Oliver

He watched her.

He suspected she knew. Maybe that he’d watched her personally, maybe not. But he knew she was aware of another set of eyes on her. He sat in front of his security screens in the morning, watched her emerge for breakfast at scattered times.

For a lot of people, this may have been the norm. Disordered people. The ones who woke up at different times in the morning naturally. People who weren’t chained to a work schedule and let nature wake them up.

Nature had failed Elizabeth. Horribly. He didn’t need to know the specifics to know this. So she dealt with it by rebelling against every facet of human nature. The need for human contact. The need to feel sunshine on the skin, to breathe in the fresh air carried by the wind. To breathe at all.

She controlled everything she could—which was really nothing at all.

Still, she clung to routine. Violently.

He suspected that was the only thing that had her functioning currently. That and his death threat. Though it wasn’t a threat. If she hadn’t gotten out of bed, if she hadn’t regained whatever she had left of her strength, he would’ve killed her. He would’ve had to. He couldn’t witness her like that for another moment.

He couldn’t figure out quite yet if her getting out of the bed was the best or the worst thing for both of them.

So he watched her.

More than he should’ve, which was not at all. He traveled, he worked, but only took on contracts that took him away for no more than five hours. He told himself that it was because he couldn’t leave her in his house unattended for that long—it was potentially damaging to him and everything he’d spent years to build.

He didn’t entertain, let alone admit, the thought that it was because he was worried. About what she might do to herself in those hours. About what his clients would do to her if they knew she was still alive.

This was not the case, as far as he knew, and he made it his business to know everything.

He paused.

That’s what she had said. That he knew everything. The venom combined with the utter sorrow in her words did something to him. But he couldn’t admit that either.

It was bad enough that he was spending more and more time in this little room of screens watching her go about her routines. Watch the way her limbs moved in the room he’d made for her to practice yoga in. Watched as she sipped the tea his housekeeper had made for her but barely touched the numerous other foods scattered around.

Same with lunch.

And dinner.

Despite it being served, and her sitting down to go through the motions of a meal, she picked like a bird.

He thought at first it might be due to some kind of food allergy: gluten, lactose, nuts. He’d ordered his housekeeper to throw out anything containing peanuts and cook everything without allergens.

Still, the result was the same.

The thought crossed his mind that she was on some asinine diet like countless other women in this asinine world. He quickly dismissed that. Elizabeth was not like any other woman in this world. She certainly wasn’t asinine. She was an enigma. Nor would she want to make her appearance pleasing to men, especially to herself.

He came to the conclusion that it was as simple as her appetite withering away just as everything else inside her was doing.

It angered him, though he didn’t admit it.

Now, after she’d remained standing in the middle of his collection room for long moments after he’d left, he watched her wander slowly back toward her side of the house. She paused, like she always did, in the entranceway, staring at the doors.

He leaned forward to see if his state-of-the-art screens might provide a glimpse as to what was going through her head as her brow furrowed and her teeth caught the inside of her lip. She was contemplating. Lamenting.

Then she abruptly emptied her expression and walked—a lot more purposefully this time—into her room and yanked open her laptop, stabbing at the keys and glaring at the screen.

Yet another enigma. He had assumed—been certain of, in fact—that she was a coward. A little mouse who skittered around life, careful not to disturb anything she didn’t have to. Hence her self-induced isolation.

Her blowup minutes ago had proved him wrong. He studied the human condition, both in life and death and in that time in between. He considered himself somewhat of an expert. But every time he was sure he’d figured her out, she proved him wrong.

He was not a man used to being proved wrong.

Maybe that was why his voyeurism was reaching a mania. An obsession, a raging need to figure her out. Analyze her.

Her anger in his collection room had done something to him. She had done something to him. She’d shown him she wasn’t a little mouse. Shouted at him, insulted him, seethed at him. Taunted him. Invited him to punish her. And with anyone else, he would’ve. He would’ve hurt them. Killed them.

