Besotted

The room was fairly bare. It was the living room of a low rung career woman. There were a few pictures on the wall of family members smiling in various positions and locations. The furniture was sparse but comfortable. There was a recliner chair, her largest sentimental indulgence, in the center of the room. It had belonged to her father. When he’d passed away, it was the only thing of his she’d kept. Sitting in it, she would smell his scent and remember falling asleep in his lap to the sound of whatever late night monster movie was on. Or sometimes it was a classic sci-fi movie. The apartment was small and the recliner took up a lot of the space, made it hard to accessorize and match with, but the bustling city was so different from where she came from. She could lie back in that chair after a hard day with the people and the crowding and all the noise and confusion and just let down her guard. It was her therapy, cheaper then a psychiatrist and worked just as well. The clash with the rest of her possessions was a small price to pay for piece of mind.

He rose slowly from her body. Her name had been Sarah, he knew. He’d known much about her in the time that he’d watched. But he hadn’t known about the chair. It confused him greatly, why her last act as he squeezed her throat was to reach her arm out weakly to touch the side of the recliner. It had been a loving gesture, a caress. He had looked deeply into her eyes at the moment of death, watched them glaze over. But they hadn’t looked at him. It was as if she saw through him, past him, like he wasn’t even there, to something beyond his existence. He hated that.

His rage was like the hibernating bear most of the time. He could be pushed to take so much, as it rested in its cold slumber, in the deep dark recesses of his soul. It wouldn’t stir or wake or so much as breathe…until he was alone with them. In those quiet, intimate moments between he and his besotted, when he shed his skin. He relished the act of revealing himself and bearing the hole in his soul. How he felt when he didn’t have to hide himself any longer. He loosened the fetters on his soul and all the bile hatred came flowing out. Started inside him it worked its way out like a great beast. Shaking off its long slumber and stretching forth its claws to trap what was set before it, it was beautiful, a black angel.

That’s how he thought of himself. He was beautiful inside. His body was a canvas. He was a work of art as great as any Picasso or Rembrandt. It was incomplete though. He needed to feed it. In those moments of pain, mutilation and death, he attained that perfection. He swallowed the innocence in them, ate it in monstrous, soulless gulps. He was their world in the end, the only thing that mattered. He was their god, devil; it was the same to him really.

She had somehow escaped him though. When the end had come, she’d denied he even existed. That peaceful moment on her face as she caressed that chair had taken it all from him. She should have been crying. She should have been terrified. She was meeting her maker and he was wrathful without cause. If she wasn’t afraid, he couldn’t feel that divinity in himself. It was an empty death, so unlike the others he’d come to love.

In his rage he tore the place apart. He couldn’t touch her now that she was gone. It would be like giving her power that she would mean so much to him. So he struck out at what was left of her life that she valued so much. He smashed the recliner, tore the pictures apart, and threw the dishes onto the floor. This went on until he was satisfied, the beast slumbering again, though its dreams were not restful like before. He shrank a few inches. Hunching over a little, his shoulders slumped, his head forward and his gaze down. He reverted back to the quiet man he hid behind until it was safe to come out again.

This was how he left, opening the door quietly, shutting it softly and pocketing his gloves. He didn’t have a second thought about what he’d done, he wouldn’t remember it until he was back home again where he could bask in his sickness like it was a ghastly ray of light.

She would not be found for two days. No one heard anything, or admitted to it. No one cared there. If it wasn’t happening to them, it didn’t exist. They never once gave a thought about how this could one day work against them. That was partly why he’d chosen her, such cooperative neighbors.

He went about his days under his guise pretending to be a shy and small man. He said little and did less. He didn’t like to get close to people. The effort of faking emotion exhausted him unnecessarily.

He read about her death in the newspaper soon afterward and used the page of the article to line his birdcage. He smiled when he did it, she hadn’t even warranted first page. It satisfied him in a small way that she who would deny his art would be denied even the dignity of first page coverage. It was a sad world he lived in, where no one called for help for another when they could not, or that her death was so commonplace that it was beaten from the headlines by some accidental death of some celebrity. It was his kind of world. Where one could revel in the ugliness of a soul and what it could do, but it could be pushed back and covered over by more acceptable events. A kind of denial that was like him and allowed his darker side to exist and carry on for so long underneath this lighter, more acceptable exterior.

