Tabula Rasa (13 page)

He physically broke up a few sexual encounters, herded them all up
the stairs, and shut and locked the basement door, leaving me down
below.

When everyone was gone, the door unlocked and Shannon came back down,
only slightly calmer. He still wore the gorilla mask. The white cat
was on his heels looking smug, like she couldn’t wait to watch this
unfold.

I should have taken the opportunity alone to put clothes on. They
were in my hands. I was just so freaked out by everything. Maybe it
was shock. It felt eerily like the night I first met him all over
again. I backed away from him, still clutching my clothes to me like
I’d done with the sheet the night in the castle.

Shannon continued to advance. The music still blared. He turned it
off, and silence poured like water into each space that had once
contained sound.

When he spoke, his voice was dead calm, which was about a thousand
times more scary than the yelling of only minutes before. “I
thought I told you to stay in your room.”

“I’m s-sorry.” I couldn’t keep my eyes from straying over
him. He was still naked, and hard. I didn’t want to think about
what part of this was exciting him. If he was a normal person with
any sense of decency and morality, seeing some other guy almost
violate me wouldn’t have him worked up this way.

“T-take the mask off.” I continued to back up until I ran out of
space to retreat. He sounded so inhuman, his voice warped behind the
rubber.

“No.” He said the word slowly as if pausing to taste it first
before giving me his decision. “It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t
it?”

“Yes.” I knew there wasn’t a lot in those eyes, not usually.
But I still wanted to be able to see them. Because as inhuman as
Shannon might be, he was infinitely more human than a rubber gorilla
mask.

“You broke my rules. I’ve been very good to you. I’ve protected
you and kept you safe. Except for the night we met, I’ve kept all
the darker business of my life away from you, including this. You are
the one who opened the box, my little Pandora. Now we can’t close
it. All the evil inside can never go back in. It’s in the air now.
Can you smell it?”

What I smelled was sex and alcohol.

He ripped the clothes out of my hands and dropped them on the floor.
“Do you know how much I’ve had to rearrange my life for you? My
schedule? My routine? All so I wouldn’t have to kill you? I’ve
asked myself... Why, Shannon? Why even bother? I knew why, but I
wanted to keep you pure and untainted by all the dark things that
crawl around inside me. But now you’ve seen too much of it, though
not nearly the worst of it. You know what? Fuck it. I kill people,
Elodie. For a living. But I bet you already knew that, didn’t you?
You’re smart. Maybe too smart.”

I thought I’d known, but hearing it out loud was a whole other
thing. There was a part of me that had thought it was pure invention,
my imagination running wild, my mind playing tricks on me.

“Shannon, please stop.”

He was never letting me go now. Not only had I seen his freaky little
sex party, but we couldn’t pretend anymore that I was ignorant
about how he financed his life.

He wanted it that way... for me to know... to be sure that I knew how
he made his living so he could justify keeping me locked up in his
house. I didn’t know why he wanted to keep me here, but I knew that
he did. The way he’d acted just now with that other man wasn’t
the indifference I’d thought I mostly inspired in him.

“Do you know what else?” he prodded, just gaining steam. “I
really
like
my job. A lot. You can’t believe how much job
satisfaction I have. It’s a shame guidance counselors in school
aren’t allowed to suggest this career path. Robbing young minds of
their callings, I say. But hey, more fun for me.”

“You’re drunk,” I said.

He laughed. “No. I haven’t had a drop. This is all me, baby.”

“You’re no better than Trevor.” In fact, Shannon was probably
worse.

“In general, you’re right, but where you’re concerned...” He
took a step back and released a heavy sigh. “You might still be
right.”

He hadn’t lied to me. At least not overtly, not that I was aware
of. Maybe he lied by omission, but everybody did that, and in truth,
he owed me nothing. He hadn’t kept me prisoner in an abandoned
theme park, thinking the entire world had ended and almost everyone
in it had died. But he’d kept me prisoner in a nice house. Was it
that much different?

