She’s tried to get out, but I’d locked the door and she was tied up, so she couldn’t really move, never mind unlock the door.
I smile, even though my teeth are chattering.
She looks up at me, and I see the mess her face is. Guilt rips through me.
She sobs, tears pouring down her cheeks.
She’s shaking and looks so frightened.
Guilt rips a hole in my heart.
“I’m sorry, Carrie,” I say, and my voice is thick with tiredness and pain and guilt.
I see the puddle of piss she’s in and I frown. I don’t want to touch that mess, but I know I’ll have to. I take a step into the room, and then decide it can wait for a bit longer because I need something warm to wear. I need to get out of these wet clothes. I need food. And damn it, I need a piss too.
It’s not always about you, Carrie. I’m important too, you know. I came back for you!
I leave the room, and I listen to her hoarse screams through the balled-up sock in her mouth as I shut the door and lock it. I go to the kitchen and I turn on her central heating. I listen to the boiler fire to life and I know I’ll be warm soon. I take off my bloody, soaking-wet clothes and I put them in her dryer, and I turn it on and then I walk naked through her house and I go up the stairs.
She has to have some other clothing here. Even if it’s Mr. Fancy Asshole’s. I don’t even care right now. My muscles are aching and my jaw hurts from my teeth chattering together so hard. I’m freezing cold and I just want to be warm.
I go to the bathroom and grab the towel from earlier, and I wrap it around myself. And I sit on the edge of her bath and I feel like I can finally breathe again as the soft material brushes against my body and my teeth stop chattering.
I look at the bath and sigh because I’m so fucking tired and cold, and then I get down on my knees and I scrub the bath with some detergent and a scrubber from under the sink. Neither look like they’ve been used before.
When the bath is relatively clean, I put the plug in and I turn the taps on, and I think how glorious it will be to take a bath. I don’t normally like baths; what’s so great about lying in your own filth? But right now, I can think of nothing better than being cocooned in the warm water.
When it’s full I drop the towel and I step into the hot water. My skin prickles with delight as I sink into the depths. I leave my damaged arm dangling over the side of the tub as I let everything but my face rest below the water—even my ears.
My muscles relax as they heat up. My heart thumps happily in my chest.
I’m here, Carrie is here, and we’re both okay. I sigh and I close my eyes against the sterile white bathroom.
Everything is going to be okay now.
Chapter twenty-nine:
I wake slowly to the feel of lukewarm water.
The wetness cocoons my face like a blanket.
It slips off as I sit up.
I feel a hundred times better than before. I look down at my body, seeing the water tinged pink where my feet have bled. I reach for my left foot first, expecting the worst, but it’s nothing really. Just some small cuts. The same can be said of my right foot.
I peel off the bandage on my arm and take a proper look at it. The stitches look angry and red, and that’s worrying, but I can’t go back to the pharmacy for anything so I’ll just have to deal with the problem. I pull the plug on the tub and I stand up, grabbing the towel and drying myself with it. It’s nice; it still smells of Carrie and it makes me feel more and more relaxed the more I rub it over my body, as if I am rubbing Carrie all over me.
I need to clean the tub out, but it will have to wait for now.
I stand up, catching sight of myself in the small vanity mirror. I look exhausted and beaten down. Dark rings are heavy under my eyes, and a small bruise has formed on my chin where I fell.
I look away with a shake of my head, my brain already in overdrive as to how I can turn this entire mess around. I look through Carrie’s things and find a white T-shirt which looks pretty clean, and I take that with me down the stairs to the kitchen. I pull my clothes from the dryer and put them back on, feeling more and more like myself as the minutes pass.
I cut the T-shirt into strips and wrap them around my arm to make a clean bandage, tying them in a knot. I wince, but I feel better now that the wound is covered. I boil the kettle and make myself a black coffee with extra sugar, because I know that sugar, or really glucose, is important when you’ve lost a lot of blood, and I know now that that’s what happened to me. I lost too much blood and passed out. They gave me fluids and blood at the hospital and probably some antibiotics, though I’ll need to get more at some point.
