Dark Duets Part 33

The screen starts out black, but then a light comes on and shines on a girl in a chair. At first I think it's me. She's got my round face, my brown hair, a little s.h.a.ggy, parted in the middle. My blue eyes. My figure, a little on the thick side, heavy b.o.o.bs. And she's got that collar around her neck, as I do. But the white top she wears is different from the one he dressed me in. As the camera moves closer, I see that she's not me, after all. He's got a type, like most guys, and we both fit that mold. She might be prettier than I am.

She's every bit as scared.

The camera pushes in more and I see that she has also been cut, or cut herself. What I first took for a deep dimple on her right cheek is a slash, with blood still dripping from it, down to her jawline and running to her chin. A drop hangs there until she speaks, when it plummets toward her lap.

"M'lord," she says, her voice quaking. She can barely get the word out. I release a sob along with her, knowing her terror. "I have been awaiting your return with . . . with profound . . . desire." She's reciting a script, I can tell. The script is awful, and she's awful in the role. I could have done better. As if remembering a stage direction-or maybe he reminds her, off camera-she licks her lips. It's an awkward, artificial moment. Maybe it looked good to him when he was shooting this travesty, but not to me.

"I have been l.u.s.ting for your touch," she says. "Longing for it." She couldn't be less convincing.

"Show me what you've been waiting for," his voice says from offscreen. The whole scene is ridiculously artificial.

In a move as smooth and sensual as a fourteen-year-old boy at his first makeout party, the woman grabs her own right breast.

I have to look away. It's so bad it embarra.s.ses me to watch. And I understand, I get it. She's not an actress, she's a woman just like me, s.n.a.t.c.hed from someplace and forced to humiliate herself. Like he would have had me do.

I know he'll ask about what I've seen, but I can't bear to view it. I look around the room, letting the DVD play, hoping he can hear the absurd dialogue he wrote for her. So he thinks I'm still watching.

I don't look back until I hear her screaming.

I watch the rest through a screen of my own tears, my own horror. She has the razor in her trembling hand, and when she hesitates he activates the collar. She is thrown from the chair, slowly gets up, listens to unheard instructions, and takes the razor to herself. Slices her forehead, her other cheek, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Blood everywhere. The razor slips from her hand. She refuses to pick it up, so he shocks her again.

This time, she doesn't get up.

After a few minutes, he moves into the frame. Takes up the dropped razor. Draws it across some part of her I can't see, his back to the camera blocking my view. Pulls off something that can only be flesh.

When he turns around again, he's tucking it into his mouth. He chews, swallows, smiles at the camera.

And I am, I realize, so, so hungry that even what the monster just ate looks absolutely delicious.

SHE'S WATCHING ONE of the DVDs. I can hear the screaming from the other room, still as real and frantic as it was on the day I recorded it. I think she might be watching Lisa or Dolores, but I'm too far away to really say for sure-and, frankly, it's getting hard to focus on the things around me. I have stopped being able to feel my feet and legs; my arms are nearly useless. I can turn my neck, but all that allows me to do is see the closed utility closet door. This just makes me feel terribly sad, so I've stopped looking that way.

Louise comes into the room, eyelashes wet from crying. She storms over to where I'm lying and squats down beside me.

"Why do you do this?" she asks, grabbing me by the hair and lifting my chin off the floor. "It's disgusting. You're murdering people for what . . . ? So you can eat them?"

She has no idea what she's talking about. She doesn't understand that there is a method to what she considers madness. That there always has been. I want to explain to her, but I'm not sure she will get it. Still, I am dying-I know this now, an absolute truth-and I want to tell someone about my work. I turn my head to look at her, to catch her eye, because eye contact is imperative for understanding.

"I am your G.o.d," I say to Louise, holding her gaze with the last of the energy I possess. "Your creator."

I can see that I am losing her. My words are not penetrating. I try another tack.

"You want to know why I eat them?"

This is what she wants to hear about. I have finally penetrated her, it seems.

"Yes, I want to know why."

Her stomach growls, aggressive and insistent. Of course she is starving. It's been more than a day since she last ate. I wonder if she had dinner before going out the night before. These actresses are always so worried about their weight, she'd probably only nibbled at something, a kale salad or a piece of baked fish.

"Why?" she presses, slamming my chin down, hard, on the concrete, recapturing my attention.

I feel the skin tighten, then burst apart like the seams on a child's stuffed toy. Blood flows from the wound, mixing with the blood that's already all over the floor. I am losing blood with every breath. Dying one exhalation at a time.

"They are my creations, my actresses," I say. "Through them I give birth to my films, and my films give life to them. When they have concluded their part, I complete the circle. They belong to me, and no one else.

She stares at me, eyeb.a.l.l.s darting back and forth in their sockets as she tries to process what I've said.

"You're sick," she says finally. "A f.u.c.king monster."

