Instead, it skittered down his piss-soaked leg and across his sock. It dropped to the floor, and crawled under the door.
Brian laughed. A mad, deliriously relieved laugh.
Soaked in cooling piss. Bound to a kitchen chair. His shoulder muscles burned from the panicked contortions he’d just put them through. On a day this awful, this moment qualified as a victory.
What the hell.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Brian jerked awake at the sound of banging pans in the kitchen. He couldn’t believe that he’d dozed off in such an uncomfortable position. It sounded like Tyler was back, and Brian’s guess was that his brother wasn’t following along with a cooking show on cable TV. Then, from another part of the house, came the sound of furniture dragging across carpet. Tyler was executing some plan, and that couldn’t be good.
The embers of Brian’s anxiety glowed a bit brighter. His pulse accelerated.
Mr. Jitters appeared, sitting in the sink beside him. His black-painted-tooth smile swept upwards and curled in on itself in an even more malicious grin than before. His long arms and legs poked out of the sink at add angles. His top hat hung low, shading his eyes.
“C’mon, Brian!” He laughed that maniacal cackle of a laugh. “Time to have a little fun, a little dance with the J-Man, hey?”
He leaned in close. His hot breath rushed across Brian’s cheek. It reeked of things long dead.
Brian’s breaths came short and rapid. His legs began to vibrate in their bindings and jiggle against the chair. He didn’t need this, didn’t need the incapacitation of a full-blown foxtrot with Mr. Jitters, not with Tyler on the verge of starting who-knew-what elsewhere in the house. He closed his eyes.
“Go the hell away,” he said through clenched teeth.
“You forget, boy,” Mr. Jitters said. “Without the prescription pharma, I’ve always been the one giving orders here.”
Mr. Jitters was right. A sure as Tyler had him physically bound to this chair, anxiety had always had him mentally bound, always restrained from stepping out into the wide-open world the way any normal person would. And nothing but the meds he’d flushed down the toilet had ever been able to keep it at bay. Mr. Jitters had always come and gone on his own schedule. Brian’s sense of powerlessness only amplified his anxiety.
Wait, this is a damn hallucination, he thought. A damn withdrawal-induced waking nightmare.
Understanding that didn’t stop his pounding heart or chill his burning nerves. It only made him even more furious at his internal and external captivity. He opened his eyes and turned to face Mr. Jitters. Jitters was so close Brian could make out the swirls in the white greasepaint on his cheekbones.
“You’re nothing!” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”
The door swung open. Brian turned his head to see Tyler standing there, with a pair of gray shorts in his hand and a perplexed look on his face. Brian glanced back to the sink and Mr. Jitters was gone. His anxiety wasn’t. His shuddering made the chair rattle against the toilet.
“Bro! What are you doing?” Tyler said. “Talking to yourself? Worse, shouting at yourself? Conduct unbecoming, dude. You want people thinking you’re crazy?”
In his anger, Brian almost shouted that of the two of them, his new-found brother was the damn expert on crazy. But he cut himself off. Tyler had his happy persona on. No point in pushing the buttons that turned that off. Not with Brian bound to a chair and Mr. Jitters ready to cue the arrival of a full-blown anxiety meltdown. He took and held a deep breath, then slowly exhaled to calm himself.
Tyler stepped in and looked down at the piss-soaked towel. “I left you in better shape than this. What the hell?”
Brian wasn’t about to admit to the spider incident and give Tyler another weakness to exploit. He just looked away. Tyler pulled away the towel and tossed in on the floor. He pulled the big cherrywood knife from his pocket and flipped it open. He tossed the shorts on Brian’s lap, a cheap cotton exercise pair. Tyler knelt and cut the zip ties from Brian’s feet. The blade was so sharp that the ties snapped and flew away at first contact. Brian immediately tried to kick Tyler in the face. His leg wouldn’t move, frozen in place after being immobilized for so long.
Tyler pulled the shorts off Brian’s lap and slipped them up his tingling legs, under his ass and around his waist. Then before Brian knew what was happening, Tyler whipped zip ties out of his pocket and re-bound Brian’s ankles.
