The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) (17 page)

I decided to do it the next night after
watching him return home empty-handed. I knew he’d be extra eager,
having failed at his sexual endeavors the night before. I was
right. Baiting him was a piece of cake. I simply walked into the
bar a few minutes after he sat down, chose the bar stool beside
him, and made my interest as obvious as a schoolgirl with a crush.
I suspect he liked that very much. It wasn’t very long before he
invited me to his place.

Once I got him alone, all flirtation ceased.
I had no desire to toy with Roger. I only wanted him dead.

He led me to his bedroom, then turned around
to size me up. “There's something so familiar about you.”

“Oh?” I smiled, trying not to look nervous.
“Maybe you know my sister. We're only a year apart.”

“Ah, never mind. ‘There's enough of me to go
around,’ as a cheesier man might say. Oh, damn... I just said it,
didn't I?” He chuckled, like it was funny. I didn’t think so.

I reached behind me, undid the zipper on my
dress, and pulled the knife from my satin corset. He didn’t realize
what was happening until the blade was plunging through the air
toward his neck. He swung and tried to hit me. He would have
succeeded if he’d been two seconds faster. Lucky for me, the blood
was leaving his brain and coursing to his groin when I struck,
impairing his reflexes. The knife entered, sinking deep. His skin
grazed the handle.

I pressed hard and traced the curve of his
throat, slicing his Adam’s apple. Blood gushed out, and I gagged. I
wasn’t prepared for all the blood. Hot and sticky, it poured all
over us. I almost dropped the knife.

I did it quickly and took no joy in the
killing, only in the knowledge of revenge. He gripped me by the
hair and thrashed at me with his other hand, but it was useless.
The life drained quickly from his eyes.

He slumped to the floor, and I realized his
hand was still tangled in my hair. I knelt down beside him. A death
rattle quivered his lips. I untangled his fingers and let him drop
to the carpet, and I cried for a moment. I think they were tears of
relief.

It wasn’t until after the murder, when
curiosity overtook me and I began rooting through his things, that
my hatred for Roger grew. The three-ring binder in his desk drawer
wouldn’t have caught my attention if not for the title scrawled on
it with permanent marker. “Damaged Goods”.

I flipped it open. Inside were four notebooks
of handwritten journal entries. The first three were filled. The
fourth notebook had been left incomplete when its author
unexpectedly died.

“Damaged Goods” was written like a memoir,
but I’m sure Roger never intended for anyone else to lay eyes on
it. It was for him and him only, his little trophy. In it, he
detailed his sexual exploits, some of which were very illegal.
There was a chapter for each period of his life since he started
keeping the journal, and guess what, Kimmie? We got to be in
Chapter One.

I ground my teeth as Roger detailed his
obsession with “damaged” girls. “I like the ones who are broken.
They let me do whatever I want.” No doubt that’s why he worked so
hard to become a college professor. What better place to scope out
victims he might be able to further abuse?

No one sees that side of him, though. Roger
will be the media’s undeserving victim. I could expose him. I could
admit my motive. But that would expose you, too, wouldn’t it? I
burned those notebooks, anyway. There’s no proof. I couldn’t stand
for the women he abused to be mocked in those sordid pages any
longer.

Roger never planned to stay with mom. She
likes to think she forced him into a speedy divorce and expelled
him from our lives as a punishment for his deeds, but she is wrong.
That divorce was not a punishment for Roger. He was more than happy
to leave us in his dust and move on to his next play thing. He'd
had his fun.

The more I read his filthy book, the harder
it was to keep my eyes in focus. My blood boiled. Tears blurred my
vision and my heart hammered out a war song. I wanted to kill him
again, but I couldn’t. His death hadn’t lasted long enough. I had
taken revenge for the two of us, but what about these women? They
deserved revenge, too, and the bastard had been in pain for only a
couple minutes.

I went to his kitchen. I found the biggest
knife I could. And I began to hack Roger to pieces.