He wanted to hurt her. But not like he did with anyone else. He wanted to punish her.

His cock twitched in his pants.

He shut the screens off, letting out a hiss of disgust. In her. In himself. This was dangerous. She was dangerous. She could turn into a complication. A weakness.

Weakness was fatal.

He stood.

He would make sure it wouldn’t be fatal to him. Stepping forward, he was about to go and do exactly what he should’ve done one month ago—kill her. The beeping of his phone stopped him. Glancing down at the screen, at the contract, he decided it was not her day to die. Yet. It was someone else’s.

But that didn’t mean her fate was safe.

Nor did it mean his was.

* * *

Elizabeth

It was hard, seemingly impossible to go back to my routine after yesterday. After seeing his room of horrible beauty. After seeing him in all his horrible beauty.

But that was the only thing left to do. Without routine, there was nothing here but the impossible truth that I was stuck here in a house of dead things. Including him. Including myself.

So I got up.

I did my yoga.

Showered.

Dressed.

And despite the knots of nausea in my stomach, I went to the dining room for breakfast. Meals were a force of habit more than anything else. I forced down the food with considerable effort. I couldn’t stomach much more than a few bites at a time. Like my body was rejecting the substance to keep it alive while my daughter decayed in the ground.

Whatever it was, it was enough to keep me alive, but also enough to keep a size two drowning me.

Though that was a good thing. I liked layers. I liked hiding my body, the sharp edges of my bones through the folds of clothing. There were no tattered and baggy hoodies here, so I made do. Today, I wore white leggings and a tee that was supposed to be fitting but covered me to mid-thigh. Another long-sleeved tee was shoved on top of that. I layered this with a baby pink cashmere jumper, the biggest one I could find, skimming over whatever womanly curves I had left and drowning them in wool.

It was warm inside, so completely inappropriate. But what did it matter? Even if it was warm outside, I was never going to feel the balmy summer air. And even if someday I did, I’d never expose my bare skin to the elements, to the world.

I stopped in my tracks when I reached the dining room, my heart stopping with me.

Everything was as it should’ve been, the food laid out artfully, enough to feed at least six people. Various jugs of liquid, in case I decided to change up my normal OJ and tea combo. My plate and silverware, sitting in the spot I always sat in.

All as it had been since I’d started my routine.

With some additions.

The air was noticeably colder in here, seeping through my layers, through my flesh, right to the bone.

Maybe I just imagined that, though, when my eyes found his.

Found him.

Sitting at the opposite end of the table, sipping coffee and regarding me silently. No emotion, not even an arched brow. As if nothing was out of the norm, and my hit man and I sat and had coffee and croissants together every morning.

I continued to stand frozen in the doorway. He continued to watch me. I got the feeling that he might continue to watch me, silently, no matter how long I stood there.

That was a thought that made me move toward my normal seat, thankful it was as far away from him as the table allowed. But the distance still wasn’t enough; the weight of his stare still settled on my chest.

I didn’t let my eyes leave his as I reached for my mug, not because I was particularly thirsty but because I craved the heat of the bitter liquid. Though even that wasn’t enough to chase away his chill.

Still he said nothing, yet his eyes were probing, prodding, invasive.

I put the cup down with a clatter, cursing my nerves for getting the best of me. Where was the woman my mother raised? The wife who managed to not even bruise a tea cup with a wrist her husband—the one sitting across from her reading the paper—had broken the night before?

I knew the answer to that.

She was dead.

Every woman, girl, being I had been before that day in the hospital perished when my daughter was laid on my chest. Whoever I was now, whatever I was now, was a stranger.

How was it I was only realizing this now?

“I’m going to have to request that you eat more,” he said after an indeterminate amount of time. His eyes went to my empty plate.

So did mine.

“Is that a request or an order?” I asked, my tone holding a bite to it that I didn’t know I could possess.