“Damn,” Brian said. “At least give me a chance to stretch.”
“Opportunities abound, bro. Just moments away.”
Tyler pulled the chair forward, then pushed it from behind and out the bathroom door. Relief washed over Brian like spring rain as he saw something, anything other than the four walls of the bathroom. He reveled in the open space, the daylight streaming through the window’s gauzy curtains. A day, or maybe more, in the tight, silent confines of the bathroom had been more than enough.
They took a right and rolled into the living room. A tacky pink floral-patterned couch and two matching armchairs faced a central coffee table. The light blue pile carpet clashed perfectly. Family photos hung on the walls, some new, some old, lots with kids. Brian would have normally tried to connect the genealogical dots between all of them, but he hadn’t the time. There’d be no clues to Tyler’s past in those pictures. This obviously wasn’t his house.
A laptop sat open on an end table beside the couch. A psychedelic screen saver danced around the display. Brian wished he could get his hands on that for about five minutes. He’d have the cops beating down the door in no time.
Tyler parked him opposite the couch with the coffee table between. He took a seat on the couch, and stared at Brian with barely controlled anticipation. Tyler’s psyche seemed balanced on whatever razor’s edge he walked between crazed killer and childlike best friend. Brian didn’t want to push him in the wrong direction. He didn’t say a word.
“So,” Tyler said. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Brother stuff. Some of it might seem out there, but I really think it will be fun, get to know each other better, you know? Do some real bonding.”
Tyler whipped out his knife and snapped it open. He reached over and severed the zip ties on Brian’s right arm. Brian tried to lift it with no effect. Tyler grabbed his wrist and lifted his arm. He rocked it back and forth, in and out. Every muscle burned with the motion. Brian whimpered as his muscles stretched after being frozen in place by inactivity.
“Oh, yeah,” Tyler said. Snort-laugh again. “So been there. One foster family.…” He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to expose a series of cigarette-burn scars on his bicep. “This family here. They had this box for me, like a dog carrier. I got the box when I broke one of their asshole rules. All cramped up in there for hours and then after they finally let me out I wasn’t able to move for another hour. Just shake ’em and stretch ’em, bro.”
He let Brian’s hand go. Brian was able to stop it before it fell all the way to his lap. He stretched his fingers as he rolled his arm in his shoulder socket in slow motion.
His mind went straight to escape. He cycled through several scenarios, but one free hand and three other restrained limbs didn’t offer any good options. As he figured Tyler already knew, otherwise he’d still have all four limbs bound to the chair. His damn brother was one step ahead of him.
Tyler reached under the couch and pulled out the board game Life. Brian hadn’t seen one in forever. It looked brand new. Tyler popped the top, pulled out the board and unfolded it. It had a big spinner to determine how many spaces to move. A trail of spaces ran across the board, by white plastic buildings, and over plastic green hills. Each space had a life event on it.
“If we’d grown up together, we would have so played games like this. On rainy days, when we were stuck inside, we’d have played for hours. This’ll be excellent.”
The idea of playing Life with
a serial killer didn’t seem at all excellent to Brian. Tyler apparently didn’t get the situation’s irony.
Tyler pulled out a handful of tiny plastic convertibles with holes on top of each. They were all different colors. He shoved them in front of Brian.
“Pick your color!”
Brian couldn’t have cared less what color he had. He picked green.
“Excellent.” Tyler picked red. He placed both on Start and put a little blue stick person in each driver’s seat. “You go first, Little Bro. Spin it!”
Brian spun the wheel. It stopped on the number ten. The higher the numbers, the faster the game went. All tens would be great. He reached over and started counting spaces with his car. He got to the branch where he had to choose whether to go to college. He took the college track.
“Whoa, whoa!” Tyler grabbed his hand. “What the hell? We’re not going to college.”
“No?”
“What kind of shit are they going to teach us there? We haven’t been yet and we’re doing great. Well, I’m doing great and I’ll be making you great in no time.”
He grabbed the car from Brian’s hand and tapped it forward a few more spaces. He stopped on a space that said Get Married-Get Gifts.
