Please Don't Go (38 page)

Her eyes heavy and lost, she drove.

She drove.

She drove somewhere.

Anywhere. Everywhere.

She drove.

14.

Zephyr worked for the next two hours restocking the shelves with the books he had tossed about the room in his moments of reckless abandon. Lilith had insisted upon it, groping at his neck for a reaction; pleasant in demeanor when she saw how fast he had reacted to her plea. He was very much broken, and becoming more so every day, every hour, every minute—whether he wanted to admit to that or not. Things were falling into place for Lilith and she could not be happier. Zephyr was a work horse now, primed and ready for action wherever or however she so desired- the bedroom included.

Lilith.

The whore.

The name hopped around his brain like a kangaroo on speed. He had no real direct link between the mythical succubus and the invisible monster that kept him at bay, but it seemed so very fitting to him that he could not turn his back on the analogy. He hesitated to call her it out loud, fearful of how she would respond, or if she would understand the underlying reference at all. She was Lilith-like, but not Lilith
herself
.

If asked a month earlier if there was any way to keep a human at bay, with permanence and without a three-dimensional physical restriction of any sort, Zephyr would have laughed out loud. Sure, he had always believed in ghosts, extraterrestrials, and the mysteries of the occult world, but only in theory. In practice, it seemed absurd to him. Harry Potter stood a better chance of actually existing than Lilith (or her phantasmagorical copycat killer) did.

He was unable to recall the original order of the books, and so he used no particular method to recompile the shelving units. Rattup, who had come across as very anal-retentive during their brief encounters, would have shuddered at the thought of loading any brand of chaos into his life, particularly with his adored book collection.

Zephyr’s shirt was soaked all the way through with sweat and he would need a shower.

Showers were horrific.

She loved to watch him.

Not just watching, but lathering with her furtive, dead hands. When he resisted, trying to squirm away from her frozen touch, she would bite at him with her jagged teeth. Pinching or scratching didn’t work too well when done upon a wet body, but snappy biting served as a fitting substitution. The bites were far worse than the pinches and scratches. The deep “nibbles” would bleed, while the other methods of control only bruised.

You’re so dirty. My lover is so very dirty!

“
I’m almost finished,” Zephyr replied in a bland voice, putting another book back into place. He had purposely stashed the book that had described Lilith and her theological significance in a spot that he would remember, on demand, on the top and the far left of the west-facing shelf.

And you’ll be taking to the shower thereafter?

He shivered. The shower had once been such a lovely place, where the dirt was vanquished and a fresh beginning could be launched from the dock of life. Now, it had transformed into something sinister, a place that had become tarnished by her roaming hands and watchful eye. Even when she did not physically touch him in any way, in a sexual romp or otherwise, he could feel her eyes looking him over, searching for her joy in his body. When he imagined what she looked like, in the real sense of the word
looked
, he pictured a hag with scaled skin and thin, chafed lips, liver spots all about her face, smoking a long cigarette and hacking the entire while. A decrepit Audrey Hepburn who had been in the sun too long, and had been run over by a bus. A leathery bag of bones that coated her face in makeup to mask the fact that she was in her dwindling years. This was his “lover.” This was his Lilith.

“
I would assume so. I haven’t had a shower yet today. And that’s
not
an invitation.”

I go where I please, lover. That cannot be helped. I am an empowered female and I have tasks that need to be completed by my men. Jobs both great and small are not for my hands. The slaves are obedient and they live to see another day.

“
Sounds like paradise. For you.”

Oh, it is. Now finish with the books. I have another job for you, before you can get yourself clean. It’s a messy job, so don’t bother washing your sweet little hands. Bring a mop and a bucket. Bring garbage bags. And I know you have a gag reflex, so bring along one of those medical masks from beneath the kitchen sink.

“
What’s the job?” Zephyr asked, feeling as though he was a hitman getting prepped before a big kill. Lucky Vinny. Fingers Malone. The Big Fazool. Somebody said something raunchy about somebody else’s mother, and there was no other end game but a
rub out
. Messes were made and messes were cleaned, family or otherwise. “Did you shit the bed again, sweetheart?”

She slapped him hard across the face and he could feel the pain jolting through his skin, dancing and jigging around on his nerve endings in a screaming fit of hysteria.
You watch your language. You watch your language or I’ll tear you apart. Get the supplies and meet me in the basement.
Footsteps meandered away from Zephyr, followed by the basement door opening and shutting.

The basement.

Karen was in that dank hole, festering away and being eaten alive by the sands of time. Lilith kept a tidy house and there was no room for dead bodies.

***

He grabbed the mop and bucket with a reluctant groan, along with a box of industrial strength garbage bags, strapping the medical mask to his face. Beads of sweat came to life on his brow. The house had grown exponentially warm in the late afternoon, added to the hot breath that was collecting behind the confining mask. His nerves quaked as he imagined what he was set to discover in the basement. He had still not visited that part of the house yet, and so that surmounted the nervous tension even more. Into the unknown, men walk like cowards.

As he descended the steps, one at a time with the utmost care (they had a visible wobble to them that indicated they could give way at any moment), he kept his eyes sealed, as though he was walking into his birthday party, not wanting to see what mess Lilith had made of his former co-worker. There had been not a peep from the basement since her visit, and so he could only assume that she was dead, but by what measure? He had tried to keep her assumed demise out of sight, out of mind.

