Page 62 of Texas Hold Em'
Tex put out his cigarette and tipped his head inside. “It’s late. We should try to get some rest.”
I knew sleep wouldn’t come, but I went through the motions of getting ready for bed anyway. We stood side by side in his bathroom brushing our teeth. It seemed a terribly mundane thing to do together. I splashed water on my face and he told me he’d meet me in the bedroom.
Alone in the bathroom, I gripped the counter and stared at my own reflection. Beads of cool water rolled down my cheeks and dripped from the end of my nose, landing soundlessly in the porcelain sink. The woman staring back at me had lost weight. Her cheeks weren’t quite as full as I remembered, nor as rosy, and her lips were chapped. Her eyebrows were thinner from days of anxious and absentminded picking and plucking. Her hair was disheveled and one might go as far to say unkempt. Baby hairs around my hairline curled every which way when I usually had them slicked back into my bun.
“Who are you?” I whispered to myself.
Naturally, the woman in the mirror didn’t answer. She continued staring back at me, her blue eyes deadpan and endlessly hollow, like an ocean cave that went on forever, full of truths and horrors both realized and never to be known.
What horrors would I come to know over the next few days?
Who would I see in the mirror if I lived to see Saturday morning?
Tex called my name from the bedroom and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Coming,” I called back, my voice shaking as my grip on the counter tightened and white-knuckled.
I didn’t want to go to bed. If by some miracle I managed to fall asleep, I’d wake and be one day closer to Friday night. I wanted to cling to every minute I had and hold it tight.
Instead, I turned off the bathroom light and made my way into the bedroom, where Tex was already in bed with his hands clasped behind his head. His eyes were closed, but he cracked one open when he heard me come in. He watched me undress.
I climbed into bed with him and he enveloped me and pulled me into him. His chest against my back was warm, his heartbeat steady, his breath on the back of my neck hot and reassuring that he was, at least for now, breathing.
He kissed my shoulder. “Goodnight. Try to turn that mind of yours off. You deserve and need rest.”
He buried his cheek into his pillow and nestled in even closer to me.
I clung to my pillow and listened to the silence of the apartment as the minutes passed. All I could hear was his breathing, and in time, it evened out and he fell asleep. His grip around my waist slackened, and I found myself mindlessly running my fingers over his knuckles and tracing the veins in his forearm until the feeling was committed to memory.
Eventually, sleep took me too.
My eyes fluttered open.
I wasn’t sure what had woken me, but as I lay in bed, I became aware of several things that weren’t quite right. Somewhere close by, something dripped in a steady pattern and echoed as if in a well. It was full night, but a pale blue light shone down on me. I sat up and shielded my eyes as I looked around and tried to get my bearings.
There, at the end of the bed, sat a man in a chair.
I gasped and scrambled back until I hit the headboard. I drew the blankets up to try to conceal my nakedness as the man chuckled. I knew the laugh before a cigar appeared seemingly out of thin air in his mouth. Smoke curled about his head and glowed blue in the pale light.
He spoke in a menacing mumble that sounded like he had a sound system attached to his voice. The base of it rumbled through the bed and rattled my ear drums.
“Miss Hart,” Walter Bates purred, “I’m impressed. You do good work.”
Good work?
What work had I done?
My mouth formed the shape of words, but my voice was caged in my throat. I clawed at my neck as my voice threatened my windpipes.
Walter Bates stood up and walked around the other side of the bed. I watched, horrified and confused, and he stopped on Tex’s side of the bed and smiled down at the rise under the blankets beside me.
With a flourish, Walter Bates pulled the blankets down.
I tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Tex lay on his back in the bed beside me. He was covered in blood, hisskin slick with it, and he was naked. His eyes were wide open and staring unseeing at the ceiling. Blood splattered the headboard, and when I looked down, I realized it was splattered all over me, too.
My palms were dark with his blood. My thighs were stained. My knees, my forearms, my stomach, my breasts—all of me was covered in Tex’s blood as if I’d murdered him and rolled around in it.