He didn’t blink. “It doesn’t matter what it is. It matters that you do it.”

“An order, then,” I surmised.

What I didn’t do was touch the food.

He waited.

I continued to be still.

Again an indeterminate amount of time passed before he spoke. There was no outward sign of irritation. Not a narrowing of the eyes nor an exaggerated exhale. Just the cold, hard marble of his exterior.

“The number of days someone can survive without food varies from person to person,” he said. “In 2009, research supported the consensus that human beings can survive without food or drink for eight to twenty-one days. This is extended to up to two months if said person has access to water.” His shrewd gaze saw through my layers, as if he was inspecting my skeletal frame. “Women are recommended to eat at least 1200 calories per day. Dipping below 800 has serious side effects, such as weakened immune system, irregular heart beat and heart attacks.” He looked at my empty plate. “You’ve been consuming approximately 500 calories per day. Extending that any longer is going to subject you, and by extension me, to serious health complications.” He sipped his coffee. “I don’t do complications. As you said yesterday, your presence does present one big one in itself. Anything beyond that is going to mean I have to do something. It’s your choice, ultimately, but understand that I’m at my limit for how much your choices and your handicap are going to disrupt my life.”

Well there it was.

If I didn’t start eating enough to maintain my healthy body weight, to prevent complications, he was going to kill me. He didn’t say it outright. He didn’t need to. It was the underlying thread of my entire existence since I’d woken up with him in my bedroom.

My life was teetering on a knife edge. And he held the knife.

Without even realizing I did so, I picked up a muffin. And once more, like a movie, my consciousness cut to the crumbs on my plate and muffin in my stomach.

It seemed some part of me wanted to continue to survive. At the mercy of my hit man, who I didn’t even know the name of.

* * *

One Week Later

My routine became altered. Not that it ever was really mine.

I still got out of bed at the same time, still dedicated my time to yoga. Still worked on existing contracts, began new ones. Read from the library.

But there was one serious and world-tilting exception.

Him.

Still I didn’t know his name. I couldn’t find the words to demand it again. There wasn’t enough space in the room when we ate together for words. If I didn’t eat, I could’ve cut at the quietness with my knife and fork.

But I did eat.

Still not a lot by many people’s standards. Especially Americans’ standards. But it was scientifically enough to keep me alive. I didn’t know this because I counted calories, I knew this because I was alive. He hadn’t killed me yet.

Every part of my day was consumed with him now. When I wasn’t with him, I was stewing on our next interaction, or shaking off the poison from our last one. Because that’s what he was: some kind of toxin, seeping through my pores, despite all the layers I wore to protect myself.

There was nothing I could do to protect myself.

Even though we didn’t speak a word to each other for the week we’d been eating three meals a day together.

There was something running underneath the silence, like an underground torrent. Unpredictable. Deadly. Some kind of dark draw I felt to him. I held no romantic illusions. I was still certain he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if the occasion arose. He would hurt me too, if he needed to. But only if he needed to. I’d spent years with a man who hurt me because he could. Because he enjoyed it. My pain. My suffering. I knew what that looked like. Felt like. Tasted like.

This wasn’t that.

The man I sat across from was still a monster, just a different kind than the ones I’d known.

But then again, maybe that was the truth of it. Maybe humans weren’t humans at all. Maybe we were all just different kinds of monsters.

“Why do you collect dead things?” I asked in the middle of cutting through a rare steak.

The silence that followed my words—the first I’d spoken aloud in the week this strange routine had begun—settled heavier than the one that had preceded it.

It lasted so long, and he didn’t give any signs of hearing me speak, just continued to eat his own steak and sip at his red wine, I began to think I’d imagined it. That I’d said it in my head. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but I suspected not.

I took another bite of my steak before putting my knife down and trying again.

“Are you a sadist?”

Again he didn’t stutter for a moment while eating. Again silence yawned on.

I waited.

