Sociopaths In Love (26 page)

There was a sound to her left. Someone had
tried to shove a paper under the door but it had hit the corpses
and just kind of wadded there. Erica fished the paper out from
between the congealed blood and the door.

It was a simple black and white sheet of
paper. A flyer for a missing girl. Rosalia Atkins. Missing since
May 22. So many of the girls Walt had taken looked similar but she
was pretty sure this had been the first. The waitress at the diner.
Erica stood up and walked it to the far side of the room, adhering
it to the wall with the sticky blood.

She went to the corpses and dragged them
back from the door, hoping something else would find its way
in.

When she returned to her spot beside the
door and closed her eyes, she continued to hear the voices. Walt,
definitely, and one, possibly even two, female voices. A dream
scenario worked itself out in her head. If one girl was the
replacement then the other girl was Dawn, come to rescue her.

But there was no rescue.

Time, liquid before, became measured in
paper.

Another flyer. Kayleigh Cooper. Missing
since June 1st. It went up on the wall.

She had to receive more than a flyer a day.
Otherwise, she knew, without food or water, she would be long dead.
Which meant whoever was leaving them had to be there a lot. But if
it was Dawn, why wasn't she saying anything.

Jennifer Beaumont. Missing since June
3rd.

Alison Bowsman. Missing since June 5th.

Laura Pauley. Missing since June 6th.

Amy O'Keefe. Missing since June 6th.

Saturnine Rebania. Missing since June
7th.

Sadie Sands. Missing since June 8th.

Jennifer Nicely. Missing since June 8th.

Indiana Virginia. Missing since June
9th.

Reagan Bentley. Missing since June 9th.

Jordan Musgrave. Missing since June
10th.

Mercedes Tolson. Missing since June
11th.

Violet Ney. Missing since June 11th.

Phoebe Ross. Missing since June 12th.

Bridget Smith. Missing since June 13th.

Appalonia Ferrara. Missing since June
13th.

Eventually she received two
or three flyers at a time and she put them all up on the wall. She
wanted to respect them, remember the names, think over their
images, but they soon all ran together and formed a monstrous
collage, mocking her. And when nearly the entire room was plastered
with these flyers – all different, but just slightly – she felt the
weight of it pressing down on her and collapsed in the middle of
the room. This many women had fallen to Walt. This many women had
been tricked or blindsided in one way or another. Who was she to
think she could escape? Who was she to think she even
deserved
to
escape?

Suddenly the apartment exploded with voices.
Over them all was Walt's, happy and laughing. She hadn't heard him
sound like that since the night with the Boys and when she heard
him outside her door saying, "Just like old times," whatever was
left inside of her died.

Or so she thought.

The End of It

The door opened and she imagined throwing
herself on Walt, clawing out his eyes, and darting for the front
door, naked or not. Who would notice anyway? Who would care? She
recently spent the greater part of one day hanging naked off the
balcony. No one showed up to rescue her. Besides, she barely had
the strength to stand up. As soon as she did that and turned to
face the doorway, the harsh fluorescent lighting from the hallway
scalded her eyes. Instead of gouging her way through Walt she ended
up falling into his arms. He placed her on the floor and she found
herself thinking about the door. It didn't open inward or outward.
It slid into the wall.

She couldn't manage to stand back up. She
tried to open her eyes as much to orient herself with how many
people were in the apartment than to prepare for her break. Walt
dragged her out into the middle of the living room amid the
lecherous laughing of several men and laid her down on the
floor.

Dear
God
, she thought,
it
is
the
Boys
.

But Dawn said she had killed them.

Then why were they still here? Why were they
here now? Was it even the same group of guys? Was Dawn here? Had
Dawn somehow set her up and, if so, what was the point in that? But
she didn't have to think about the latter question very much. What
was the reason Walt had for doing anything he did? To amuse
himself. And it wasn't like Erica was innocent in all of this
either. The reason to take what she wanted was to, if not amuse
herself, at least give herself some very selfish satisfaction.

"She stinks," one of the men said.

"Looks dead," another one of the men said.
Erica thought about the one Boy who had fucked the dead girl. Maybe
they had all fucked the dead girl. Her stomach tightened around the
nothing that had blossomed in there a long time ago.

She lay on her side, the idea of confronting
the overhead lighting directly too much for her. Someone rolled her
onto her back with his foot.

She could open her eyes to slits. There were
at least five guys in the room and then she saw someone who she
thought was Dawn at first and she thought she might be saved from
this but when she was able to focus a little better, she saw that
it was the girl from the cafe and she felt even more afraid than
she had been. More afraid because she now knew it wasn't just about
Walt and the Boys getting some kind of kick. It was now about the
spectacle as well. Not long ago, she'd been the girl from the cafe.
She witnessed another girl thrown into an empty pool with venomous
snakes. What fate would await her?

"Should we scrub her down?" Walt said.
Whatever remnant of self worth she had was quenched. It was the way
he said it. She may have hated him for a while but the way he spoke
relegated her to merely another one of his conquests. There was no
hint or acknowledgement of the time they'd spent together.

"Let me take a crack before you do," another
male voice said.

She heard him move between her legs and get
down on his knees. She heard his zipper slide down. She wasn't
going to try and get away. That would be what they wanted. Make
things worse for her and better for them. She heard him spit into
his hand, the liquid sounds of him wetting his cock. He wiped the
excess spit between her legs. Now he was overtop of her and
pressing himself into her and she died a million deaths and felt
his shadow on the outside of her eyelids and when she opened her
eyes it was to look past him. To look up at the lights. To hope the
light would bore through her retina and into her brain and she
would become one of those fragile gray things she'd seen wandering
around. Maybe she hadn't imagined them at all. Maybe she just
started noticing them because her brain knew that's what she would
become.

