“I mean, it’s a strange request.”
“Is it?” she asked. She was fiddling with the pineapple garnish on her drink. He watched, almost hypnotized, as she slid it along the rim of her glass, immaculate purple nails starkly contrasting against its nearly neon yellow liquid.
Peter often spent his nights at this bar. Its location and ample parking were a plus, and it got in a varied crowd. Blue collar workers, the broke college kids, and next to three motels. Best of all, the cameras didn’t work. That much he’d figured out after he watched a man beat a regular nearly to death before bolting, the bartender lamented that they had no footage to give the police.
He had no idea how long she had been watching him. He couldn’t imagine it’d been long. Peter had noticed her once or twice. She wasn’t his type. Not that she was ugly per se, but she was bigger than his ideal. Dressed too nicely—too put together. She looked like she could handle herself, that she was large and in charge. Like a woman who prided herself on never crying.
When she approached him, offered to buy him a drink, he hadn’t said no. After all, free booze didn’t fall from the sky every day. When she’d asked him to follow her to a booth in the back, he wondered if maybe she was his type after all. Maybe he could make this work.
Then she had made her intentions clear.
“I guess I just don’t get why,” he said after a few minutes of charged silence.
She nodded, humming as if she was agreeing with him. “What if I told you I had some inoperable brain tumor?”
“Do you?”
“Sure do.” She flashed him a big, bright smile.
He leaned back in his seat, looking her over again. “I don’t think I believe you.”
She tsked, the smile fading fast from her face, replaced with the beginnings of a pout. She leaned back as well, mirroring his posture. He wondered if it was accidental or intentional. “Why do you care?”
“I mean, I don’t.” Even before he finished that sentence, he knew that wasn’t true.
“Do you think it’s the fact that I want it?” she asked. “Maybe what’s missing for you is the thrill of the chase. The hunt.” She perked up, leaning in with her elbows resting on the table, “Did me buying you a drink emasculate you?”
Peter felt his face grow hot. “God, no, jeez,” he said. He realized he sounded a little like a petulant child. Stop whining Petey! He could hear his mother chastising. He tried not to grit his teeth—yet another bad habit. “It’s not…that’s not the point.”
“What is it then?” she asked. He could feel her eyes studying him, looking him over, like she could somehow find the answer stitched into his clothes. “Power?”
She stopped to look down at his hands; when he followed her gaze, he noticed he was white-knuckling the edge of the table. He should leave. He should just get up and walk away and deny everything. She didn’t have any proof.
“I can pretend,” she said. “I can scream and beg and do whatever else revs the engine.” She took a sip of her drink, his eyes glued to the way her tongue peeked out to guide the straw into her mouth.
He scoffed. “I’d know you were faking it,” he said.
She smiled, the straw still clenched between her teeth. “Well then, you’d be one of the few, eh tiger?”
“Listen, I appreciate the offer, but I’m just not feeling it.” Peter moved to stand, but she grabbed his wrist. Her grip was strong. Stronger than he would have assumed. When he turned to look at her, the flirtation was gone, leaving behind a serious expression, eyes narrowed. There was something sinister in that look, it was trying to dig under his flesh.
“I am giving you the gift of a lifetime,” she said. “I won’t fight, I won’t run. There is a zero percent chance of failure here.” She nodded her head to the left, her eyes never leaving his. “Can you say the same for that blonde you’ve been eyeing?”
Had he been so easy to spot? Maybe he wasn’t being as careful as he thought. He could hear the girl’s tinkling laugh across the room, surrounded by boys, swarming to her like moths to a flame. They were always swarming. Maybe that’s how she knew. He had a bad habit of watching. His mother always told him not to stare. Keep your eyes to yourself, Petey.
“I promise,” she said, standing up slowly. “It’s going to feel just like the real thing. Think of it like a game you can’t lose. And it’s your turn.”
They’d gotten into his car and driven off into the night. She made idle chitchat, which he loathed, going on about the weather and the road and stores they passed. It was certainly helping him get in the mood. Once he parked at the edge of the forest, she’d followed him on foot, deeper amongst the trees. Muscle memory took over then, though it was strange without the struggling and crying. He knew where the others were buried, knew it better than the way home. The oak with the notch in its side was number one. The fir that was split from last year’s hurricane, 20 feet to the left, was the marker for number two—how he had loved her. And deeper still, by an old spruce, he’d dug the hole for number six, ready and waiting to be filled.
When they stopped at her final resting place, he looked her over, planning it all, the hammer heavy in his hands. She peered down into the grave with arms crossed like she was surveying a mattress, impassive and mildly judgmental. It made something ache in his molars, and he tried not to grind his teeth.
There was something off about her. It could have been the lack of fear, or some foliage displacing the moonlight, but she seemed to glow, her figure stark against the darkness. There was something in the back of his mind that called for him to be afraid. It was probably just the adrenaline coursing through him. In these moments, everything was brighter, sharper, better. That must have been it. He was overthinking again.
“Will you finally tell me why?” he asked.
“Honestly?” she said, letting out a low huff of air. “I’m just so fucking bored.”
That was when he swung the hammer down, down, down.
She had done as she promised. She let out a scream that sent a chill up his spine, going down like a pile of bricks. The sound of her body hitting the soft forest undergrowth did something to him, and he couldn’t help but indulge. It hadn’t felt like the others, not quite, but Peter felt that thrum of peace in his chest that let him sleep soundly. She had promised him real, and she’d gotten pretty close, close enough to collapse into bed and quiet the voice he could never drown out on his own.
The high did not last.
He was back at the bar three nights later, the itch in the back of his mind driving him mad. He knew he should wait at least another week for number seven, a month to be safe, but he couldn’t stay away. All day at work, it had thrummed in him like the bass of a song, the siren call to play again. The last girl just wasn’t it, wasn’t the real deal. But he’d been good, finished her like he should. And he was careful enough, right? It wouldn’t hurt to go, just to look. Just one little look.
The moment he walked into the bar, his eyes locked onto a brunette, chubby but sweet, surrounded by a cadre of friends all pressed close, enraptured by whatever she was saying. Counting to ten and back again, he made sure to keep his eyes on his beer. He would just look tonight, hold off until the time was right, throw off suspicions, find her again when the time was right. He would be alone, but he could at least watch. That would be enough, he told himself. It was going to have to be enough.
He startled when he felt a hand on his back, solid but cold. “I’m real sorry, Petey.”
Peter choked on his spit, chest seizing violently. He whipped around to look at the new arrival. The room seemed to shrink in an instant, the chatter of the bar fading into the background. It wasn’t possible.
“Looks like we’re going to have to try this again.” Her smile was bright, her teeth perfect. His stomach dropped as he watched her fingers, decorated in chipped purple nail polish, grab his drink. She took a sip, her eyes never leaving his, boring into him.
How had he not noticed it before? He’d been so entranced, he never bothered to look at her eyes. Even in the dim light of the bar, the pupils were so small, her gaze fixed and unblinking. Watching him carefully, so carefully he never even noticed.
When she leaned in close, he could smell it on her breath, the rot, the earth. She was too put together, large and in charge. He had seen her, but not all of her, not really.
“And guess what, big boy?” It hurt to look at her face, all predator, all perfect camouflage. He had made a terrible mistake. He should have known, should have listened to his mother. She put the drink down and grabbed his chin hard. Her nails dug into the soft flesh, and he had no doubt then she could rip his jaw off without breaking a sweat. “It’s my turn now.”
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