He looked up. “Your generation and the latest literature of your generation have come to the conclusion that sadism doesn’t exist as a clinical term. It helps to popularize pain as a form of sexual release if enjoyment of aforementioned pain isn’t stuck to a label most frequently tattooed upon serial killers,” he responded.

I glanced down at my half-eaten meal, positioning my knife and fork parallel to each other to signify I was done, as one of my many etiquette teachers had taught me.

When I glanced up again, he hadn’t moved. It was something you didn’t get used to, seeing someone totally lack any form of human twitch, of impatience, someone content in being as still and as hard as marble. People with enough discipline over their bodies were people to avoid, because if they could control such basic instincts within themselves, it stood to reason that they could do it with anyone.

“Serial killers,” I repeated.

He didn’t answer.

I rolled the term over my tongue, like I had the steak moments before. “You said you’re a serial killer, the night we… met,” I said.

He nodded once.

“But not in my society’s sense of the word,” I continued.

This time there was no nod. He didn’t seem to see the need to continue to placate my hashing over the night he came to kill me.

“So, are you a sadist? In any sense of the word? I’m part of the section of my generation that knows sadism as a clinical term and a character trait does exist.”

I swallowed because I didn’t want to sound like the poor defenseless victim of an aforementioned sadist—but that’s exactly what I was, so that was exactly what I sounded like.

This man had a way of making sure all my ugly truths were laid in front of me—of him—like pieces of a puzzle. Like pieces of twelve different puzzles, none of them ever going to be solved, to be put together, because they were missing corners, chunks.

He put down his knife and fork like I had mine. But his were splayed like a triangle—there was still half a steak on his plate, after all. He cleaned his plate. Every meal. To keep as muscled as he was, I guessed he needed the protein. Or maybe he was trying to lead by example. It didn’t exactly matter.

“Do I derive pleasure, more specifically sexual gratification, from inflicting pain or humiliation on others?” he asked.

I nodded once, though I didn’t exactly need to.

“No,” he said. “Violence is a part of my life, an inescapable part. And yes, I do enjoy killing. I do it quickly and cleanly. Torture is not enticing to me.”

I reached for my water. There was always a glass of wine in front of me, one I never touched. I didn’t drink, not when I had enough shit inside my brain altering my state of mind, messing with my state of comprehension. Same reason I didn’t take pills. Sure, they might help, might soften the edges of it all, but it wasn’t real. It was a temporary escape from an inevitable future.

“Well, that’s reassuring. My death will be quick and painless.”

Quite unlike my life.

He moved his knife and fork beside each other, like mine, and then pushed his plate away. Giving me his full attention.

This was a man who couldn’t even go through the menial task of eating and have it interrupt his focus… his focus on me. When he did something, concentrated on something—someone—he did it with everything. With a fatal intensity that unnerved me. Terrified me. Because that intense speculation meant he’d see through whatever I had left on the surface right down to my broken parts. My ugly and warped parts. The true me.

Why did I care what a self-professed serial killer thought of my ugliness?

Maybe because he wasn’t just forcing himself to inspect my hideousness, but I had no choice but to do the same.

I hated him for that.

Violently.

I had the strange and passionate urge to snatch up my steak knife, round the table and slam it into his neck. I saw myself doing it. Watched the blood spurt out from the artery, felt it spray onto my face, witnessed the darkness and evil and whatever else lay inside him leave and seep into the expensive fabric of his suit.

But then I was sitting back in my seat, clutching my water glass, staring at him staring at me.

“If I am forced to kill you, I assure you that you will not even know it’s happening.”

“Forced,” I repeated. “Murder isn’t an obligatory necessity in life. It’s a choice.”

“Not in my life.” He paused. “Not in yours either. I suspect you’ve just hidden from obligations that might’ve stopped you from being here in the first place.”