She would have vomited if there were
anything to throw up. Instead she was left to lie on the cold floor
while this man thrust against her, grunting.

Now he was back up on his knees, his hands
wrapped around the backs of her knobby knees.

Another shadow descended and she opened her
eyes to see what kind of horror it was this time.

It was the girl from the cafe, sliding her
underwear down her legs. She crouched over Erica's face and let go
with a stream of urine. The guys clapped and laughed.

Erica tried to find the cave.

There was a knock at the door. She probably
heard it before Walt or any of the Boys because she was trying to
focus on anything except them.

The sound at the door created a near
suffocating vacuum in the apartment. Erica didn't think there was
any way in hell they were going to actually answer the door.
Amazing how rational her thinking was during a traumatic event. Not
just rational. It seemed mundane. The man on top of her stopped his
movement and his rough breathing. There was complete silence and
she thought she could hear the frosted crackle of the fluorescent
lights.

The person at the door knocked again.

Erica thought it could
possibly be Dawn and then she had a wild hope that, if someone were
to actually open the door,
this
would be her chance to escape. All she had to do
was get out from beneath the guy who weighed twice as much as her
and somehow manage the strength to make a run for it. She would
try. She also knew it would be impossible. She didn't want to get
her hopes up.

"I'll get it," Walt said.

Erica turned her head to look toward the
door. After spending so much time around Walt, she was amazed at
how much she still expected him to do things the way a normal
person would. In this case, that would have been to either not open
the door or to open the door just a suspicious crack. Instead, he
swung the door open, not even bothering to check who was there, and
said, "Come on in!" in a down home kind of voice he used when
trying to relate to people.

A beleaguered looking man entered and
briefly surveyed the apartment. Erica thought about what he must
have seen. Four or five blue-collar looking guys standing around.
One very fashionable, attractive, young girl in the middle of them.
And one girl, her, naked and looking like she'd just escaped a
concentration camp with another man on top of her. The man didn't
seem to be too interested in this.

"Help," Erica said, not really caring what
the consequences were. This, she thought, might be her only chance.
Better to say something now while the man stood at the door, while
he still had a chance to turn and run, to try and get help.

Maybe she didn't say it loud enough. He
didn't seem to understand her.

"What can I do you for?" Walt asked.

"I received this," the man said. He handed
the crumpled piece of paper to Walt.

Walt uncrumpled it and looked at it. Erica
couldn't see the front of it, but the bright lights shining down
allowed her to see through it. It was one of the MISSING flyers.
She wondered which girl it was for. She imagined her own father
receiving one of these flyers. What would he have done with it?
Probably wadded it up and threw it in the trash. Maybe he would
look at it, scratch his head, say, "Huh," and think about getting
to it later.

"Not sure I understand why you're here,"
Walt said. "Do you need someone to talk to or something? We're a
little busy at the moment. Gang bang." He cocked a thumb back
toward Erica.

The man looked toward her and, as if
noticing her for the first time, raised his eyebrows.

"I was told she wasn't just missing but
dead. That came in a separate email."

The man entered the apartment farther and
leaned against the wall just inside the door. There still wasn't
any furniture in the apartment. Otherwise, it looked like this man
would have been more comfortable sitting.

"I am very sorry to hear that," Walt said,
"but I guess I'm just not seeing how this concerns any of us."

"Do you go by the name Walt Haha?"

"Yep. That's me."

"I was told you were the one who took her
and, most probably, the one who killed her."

Walt let off one of those short barnyard
laughs and said, "Well, I'm sure it's probably not in my best
interest to answer that question."

The man held a placatory hand toward Walt as
if steadying some potential emotional swell.

"First of all, it wasn't a question. Second
of all, let me tell you how I felt when I heard my little girl was
missing."

"Sir, again, I'm very sorry to hear this
but, as I mentioned, we are kind of in the middle of
something."

"The first thing I felt was
an overwhelming sense of . . .
relief
." The man almost exhaled this
last word like it was a great unburdening.

Erica noticed Walt's body slacken and she
didn't realize he'd been so rigid and tense, waiting for something
to happen.

The man continued. "Megan
was . . . Well, first of all, she was an accident. But
she created a lot of problems. Burned the neighbor's cat alive when
she was five. Set our first house on fire when she was seven. Was
caught in bed with a much older neighbor boy when she was nine.
This was pretty much a constant occurrence. Apparently she was
charging for it. Stole her mother's car when she was eleven and
ended up crashing it in a joy ride. That's just a few of the major
things. A brief overview. I can assure you every second of every
day was complete and absolute hell for me and my wife. So, when
Megan never came home, I at first felt a sense of relief. Then I
felt a sense of great anxiety. What was she plotting? When would
she come back and what consequences would that bring? We put
together a small campaign for her, of course, but she had a
negative impact on everyone in our town and I'm pretty sure no one
really bothered trying to find her. She was the type of person who
was infamous in the town when she first started getting into
trouble. People would see her and talk about it at work or the
grocery store like she was a celebrity. Mentioning that they'd seen
her gave them a chance to talk about her history, some of the
things she'd done. But then even that got old and people just
decided to look away, as though merely
seeing
her would implicate them in
some devious scheme. So, anyway, relief followed by anxiety and
suspicion . . . followed by another bout of relief,
although met with a certain amount of skepticism when I received
the email saying she was dead. Followed by
. . ."

The man lowered his head. Everyone in the
room now paid attention to him. The guy who had been inside Erica
had grown soft and fallen out. Tired of bracing himself on his
hands and knees, he stood up and raised his pants. Erica scooted
away from him. She couldn't tell if the others in the room were
paying attention to this man because they were interested in what
he had to say or if they thought Walt was going to need their
help.