Authors: Jesse Abundis
“ I’ll be back.” She takes one final breath and views the entire landscape as it fades away, returning back to it’s forgotten realm.
Karen could feel herself slowly pull back from her deep slumber. Her hearing began to pick up the noises around her. “ Where am I ?” She called out to the shadowy figure that appeared beside her, it’s face was blurred but she could see it’s fingers caressing her face.
“ I’m sorry,” It said to her in a deep hollow voice. “ I guess I had the hold for too long, I didn’t expect you to have so much strength.” She could hear it chuckle.
“ Hold?” Karen’s mind was still fuzzy. “ Where am I?”
“ It’ll come back, just take deep breaths.” Her blur circled around, pulling on straps that kept her feet and hands tightly secured. “ Think back, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“ I was at my apartment, waiting for Peewee, I saw his car and…” the blood began to return and so did her memory of the night. “ You attacked me.” It took her a few seconds until her vision came to focus, letting her see a face she had seen long ago, in another life of her time, still lost and looking for a home. “ It‘s you,” Karen uttered in dismay. “ It’s really you…”
3 Years Ago
She was broke, out of luck, hope and faith were two combinations this poor girl had given up on long ago. Her name was Elle, just a girl from Florida, who worked busting trays, cleaning dishes for less than minimum wage. Elle, the girl with a mean streak of tattoos, just passing through life, never knowing where to go. Sick and tried of living a lie, force to be someone she wasn’t, just to fit in, just to be left alone. Her name wasn’t Elle to begin with, Karen was her birth name, Elle was just one she stole from a homeless teenage girl that played guitar at the bus stops and gave blow jobs in the mens bathroom outside the park. Karen was in need of a change of skin, something to restart all over again, because being Cassandra in her other life had been getting old and boring. There were so little things the nice girl could do before she wanted to jump off the roof just to hear her own skull crack open.
Her life as Elle had been ok, she played guitar as the other, not as good, but just enough to get people to toss her a quarter here and there. Gave blow jobs as the same, but worked on the side to feed her habits, because sucking dick had never been her forte. But the life of the drifter was wearing thin, she was feeling the need to hit the restart button all over again. So she left everything and walked the open road, still with no clue where to go.
“ I don’t believe you’re Elle, not for a second.” A young man had crossed her path, just another drifter walking on the other side of the road, they made faces at each other as they walked, Karen would flip him off and he would do the same to her as well, both laughing at their silent back and forth. It took a good few hours until the other decided to cross the road and walk side by side. “ Her life doesn’t suit you.” Karen rolled her eyes at him. “ It’s like your trying to force that skin onto your face, just to keep people from seeing the real you.”
“ Is that right?” Karen said sarcastically as she could. “ If I’m not Elle, then what happened to the real one?”
“ Fine, mock me.” He said, tossing his hands into the air.
“ I thought I just did?” She gently slapped his arm. “ Oh, lighten up, stranger.” She tried calling him by his name but remembered they had never been introduced. He just mainly asked for her life story and she bared her false past to him on a plate. “ What is your name? “
“ Guess.” He winked at her.
“ You look like a David.” She said to him.
“ Oh my God,” He jumped, acting shocked as he could. Karen wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg or if she actually hit the nail on the head. “ How did you know, my name is David.”
“ Don’t fuck around, is that really you’re name?”
“ Is Elle your real name?”
“ Ha ha, smart ass.” Karen flipped him off.
They walked for a few miles not saying a word, the young man would just look constantly back at Karen with a smile, one that annoyed the hell out of her. “ What?” She finally blurted at him as he stared once again.
“ You got to admit, there’s something between us here, isn’t there?” Karen flipped him off again.
“ So what brings you out here, walking the highways on your own?” She asked him.
“ I lost myself, I don't know what I am anymore.” He said honestly to her.
“ So, we're both alike then?” She said.
“ Told you we had chemistry.” She flipped him off again.
There paths had come to an end, Karen was heading east, when this young man was heading west. “ I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.” He shook her hand. “ You take care, Elle.” He smiled once more at the name.
“ You too, David. Who knows, maybe faith will lead us back together one day.”
* * *
“ David..“ She called him out by the name she knew him for. “ you’re the one that Peewee and I have been looking for.” She cringed as the fact of what happened to Peewee crept into her mind.
You don’t know if he’s dead!
Her inner voice shouted at her, upset that she would allow such a thought pass through.
“ My sweet Elle, we meet at last,” He grabbed onto his ribs as he spoke. “ I think you broke one,” He leaned against the table to catch his breath. “ I didn’t think you pack such a punch.”
“ So this is the place you’ve been hiding all along. Safe and sound, away,” She looked at the black drapes covering the windows. “ from wandering eyes. But always near me to keep me at your reach.”
“ I like to be near my love ones, keep an eye on them, keep them out of harms way.” Karen chuckled at him as he utter those last words. “ It’s true, I love you. I never thought I'd see you again, never. Then one day I return to this city, and I see you from afar. I followed you. Saw the new life you constructed for yourself. A clever little lie.”
“ If you love me so much, then what’s with the knives,” She pointed her eyes to the tools on the tray to her right.
“ You’re going to be apart of something beautiful, something extraordinary!”
He scratched his skin out of excitement, grinning like a demented fool.
“ Lisa Donner and the others became apart of this creation you’re working on ?”
“ Yes.” He prep his tools as he spoke. “ Do you want to see your sisters?”
Karen shook her head. “ No, I don’t want to see them.”
“ How did you know we were looking for you.” Karen pressed on.
