Page 16 of Shattered
CHAPTER 5
Rourke
You would have thought after two nights in a row, Melissa would have installed new locks on the doors and windows. Perhaps during the daytime, she had made moves to do so. But there were no new locks to pick on that third night. I went through her closet, rummaged through her old clothes, some in good condition, and others in rags. Blank canvases. Painted ones. A few textbooks on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. I found the same box of matches and used one to light the candle on her nightstand.
She was in the shower and hadn’t seen me yet. I stood in the corner again, as if I had always been waiting there. As if I only existed when she came into the room.
This time, she immediately looked into the corner before taking a seat on the bed. Her shoulders were loose, her skin tinted pink, a fluidity to her limbs. Confidence was on her side, then. Perhaps even trust. She knew that while I may have restrained and made her unconscious twice now, I had not hurt her.Yet.
The ‘yet’ was what I held onto; my control of her. I faced the bed, using my height to loom over her.
“Rourke,” she said. There was an edge to my name on her tongue. “You didn’t get to know me enough last night?”
“I would hardly think knowing your place of work and your hobby is knowing you,” I said. “How was work, yesterday, by the way?” I clicked my tongue, but the sound of it through the voice changer came out in staticky knocks. “How impolite of me not to ask.”
“It was fine.” She smoothed the comforter underneath her, one hand clutching the top of her towel to her body.
“Just fine?”
“This new member came to see me.”
I tilted my head. “Disappointed then?”
“Not really.” She looked up from the bed, hesitation flickering in her eyes. “And your night?”
Being in the same room as me wasn’t enough to show her fear, but addressing the fact that she knew that I killed people, was strange for her. That was understandable.
“I’m taking some time off,” I said, “For now. And you haven’t gone to the police.”
She shook her head. “Why would I?”
“Most people would jump at the chance to turn in a murderer. Demand a cash prize. A favor stored for future cases.”
“I’m not interested in that.”
The wine red towel clung to her chest, showing off her curves, her hair blending into it. Her hair was thick, the kind of hair I could stick my fingers inside and wrestle her around, molding her into doing whatever I wanted. Yesterday, tender red splotches had dotted her cheeks from the asphyxiation, marking where I had been. But now, even in the dim lighting, I knew they were gone. Her legs were pressed together.
“Show me your paintings,” I said.
Without a question, she went to the closet and pulled out a few canvases. A dark ocean night, the shadow of a buoy bobbing in the distance. The coast in the early morning, a few birds roaming the sand and floating in the air, fog hovering around them. A naked redhead pouring a canister of paint on herself, the spotlight covering her body, the audience empty. A self-portrait.
The last one was more interesting than the other two, to see inside of her head, how she imagined herself. The spotlight amplified the loneliness as if nothing could penetrate that beam, and that no one wanted to. She was an object on display. Not someone to interact with. it was almost as if she preferred it that way.
But still, she was holding back in that painting. There was something more that was pulsing beneath the surface, barely visible.
“This is what you sell at the Dahlia District,” I said.
“Yeah.” She pulled the morning coastal canvas to the front and studied it. “When I first started working there, I sold a few, but the longer I’ve stayed, the more dust they’ve collected. And these are the overstock.”
She had likely sold a few at first because she was a novelty item, but that had dissolved into nothing. How disappointing.
“How long have you worked there?” I asked.
“About three years.”
I pointed to the textbooks that were visible in the open closet. “You went to school, then?”
“I dropped out. Took out some bad loans. Working for Dahlia seemed like my best chance to do what I wanted to do for a living.”