He’d killed eight women now. All this had happened over the space of fifteen years. He was careful in his choosing, within limits. They had to be loners, who would go unnoticed for a time when they didn’t show up. Not important to the rest of the world, but important to him. That was his clincher. The other criteria had to match, of course, but ultimately he picked souls who were beautiful. Good in a world of darkness. They were like pathogens in the body of humanity. They could corrupt the darkness of the world with their mere existence. He liked the world the way it was. It was his world; he wouldn’t allow these transgressors to exist, to resist his darkness. So what better way to be rid of them then to sacrifice them to the very darkness they endangered? Their deaths were art to him, made him art, they made him what the world truly was, in its heart of hearts.

That was why this last death still bothered him so. It gnawed away at him. She had some small measure of power in her light, to resist him in those final moments. Could it perhaps have been a sign of the strength of the light still in the world? He dismissed this, nonsense it was. He had killed her, not she him. But all of this could not quiet the unrest of his slumbering beast. He needed another kill to satisfy himself, to prove that all was indeed right in the world.

He began his hunt again, much sooner then he usually would.

When he finally found her, it was almost too good to be true. She was 5’4”, very petite. Her skin was pale and her hair red; there was an almost luminous appearance to her. She was wearing a short red dress when he first saw her. She was buying a few groceries, dinner for one, at a small grocery store not too far from where he lived. He followed her onto a bus for a short ride and then through the subway. After a while she emerged onto the street with him following a discreet distance behind. The further he followed her, the more perfect it seemed. She walked as if there were no dangers, no risks of muggers, and no monsters in the world. Hers was a slow, easy pace, not hurried in the slightest. He kept after her until she finally went into one of many dirty, rapidly deteriorating buildings. It was all fitting. It was almost too perfect. She had to be sacrificed for the betterment of his world, she couldn’t be spared, she was simply too good to let be.

His trip home was a blur. The beast within was stirring and he found it difficult to stay concentrated on mundane tasks he’d performed countless times. It was hard to think about such small things when he would soon make himself one with the darkness of the world. Soon, he would make his art, and it would give him what had been lacking in the last attempt.

In fifteen years, he’d gotten very good at going unnoticed when he chose. He was a shadow to her existence, just as quiet and permanent. He loved watching her. Every move, every act was filled with a blind trust in the world. The way she tossed the hair out of her face and the way she ate her lunches with those slow, careful, thoughtful bites. He wondered what she thought of. Her gaze, her eyes were so innocent, so trusting. She looked around without a hint of suspicion for her fellow man, when bumped by passersby she didn’t immediately check her purse or glare suspiciously.

As careful as he was, his excitement got the best of him one afternoon. While following her he got too close and entered the realm of her existence. She noticed him. She paused on the sidewalk, turning to face him with those eyes.

“Are you lost?” He was shocked to the core. He’d talked with his victims before he struck on other occasions, but it had always been a situation he controlled, he had planned and prepared for that he had initiated.

He blushed; he was the quiet, bashful man. “Yeah, kind of. I’m new here.”

She smiled knowingly, her expression saying she knew exactly what that was like. “I thought so, you look a little…lost.” Her eyes when she said that changed. He thought he saw something…something more in her, but it was gone in the same instant. His heart hammered. Had she glimpsed his soul, could she have seen what he really was? But that was impossible. No one so innocent as she could really believe such a monster as he existed. He thought perhaps it was his imagination. It had to be.

Her gaze never left him during this mental exchange. Her head was tilted to the side, peering at him with eyes hiding nothing.

He knew this area now. He picked some street at random he knew to be close by and she pointed the way.

“Would you like me to show you?” He was dumbstruck for a moment at her offer. He marveled that anyone could be this good in this world. In the same moment he admired the trust in her and loathed that it could doggedly exist in the face of the world he had worked so hard to create.

He licked his lips as his desire to kill flared, almost too much to control. He gazed around. The air was hot, dry. The sun beat down on the empty streets in a rare moment of silence in a city this size. The situation was too perfect to pass up. The darkness of the world was clearly evident in this moment in time. There were no people to watch and remember the quiet man or the pretty young woman. He made his choice.

He swallowed first, talking was not something he did often and he always felt he had to prepare for it. “Yes, that would be very kind of you.”

She smiled, accepting him as a poor man, lost on his way to get home. Perhaps she imagined he was married, had kids and was eager to play with them after a boring day of work. He new not a single suspicious or dark thought had crossed her mind.

They walked together, talking of the weather at first, then moving onto movies and TV shows. Finally making their way towards politics. Neither pressed views so strongly as to make the other feel uncomfortable. It was considerate, polite chitchat and he hated it.

