Page 29 of Shattered
CHAPTER 9
Rourke
The building was as familiar to me as my own home now. Going through the canal behind the houses and hopping the fence was easy. There were thick trees bordering the fence, making it difficult to see beyond it. Each time before this, I had climbed up to the balcony of the master bedroom and let myself in there. But this time, I checked the door to the kitchen. It had been locked when I first followed Colin here. But now, it was open.
Was Melissa careless? Or was she hopeful? Waiting for me.
It had been a few days since I had been to her place, but it seemed like weeks. Weeks where I couldn’t stop thinking about Melissa and the depraved things I wanted to do to her. Days upon days where I reminded myself that this kind of thinking wasn’t helpful, it got me into trouble. Trying to stave off the hunger to kill was only easy because I focused that frustrated energy on the need to control Melissa. Dreamed of cutting off her clothes. Tying her to the foot of my bed. Fucking her senseless until she was an exhausted heap at my feet.
It was either kill another abuser or go see Melissa.
The door to her bedroom was propped open. She was sitting up in bed, a shiny peach bra holding her plump breasts, her soft stomach hidden behind a pastel pad in her lap, her legs tucked inside of a comforter. Focused on the drawing in front of her, she bit her lip. Then the strokes of the charcoal became longer, more reckless. I leaned on the doorframe, crossing my arms.
“You draw too,” I said.
She startled and looked up. A subtle grin crossed her lips. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back.”
“And yet here I am.” I turned off the light and lit the candle, enjoying the atmosphere I’d come to expect here. I motioned at the pad. “Care to share with me?”
She turned it around: circular, fish-like eyes, a mouth full of sharp pointed teeth, a tongue that snaked down and became a noose around the creature’s own neck, foreshadowing its own death.
The feeling was mutual, then. She couldn’t stop thinking about me either.
“You couldn’t draw the mask as it was?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want the police to find it somehow.” That was surprising. I had figured she wouldn’t look out for me like that. She had no reason to.
Melissa was strange. Who protects a killer?
“Why the mask?” she asked. She put the pastel pad down on the bedding next to her. “I get that it hides your identity, but there are plenty of masks out there that would do the same thing. This one,” she gestured to it, “looks post-apocalyptic. Covers your entire head. Makes you look inhuman.”
I tilted my chin. “That’s the point.”
“Does it terrify your vic—” she stopped herself, then said, “your targets?”
She had learned. “You can answer that for yourself,” I nodded at the pastel pad, “can’t you?”
She stared at the drawing, almost as if she could rub the ink and find the answers she was looking for buried inside of it.
“I don’t understand it,” she said, shaking her head. She glanced at the closed blinds.
“Don’t understand what?”
“Why I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I lifted my chin. As if the human condition was easily explained. Why could some follow the rules of society? Why did those others, people like me, choose to break the rules? Why did I break the one rule that was meant to protect our fellow man, repeatedly choosing to extinguish life, until it was a habit rather than experience?
Why did bystanders, like Melissa, fall for men like me?
“You don’t understand your attraction,” I said. A small nod settled on her face. I couldn’t explain mine, either. Why her? Why did I want the one person I was supposed to use to my advantage? Who I was supposed to frame? “The mask prevents you from knowing me. You think that with every move, you get closer to the person underneath. It’s the chase,” my words quickened in pacing, digging at her wonders, “The mystery of the man behind the mask. The man you want me to be.” I leaned against the wall, letting the words slow once again. “Once you see who I am, the desire will no longer be there. It’ll disappear. The mystery gone with it.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” she said, her touch lingering on her chin, smudging her with charcoal. “I’m sure that has something to do with it, but it’s more than that.” She licked her lips, a glossy sheen to them now. “There’s power behind it. Knowing that you can see me like this.” A blush covered her face as she gestured to herself. Clearly, she had worn that outfit for me. “But you still see through the bullshit. You don’t give anyone a chance to hide. It’s like you can see through the lens, and you let me see too, but I’ll never truly know the pictures you’ve created of me.”
The silence between us thickened. She had opened up a door to a thought that I had considered, but had never expectedherto go through. To see me inside of it.
Identity was about perception, even when it came to ourselves.
“Why do you kill?”