“ I didn't. I kept out of your way and your friend. I needed to speak to Maggie one last time before her daughter took this new stage in life.”
“ Peewee, called her.” She wanted to cry so desperately.
“ I did lure him, with the help of Maggie.”
“ Where's Maggie?” Karen asked.
“ Dead. Lisa and I felt her mother was better off that way. She would never accept her in this new form.”
“ You bastard.” Karen wanted to scream at him. “ How did you manage to pull all this, was it by yourself?”
“ When I came to the city, I found aid. A street hooker you might remember, pink hair, she called the night you ran into her.” Karen remembered, she was the one that told her and Peewee that Lulu had been murdered.
“ What's her story?” She asked.
“ She was broken, lost in a circle of hell. I spoke to her, made her see life in a different way and put her god given talent to work. In return I would give her what she wanted the most, a partner that understood her.”
“ You would trust outsiders?” She snorted.
“ To a point. I lead them down a path and let the outcome play on it's own. I can't be held responsible for what happens.”
“ You're a real charmer. You play the flute and make them dance near the edge of the cliff, if they die, oh well, if they live it was all apart of the plan.” She wanted to spit on his face. “ You're fucked up.”
“ You can scream if you want, your sisters did so,” Karen wanted to hurl as he called his victims 'her sisters' but she kept her composure. “ It’s a natural feeling, I won’t get mad.”
“ I want to know about you, the real you.” She interrupted his senseless babble.
“ Me ?” He almost seem to blush. “ Where do I begin?” He pushed the tray aside.
“ Tell me the first time you killed.” Karen kept her gaze on him, getting a look at the real man, not the one in disguise.
“ The first time I killed was out of sheer anger, I fooled myself to believe that I needed to make someone suffer like I did. Cause their love one to feel the lost I felt, just to balance things out in the world, just to make it right. The moment I took my first victim’s life, I saw her standing there from the corner of my eye.” The killer took a deep gulp as he continued. “ I saw her smile at me, I could feel her, this wasn’t just in my head, she was really there. And it drove me insane, I wanted to put her out of my life, I thought the blood would be my relief, in the end I would kill just to see her again, just to have her in my life.”
“ Whose the she in that story?” Karen asked him.
“ Miranda was her name.” He reached out to Karen to find solace, but he could feel her push away, rejecting his very existence.
“ What did you do to her ?” He frowned at her. “ You put so much effort to all this, you must of done something?”
He rushed at her grabbing her mouth shut, his body shook with anger as he clamped his grip around her. “ Why are you pushing me, why do you want to hurt me, can’t you see I love you, everything I’ve done is for all of us.” He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. Knowing this was just his lovers habit, he couldn’t hold it against her. He let out a deep sigh as he began to tell his story once more. “ I loved her with all my heart, to me she was perfect, there wasn’t a single thing I would do to change her, you could talk to her for hours on end. Sometimes she would just randomly begin to talk to anyone in the grocery store as they waited in line, you’ll think they knew each other for years. The way she would laugh, you could listen to it for hours on end.
I don’t know what happened, but one day she started to hate herself, for no reason at all. I never knew where it came from, but she just hated her own existence. I’d tell her time after time, that she was beautiful , but that just send her deeper into a rage, she’d yell at me to stop lying.”
Can’t you see how ugly I am, everything is wrong!
The killer flinched as he heard his old lovers voice screaming at him. “ It just got worst and worst, she became obsessed with other womens looks, she would take photos of actress, models and just random people and try to pace the perfect body she wanted to have. “ He reopened his eyes to let the tears run down his face. “ She kept those photos under her bed in a shoebox, hoping I wouldn’t find them. I wish to God sometimes I never did. I didn’t know what to think when I found them, should I be scared or do I just block this memory out of mind.” He stared down at Karen as he said those last words. “ In the end I just ignored it and hope it would all go away. I hid her shoebox under our bed, left it where it was. I just wanted it to go away.”
Wake up love, I need you to see this.
“ Then one night she wakes me up. The moment my eyes open, I see her holding a gun to her head, I thought it was a bad dream, I can hear myself yelling to her to put it down, but it doesn’t feel like me, it feels like I‘m watching all this from the outside. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she keeps mumbling to herself,
why can’t I be perfect, that’s all I want.
I beg her once more to put it down, that I can help her, that I can make her perfect.” The killer‘s eyes stared into space. “ Why did I say that?”
“ What happened ?” Karen muttered under his grasp.
He pulled himself away from that moment, taking a deep breath before continuing. “ She just smiled and thanked me.” He closed his eyes once more, remembering the moment it all went wrong. “ And she pulled the trigger, her head exploded and her lifeless body fell into my arms. I can still remember the smell of the gun powder, how her blood flew into my mouth. I wanted to scream, cry, yell, but I didn’t. I just held her dead body in my arms for days.”
The killer undid his grasp on her mouth and walked around the table to shake that haunted night away. “ But the story doesn’t end there, now does it?” Karen kept prying deeper into this killer's mind, she wanted to know it all.
The killer smiled at her once more, he was please with her, even though she could push his buttons, she had the knack for wanting the truth no matter how dark it might be, one of the reason he was attracted to her in the first place. “ You’re correct, that‘s only one half of a very long story, after she died, as I said before, I was just like a wild animal, I wanted to hurt someone, and the moment I saw her I killed to keep her from leaving me forever.” He walked over to the corner of the room, pushing his second cart of tools over to the operating table. “ It was Alistair that help me find my calling, he helped me wake up, he broke the walls I put up for myself to keep the truth back. He showed me how to deal with this pain.”