He forgot himself as they talked. His shoulders went straight as his slouch fell away forgotten. He stood up to his full 5’10”. The black angel inside him rose from its depths and stretched forth to see what he had put before it. It did not find the meal wanting. The barrier in his eyes that hid the hole in his soul went down and he looked at her with eyes that burned. He radiated violence and destruction, his very being vibrating to a different chord of existence. He only saw her innocence, so perfect, so good. She contaminated his beauty and marred his canvas. She was blight on the world and he would remove her now. He could wait no longer.

“I recognize this now,” he cut through her words. “I know a shortcut. Through this alley.”

She looked slightly petulant. “Guess you don’t need me any longer then.”

But she didn’t make any move to leave. He blinked in surprise. She liked him. She was waiting for something, perhaps an invitation to dinner or a movie. The illusion he had draped himself in had actually attracted her. He smiled almost sleepily.

“Listen, I’m kind of new to this place,” he paused pretending nervousness, choosing his words carefully like a normal man would in his place. “The hustle and bustle really get to you after a while, kind of hard to get to know people in the thick of the crowd, you know?” She nodded, of course she knew.

He pushed on, saying the next words in a rush. “So I was wondering if maybe you’d like to have dinner with me?”

“I’d love to. That sounds great.”

“Great…great then.” He started down the alley, “I’ll just quick change and we can head out.” He looked back to see if she was following. She was.

He led the way in, not turning around again. His stride was strong to match his need. He could feel it, that great beast inside. It was raging, the heat of it touching him. He would rid his world of this goodness. He would take her soul and feed it to his and in that moment he would be everything. He would be the soul center of her existence, her god and devil made flesh and come to judge her. Snuffing out the light in her would be better then any of the others. It would certainly make up for Sarah.

His thoughts stopped for a moment. Something felt wrong. He turned around to face her. It was time. He stepped back in surprise, she’d been standing almost right against him.

She stared up at him with those big, innocent eyes. “Is something wrong, Wesley?”

He blinked twice, it was funny, he couldn’t remember her name. Yet they must have exchanged them for her to know his.

She liked her lips, then spoke, “I didn’t tell you my name.” He didn’t like this. He’d been distracted, but surely not that distracted to let slip his name without remembering. Then she answers his thoughts as if she knew what he was thinking.

“Is something wrong, Wesley?” she repeated. He didn’t like her using his name, it was an edge over him. It was a threat to his control. A quick, hard smack across the face would solve that.

She laughed. “You can try, anyway.”.

How did she do that? What was going on? This situation was slipping out of his control. He snarled, all traces of his façade gone like they’d never existed. He bared his soul to her in his eyes, in his stance. She was unphased but he could see in her eyes that she saw it all. She wasn’t afraid. His lack of effect on her was completely unacceptable. He stepped forward fiercely, swinging to backhand her.

Her smile the whole time was sardonic. Even as his fist streaked towards her, that smile never left her face. She stepped out of his arch easily, almost lazily, like she wasn’t even trying. Gone was the innocence he had seen in her.

She seemed to blur as she moved again. The pain in his stomach exploded as the wind was knocked out of him. He slammed into the wall of the building from the force of the hit. He stared at her like he’d never seen her before in his life. And indeed it seemed to him that he was seeing a stranger. Gone was her innocence, gone were those trusting eyes and gone was that air of gullibility. What he saw before him frightened even him.

She walked slowly over to him, watching him gasp and suck for air. There wasn’t any possible way that she could have that strength and speed. Catching his breath, he choked out a few words, greatly weakened from the punch to the stomach and from the shock to his system. “Who are you?”

She raised a small hand to his chin and pushed him up to stand against the wall. “To you,” she paused, looking at him and seeing all of him with eyes that couldn’t be hidden from. “I’m everything.”

She curled a leg around his and pulled his head down for a kiss. When their lips touched, he felt his breath being taken from him. He tried to pull away but he couldn’t break her grip. He couldn’t move her one inch.

Finally she broke the embrace. He collapsed to the ground, barely hanging onto his thin thread of life. He watched her inhale deeply. She looked to be in ecstasy. She was kin to him. But she was something else, he could see it now. She’d hid it so well, seemed to be the perfect prey. If they were one in the same, then why had she done this? They were doing the same work, he and her. He had the breath and energy for that one last question.

“Why?”

She shook herself out of her revelry. She peered down at him with those eyes so innocent once again. “Sometimes, evil…” his vision glossed over and his ears barely caught the words before his end. “Sometimes it eats its own.”