She releases her grip on my hair, and I use the last of my energy to lay my cheek against the concrete floor. The blood that coats the ground-my blood-is wet and sticky, but even through its viscosity I can still feel the coolness of the earth coming up through the concrete, reaching for me, making me shudder.

I am not a monster, I want to say to her, but I have nothing left inside to defend myself with. It would just expend too much energy.

"You're just hungry," I whisper. I say it so quietly, she doesn't hear.

"What?" she says, leaning closer to my face.

"You're just hungry," I repeat.

"Yes, I am," she says. Then: "You promised me that cell phone if I watched your movies."

I nod as best I can.

"Cut a little of my cheek for yourself," I say. "Eat a little of me. So you don't starve."

She rolls her eyes.

"Not a f.u.c.king chance."

We are at a stalemate. She did as I asked. I owe her the phone, I concede.

"Phone is on my ankle."

She doesn't believe me, shakes her head.

"Holster on my ankle," I say.

She is suspicious. Slowly, she picks her way over the rubble that traps me, lifts my pants leg. I can feel her shaking with relief. She can't believe I held to my promise. Though I may be many things, a liar I am not-but she doesn't know this. She knows nothing about me, really.

"Thank you," she says, crawling back over to me so I can see her face. "Thank you for this."

She is crying. Tears are leaking from her eyes, falling onto her cheeks and then the floor, melding with my blood. Bringing us even closer together. I think part of her wants to kiss me in grat.i.tude, but she doesn't. Instead, she powers on the phone, her excitement growing . . . and then it is dashed before my eyes.

"It's pa.s.sword protected," she says in shock.

"Eat a little of my cheek and I'll tell you the pa.s.sword," I say.

She glares at me. "No."

I try to shrug, but my body is a lifeless thing.

"Eat a little of me and save yourself," I say. "It's the only way."

She doesn't want to do it, but I have her in an untenable position. She holds my gaze for too long and I think she is not going to do what I want her to-but then she gets up and walks over to the corner of the room. The blade she used to cut off her nose lays there, still red with her blood. She picks it up and comes back to me, kneels down. She places the blade against my cheek and quickly slices off a piece of flesh, lets it drop into her palm.

The pain makes my blood sing.

Her body thrums with rage as she cradles the piece of me in her hand. With a shudder, she lifts the raw flesh to her mouth. I close my eyes, savoring the knowledge that my body will become one with hers, but when I open my eyes again, I see that she has not done as I asked. My flesh still rests in her hand.

"Do it," I say, encouraging her. "And the pa.s.sword is yours."

Her body trembles as she raises the flesh to her lips. She grimaces, then shoves my cheek into her mouth. She can't even chew, just swallows hard, forcing me down inside of her. She starts to gag, then she vomits, the unchewed skin splatting on the floor in a puddle of bile and stomach acid.

I grin up at her.

"There's another way out," I say-and there is. I don't lie. "I'll tell you how to get to it, but first you need to promise me one thing. My movies-"

"f.u.c.k you," she says. "Tell me the pa.s.sword. You promised."

I sigh. She may have spewed me back up, but technically she did do what I asked. There is also the fact that I am dying, and I need her to live so that she can bring the world my masterpieces, my films.

"The pa.s.sword is 3337," I concede.

She presses in the code and the phone comes to life.

"Now listen. It's important that you-"

At first, I don't realize what she's doing, but then, as the life ebbs from my body, I understand: she is stabbing me repeatedly with the blade. I try to open my mouth, to tell her the way out before it's too late . . . but then the moment is gone. I am out of my body, floating away. I look down at my lifeless corpse, devastated that all my glorious work will be forever lost to the ages.

Because unless she gets over her distaste for flesh, she's doomed. Rescue will come eventually, but no time soon.

And my phone has never had a signal down here in my secret studio.

BRANCHES, CURVING.

Tim Lebbon and Michael Marshall Smith.

So what did she do now? Did she get up out of bed or try to go back to sleep? Did she continue to doze or try to wake up?

SHE LAY THERE, arm still held rigidly down by her side, and could not make the choice.

Jenni hated choices. Always had. She took forever to order in restaurants because she wanted every meal to be perfect and couldn't bear the cost of selecting one thing over another. She spent so long browsing Netflix that by the time she'd chosen her evening's entertainment she wound up nodding off halfway through the movie. Even a simple trip to Starbucks could strand her blinking up at the menu board, becalmed and indecisive, while people muttered in line behind her. Sometimes there was just too much information. Too many choices, and no telling what to choose.

It was a peculiar trait, this inability to decide, because in other ways she was notably impulsive; two ex-husbands and a string of failed affairs before and after each barren marriage (and also during, regrettably) stood testament to that. Fleeting closeness is not about choice, however. It's living in the moment, however ill-advisedly. It wasn't as if she was ever faced with a room full of men to select from. Perhaps that would have been better. At least that way she might still be choosing, still dithering . . . and would not have spent so very, very long looking for whatever was missing from her life. That elusive something, hidden from view, and yet the one solid anchor in the storm of her mind. The thing that would close the circle and make her complete.

