Chapter Sixteen

 

Joshua

I’m in my office, watching my new favorite TV series, The Tamara Bennett Show, played out on the bank of monitors on the wall to the right of my desk. Right now, she’s sitting in the library, a western novel resting on her lap, staring into space.

It’s fascinating watching her evolve along the path I’ve chosen for her. She’s almost where I need her to be. I’ve punched another hole in the wall she built to keep me out of her most secret places. Soon the wall will be rubble, and she will be all mine. I’ll mind-fuck her until I’ve penetrated every part of her.

She seems stunned, dazed after I dragged her secrets into the light. I let her be for a few days. Let her slowly put herself back together. I don’t ask to kiss her pussy. I don’t make her suck me off. I let her wear the thin collar and the longer chains. I make light conversation with her at meals, talking about the dishes that Elizabeth prepares for her. Where the name “pasta puttanesca” comes from. That one drew a faint smile from her.

And something else: Tamara doesn’t have bad dreams anymore. She’s not crying out in her sleep, torturing herself with nightmares too terrible to remember.

She used to wake up in the morning gulping in panic. She doesn’t do that anymore.

I’ve made life better for her. I note with interest that I feel a strange glow of pride at that. That’s something new. I’ve never cared in the slightest about anyone else’s needs; if anyone benefitted from my actions, it was pure accident.

I notice on some dim level that Elizabeth isn’t communicating as much with me. She never wanted to learn sign language, but after serving me for so many years, we have developed our own communication system.

She’s sulking, withdrawn, because of Tamara. That’s not my problem. I didn’t ask her to live her life for me.

When we were in our teens, I tried to send her away. She refused to go. I tried everything I could think of. I told her the truth—that I didn’t love her, that I would never love her. When she still could speak, she told me that it didn’t matter, that she loved me and didn’t care if I loved her back; all she wanted to do was stay with me and exist only for me.

So I lied and told her that she couldn’t stay with me because I was afraid that she would tell all my secrets. That was when she cut her own tongue out. She nearly died from blood loss; she was in the hospital, as a Jane Doe, for weeks.

So I went back and fetched her from there and let her stay with me.

The reason I’ve been able to tolerate Elizabeth’s presence for so long is because she’s barely there. She’s like a ghost, hovering in the background. She serves me and then vanishes. She never tries to communicate with me beyond what’s necessary to serve my needs.

She’s been different ever since I brought Tamara here. She’s losing weight. Last week I ordered her to eat more, but since then, she looks even thinner. Is it possible she’s disobeying me? I cannot imagine such a thing—it goes against her very nature—and yet her clothes are getting looser.

I’ll talk to her about it later.

My main focus these days is Tamara, my struggling, squirming little captive.

It’s deliciously frightening how much pleasure I draw from punishing her. It’s the giddiness of a skier on the top of Mount Everest, looking down, down, down.

Feeling floods back into me again.

Food tastes delicious.

Little porn movies featuring me and Tamara flash through my mind throughout the day, as I fantasize about what I’ll do to her once she begs me to fuck her.

There are flies in the ointment, however. There’s the mysterious text message. I haven’t heard anything else from the texter, but I don’t believe for a second that whoever texted me is done with me. I haven’t been able to find any security breaches at my company, and I am still at a loss as to who could be behind this.

It’s making me more watchful all the time, but that’s probably a good thing. A whiff of danger keeps the senses sharp. I can never be complacent.

I debated getting rid of this new burner phone, then decided not to. If I bought yet another burner, and he or she found out that number and texted me on that phone, it would hand over a win, a sensation of victory, that he or she didn’t deserve.

And there’s the Morton Media issue.

I haven’t heard from Morton Media. The deadline has passed, and not a peep. No more pleading, no more attempts at negotiating. Not only that, but all my surveillance devices have gone dead, and the janitorial company was abruptly fired two days ago.

These events can’t be a coincidence.

I ponder whether this could somehow be connected with the text message. There’s no logical reason to think so, but these are two anomalies that are happening at the same time. My Spidey-sense is tingling.

Tapping my fingers on my desk, I start thinking about anything else that’s been happening recently that’s an anomaly. The only thing that I can think of is the oddness of Heather, Tamara’s neighbor, not reporting her missing.

I quickly hack into the police department to check up on Tamara’s case, and I’m annoyed to see that Jessica Brown, the director of the homeless shelter, has filed a complaint saying that they’re not taking the disappearance seriously enough.

Should I kill Ms. Brown? I’d have to find a way to make it look as if she died of natural causes—a little challenging, because she’s only forty. Or I could make it appear to be a mugging gone bad. She’s prominent in the local community; her death would attract a lot more attention than Tamara’s disappearance.

I’ll have to start checking the police reports daily.

I call up my private investigator. He’s not allowed to leave me messages, and I haven’t checked in with him for too long. That isn’t like me.

His report unsettles me. Heather, Tamara’s neighbor, has deliberately dropped off the grid. She quit the bagel shop job, she paid her landlord in advance through the end of her lease and told him she wouldn’t be renewing, and she hasn’t been seen since. The PI broke into her house and found nothing but furniture. The closet is empty, the fridge is empty, the bathroom cabinets are empty. There’s no laptop or phone or chargers.