The thoughts hit me all at once, like a wall moving toward me at full speed. The hospital will have filled out a police report about me because it was a stab wound. They have my wallet because they stole it from my jeans.
“Fuck,” I say to myself, because that means they have my ID and they’ll find out who I am.
They’ll go to my apartment, to my job.
They might contact my parents.
And they’ll definitely contact Mr. fucking Jeffrey.
I’m panicking, but it’s okay, I eventually decide. It’s okay. I’m not at home, I’m here with Carrie.
The police can’t and won’t find me here because they don’t even know that Carrie is alive.
They think she’s dead, just like her dad.
Carrie and I will eventually go to the station together to clear my name, and I’ll apologize for leaving the hospital like I did. And I’ll explain that I needed to get back to Carrie because she was here all alone. Though of course I won’t mention that I tied her up, because they won’t understand.
And I can understand why it would look bad. I’m not stupid, but they don’t know me and Carrie. They don’t know how our relationship works.
I’ll even ask where my sneakers are, and we’ll all laugh at how I had to walk home in the rain with no sneakers on.
I smile and I feel calmer now. I feel like I have a better plan. I sip my coffee, and it’s really not nice at all. Carrie really needs to get some better coffee than this. And I’d go to the store for her and buy some things, but I don’t have my wallet so I don’t have any money, so I can’t.
“What a mess,” I say.
I look at the clock on the wall and see that it is 3:15 a.m., but I’m not even a little bit sleepy. I cook another can of her beans, and I eat them straight from the pan because it’s just easier that way. The beans fill the empty hole in my stomach, and that’s nice. My stomach feels warm and full, and I don’t feel so worried or nervous anymore. The anxiousness has gone, not just from thinking about the police or being at the hospital, but from being with her again. It’s nice, I think, that we’re slowly slipping into some form of normalcy.
I think of the homeless man I spoke to earlier. I wonder where he is sleeping tonight; with all this rain, his cardboard won’t keep him dry. I worry about how hungry he must be, and I vow to go back and give him some money once all of this mess is sorted out.
Mom always said I was a caring soul. Those were her exact words.
‘You’re a caring soul, Ethan,’ she’d say, and she’d smile at me with her pretty pink mouth.
And Mom was right, and she still is, even if she doesn’t believe it anymore. Even if my dad made her turn her back on me. I am a caring soul. If I wasn’t then I wouldn’t be here, looking after Carrie and making sure that she was okay. I wouldn’t be planning to go and help that homeless man.
A caring soul wouldn’t do those things. But I am and I will. Because I’m good.
I’m not bad, or rotten, like the lawyers said. Like the reporters said all those years ago. Mom didn’t do anything wrong; she was a good mom, and I was a good boy, and now I’m a good man.
Sometimes things just seem worse when you don’t know the full story.
I smile and I finish my coffee, and then I wash the mug out and I make Carrie a coffee, becaus
e she’s not had any coffee in over twenty-four hours so I bet she has a killer headache. I get that sometimes—a headache from no caffeine. It’s an addiction really, the caffeine, but it’s my only one so I don’t berate myself too much. Some people have much worse ones. Like drugs, or drinking, or sex, or other things that are much, much worse. Things that people don’t talk about as much.
My first roommate in the hospital had one of those addictions, and sometimes he’d tell me about the things that he fantasized about. The people he dreamed of hurting, and the ways in which he would hurt them.
It made me feel sick, and that’s why he did it. He would tell me the stories of things he wanted to do, and things he had done, until I puked and I cried and I begged for my mom. And then he’d laugh and he’d kick me in the stomach as I lay in my own vomit curled up on the floor, and he’d tell me to ‘stop being such a pussy.’
So I did.
I stopped being such a pussy.
I stopped crying when he told me those things, and I became impassive to them, even though they still made me want to puke and cry. Even though I would never get the images out of my head and sometimes they still haunt my dreams even now.