I blinked. My anger stayed, grew, warmed every inch of my body that I’d been so sure was going to stay frozen as long as I was in his presence. It was this anger that pushed me out of my chair, that had me rounding the table much like I had in my imagination moments ago, but I didn’t have a steak knife in my hand. Which disappointed me, and my anger that had become a separate, stronger being inside me, sharing my skin.

Because all his attention was on me and my movements—however unpredictable they were—he was already standing when I got close.

I momentarily took the reins off my anger to stop a couple of feet away from him, despite my fury yearning to get close enough to burn him with its heat. Some self-preservation, or weakness, remained in me.

“You think you know me,” I hissed, pointing my finger at the air, wishing I could jam it into his chest. Wishing it was sharp enough to puncture the skin, crush his rib cage and tear through whatever beat inside there to keep his blood flowing.

“No one truly knows anyone,” he said placidly. “Not even themselves. Humans don’t have enough self-preservation to spend time getting to know themselves. Otherwise they’ll see themselves for the monsters they really are. Not many people are strong enough to survive after meeting their monsters.”

I wanted to scream. “And you met your monster, right?” I yelled. “Because you’re more evolved than all these humans you remove yourself from? You’re better, the one with dead birds in some secret room and with a body count that doesn’t line up against your soul because you don’t fucking have one. Because you’re above that. Because you’re almighty and dangerous and ready to kill anything or anyone who provides complications.”

“Yes,” he agreed simply.

I stared at him, the acid on my tongue melting away the capacity for me to spit something else at him. To scream at the top of my lungs like I urged to. To scratch his fucking eyes out.

He did nothing as I simmered, as I seethed. Not a thing. Just stood there. Calm. Collected. Cool. Fucking robotic.

I didn’t know if that infuriated me more than the fact every single part of my being, my anger included, wanted to be closer to him, wanted to rip him apart, dissect him, just so I could know him better than everyone else did. Better than all his victims.

The urge was so strong, I had to bite my lip hard enough that warm metallic blood rushed into my mouth. I liked it, the taste of blood. The pain.

It was a good thing too, because I was in for a lot more of it. Both the latter and the former.

* * *

Oliver

She was doing it again. Biting the inside of her lip. More violently this time. Violently enough to draw blood. Oliver’s toes twitched inside his loafers, urging him forward so he could snatch her sparrow-like arms in his grip, yank her to him and claim her mouth, taste her blood on his tongue.

Taste her pain, devour it.

But he didn’t move. He knew better than to let his baser instincts dictate his behavior. He’d spent his life making sure they didn’t. But never had it been so hard to fight against.

He instead forced himself to think of the clinical reasons for her biting her lip. It was an extremely common tic in those with anxiety disorders. One of the many behavioral habits used by the body to provide a coping strategy. She did it often, because her brain was desperate for outlets to direct her anxiety toward.

Most of the time, things like this were done out of fear. Right then, he knew it was because of anger. Fury. He’d not experienced such a feeling in years.

Decades.

It was useless and was the base for bad decisions.

He observed her body language, the taut way she held herself, the wildness and light in her previously drab brown eyes. She wanted to spring. Attack. He found himself anxious too. For her to give in to that.

Another unfamiliar feeling.

Everything was unfamiliar with her.

He hated her for it.

But that didn’t stop the urge for her to give in to whatever was trying to force her to him.

She didn’t. The woman fought, for once. And he found himself immensely disappointed.

Instead, she spoke, picking up a thread from their conversation before.

“You like killing,” she said, question absent from the words. As was the disgust that was expected with such a statement.

He didn’t lower his eyes, forcing himself to stand still, the posture that used to be comfortable—before her. “Yes,” he said.

She didn’t lower hers, embers still flickering within them. He found himself liking her anger, her fire. He found himself planning to make her angry, furious, as often as he could. Even if it made her hate him. Especially if it made her hate him. Because hate and anger would mean she was living. Passionately living.

Hate would always be more passionate than love. It would always force someone to go on living. Love taunted a person with death daily. He didn’t want that for her. He realized that. He didn’t want her death at his hands. At anyone’s.

