Page 20 of Edge of Control

Tonight was no different. There’d been so much blood.

She struggled more than the other two had. She had realized something was wrong nearly from the second I stepped into her apartment. It wasn’t a clean kill. Not by a long shot. I had to hit her over the head with a vase. Thankfully, the neighbor was having a loud birthday party. No one heard her shout for help over the thumping sound of reggaeton vibrating the thin walls.

It was messy. It had made me panic. My lungs felt like they were being constricted by a python. I couldn’t get a full breath into them.

Even when I left her apartment. Even when I had to dodge a downstairs neighbor who was getting home from a late shift working a fast-food joint. I smelled the grease before I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs. I lurched back into the hallway and pretended like I was heading to another apartment. The woman barely even registered me. She looked up from her phone for a second, her exhausted eyes clearly only caring about getting into bed.

The python grew tighter, even as I stepped outside into the crisp night air. The apartment was in a beat-up ten-story building in Harlem. A construction crew worked to dig into the concrete, the sound of their drills clattering in my brain.

I couldn’t breathe. It was getting more difficult to breathe.

Tonight had been far messier than any others. And all I could think about was Jace. He knew my name. He had my number.

Jace.

Jace, Jace, Jace.

Messy.

Fucking hell.

To make everything more complicated, the media had picked up on the story. They’d given me a name. Nevermore. A smart name, but a name nonetheless. Interest would skyrocket. More eyeballs on me meant more chances that this twisted little game I played would be over. Would I be the winner or the loser?

I couldn’t keep making mistakes.

I leaned against the cracked glass of a bus stop. Blueand black graffiti letters covered the face of a model trying to sell an expensive gold wristwatch. It was a Movado, from the Heritage series. Nice blue face with a classic brown leather strap.

I wasn’t sure exactly when my obsession with wristwatches began. Likely when my father started locking me in the bathroom for days at a time. I remember having just my watch in there. I’d take it off and dismantle it, just to try and keep entertained. But it turned into an appreciation for how complex and beautiful they were. How they weren’t only functional but could also tell a story about the person wearing it. Were they flashy? Did they have a cracked face and didn’t care much about their possessions? Were they collectors? Were they annoying Apple Watch fanatics?

That one I didn’t understand. They were literally wearing tiny phones on their wrists, not actual wristwatches. It took away from the magic of a good timepiece.

I adjusted the Shinola on my wrist. It was one of my preferred watches. I’d picked it up on a vacation to Italy shortly before Em passed away. Back when life felt like it was slowly beginning to get itself in order, all before it came crashing back down again.

That’s when I noticed a scratch on my forearm.

Shit.

The woman tonight had fought. It wasn’t like the previous two. For those two, I had been able to act as though I was there to fuck them. I had caught them both by surprise. Everyone was vulnerable when they had their heads stuffed in a pillow and their asses aimed up in the air. It wasn’t hard to reach over and slit their throats. All it tookwas the correct amount of pressure, and the life would drain out in less than a minute. They likely didn’t even register any pain.

Not tonight. She figured it out. She fought.

But I fought harder. Had to.

Oh, Marielle.

The fight had me rush through the ritual. My hands were shaking when I reached for the backpack I had brought. They shook as I hooked the raven feathers into the woman’s back. They shook as I pushed the wire through her skin. As I folded the wings to make it appear as if she took flight.

They shook when I grabbed the camera. Deleted all the footage. Left it with a single photo, back where it had originally been placed.

“Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore?—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

’ Tis the wind and nothing more!”

My hands still shook as I walked down the street, trying to keep my pace controlled. I wanted to run. To fucking fly. Panic made a noxious mixture with adrenaline. Toxic. It clouded my thoughts. Made me feel like I was high on cocaine, numb with novocaine, and drunk off a handle of tequila.

It meant my judgment was clouded. Maybe that’s what made me walk down into a subway station, go through the turnstile, follow the signs for the A train, hop on, and sit down for the thirty-four-minute ride it would take me to getto Lower Manhattan. It wasn’t home I was headed to. If it were, then I would have stayed on that train for another twenty minutes, riding it into Brooklyn.

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