Clean this mess up, and be quick about it. The garbage bags can be left in the greenhouse. I’ll take care of burying them at a more suitable time. There’s a garden hose in the back corner. Use that.
If nothing else, she was a well-organized inter-dimensional harpy.

The first thing he noticed, eyes still clenched shut, was the smell.

The stench of Karen’s body had not yet traversed into the upstairs floor, but given the heat that was on its way in the arms of summer, that fact would soon be reversed. Perhaps this was why Lilith had suddenly tasked him with the removal of the body. The foul stench was not of spicy rotted peaches, as in Rattup’s story, but of salt and metal. Dead flowers that had been urinated on by a canine, or what he would have imagined battery acid would taste like. The odor was so overbearing that he could taste it on the flagella of his tongue. Zephyr was reminded of the phrase of having to piss so bad that you can taste it. At this, he wanted to laugh, for he now understood what piss tasted like.... salty acidic piss from Satan’s dick, splashed atop a maggot-coated sirloin steak from the Great War.

Zephyr opened his eyes and recoiled, slamming his lids shut again.

Karen had been dangled from the ceiling, on display like a bloodied trophy. A thick silver chain had been strung through the overhead rafters of the unfinished basement, attached to a stained red hook that had been poked directly through Karen’s stomach. She had dressed up in that special dress for her purported date with Zephyr, but was now splattered with her own blood, and something in that dichotomy made his stomach do somersaults. Dressed to the nines, for her own demise.

The hook had plunged through her stomach and Zephyr observed that she would have been impaled while still alive, as both of her hands were clutched around the business end of the hook as if she had been flailing in desperation during her final moments, to remove herself from that position, like a fish with working limbs and opposable thumbs. Her face was contorted into a final resting position, aghast at what had stricken her, intermingled with the shock of an invisible force that had dragged her down the stairs in a callous display of hostility. Her screams had first come from the attack upon her body, Lilith bludgeoning her with translucent fists and biting at her neck with her prodding teeth. The bite marks had turned to a dark purple, as had the remainder of Karen’s face. Likewise, her arms were an eggplant color, frozen forever in time.

Her jaw hung low and it reminded Zephyr of a wooden puppet, so much so that he could picture the square penciled edging around her chin. Lilith had played her like a puppet in those final moments, as she had played all of them, Rattup and Zephyr included. She was the ultimate gamer, opting for real humans as opposed to a video game console.

Karen’s eyes bulged out, becoming almost vacant from her skull altogether.

The flies swarmed her body, dive-bombing and returning again with a frenzy of activity, collectively delighted at the new landing pad they had discovered.

The worst part was her legs. Both had been ripped away from her body as a butcher might dismantle a chicken into separate parts. At the point where the ball joints of her femurs would have met her pelvis, there remained nothing more than a hardened mess of human flesh, encrusted by the open air, made into brownish steel by the passage of time. Though she had only just died (if one could lump “died” in with “murdered”), the effects of her immediate world around her- buzzing flies and all- had gone right to work, even quicker than a mortician would have.

“
You sadistic bitch,” Zephyr mumbled, clutching his hand to his face. He would not allow himself to continue his morbid study of Karen’s purple, bloated remains.

Her legs are propped against the wall. You can take care of those first, if you’d like. I am a practicing student of anatomy. Don’t you know that about me, lover? I take apart specimens that interest me. I was so very confused about the way in which the human legs worked, how they operated. I guess once I saw it all, there was no need for the arms. I can assume they work the same way?
She jested of the mangled body and her supposed curiosity, but Zephyr knew the truth of her devious, playful prodding.

Zephyr gazed past Karen’s dangling torso, arms, and head. At the back wall, as promised, were both of her legs, propped against the cold cement in a standing position, as though Lilith had intended to put the body back together again, and was only looking for a good place start, like a modern Frankenstein, a delusional scientist semi-versed in the world of human anatomy.

He shook his head from side to side, holding back his urge to purge.

Her legs were still wearing white fabric shoes, slathered in thick dark blood, laces still tied.

For a moment, he could have sworn that he saw the dangling torso shift an inch or two, swinging back and forth like a meaty pendulum. He averted his gaze, looking down at his own body, trying to fathom how one could so easily dismantle a living, breathing human being. He had listened to Karen’s screams for several minutes after she had come for her misguided visit. The sound of her voice had been so hard to drown out, but still Zephyr had imagined the best case scenarios, the ones with the least amount of carnage and physical harm to her. If she was to be killed, he had thought to himself at the time, then it would be best if the deed was committed fast, and void of pain. Surely, his captor would show some mercy.

How wrong he had been.

Zephyr looked down at his sneakers and vomited. The splash of partially digested soup bred with the thickening pools of blood around his feet. His vomit seemed to float on the surface of the blood as a witch would have were she on trial and being tested for her witchery.

The torso moved again. This time, Zephyr was quite sure about it.

As if his prophecy had been detected (or stripped from his mind, which seemed all the more possible), Karen came to life at the hands of Lilith. Her mouth opened a sliver, the sound of her creaking rigor mortis snapping undone like a snow pea. The jaw moved and up and down a few times, testing the resistance of the pried chin. Zephyr backed away towards the stairs, his vision going blurry as he fought through the reality of the moment, wishing to himself that he was still asleep but knowing that to be a false hope.

A voice came from Karen’s stiff mouth. It seemed ludicrous that Lilith would even go so far as to manipulate the vocal chords of the dead girl who had once been madly (and secretly) in love with him. Every moment that passed, he became more and more amazed with Lilith, and never in a good
ain’t-she-swell
way.