I had begun to think of my life in two chunks of time: the theme park
captivity and the monochromatic minimalist house captivity. The
world may as well have ended for all I’d seen of it during both
imprisonments.

When Trevor took me, and my face was splashed all over the news, he’d
ended the world for me. Shannon was keeping the same cycle going.
Though I couldn’t imagine any reality in which everything wouldn’t
be completely fucked. The moment some part of my brain had shut down
and locked up all my memories was when things had gone to shit.
Because from that point there was no option of heaven, just different
circles of hell.

My eyes kept straying downward unable to stop looking at Shannon in
all his glory. He just chuckled.

God, why was I so attracted to him? On the looks scale, both Shannon
and Trevor were very appealing—certainly neither of them looked
like the monsters they were. But from the first moment I’d seen
Trevor in the pirate ship, there had been an active revulsion. It was
only desperation and fear and isolation and the need to survive that
had brought me around to finally sleeping with him, then to
convincing myself I actually loved him.

But Shannon? I’d been trying to pretend I wasn’t attracted from
the beginning because our story didn’t start with the fuzzy lie
that he was my loving husband. I’d known what he was. I’d known
the moment he started chopping up my fake husband and throwing him in
the flames.

With Trevor I’d had to force myself to feel things; with Shannon
I’d had to force myself not to. Think of him as a big brother.
Think of him as a sexless bodyguard. Think of him as a distant
guardian angel. But God, whatever you do, don’t think of him as a
potential lover.

It had been easy before tonight. He hadn’t tried to take anything
from me. There had been no overtures, no innuendos. I’d had safety
and warmth in my own room. I’d had food and shelter and running
water. I’d had someone who didn’t demand anything from me at all.
I’d been convinced he was this asexual being, that the hunt and the
kill were all that mattered to him. That the only way he interfaced
with a human body was by destroying it and chopping it into pieces.

And now, that one safety had been ripped away because Shannon was the
worst possible man for me to want or fall for. He might be a much
more sexual being than I initially thought, but whatever kernel of an
emotion the cat made him feel or I made him feel... I knew it was
continents away from love. It was the barest glowing ember, ready to
die at any moment. And what happened when the ember smoldered out?
All bets were off, right? Then what would keep him from disposing of
me when I became too inconvenient? What kept him from it now?

“I’ve tried to keep you at a distance,” he said, echoing my own
thoughts back to me. “You make me feel normal. Like a real person.
When I saw you in the castle, I felt this warmth I didn’t know was
possible. I felt something like that but with less intensity with the
cat. But never before with another person. I have these idiots around
me who think they’re my friends who can’t see behind the mask.
But it’s all surface shit with them. They don’t notice because
they’re just that shallow. I can’t give you what you probably
deserve, but for my own self-preservation, I can’t let you go,
either. I thought if I thought of you like another pet in the house
it would be fine, I could keep you compartmentalized. And now... I
can’t anymore.”

This was the most Shannon had talked to me in the weeks I’d been
living here. Normally it was a perfunctory robot sentence here or
there, nothing of much depth or value. I tried to determine if he was
being honest or just belatedly turning on some sociopathic charm to
chase his own selfish impulses. But that stupid gorilla mask was
still between us.

“Please take the mask off.”

He ripped it off and tossed it on the floor, then his hands went back
to pressing against the wall, framing either side of me.

“W-what are you going to do with me now?” It must be a special
talent of mine to always ask the most wrong questions—things I
didn’t really want the answers to.

“Everything.”

From the way he looked at me and the way his gaze shifted to the sex
furniture, it was clear what
everything
meant. Whatever had
allowed him to treat me like his roommate or kid sister had vacated
the building. In its place was something wild and hungry that might
devour us both if given half a chance.

“Why can’t we just go back to how things were? I’m sorry I left
my room. I’ll pretend I never saw any of this.”

His hand started in my hair, then trailed down my face and along all
my contours. A tremor ran through me, chasing his hand down the
length of me as if each cell in my body stood in line, waiting its
turn to show appropriate fear of him.