“All right, you dog!” Tyler said. “Hooked a hottie! Getting some action! Congratulations.”
Tyler picked up a blue stick person and held it just over the passenger seat in the green car. He looked at Brian, then snort-laughed.
“Just messing with you! I know you’re no fag. I’ve seen Daniela.”
A shiver ran down Brian’s spine. Tyler had stalked Daniela. Or worse, seen Daniela through Brian’s eyes, maybe at some pretty intimate moments. Damn, he might have seen her naked! She didn’t need to be involved with this at all, and now he was afraid Tyler already had her in deep.
Tyler put a pink peg into Brian’s car. Then he took a five hundred dollar bill from the stack of cash in the box and laid it on Brian’s lap. “Live large, dude!”
His brother hadn’t set them up with any money to play the game. Brian wondered if he’d ever played before, knew any of the rules.
Tyler spun the wheel. It stopped on eight. His car ended up beside Brian in the Get Married spot anyway. “Look at that. Twins with a double wedding. Maybe we even married twins. Way cool. We can switch on them in bed, kind of change it up, and they’ll never know.”
The game crossed the line of ‘borderline creepy’. Brian spun the wheel. Tyler grabbed Brian’s car before the wheel even stopped and moved it forward. It landed on a space that read to collect one thousand dollars for winning a talent contest.
“Oh, yeah. That’s believable!” Tyler said with a snort-laugh.
He reached across the table and grabbed the front legs of Brian’s chair. He lifted them up, and then rocked the chair side to side. Brian gripped the edge with his free hand, afraid of falling partway out of the chair and having a zip tie slice into his flesh.
“Here we go,” Tyler said. “A little tap dancing for the talent show!” He snort-laughed again and dropped Brian down so hard it jarred his spine. He threw a hundred-thousand-dollar bill in Brian’s lap. “See, who needs college?”
Tyler spun the wheel. He advanced until he got to a space that read You Have A Daughter Get Gifts. His face went dark. He picked up a pink stick figure and stared at it.
“Well, little bitch. Welcome to the world. Daddy was using a condom, but here you are anyhow. Sit in the back and shut the fuck up.” His face flushed. He jammed the stick figure into the far corner of his car. He picked up a thousand-dollar bill from the till and slammed it down beside him on the table. “Thanks for the gift, bro.”
“No big deal. Nothing’s too good for my brother.” The last sentence nearly stuck in his throat. But he needed to try to reel Tyler back in. Tyler didn’t look up, focused on the pink stick in the back seat of his little red car.
Brian twirled the spinner and it landed on seven. He gingerly tapped his car forward, like it might break through the board. He landed on a space and read the result aloud. “Buy A Sailboat- $30,000.” He didn’t have any money. He wasn’t about to bring that to Tyler’s attention.
Tyler brightened and raised his eyes from his little red car. “Excellent! Sailing the high seas like pirates!” He rooted through the box. “There’s no sailboat in here.”
“Everything like that isn’t in the game. You don’t really get a house when you have to buy a house.”
“Well, that’s retarded. Who spends thirty thousand dollars on a make-believe sailboat? Screw that, we’re not buying.”
Tyler spun the wheel and it yielded an eight. He drove his car forward, making a vroom noise. He screeched to a stop on space number eight and read the result. “Send kids to college. Pay $50,000.” His face screwed up in disgust. “See? Fucking leech. Little bitch should have spent a few years with Old Man Dunham. Learned a little about having to work for a living.”
Instead of footing his college bill, Tyler moved his car forward until it shared Brian’s space.
“Families are just slowing us down,” Tyler said. “Wives especially. Nagging us day and night. Crushing our souls, bro. This isn’t how our life should be at all.”
Tyler reached down and plucked the three pink sticks from the vehicles. He laid them down in front of the cars. He made an engine-revving noise, then drove his car over the three little sticks. He backed up and did it again.
“There! Free at last!” Tyler plucked Brian’s blue stick out of his green car and put it in the red car’s passenger seat. “Here’s a plan. Brothers on a road trip. Free and easy, where we want to go, when we want to go.”
