His (12 page)

“I can take a bath myself.”

“Are you going to clean yourself with those bandages on both hands?”

I looked down to where the bandages were dirty and beginning to pull off.

“Maybe.”

“You can’t get water on those stitches. They’ll get infected.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as though it was a simple problem with only one solution.

“I don’t—”

“What, kitten?”

“I don’t want you to see me naked,” I said, hating the timidity in my voice.

“That’s too bad, isn’t it?”

“But—”

“No, kitten.” He stood up from next to the bathtub. “Do you need me to help you undress?”

“No!” I nearly screamed the word. I couldn’t risk him finding the razor in my bra. “No, I’ll—I’ll get undressed.”

Turning away from him, I stripped quickly, balling up my bra so that the razor was well-hidden. My mouth was dry as I turned around, completely naked. I could feel the heat coming from my cheeks where I blushed hard. I hated being naked in full-light.

Stupid, maybe, to be self-conscious standing in front of a serial killer. But I couldn’t help it. His eyes swept over my body, over every roll of fat, every lumpy part that wasn’t supposed to be lumpy, over my unshaved legs and my unshaved…well, you know. I waited for him to tell me how disgusting I was, to order me into the bathtub.

Instead, he licked his lips.

“You are… incredible,” he said.

My jaw dropped. I tried to hide my surprise as he reached out and helped me step into the bath. As soon as my feet touched the water, all of my other thoughts disappeared. I slid down, letting my body sink down into the deliciously hot water. Steam rose in white billowing clouds around us, fogging the bathroom mirror.

I closed my eyes. My feet rubbed against each other underwater. It felt so good. I could almost forget where I was, who was with me. When I opened my eyes, though, he was watching me intently. He coughed slightly.

“Thank you for being obedient,” he said. “Now another trade.”

Another trade. My heart beat faster. What was he doing to me? I had never responded like this to a guy before, any guy. But the low rumble of his voice sent my heart into palpitations like I was some horny teenager. The confidence in his voice, the way he moved, the way he spoke with such sureness. There was nothing I could do but clamp down on it as hard as I could, to try and push the feeling back.

“You let me wash you, and in return I’ll put on new bandages for all your cuts. Yes?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

He took a washcloth and dipped it in the hot water. The bar of soap he picked up was one of those luxurious handmade soaps, cut like vanilla fudge. It smelled just as good, too. When he touched the washcloth to my back, my lips dropped apart. I couldn’t hold back a long sigh as the cloth moved over my shoulders, rubbing my skin in long slow circles.

“Good, kitten?” he whispered. I shook my head yes. Obedient, that’s what he wanted. That’s what I would be, until I had my chance.

He washed my back, then my neck, being careful around the silver chain. For some reason, he hadn’t asked me to take it off before bathing. I supposed that it was real silver.

The bandages peeled away without hurting, and his hands moved carefully around the cuts on my arms. The hot water only made me wince a few times, when the washcloth came too close to the fresh cuts made by the glass window. I wondered if the cuts made him think about how I had tried to escape.

He unwrapped the bandage off of one of my hands and washed around it. His fingers massaged my fingers one by one, the cloth cleaning between the cracks. The feeling was so sensual that my pulse began to quicken. He massaged the thick heel of my palm just under the deep cut, the cloth clouding the water with soap. Then he stopped, his hand still holding my wrist.

“Your wrists are the only places on your arms that you didn’t cut,” he said. He held them up higher in the light, and I knew then what he was seeing. Fear turned my blood cold. I tried to pull away, but not in time.

“They were cut before, though,” he said. “There are scars here. Along both wrists.”

He took my hand and ran his thumb over the white seam. I watched him carefully, looking for signs of anger. Instead, when he turned his face up, there were tears in his eyes. He blinked them back, but not before I could see them.

“What is this, kitten?” he asked. His voice broke my heart, it was so tender. I had to remind myself that this was the same man who had used a saw to cut a body into pieces on his kitchen table.

But this man was different from the one I had seen through the window. He seemed... gentle. Despite myself, I felt my heart opening up.