Did I go crazy? Perhaps. Will I pay for my
sins? Maybe. The truth is, I don’t know what to believe. A part of
me hopes Hell is real so that Roger can rot there. But if Hell is
real, aren’t I damned?

“Thou shalt not kill” makes no sense in a
world where murder isn’t black and white. There is a vast gray
area, a place where victims who seek their own brand of justice
dwell. How can the commandments condemn me when they failed to
protect me? What about “Thou shalt not rape”?

No one on the outside looking in can
understand how rape and murder are so very much alike. He killed
the child in me, so I killed him. An eye for an eye makes the whole
world blind, but most people are blind to abuse sufferers
anyway.

Dear sister, I hope you live a long and happy
life, as happy as a person can be after their sister makes national
headlines for a crime that turned the stomachs of investigators.
For what it’s worth, I only wanted him dead. It wasn’t until after…
when confronted by the magnitude of Roger’s evil that I decided I
would chop him to pieces. My mind, like an old, tired rubberband,
stretched too thin for the last time and snapped.

I was filled with only rage as I sawed into
him, breaking bones where the knife got stuck. Half of me pleaded
with the other half to stop, but the knife just kept on carving. If
there was a craziness in me waiting for release, I guess “Damaged
Goods” was the trigger.

Give my love to Kayla and Tommy. I love them
and I’ll miss them. I love all of you so much. Of that you can be
certain.

And I apologize if I’ve written too small.
One of the guards told me to make this paper last, but I wanted you
to know the whole story. My side of it, anyhow. If you had
difficulty reading my handwriting, I hope you can at least read my
heart. I won’t say “I did this for us” because I didn’t. I did it
for me… but he hurt you, too, and I think that’s what has tortured
me all these years. I’m your big sister, your protector, and I
couldn’t save you from his darkness. That’s my only regret.

The cops are still looking for the missing
pieces of Roger, but I refuse to cooperate. Until I start talking,
they say, I won’t receive any privileges. But I’m not spoiling the
fun. They’ll find him soon enough.

Remember how Roger said, ‘There’s enough of
me to go around’? Let’s just say I took him up on that offer. He
used women and threw them away. He wrote disgusting things about
them in his memoir. And sometimes he wrote their full names. In my
manic state, that gave me an idea. Finding addresses for some of
those names was easy enough, and besides, after the way he treated
us, I thought we all deserved a little closure.

A madness was triggered in me the night I
read his journals. Maybe that’s why I’m still smiling about his
gory departure from this world. The memory of his eyes rolling in
their sockets, it comforts me.

For being a bad aunt, I’m truly sorry. I
didn’t think about Tommy and Kayla getting mixed up in all this
when I did it. I especially wasn’t thinking of them when I sent the
packages, including the one I mailed to you. Please, don’t let them
open any boxes that arrive! I’m sorry! I shipped everything at the
slowest postal rate, but still… Roger should be turning up any day
now.

Forgive me.

Much love,

Your Sister

The Gift

“Who did you buy this for?” Tears shimmered
on Ty's chocolate brown eyes as she held the tiny gift box with the
gold and silver bow. Trevor studied her face as he cleaned his
harpoon. This was the first time he had seen her cry. Six weeks
they'd been dragging dead bodies from the building by day, hiding
in his apartment by night. Six weeks and Ty hadn't shed a tear.
Until now.

She looked at her feet, eyelids heavy with
makeup, and Trevor had to stifle a chuckle. Even in times of
crisis, Ty found the time to apply eyeliner and mascara. Fresh
gloss shined beneath the sterling silver hoop in her lip.

When she spoke, her voice was shaky and
demure, nothing like her usual tone. “If there was someone else, I
need to know.” She wiped at the moisture on her face with the
sleeve of her black cotton jacket and turned to gaze at the dark
sky full of pinprick stars. The lights of the city used to drown
out those stars, but now she could see them all, thousands of
them.

“Who was the present for? Who did you love
before the world turned to shit?”