He pulled out his knife, and flipped it open. Sunlight flashed along the blade’s sharpened edge like a warning strobe. He thrust it into the game board, chopping the three pink sticks in half. Then he jammed the sticks into the holes on the green car, and pushed it into one of the little white buildings on the game board. He uttered a little explosion sound.
“There you go, that’s all covered up,” he said. “Cops won’t find a thing. They were just heading to the store and had an accident.” He extracted his knife from the game board, snapped it closed, and put it back in his pocket.
Brian struggled to keep an impassive look on his face, to not betray his growing repulsion at Tyler’s interpretation of a perfect life. Tyler picked up the red car and moved it straight to the end where the space read Millionaire Estates. He broke into a big smile.
“And the road trip ends happily ever after!” A timer dinged in the kitchen. Tyler’s face lit up. “And right on time!”
He flipped the board closed. The cars and recently deceased stick figures crunched between the boards. He threw it all in the open box and dashed off to the kitchen.
Brian exhaled, and realized he’d barely breathed while Tyler had been in the room. He felt like he’d was walking on ice during the whole bizarre scenario, afraid to say anything to disrupt Tyler’s deranged stream-of-consciousness game play.
Now he had a free hand, and his mobility was back. He grabbed for the zip tie on his left hand and pulled. It didn’t break. It didn’t even budge. These things were tough for being so thin. He wished Tyler had left his oversized pocketknife on the table. It would make quick work of these ties, he’d be free, and out the door one second after. He had no illusions about being able to overpower his beefier twin. Escape would be good enough.
But the knife was still in Tyler’s pocket. In fact, nothing useful was within reach. Even the game was on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. Tyler, as usual, seemed to have thought everything through.
An oven door banged open in the kitchen. The smell of baking cheese wafted into the living room. Brian’s stomach growled and he realized how little he’d eaten. Plates and silverware clinked from the kitchen. A beaming Tyler walked back into the living room with two dinner
plates in his hands, raised too high for Brian to see what was on them, but steam rose from both. Brian’s mouth watered.
“And dinner!” Tyler said.
He placed the plate on Brian’s lap. The warmth of its bottom transferred through his thin shorts to his thighs. On the plate sat a gooey, bright yellow pile of macaroni and cheese. Thick, bulging discs of unnaturally red hot dog poked out of the mound. Beside the little knoll of cholesterol sat a white plastic spoon, handle hanging over the plate’s edge.
“Mac and cheese.…” Brian couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something so totally artificial, in color and flavor.
“Totally, bro. From the box to you. Kid’s comfort food. Two brothers sitting down to Sunday supper with the fam. Well, hell, we’re the fam, aren’t we?”
Tyler dug into dinner with gusto. Brian took a tentative bite. It tasted like chemicals. The pseudo-cheese was a rough approximation of the real thing, but with the hot dog he recognized nothing but nitrates and food coloring. The overcooked pasta and greasy hot dog felt all wrong in his mouth. He swallowed and the oily mass hit his stomach like a slurry of sludge. He took another small spoonful.
“Bro, what’s the matter?” Tyler said.
Shit, Brian thought. He hadn’t masked his look of displeasure very well. He dreaded the violent reaction he’d get from Tyler if he turned his nose up at this meal.
“You want some of the crunchy part from the top?” Tyler speared a big scab of hard, blackened cheese from his plate and offered it up.
“No, thanks. I’m just not used to eating something so…heavy. I’ve always eaten lots of natural foods. Camilla read that all the chemicals made me more anxious.”
“Really? Honestly, I tuned out most of your meals when I was linked to you. So boring. You didn’t do mac and cheese, no Twinkies, no Lucky Charms?”
“Never.”
“Well, shit, bro. No wonder you’re no fun. Eating like a cave man when you should be eating all the present day has to offer. Look at me. Bigger. Stronger. Taller. Did I do that on wheat germ and bean sprouts? Shit, no. White bread, mayonnaise, fried chicken, fast food. Cheap and chock full of everything you need. Eat up. You’ll see. I’ll bulk you up in no time flat.”
The Playing Card Killer Page 15