“I— I tried to commit suicide once,” I said.

“When?”

“When I was fifteen.”

He paused, and I tried to read the emotion on his face. His eyes shone a deep blue-gray in the fog of the hot water. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Was he pitying me? Was he annoyed with me? I wanted desperately to know, but as soon as I saw a bit of him open up, he pulled back and wore a mask of indifference.

“Was that why you ran away? Because you tried to commit suicide and failed?”

I turned my head up sharply.

“How do you know about me running away?”

“
How do you know about that?”
he repeated, mocking me lightly. “Come on, you work in a library. I looked it up.”

I pulled my wrist away from him and he let my hand go. The scars throbbed as I remembered the day I had tried to commit suicide. The note. The knife.

“Thanks for reminding me I failed,” I said.

“Failed miserably. You’re much more alive than most people.”

Raising my eyes to his, I was met with a blank stare. I didn’t know what he meant by that. I didn’t feel alive. I was a prisoner. It didn’t sound like an insult, though, and I flexed my hand, trying to get rid of the phantom ache.

“Did you know about my suicide?” I asked. “Before, I mean?”

“They don’t keep juvenile records on public file. I only noticed the scars.”

He shuddered, and I felt emboldened.

“I cut myself,” I said. I don’t know why, but I wanted him to know all of the details. He didn’t seem to want to know, but I didn’t care. “In a bathtub, so it would be easy to clean up.”

“You see, this is why I couldn’t leave you alone in the bathroom,” he said, the joke falling flat. Then he turned serious again, his eyelashes fluttering down on his cheeks. He moved to my side, the bar of soap gliding over my shoulder. My breath went shallow as he touched my neck.

“Did it hurt, kitten?”

The scar throbbed again, and I clamped back on the feeling. Was he being nice to me in order to manipulate me? I wanted to reach out to him, but I didn’t want him to have control over me. Not like that. I pressed my lips together before speaking.

“It hurt less than I thought, and I felt myself just—slipping away”

“Yes.”

“That’s why I’m not so scared. To die, that is. It was… peaceful.”

A smile tugged on the corners of his mouth.

“What?”

He looked up at me, his hand falling back from my skin.

“The way I kill people, it’s not peaceful for them.”

I jerked away from him, the water splashing at the edge of the tub.

“Why would you say that?”

“Say what?”

“Why would you say that to me? That you wouldn’t kill me peacefully? Or—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t kill you at all,” he said, raising his eyebrows as though he was surprised my conclusion.

“But you kill others. Torture them.”

He smiled sadly and wrung hot water over my shoulder. The washcloth felt rough against my skin, and I wanted his hand back on me, as much as I hated to want it.

“I told you, kitten, these are not good men that I find. I need to kill, and if anyone has to die, it is a good thing that it is them.”

I looked back down at my wrists. The white scar almost glowed against the redness of my skin in the heat of the steam.

“Have you ever thought about it?” I asked quietly. “Suicide?”

“Killing myself?” He laughed out loud, and the sound echoed against the bathroom tiles. It was such a strange reaction, but his laugh made me want to laugh along, that’s how infectious it was. “God, no. That’s abnormal.”

“Abnormal
?”

“I’m not judging,” he said, spreading his hands. “It’s simply abnormal.”

I blinked hard. His reaction took me completely aback.

“I can’t believe a serial killer thinks I’m abnormal.”

“Take it as a compliment. Most people are like me: we enjoy life. Or at the very least, we don’t want it taken away from us. I think that’s what joy is.”

“I can’t… I don’t…”

“Don’t worry, kitten,” he said, smiling. “But answer another question for me, please. A trade, if you like.”

“Sure,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. It felt crazy to have a serial killer laughing at me for trying to kill myself. Then again, there wasn’t anything that wasn’t crazy about this whole situation.

“Tell me, kitten,” he said, still smiling boldly at me, “why exactly did you try to kill yourself?”

     Gav    

Delicious, her body. The water turned the pale skin pink, reddened her cheeks in the white fog of the water. She held her arms up obediently on either side of the tub, the bandages only a few inches above the waterline. I kept waiting for her hands to slide down accidentally toward the water, but they never did.