Trevor's heart broke at the sight of her
quivering lips and the wetness that formed on her cheeks. Then a
thought occurred to him and he blinked, shaking away the stupor.
“Wait a minute. Why were you going through my stuff?”

Ty looked at him, a guilty wrinkle forming in
her brow. Worry lines creased her forehead. The truth was written
all over her face: She had been snooping, found the box, and
jealousy got the best of her. She hadn't taken the time to
formulate an excuse before storming up the staircase to confront
him. She stood, doe-eyed in the headlights of Trevor's questioning
glare as the moon glowed bright overhead.

After a moment of silence, Trevor smirked and
shook his head. He wiped the last smear of blood from the pointed
tip of his harpoon and gestured behind him. “C'mon. I need your
help.”

A breeze blew through her short black hair
and rustled the once-purple streaks, which had faded to a
violet-gray. She fiddled with the silver jewelry in her upper ear,
a nervous habit that Trevor both loved and hated. He enjoyed
watching her slender fingers move, but he hated that she felt
nervous.

He turned and led the way across the rooftop.
Ty followed, her boots thudding in time with his sneakers. She
stuffed the gift box into her jacket pocket and zipped it shut.
Trevor was right. This was an argument for another time. Not on the
roof, not now. It wasn't safe up here.

A disturbing chatter filled Ty's ears, and
she stopped. She scanned the sky with wide, leery eyes. A loud
clicking sound, out of rhythm with their footsteps, had echoed off
a neighboring skyscraper. It sounded like the “clacker” toy she had
as a kid—a plastic noise maker she received as a party favor. Her
mother hated it, and the noisy toy quickly found a place in the
garbage. She reached out and squeezed Trevor's arm. He stopped, and
they listened to the city together.

The clicking sound didn't repeat itself, but
they heard the flapping of gigantic wings. A silhouette swooped
over the moon. They froze, watching, waiting...

The creature glided through the air, heading
towards the beach, its leathery wings carrying it further into the
distance. They sighed in unison and exchanged a look that expressed
an unspoken agreement: They needed to hurry up, finish their task,
and get their asses back inside.

They neared the metal railing of the fire
escape. Ty was hesitant to approach. A mammoth creature lay
motionless on the cement. Its black wings were pulled close to its
furry body. A portion of its head was missing. Pieces of brain
matter and skull littered the ground. Ty put a hand over her mouth.
It smelled like rotting meat, but Ty guessed that was because the
creature had been feeding on corpses. It was too freshly dead to be
decaying.

The hair that covered the creature's snout
was stained a dark red, and its mouth hung open, revealing pointed
teeth the size of Trevor's fingers. Ty fought off a shiver. She had
witnessed identical teeth ripping her family and friends to shreds,
an all-you-can-eat buffet of humans.

“This has got to be the dumbest idea ever,”
Ty noted.

“Agreed. But I don't want to starve.” Trevor
knelt down and opened a backpack that lay near a congealing pool of
crimson bat blood. The shot gun lay just within reach, but he was
hoping he wouldn't need it any more tonight.

He reached into the canvas pack and pulled
several plastic bags and two knives from inside. “You've got to
help me. We need to get back inside before long. This guy here was
an early bird,” he said, pointing to the corpse and forcing a fake
smile.

Ty knew he was right. Most bats didn't wake
up the very moment night fell. Just as humans used to sleep past
sunrise, the bats liked to snooze for a while before breakfast. The
moon had just started to shine in the dark sky. But soon... soon
there would be too many to fight.

Trevor tossed her the knife, and she removed
its leather sheath. “Take these, too.” He threw a pair of rubber
gloves at her feet. The were yellow, the kind used for scrubbing
dishes. “I found them at Mrs. Jenson's place.”

Ty donned the gloves and set to work, slicing
a thin layer of furry flesh from the bat's body and discarding it
onto the blood-soaked ground. She carved deeper into the meat,
trying to find a piece that resembled something she could eat. Her
mind raced. “What if it makes us sick?” She pushed the finely honed
blade through the animal's flesh, coming away with strips of meat
that she dropped into a plastic bag.