She didn't want yes/no. She wanted a continuum, a permanence, something that would hold her steady forever and put a stop to the endless circle of selection. She was still searching. Still dreaming her life away.

Still waiting to be awake.

AND IN THE meantime she sat at the fork in the road, unreasonably furious at whoever was responsible for the absence of direction. The road to the left angled up a steep slope and soon disappeared around a high-hedged bend. To the right it continued across the hillside, disappearing eventually into a dip in the valley a quarter of a mile away. Both routes were the same width, both imbued with the promise of roads untraveled, and there wasn't even a road sign to help make a decision. She knew they'd taken down a lot of signs across the countryside during the war-to confuse the Germans if they ever invaded-but that was a h.e.l.l of a long time ago now, surely. Maybe there was simply nowhere interesting to go from here, and so they'd never bothered putting them back up.

"Nowhere," she said, the dull word swallowed by the car's upholstery. "Or somewhere."

Which was which? If she'd had to bet, she would have put money on the road to the right being the way to go. But there was no way of knowing for sure.

Just follow the road, the kid in the village had said. Attractive little place, church, old pub. The kid had pointed without looking, wearing a hoodie and high-tops and with a phone grafted onto his left palm, eyes welded to the screen. He'd had strange eyes, and Jenni had thought he looked like one of those kids from that movie she'd seen a month or two ago. She couldn't remember its name. That had been on a bad movie night, one of the few when she'd wished she'd taken longer to choose.

The car coughed before settling back into a tired grumble. Even her Mazda wanted her to stop prevaricating and decide.

f.u.c.k it.

She nudged into gear and pulled forward, and it was only at the last moment that she changed her mind and swung the wheel to the left, sc.r.a.ping the b.u.mper and wing through a bramble hedge as she aimed uphill at the curve in the road.

But she'd committed herself, at least.

A hundred yards along the road an ancient stone mile marker was half buried in the hedge. It felt like she'd seen it before, but with its skewed carved cross and a McDonald's cola cup pressed onto the top, it was nothing she could have dreamed. It was too specific. It troubled her that she couldn't remember seeing it, but there was a comfort in that, too. Oftentimes in life, as with ordering a meal or a movie, she needed to be shown the way.

Driving the country lanes, she expected deja vu to close around her at any moment, bringing dislocation but also joy. The many times she'd experienced the feeling before, she'd felt as if she was in her own movie, a loop separated from the world and part of something else. The smallest of things-the path of a raindrop down a windowpane, the flight of a bird, the way a stranger in a coffee shop c.o.c.ked his head and raised an eyebrow before turning the page of a book-made her ache for such moments to last, perhaps forever.

But they never did. She was sucked back into the circle like a fly that had almost escaped a patient spider's trap. Almost, but not quite. She was not convinced that this quest was aiding her escape either. She feared instead that it was tugging her closer, as if she was forever circling a web, pulled inexorably toward the center.

She pa.s.sed several country houses with no people in their gardens. A tractor headed back the way she'd come, its driver not making eye contact. A smear of roadkill steamed and twitched, and she paused until she had decided what it was.

Rabbit. Yeah, a rabbit. One leg still kicking. That tractor. . .

At last, just as Jenni began to believe she'd taken the wrong turn after all, she rolled to a halt in a gateway and saw, at the field's center and close by a small pond, exactly what she'd been looking for.

The tree.

It was an old oak. Dead a long time, its trunk had split heavily down the middle, enclosing a large shadowy s.p.a.ce that had doubtless proved a hiding place for countless kids, and even a few illicit lovers. There was plenty of room for two inside, and wasn't there some legend about making love within the shadow of an oak tree's canopy? She couldn't recall. But if there wasn't, there should have been.

It was beautiful, and haunting, and her gaze was drawn up and to the left, to one stretching branch upon which a few errant leaves still fluttered. Not quite dead, then.

She parked the car and got out.

SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER how long she'd been having the dream. There'd been no particular night when she'd woken breathless, sitting bolt upright in that way they do in movies. It wasn't even a nightmare, really. Just unsettling.

And, eventually, repet.i.tive.

Slowly she simply became aware that, when she found herself dreaming of a cold and isolated country lane with an old oak at the end of it, she'd been there before.

And now here she was again, but for the first time.

She turned back, looking toward the bend beyond which the road-killed bunny lay. For a moment she had the feeling she'd seen the rabbit before, too-that perhaps in one of the dreams she'd even run over it. Couldn't be, of course. Roadkill is everywhere. All she was doing was retrofitting it to the uncanny sensation of being here.