I stopped being a pussy and I became a man, because it was the only way to survive in that place.
I’ll always be haunted by the things that went on there. I’ll never forget them. The stories I heard, and the things that I saw, and the feel of someone’s head beneath my boot. I had to prove I was strong to stay alive. At times I wondered if it was all worth it. But I know now it was, because I’m here and so is Carrie.
I frown and I look up at the clock while the kettle boils again, the steaming bubbles escaping from the spout.
It’s been longer than twenty-four hours, I realize, a small, steaming bubble of anxiety creasing my stomach.
I got here Friday, but I’ve slept since then. Then I was in the hospital, so now it must be Sunday. I frown harder, because the timing still seems wrong. I go into the other room, the one with all the strange things in it, and I turn on the television. I flick through the channels and my movements are hurried because I’m worrying now.
I find a news channel, and scrolling along the bottom is the date and time. It’s Monday now. Which means Mr. Fancy Asshole Adam is coming back tomorrow. Fuck, it’s not enough time.
It’s never enough time.
*
“I have to go, Ethan.” Carrie is crying, her tears mixing with the rain that falls from the sky. “Please. It’s not you, it’s me.”
I don’t want to be angry at her for using that line, but I am. It’s the most cliché line ever. It’s used in all bad literature. It’s used in cheesy films. That line is every editor’s nightmare. And here she is, my Carrie, using it on me.
“I know it’s not me,” I say. And perhaps I say it with a little more venom than I mean to, but again, I can’t help it. She’s making me mad. She keeps doing this. She keeps running when I want her to sit down. She keeps going when I need her to stay.
“I can’t do this anymore, Ethan. Do you understand?” Her face is beseeching me, and I soften to her, I really do, but I’m also still angry so when she puts her hand on my shoulder, I shrug her off.
She nods like she understands, but of course she doesn’t. Because if she understood, she wouldn’t leave. Again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Carrie leans across and kisses me on the cheek. I want more from her, but of course she doesn’t give me more.
The bus has turned up and she’s gone; climbing the steps into the bright light of freedom and away from the rainy, dark streets of our hometown. And then she’s gone, and I am alone.
All alone without my Carrie.
I stand there, cold and wet, for far too long.
The streets are soaked, the world a blurred and dirty image.
I hate the rain, I think. I hate it because it washed Carrie away.
Chapter thirty:
I go into the living room and see that Carrie is asleep, her body curled into the fetal position in the center of her wet patch.
Shit, I think. I forgot about that.
I look around the room because I know I left her cell here somewhere, but no matter how hard I look I can’t find it anywhere. I run my hands through my hair in frustration, and the bandages on my arm snag painfully and I hiss in pain.
Carrie wakes up, slowly at first and then all at once. She glances up at me and begins to sob, and I scowl and let out a heavy breath.
Will you just calm down? This is getting ridiculous now.
She continues to sob, burying her face in the crook of her arms and sniveling. She’s mumbling something behind the sock in her mouth, but I don’t care too much about what she’s saying because I’m just so grossed out about having to clean up her piss.
And then I realize what a terrible job I’m actually doing of looking after her. My Carrie…my world. She hasn’t eaten or drunk anything or even been able to go to the bathroom in days. I’ve tied her up, hit her (though that was her own fault). She’s fallen over, bashed her face. I shake my head, disgusted at what I’ve done. No wonder she looks petrified of me.
Well, no more, I decide. I’m going to sort this mess out now, and it’s going to be okay.
I smile and crouch down to her. She winces with her one good eye; her bad eye is almost swollen shut.
“I’m sorry about everything,” I say. “It really wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
She mumbles something behind the socks in her mouth, and I frown because I can’t make out what she’s saying.
“I’m going to give you a shower and get you something to eat and drink, and then we’re going to have a chat. Okay?” I give her my best smile. The one that makes people soften to me—especially women. But Carrie only narrows her one good eye at me. And the way she looks at me reminds me of the woman in the croissant shop and makes me angry, and it takes everything I have not to smack her again.