“Some people think you can go to hell for murder,” she continued.

“Some people don’t know that hell isn’t a place that exists after death. It’s something that exists in life,” he replied, keeping his voice even. “Hell exists for the living. The dead know nothing because the dead are nothing.”

Her eyes flickered, an emotional flinch from his words.

His hand twitched, itching to stroke her cheekbone, soften the sharp edges of her memory. Of her soul. But that wasn’t up to him. Or even her. That’s what she was now, full of sharp edges that would cut at her insides as long as they stayed soft.

So he didn’t comfort her. So she could harden, so she wouldn’t be in such pain all the time. So he wouldn’t be in such fucking pain all the time. Because he was all hard edges, and they couldn’t cut him because there was nothing to cut. Nothing soft. He’d made sure of that. But she’d chiseled some of that away, without knowing it, and he couldn’t repair it.

He cared about this, about her, for purely selfish reasons. Or at least that was what he told himself.

“Yeah,” she agreed, watching his hand as if she knew the magnitude of the small movement of his forefinger.

“That’s where you are now,” he said, voice harsh. “In hell, with the devil, who enjoys killing.” He eyed her, hoping to invite more hatred, disgust, something that would fight against whatever in her brain was keeping her prisoner. That might make her angry enough to step outside.

He expected a lot from this woman. Had seen a lot to learn what to expect. He learned people. That was his job, before killing them. Which meant he was rarely surprised by people.

But her, she wasn’t merely people.

She was something else.

So she laughed.

Rhythmic and melodious. Pleasant. Not cold, harsh, bouncing off the walls of this harsh and cold house. No, the pleasing sound broke through the disquiet that had settled into the walls the second he began inhabiting them.

He steeled himself against the foreign urge to smile watching her. Instead, he marveled inwardly. The previously asinine human trait of laughter—the trait he used to hate more than the act of sobbing—was one of the most important things to him right then.

She changed with that laugher. All those hard edges that had seemed so permanent molded into something else. Her face lightened, the demons etched into it disappearing. Her eyes glowed with something other than sorrow or fear or even the anger he’d considered so enticing.

He found himself desperate to find more reasons to make this creature appear from inside the broken woman he’d first carried in here. He promised himself he would just as her chuckles petered off. The determination to make her hate him, so steely and definite moments ago, became transparent.

“Hell?” she repeated, voice still light.

She moved forward. Not a lot—millimeters, perhaps. But it wasn’t the distance that was important, it was the gesture itself. She was consciously moving herself closer to him, with soft eyes inviting, lips slightly parted in a way that made him desperate to claim them.

Claim her.

“You, the Devil?” she whispered, her face once more settling into the hard lines, demons settling back into their homes inside her. She shook her head and her waterfall of hair moved with her. “No, you’re not the Devil you pretend to be,” she murmured.

He stiffened with her dismissal of him. Her inspection beneath the iron façade he’d been sure he’d perfected. It all settled back into place, the cold and unfeeling heart he’d created out of the ruins of whatever he was born with. She was certain of who he was after a week when he didn’t know what kind of creature she was after almost six months of watching her.

That wouldn’t do, not at all.

He found himself desperate to wrap his fingers around her neck, to wring the life out of her, so he didn’t have to look at himself through her eyes for a moment longer.

He almost did it too. It was close. Less than a hair. He could taste her death in the air, feel her life decaying in his hands.

But he spoke instead. He wasn’t even sure why. “No, I’m much worse than him,” he shot back.

Then he turned on his heel and left, leaving her in the middle of the room, alone with the shadows and the truth she’d uncovered.

He brought his truth with him, attached like a barnacle. The sound of her laugh, the softness of her voice speaking to him. The flicker of something—longing, maybe desire?—in her eyes.

Something he needed to squash. Something he needed to replace with hatred. For the survival of both of them.