“Elodie, what was it like living in that theme park?”

I didn’t like to think about any of that. It was a testament to how
awful it had been that this set-up with Shannon occasionally made me
forget I was technically still somebody’s prisoner. On a visceral
level, I still thought I’d been saved instead of just captured
again.

“Hopeless. Awful. Boring. Dead.”

“Did he light you up?”

“No.” Trevor had been mostly nice enough once I’d figured out
which buttons tripped what, but I’d only ever gotten to the point
where I could cope with it. I’d thought of fucking him as my
wifely
duty—
some comfort I owed him. A transaction to pay for the food
and shelter he provided me. I’d felt too guilty to take away the
last shred of his wife from him. And the whole time he’d been
taking from me. Everything. But somehow Shannon’s everything and
Trevor’s were solar systems apart.

“Do I light you up?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this again.”
I can’t fuck
another monster who holds my life in his hands.

Shannon’s mouth found the pulse point of my throat. He sucked
gently on the skin—enough to make me gasp, not enough to mark me.

“What if I made you? Would you cry? Would you fight me?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He pulled back and stared at me for a full minute before he answered.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about your pain yet.”

Yet.

He was so bizarrely honest. But that didn’t help anything. It
didn’t make Shannon more feasible. Given my limited experiences
with men on this side of the wasteland that was my lost memory, it
was easy to assume all men were monsters. I’d yet to have an
experience to contradict that notion—even though I felt like I knew
in the vague way I knew about ATMs and pirates that not every man was
this way. Somewhere out there was someone who was kind and
considerate and smart. Someone who would let me be a part of a world
where I wasn’t the freak show or...
that poor girl
. Someone
who would love me in a way that was safe and in a way I didn’t have
to work myself up to wanting.

If only I didn’t want Shannon so much.

“You’re going to play all my games, Elodie. And you’re going to
love every minute of it. I’m tired of you being a toy I can’t
play with. I’m ready to take you out of the box.”

“What if I’m not ready?” I desperately sought to turn this into
another veiled threat like Trevor’s. As if the idea of being in
Shannon’s bed could distress me half as much.

His hand dipped between my legs. He smirked as he raised a finger to
his mouth and licked off my juices. “Oh, you’re ready.”

I thought he was going to throw me down and fuck me in the
basement—now filthy from other people’s trysts—but instead, he
scooped me up and carried me up the stairs. On the main level, he set
me on my feet.

“Go to my room and wait for me. You have a punishment coming for
your earlier disobedience.”

I’m sure my mouth hung open like a fish, as if I couldn’t believe
he’d really just said that to me. Despite everything I knew of
Shannon, despite the orgy I’d witnessed and almost been recruited
into, somehow this one utterance almost unhinged me.

I wanted to run for the door, despite my lack of clothing. But not
only was the security system armed, I knew now from observing him,
that it wasn’t a one-way system. The door wouldn’t open for
anyone going in or out without the code. And I didn’t know it.

But I didn’t try to run. I went upstairs just like I’d gone
upstairs earlier. I passed my room and went to his at the end of the
hall. His room was another forbidden room. He’d never stated it
outright. It wasn’t always locked, but I felt like lightning would
come out of the ceiling and strike me down if I were to go snooping
around in there.

His room was the same exercise in restrained minimalism as the rest
of the house. Utilitarian was the best word I had for it. There was
an attached master bathroom and a balcony—which were the only big
differences from my room. And then there was the normal bedroom
furniture one would expect. Nothing freaky or kinky or serial-killer
like. No hooks hanging from the ceiling. No blood splattered on
walls.

His bed was a standard king-sized four-poster. The frame and posts
were a sleek, shiny steel. Given what I’d seen in the basement, I
imagined that could be of some use to Shannon’s proclivities, but
someone who didn’t know anything about them wouldn’t think it
odd. It fit into the clean, simple lines of the room.