Sociopaths In Love (21 page)

Erica lay in bed a couple of hours later
listening to birds chirp outside the cracked window and thinking it
felt like taking a warm bath that ended with the strongest orgasm
of her life.

She fell asleep thinking of ways to kill
Walt.

New Hobby

When she left Dawn's the next afternoon,
Dawn asked if she wanted her to come with her. Even though Erica
had seen the way Dawn lived with the Boys she didn't want her
stepping into that apartment. She didn't want her knowing how she
lived. She still didn't know exactly where Dawn stood. She said she
had killed the Boys and had given Erica reasons for that so she
didn't think she could show the apartment off as some kind of
trophy. Before running into Dawn, the apartment, Walt, everything
just was. Now it seemed like something to escape.

She stepped into the apartment. Not
surprisingly, Walt wasn't there. It was in a state of complete
disarray. The glass dining room table was shattered. The coffee
table was a broken heap on the balcony. There were piles of bloody
shit everywhere. The reek was terrible. The mattress from the bed
was in the hall, along with the two nightstands and lamps. Erica
guessed the frame was probably on the balcony along with the coffee
table. She needed clothes for her shower but stopped before turning
the knob to the bedroom.

It wasn't a knob anymore. The door had been
replaced. It now looked like something she imagined securing a
solitary confinement room in a prison. Thick and metal, possibly
iron. Instead of the knob, there was a handle with a very
industrial looking lock built into the door. She already knew she
wasn't going to go in there. Probably couldn't even get in there
and she certainly wasn't going to try right now. She would have to
go steal some clothes. She could probably just borrow some from
Dawn but that would involve some kind of explanation as to why she
needed to do so and she wasn't prepared for that yet. As she began
stepping away from the door, it clanged with an impact. Erica leapt
back until she hit the mattress propped against the opposite wall.
Someone had thrown herself against the door.

"Hello! Is someone out there! Can you help
us!"

Us
.

She wondered how many
people he had in there. No, 'people' was too general. She wondered
how many
girls
he
had in there. She wondered if one of them was her
replacement.

Why didn't she just let them out?

Don't have the
key
.

That wasn't the only reason. She still
didn't have Walt's faith in the gift of being unseen. Or she had a
more realistic view. She knew those girls could stay in that room
forever and no police, no vigilante tribes were going to come
knocking on the door to find them. It was like Walt had dragged
them into some cave of nonexistence along with him. But, the way
Erica saw it, if she were to let them go, and the girls were to go
to someone, then she and Walt would be exposed. It was like a
falling tree in a forest not really existing unless someone was
there to see it fall. If there wasn't a person who was going to
tell anyone what Walt was doing, he would continue to get away with
it, even if he did those things right in front of people. A person
had to be sucked into it, had to bathe in the fetid waters of his
cave, and then emerge with that sick moisture and damp air still
clinging to her to prove she'd been there. To shed light on the
inside of the cave.

She went to sit on the balcony and
smoke.

She could be that person. She could go to
someone and tell everything Walt had done. She could convince them
Walt had forced her to do things she didn't want to do and they'd
probably believe her . . . if she was able to get their
attention in the first place.

She knew she wouldn't do that. There were
just too many steps involved.

She wanted to stop Walt but she would do it
herself.

And it wasn't even that she wanted to stop
Walt. She just wanted to be away from him and didn't feel like he
needed to exist if she wasn't with him, especially if he planned on
replacing her.

She finished her cigarette and went back
into the apartment. She was going to take a nap on the couch but
the only thing left from it was the frame. She didn't know where
the cushions were. She wanted to run back to Dawn's but felt like
that was too easy. The longer she was away from Walt, the easier it
would be to just forget about him and she didn't want to do that.
She decided she would follow him tomorrow. It was a plan, at least.
The closest thing she had to one in what felt like a really long
time.

She didn't nap long and when she woke up she
went immediately back out to the balcony. It was a little cooler
than it had been but spring was still in the air and the promise of
warmer weather was somehow fortifying. The smell in the apartment
was just too bad to endure for any long period of time. She heard
the front door slam and saw Walt enter the apartment. He straddled
one of the piles of shit, unzipped his pants, and urinated on it.
An expression of ecstatic glee was plastered on his face. Erica had
to look away before she gagged. He zipped up, slid open the balcony
door, and stepped out.

"Where were you last night?" he said.

She looked at him. It
seemed like it had been a long time since she
really
looked at him. She remembered
when his eyes had made her think of lightning or something
electrical but now they just looked clouded and dead. His hair was
messed up and uncut. His clothes were dirty and no longer fit very
well, he'd gained so much weight.

"That's not really any of your
business."

"I know you weren't alone. You don't do
anything alone unless it's moping around this apartment."

"I wasn't alone."

"Neither was I."

"I figured."

"Want to see what I got?"

She didn't but he'd already wrapped his hand
around her wrist and dragged her into the stinking apartment. She
knew exactly where he was taking her and had a pretty good idea of
what he was going to show her.

He walked her to the new security door and
slid open a slot at eye level. She hadn't even noticed the slot
upon her previous inspection.

"Look in there," he said.

It was actually more at his eye level than
hers and she had to stand on her tiptoes. The girls, probably
recognizing the sound of his voice, were no longer at the door
begging for help. They were on the far side of what had been the
bedroom. The balcony doors had been covered with plywood and
probably screwed in the wall so securely there wouldn't be any
removing them. She couldn't see anything else in the room except
for the two naked girls.

"I'm going to see how long it takes one of
them to kill and eat the other one. I got a couple night vision
cameras in there so I can watch them from a laptop virtually
anywhere. Oh, and they're sisters." He clasped his hands together
and she imagined his nipples hardening with excitement.

