Page 14 of The Darkest Half

In the scuffle, the mirror over the sink shattered; the rusted metal shelf standing over the toilet crashed onto the floor. I almost vomited when the side of my face was shoved close enough to the bottom of the toilet that I could’ve licked it. His fists pounded my head as he crouched on top of me; I could taste his salty sweat dripping from his soiled hair, making me frantic and dangerous.

I grabbed his elbows and pulled hard; he fell forward and rammed his head into mine. Spots melted in my vision, but I didn’t let it distract me this time. I shoved the man off me, and he fell onto the floor.

Scrambling to find my knife, I couldn’t get to it in time before he was on top of me again—it’s true about addicts being invincible—and we crashed against the door, his fists pummeling my face. I swung out at him, once, twice, the third time a piece of the mirror glass I’d swiped from the floor cut him across the throat.

He stumbled backward and fell onto the toilet, his hand covering the wound.

“I didn’t want to kill you,” I said with heavy breaths. “I just needed…to…I just needed you!” I was only yelling because I was disgusted—outraged because I was disgusting.

Blood seeped through the cracks in his fingers, down his throat and chest; he choked, and his lips sputtered.

After a moment, his eyes rolled back, and his arms went limp at his sides.

It was over. It was done. What “it” was exactly, I didn’t know. I never really knew. For as long as I’d needed to find a release—since I was a teenager—I never did know what to call it. I wasn’t a serial killer; I didn’t need to kill to satisfy my inner darkness. (Yes, you did.) I did kill, like on this night, but it was rarely my intention to kill anyone. I just wanted, needed, to hurt them. (To kill them.) I needed to draw blood, to inflict physical and emotional pain. I often cut out their teeth, but I rarely killed them. (You used to.) I didn’t know what to call it!

Stumbling out of the restroom, I didn’t expect anyone to be waiting in the hall, and I was right. No one cared. These people tended to mind their own business in these places; all they cared about was the high, and not even a murder ten feet away in another room could drag them away from their blissful oblivion.

Trekking over trash and unconscious bodies, I made my way outside into the fresh, cool night air. It felt good on my face. I stopped on the porch of the dilapidated house, shut my eyes, raised my head to the sky, and inhaled a deep breath into my starved lungs.

I got a lot of stares on the subway on my way home. There was blood on my hands, and I stank of the dead man’s sweat and body odor and maybe even a little of mine, too. It always ended like this: me out of breath and filthy, bloodstained, and with a look on my face like I’d just escaped certain death or robbed and killed someone. I could see a dim reflection in the window to my left. I had been looking at myself for the past ten minutes since I sat. No one sat next to me. I was glad about that.

I spent an hour in the shower when I got home, crawled into the bed, and slept for two days. I always felt exhausted afterward, not from the act itself, I didn’t think, but from the satisfaction. My mind and body refused to let me rest if I didn’t feed them what they needed most. Sleep was the reward, just after the satisfaction, of course.

I was good to go for another three weeks or so before I needed to find someone else. It was a vicious cycle. Exhausting. Stressful. Disgusting. Unprepared. Amateur.

On-The-Verge-Of-Getting-Caught.

Mind-numbingly frustrating.

But I still had to do it. No matter what.

And I knew I always would.

Present day…

With slow, delicate movements, she reaches for her teacup on the table and brings it to her lips. She sips from it slowly and then sets it back down in the same spot, the little handle always facing the same direction.

She looks so…innocent sitting there, dressed in a white, sleeveless shorts-romper; her dainty shoulders and neck are displayed like a painting in a museum that you want to touch but know is forbidden. But I wouldn’t be able to touch her if I wanted to anyway because I’m strapped to a dentist’s chair in what looks like a basement, and I knew this would be my fate one day.

Willa. My dear sweet Willa. We were very close in my days with Olaf when I was just a boy. Like me, she had also been taken by those men, forced into a life of immoral servitude. But Willa was brilliant; she knew how to manipulate them, make them believe she was as cold and heartless as they were, and that she was invaluable, so they trusted her and made her Head Servant. But Willa was only cold and heartless in front of Olaf and Eskill; behind the face she wore was a caring young woman who tended to the boys’ wounds, consoled them, and was always there to let them know they were never alone.

I was one of those boys who loved her like a sister or a mother. But most of all, she was my friend.

“I thought you were dead,” I say to her once more—I’ve said it a few times since I woke up in this chair, but so far, she has refused to talk about anyone but me.

“I did die,” she says. “I have been dead for many years, Freedrik.” Her accent is as heavy as I remember, especially how she says my name.

I close my eyes for a moment and recall the days I spent in her care, when she bathed me, laid my head on her breasts, and wrapped her small arms around my small body so I could cry.

“I died a long time ago, too,” I tell her. “But I’m guessing you already know that.”

She nods lightly. “Ve are different people now, you and I. Monsters vearing the flesh of humans. A man told me that once. Just before I cut out hees tongue.”

Every word she speaks is careful and deliberate; she’s incapable of casual conversation, laughter, smiles of enjoyment. I wonder how she gets along in the world, how someone like her, who ordinary people would instantly feel discomfort sitting next to, manages to move through society without raising suspicion. Oh yes—because ordinary people are blind to these things; they ignore their intuitions; they steer clear of anyone who makes them uncomfortable.

Willa stands. And she comes over to me, a knife in her hand. I don’t flinch. Because I’m not afraid of her, and she knows it.

She leans over me, inhales my scent like an animal, and then I feel the coolness of the blade against the side of my throat.

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