I scoop her up in my arms. She’s heavier than I thought she would be, but it’s okay because I’m stronger than she remembers me being. I talk to her as I carry her upstairs, and I smile once or twice to try and soothe her.
“I know that you’re hurting, and I know that you’re worried, but it’s me Carrie. You don’t have to worry about me.”
We reach the last step, and I carry her through to the bathroom where I just took a bath and I put her on the floor with her back against the wall. I inhale her scent and think I’m in heaven. I put the plug in and I run her a bath.
Yes, Carrie, it’s your turn for a bath now. You’re covered in piss.
She doesn’t make a sound as the water splashes from the faucet. She silently watches me from the floor, her knees pulled up to her chest. I find some bubble bath and I pour some in. It smells like flowers, and I like it.
“See?” I say with a huge smile, the heavy scents filling me up. “You’re going to enjoy this.”
A small amount of bubbles appear on the top of the water, and I realize that I haven’t had a bubbly bath since I was a kid. I decide that as soon as we get back to my place, we’ll go shopping and we’ll buy lots of bubble bath and she can scrub my back while I pop the bubbles. I don’t normally like to lie in my own filth, but I’d do it for you, Carrie. And after our bath we’ll christen my bed, of course.
Carrie and I will give the whore upstairs a run for her money.
When the bath is finished running, I turn off the tap and turn to look at her. She smells really, really bad. Not just piss, but sweat and dirt too.
“I’m going to undress you now, Carrie. But that means I need to undo your wrists while I take your clothes off, okay?” I watch her carefully.
She nods slowly as if she agrees, but I know she’s going to do something stupid. I can see the spark in her eyes.
I untie her wrists first, and she stays still. I rub the red marks that circle each one, but she doesn’t appear to be in any pain from them. I grip the hem of her T-shirt and pull it over h
er head, and I watch as her breasts heave on her chest.
‘It’s rude to stare,’ I hear my mom say, but I can’t not stare. Not when we’re this close. Not when her pink rosebuds call to me. I reach a hand up to touch one. Just a little bit; I just want to feel the soft flesh pucker under my fingertips. But as I lift my arm, unable to control my own urges any longer, she makes a dive to escape my touch.
And because she forgot that her ankles are still tied together, she falls and lands on her front, her beautiful breasts pressed against the cold bathroom floor.
“I’m sorry,” I say, over and over. Because I know I crossed a line. You should never touch a woman unless she says it’s okay to. I know that, but I couldn’t hold myself back.
She’s lying on her front and I straddle her to stop her from moving, and then I reach over and tie her wrists back together. She pants heavily, her face turned to one side, and she watches me from the corner of her eye, her mouth still plugged up with the socks. I trace my fingertips down her naked back, the skin so soft it feels like velvet to the touch. And I swallow down the hard lump that has filled my throat.
I reach under her and find the button to her jeans, and I work my fingers to undo it. And then I’m sliding her jeans over her perfect ass and down her perfect legs, and then I can see her perfect body.
And I would do anything, literally anything to put myself inside her right now.
I am hard in my pants, so hard that it hurts, and I’m shaking from the need to touch her. To feel myself inside her tight, wet warmth. I still remember exactly what it felt like to be inside her. She was both soft and hard, her body holding onto me tightly, milking me as I moved within her. Her soft thighs around my waist, clinging to me as I stared at her in wonder. As I stared at her like she was an angel sent to me by God. Because this was heavenly. There was no greater feeling in the world than this.
I groan and rub one hand over the soft skin on her back, the other pulling myself out of my jeans so I can touch myself. Because I won’t fuck her until she says it’s okay, and I can tell she’s too scared to agree to anything right now. And I understand that—of course I do. It’s been a stressful fucking time for both of us, and we’re both dealing with it in our own way.
Beautiful Victim Page 13
