Page 59 of Property of Necro
He turns an old rickety nob that screeches, pushes the door open, and I’m suddenly free. The fragrant summer breeze wafts in with a hint of fresh-cut grass. Heat bathes my face, and I nearly cry at how good it feels as the blue sky greets me like a long-lost friend.
Coffin jogs down concrete steps with an iron railing, and I tag along, smiling wide as the sun soaks into my skin. Doing my best, I try to keep pace through the church’s backyard as his thick legs encased in jeans eat up the distance with much longerstrides. It doesn’t help that I’m short and wearing Crocs, and he’s well over six feet tall and wearing biker boots. Plus, I’m distracted. This is incredible. The land goes on and on, undisturbed. Dense woods cut along the back half, where Doug must live with his bees.
We walk a solid five minutes across the well-maintained lawn before we come upon a black barn with a tin roof. Beyond it, the grass descends a short hill into a flat valley where iron stakes poke out of the ground in even intervals. A tall stone monument, the color of ice and snow, is erected in the center. It shimmers beneath the mid-afternoon sun.
Pushing a series of buttons on an advanced security system, Coffin unlocks the barn door and shoves both sides open wide, allowing the space to air out. The scent of sawdust smacks me square in the face as he steps inside, turning on the lights as he goes.
“Come on,” he calls.
Following the sound of his voice, excited to be out of the church for an hour, maybe two, I skip across the slippery, sawdust-covered floor, past stacks of plywood, a bunch of tools, and sawhorses, to find him in the back. He opens a different door, a normal-sized one this time, reaches in, and flicks on a light but doesn’t step inside.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“My trophy room.”
I wring my fingers together. “What kind of trophies?”
He jerks his chin toward the open doorway. “The kind you need to see and learn about before you decide if you wanna stay or not.”
“I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter.” I’m a gift. That’s the entire point of this, isn’t it?
Coffin frowns and shoves his hands into his front jean pockets. “There’s always a choice, Sola.”
“What choice is that? Live or die.”
“You’re not dying,” Coffin growls as if me even mentioning it irritates him, which is a surprise jolt to my system, too. I thought that was his MO.
“We’re all dying, Coffin.”
“That’s not what either of us meant, and you know it,” he snaps.
He’s right. It isn’t. But it’s nice to hear him confirm more than once on the same day that he doesn’t plan on adding me to the laundry list of forty-plus women buried down that hill outside. There’s no other logical explanation for the hidden location or the eerie row of iron stakes. Is this the barn he kills them in?
Tuckinga red curl behind her ear, Sola turns around and takes her time soaking in my workshop with her big, green, curious eyes. I’m not sure what she expects to find, but there ain’t much to see. My trophy room is where the real answers are. If she can handle that, thenI get to be the one to toss her into the real deep end and hope she can swim.
It’s been three months.
It’s time.
Once I’ve given her plenty of time to gawk, I sweep my hand toward the open door. “In.”
She finishes dissecting my workshop and offers me a tight-lipped smile that doesn’t reach her eyes as she steps into the belly of the beast. My beast. I stroll in behind her and shut us inside to keep her from running should she freak the fuck out.
A row of shelves, from floor to my height, lines the back of the room. I built everything in this place. LED lights run the length of each handcrafted shelf, lighting what I’ve collected over the years—my pride and joy.
Arms down at her sides, her frame unusually tense, Sola examines the specimen jars. One by one, she looks at what I’ve preserved with Rot’s help and reads the small description I typed, laminated, and fastened onto the wood in front of each trophy.
“You collect uteruses,” she whispers to herself. “There are so many.”
Pressing my lips together,my heart slams against my breastbone as Coffin stands in front of the only exit, far too quiet for my comfort. Not that any of this is comforting. Hundreds of women’s body parts are displayed in vessels, preserved in liquid, and illuminated by light strips. If this weren’t horrific, I would praise him for his quality of showmanship. It’s all exhibited beautifully, down to the cards.
I stop in front of an unusual trophy. This one isn’t a uterus. It’s… I lean in closer to get a better view. Yep. That’s a vagina. The outside, the inside. It’s all there. A glob of flesh without bones floating in fluid. Unlike some men, I know a clit when I see one. That’s a clit and labia.
My stomach tightens, and a twinge of phantom pain tears through my vagina at the thought of what this woman must have endured. I don’t have to ask if he did it when she was alive. He definitely carved her up like a turkey while she still breathed. There’s no pleasure in postmortem torture. That’s not a thing. This was personal.
Her card reads:
Name: Jennifer