She was perfectly in control of her body. I could see it from the way she moved. Carefully, her toes tested the water, slipped in only when she was sure that it wouldn’t burn.

I wouldn’t burn you
, I wanted to say.
I wouldn’t hurt you.

Of course, that wasn’t quite true.

“Why did you try to kill yourself?”

It was a simple question, but from the way she reacted I could tell that it was one she hadn’t had to answer in a long time. Her plump pink lips parted, her chestnut hair darkening almost to black at the roots from where her sweat had moistened it. A strand of hair lay stuck to her neck, and I wanted to brush it away and kiss the spot it had left.

“I was bored,” she said.

“Of life?”

“Yes.” The word slipped out past her lips, and she stared as though watching it go. I was silent. I wanted to listen. I wanted to understand.

“I hated my parents,” she said. “My stepdad was horrible, and my mom didn’t stop him when he…”

She waved her hand at me as though I knew what was in that lacuna - a lifetime of abuse, maybe, or some kind of emotional torment. The memories choked in her mouth, and she looked down. Was she looking at her body under the clear hot water? Or was she trying to find her reflection there between the ripples?

The silence was broken by a single drop of water falling from the faucet into the tub. Her head jerked up and she continued as though reawakened.

“I didn’t like anything… anything at all. It was like the world was empty, black and white instead of color, like you said. Mostly black.”

“Black?”

I thought of my shadow creeping in on the edges of my life, narrowing my focus until I could think of nothing else but how to get rid of it.

“Nothing looked like it used to. Food didn’t taste like food. I’d eat an apple, and halfway through I would realize that I had been eating it. I would go out with my friends, and they’d all be laughing and happy. I’d laugh, too, because I didn’t want them to know that there was this thing that was wrong with me. But there wasn’t anything inside. I imagined my heart inside my chest, and there was nothing but a hole there.”

She looked up at me, the shine that meant sadness in her eyes. Lifting my hand, I wiped her cheek as solemnly as a priest. Saying nothing. This was her confession. She swallowed, all the while searching my face as if I had the answer.

“And I was curious.”

“Curious?” I raised one eyebrow, encouraging her on.

“To see if there was anything else. Anything more that happens after… this world is over.”

I lowered the washcloth.

“And?”

“And?”

“Is there anything else?”

I realized that I had been holding my breath as I asked the question. As though this girl, this beautiful young woman in my cage, could give me the answer to something I had long decided had no answer. Strands of hair fluttered loose as she shook her head.

“I didn’t actually kill myself. My parents found me before I could die.”

“But did you see anything at all?” I leaned forward. Her eyes were deep pools; I could trust her. Had she found truth, somewhere beyond this world? It was what I hoped, what I feared. “Did you get close?”

Biting her lip, she blinked away the last of her tears. My pulse was pounding, and I thought that she could hear my anticipation, so loud was the beating of my heart. The seconds drew out; I clenched the cloth in my hand.

“No,” she said finally, looking surprised at the emotion in my face. “No. There’s nothing after this.”

I turned away from her to breathe out my disappointment. The stone of the granite tub felt warm under my hand, like a living thing.

“Gavriel?” she asked.

My face snapped shut as I smiled at her. No more. I would draw her out as much as I could, but I could not risk drawing myself out.

“You remind me of a poem,” I said. “The last lines of a poem. Would you like to hear them?”

She nodded. She was confused. So was I.

“
The shooting stars in your black hair, in bright formation, are flocking where, so straight, so soon? —Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin, battered and shiny like the moon
.”

Picking up the bottle of shampoo, I squeezed out a dollop into my hand.

“Come,” I said. “Let me wash your hair.”

Her legs tucked to her chest, she faced away from me. I cupped handfuls of water over her hair. My hands stroked her head, massaging her scalp down to the tops of her trapezius muscle. The shampoo rose in clumps of thick white foam on her dark hair. Her shoulders settled against the cream granite as I worked the shampoo through her hair, her skin smoother than any polished stone.