Page 4 of Daddy's Muse
It was expensive, lined, tailored, and exactly my fit. I’d worn it during more than one kill. But I draped it over his body anyway, hoping that he wouldn’t turn it over to police. I didn’t think he would, but people could be unpredictable.
There wasn’t any visible blood on it, at least.
Hopefully, he’d take it as a gift from a concerned passerby, not at all connecting it to the soon-to-be-on-the-news disappearance of one of the university’s tenured professors.
He murmured something unintelligible, barely audible, but still didn’t wake.
I crouched there another moment, unsure of myself in a way I hadn’t been in years. My fingers hovered near his freckled cheek, but didn’t touch. I couldn’t touch such a perfect being. I wasn’t worthy of that.
Then, finally, I stood.
I didn’t leave right away. I stood a little ways off, in the dark, watching the way he breathed—slow and shallow, a bit uneven.
It was bothering me that I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was just something about him that made me think we were fated to meet. He wasn’t prey, I was entirely sure of that now after seeing him up close, but what part did he play?
I needed to think.
2
Colby
Present Day
I was jolted awake from the sound of my dorm room’s door slamming open and shut, followed by the too-loud whispers of my roommate. I rubbed my fist against my eyes, glancing blearily over at the alarm clock I kept on my desk.
It was 5:10 in the morning.
Bryan had gone out the night before and was only now getting back. Without even looking over at him, I already knew that he’d spent the past few hours drinking. Honestly, it was at the point where I didn’t understand how he hadn’t been kicked out of campus housing or expelled. I highly doubted he was passing all his classes. And if he was, something was seriously wrong with his professors.
As I listened to him stumbling around and mumbling to himself, I wondered what it must be like to genuinely not careabout anything besides getting drunk or high or laid. It seemed like a pretty chill, low-stress existence.
Bryan was a terrible roommate, but when I’d asked for a room change because of his behavior at the start of the year, I was told that there weren’t any available beds and to either“deal with it”or get an off-campus apartment. The dorm advisor had seemed annoyed by me throughout the whole conversation, keeping his answers short and maintaining non-existent eye contact as he swiped at a dating app on his phone. So incredibly helpful…
I couldn’t afford to live off-campus. I wouldn’t have even been enrolled in the first place if I hadn’t been offered such a generous scholarship. I was already juggling a full course load and two part-time jobs just to make ends meet, so paying for housing when my room and board stipend covered my dorm didn’t make sense.
It was late February now, so I just needed to stick it out a few more months. I told myself that every day, again and again, like a mantra.
Bryan wasn’t much different from the bullies in high school, except that back then, I’d been able to at least catch a break after school, safe at home with Grandma and Pop-Pop. It was a lot harder to deal with a bully when you lived in the same tiny room as him.
Bryan’s mattress springs groaned as he collapsed into bed, the sour-sweet reek of cheap vodka filling the room. He fumbled with his phone, the screen casting a pulsing blue light onto the ceiling. I held my breath, counting silently—one, two, three—hoping he’d pass out before he remembered I existed.
No such luck.
Stuck in the muck, I thought to myself, curling my lips inward to hold back a giggle at the earworm from a book I hadn’t read since childhood. I briefly considered whether our librarymay haveClick, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type,but then again, it was a college library.
But… maybe they had a children’s section? Some students had kids. Professors, too.
“?Colb, dude.Colb, you awake?” His “whisper” was a drunken bellow. Also,Colb? I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’d told him not to call me that.
I stayed perfectly still, arm curled protectively around the nice coat that I held against my chest. It gave me a similar feeling of comfort that my childhood blankie had. I hugged the coat closer, snuggling my face into it as I thought about the time Bryan had discovered my blankie and ruined it. I wouldn’t allow him to destroy the coat, too. Although he probably wouldn’t anyway, since it was just a coat, and he’d destroyed my blankie because he said it was too childish and that he couldn’t room with a baby.
Even so, I always kept the coat hidden underneath my covers, just in case.
It felt silly to care so much about a coat, but I couldn’t help that it was so special to me. I’d woken up with it wrapped around me after a night of sleeping outside.
It was the best gift I’d ever received.
I’d still ended up with frostbite from that night in December, but the campus doctor said it would’ve been much worse if it hadn’t been for the coat and hand warmer my kind stranger had left me.