This had become his idea of a good time.
That thought made Erica realize how much things had changed. In the
days prior to coming to Dayton, there had been an impending sense
of adventure. Since being in Dayton, there was only this – hunt and
kill, hunt and kill. And now he'd entered into the next logical
phase of that. He was simply playing with his prey like a sadistic
cat. It wasn't just nourishment. It wasn't even the thrill of
eating something unique, something no one else would ever get the
chance to eat. It was just mindless amusement. Let's not just kill
them to eat them. Let's destroy them before they die.

Erica wished she didn't understand it but
she did. She told herself it was revolting because it was Walt
doing it. And while it wasn't something she would have done
herself, she didn't really feel sorry for the girls in the room.
They depressed her. The whole situation with Walt depressed
her.

"We need to look at getting another
apartment," Erica said. She had stepped away from the door and
turned to walk back toward the living room that no one in her right
mind would want to live in.

"This place is fine."

"It stinks. There's nowhere to lie down
–"

"Sure there is!" Walt cut her off. He
dragged the mattress from the hallway into the living room and
threw it down on the floor. It landed on at least three piles of
bloody shit. He flopped down on it, some shit oozing out from
underneath, pulled a hunk of what may have been skin from his
pocket, and began eating it. His tight t-shirt slid halfway up his
belly.

Erica went to the refrigerator, grabbed a
beer, and took it out to the balcony.

She repeated this trip to the refrigerator a
few more times. Every time she passed the hallway, she glanced to
her left and saw Walt standing there, staring into the room. Once
he was naked and stroking himself.

Another fog had come up outside. She looked
toward the parking garage.

The figure was back and now she really
thought it was just some trick of the fog. She had periodically
looked for the figure nearly every night and hadn't seen it since
that last night of fog. Behind him, she saw the swelling black
shadow. But, wait, she hadn't seen that the last time, had she? She
had seen that with the figure in a dream, right? She couldn't
remember. She had felt so much like she'd been moving through some
kind of alternating dream/ nightmare the past several months that
when it came to something as relatively miniscule as this detail,
she couldn't remember if it had actually happened or not and
wondered how important it was.

She stood up and moved to the balcony
railing, continued staring at the figure, not knowing what she
wanted. Did she want some sort of acknowledgement? Did she want the
figure to wave to her or something? What purpose would that
serve?

She threw her empty can of beer off the
balcony and waited to hear it hit the asphalt. It never did. Or she
never heard it. Or she was really drunk. Or the fog was the cave
and it was solidifying around her. She lit a cigarette and went
back into the apartment. Walt stood in front of the door, naked,
eating from what looked to be the lower part of a human leg. She
also noticed, for the first time, flesh colored rings encircling a
number his fingers. She thought about asking what they were but
felt like she already knew: assholes. Walt was using human assholes
as body jewelry. He didn't acknowledge her. She grabbed two more
cans of beer and left the apartment. She didn't bother locking or
even shutting the door.

She went down through the gleaming lobby,
light classical music tinkling all around her, the front desk
clerk's head gently bobbing up and down as he fought off sleep. She
stepped out into the fog and nearly stepped on the beer can she'd
thrown off the balcony.

A homeless guy came at her through the fog.
"I need a couple bucks for the bus, lady."

"Suck my dick," she said.

The man dropped to his knees and started
howling up at the sky. It was the first time she'd seen this
approach. She continued across the street, listening to the man's
insane howls. She heard another voice, possibly the front desk
clerk. Maybe he was more of a security guard than a desk clerk.
Maybe he was both. He was probably asking the man to move it along
but she couldn't make out anything he said.

She moved diagonally
through the intersection, toward the parking garage. She thought
about Dawn, possibly in her apartment just a block away. What was
the other girl doing? Erica wondered if she had gone to the Epoch
tonight and, if she had, Erica wondered if she had gone home alone.
And if she had gone home with someone else, had it been a man or a
woman? Erica realized the thought of Dawn bringing
anyone
back to her
apartment infuriated her. She felt the anger in her cheeks, pushing
through the drunkenness, pushing through her current sense of spacy
alienation, pushing through everything.

Walt, jerking off in front of two naked
girls while he waited for one of them to get hungry enough to kill
and eat the other one.

A figure on a parking garage staring out
into the fog.

Dawn on her bed, some young guy who has
something Erica can never have smiling lecherously up at her while
he slides her jeans down her pale thighs.

A homeless man rolling around on the street
behind her.

The whole world milked over and gone
mad.

She entered the parking garage and took the
elevator up to the roof. She crossed the asphalt not knowing what
she wanted. Then she stopped.

She watched the dark place in the fog. Inky
black and swirling toward the figure standing on the very edge of
the parking garage. It dawned on her that that was what had been
weird about watching the figure from across the street. If it had
been standing on the asphalt, it would have seemed shorter and less
precarious. But it stood on the ledge. Its toes were probably
hanging off into the fog. The shadow came for the figure. Moved
over the figure, cloaking it in black, making it disappear. Erica
continued toward the figure, hoping to catch a glimpse of it before
it was gone completely. She moved into the shadow and everything
went dark. Everything went away.

She sat cross-legged and assumed her ass
rested on the asphalt of the top level of the parking garage. She
couldn't see. Could only feel the parking lot's solidity. She
thought of something else and stood up and looked back toward the
apartment, wondering what it looked like from over here but she
couldn't see it. And maybe the shadow did something to the inside
of her too because she didn't even know what she expected to see
and whatever anger she had been feeling only moments before was now
completely gone. She sat back down in that space or that absence of
space and smoked cigarettes and drank beer until it was like her
consciousness melted into that black fog.