Where did she get the money to pay off several months of rent? Why did she fail to report her friend missing, then promptly vanish? Why did she disappear, and where did she go? I’m going to have to dig into everything. Her bank account, looking for any suspicious deposits, her past known associates, whether she’s used her cell phone or bank cards recently so I can get a clue as to where she is now.

I’m about to ask my PI more questions about this strange new development when three of my perimeter alarms go off. Three of them—from different sides of the property. But when I look at the video monitors, they show nothing but dense green forest.

I hang up on him as he’s speaking to me. Ice-cold calm descends on me, the way it always does during emergencies. I quickly open my top drawer by pressing my fingerprint on the lock, and pull out my Glock, tucking it into my waistband.

Tamara is in the library. Elizabeth is in the kitchen. I run down the hall and tell her to return Tamara to her cell and chain her up immediately.

Then I run to the front door and press the right eye of the lion head plaque that adorns it. It slides up to reveal the retina scanner, which scans my eye. I press a code into the keypad beneath the scanner. Then the door unlocks. That’s the disadvantage of living in such a secure home. I can’t get in and out quickly.

I rush out the front door and into the small fail-safe room, what I call my “airlock room”, and repeat the procedure on the door that leads outside.

It’s close to noon. A white-hot sun burns overhead, and for some reason, in the midst of this crisis, I flash back to Tamara and how wistfully she glanced at the windows, longing to see the sun. The cruel way I refused to open the window to let her get even a glimpse of outside.

Sometimes I’m an asshole just for the sheer joy of it. That time though, it didn’t give me pleasure the way it should have. I felt something odd and unpleasant inside me. I hope it isn’t what people refer to as “guilt”, because I’ve always thought guilt must be the most useless of all emotions. I don’t think it could be, though, any more than I think I could grow wings.

As these thoughts run through my mind, I’m climbing onto the ATV in the carport and racing toward the areas where the perimeter alarms were tripped.

How the hell did Tamara wriggle her way into my head now, of all moments?

I return my focus to where it needs to be. These perimeter alarms, they make no sense. They cannot possibly have been tripped by accident. I set up the alarm system myself, and I check it regularly, even more so since I’ve been getting the text messages. This shouldn’t be possible, and yet it is.

I check each alarm, scanning the area. There’s nobody there, and no indication as to what set them off.

Feeling unsettled, I drive through the woods, heading for the house. How Tamara would love it out here—the breeze, the sunshine.

A flare of impatience burns through me. I dredge the cruel side of me up from the depths of my filthy soul. Too fucking bad that she’ll never experience the outdoors again. She’s mine. She should want nothing but me.

I pull up in front of the house. It’s nothing to look at it, on the outside; dun-colored concrete that blends into the surroundings. The woods hem it in on all sides; I designed it that way, for maximum privacy.

As I climb off the ATV, my mind races. A long, dark cloud is hovering over me. The text messages that I’m getting. The business deal that, impossibly, seems to be falling through. These alarms going off. I’m definitely starting to feel as if they’re all connected.

Am I just being paranoid? Of course I’m fucking paranoid. I’m a psychopathic serial killer. But my instincts are always spot on. As they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

When I get inside the house, Elizabeth is sprawled on the floor by the front door. I can see that she’s got blood on her face and two goose-egg bumps starting to rise on her forehead. She looks dazed, half-conscious. She’s mouthing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Anger rises inside me. I promised her she’d be safe.

I barrel through the house to my office. The door is shut. It opens outward, so it can’t be blocked from the inside. I yank it open.

Tamara is standing behind the desk, frantically punching buttons my phone, which is blinking red and sending off shrill, beeping alarms.

She tried to make a phone call. She attacked Elizabeth and tried to call for help.

Oh, fuck no.

She scrambles away from me as I stalk toward her, backing up until she bumps into the wall. Her eyes are huge with fright and rage, her chest heaving. She’s shrinking in on herself, instinctively trying to make a smaller target. This is familiar. We’ve just run through the forest, and I’ve reduced her to the role of cornered prey.

I walk toward her, and she jabs at me with a letter opener. I bat it away easily with a laugh. She shouldn’t provoke a man like me. Adrenaline is screaming down my veins, and unholy glee sings in my heart.

This—the final act of defiance—this is what I’ve been waiting for.

I grin at her. “Really, Tamara?”

She scuttles to the side and tries to dart away. I catch her, pin her in my arms, squeezing hard enough to crush. Her body convulses in terror. I’m rock hard, ready to explode from the thrill of it.

“This is going to hurt.”

Her legs thrash, and she flings her head around, her legs kicking wildly as I lift her off the ground. “Just fucking kill me, then!” she screeches.

“Oh no. That would be merciful. You should know me better by now, sweetheart. There’s not an ounce of mercy in me.” I bite her shoulder hard enough to make her scream.

I carry her out of my office and down the hallway, and she’s kicking and clawing at my arms the whole way. Elizabeth watches, and she doesn’t dare smile, but there’s a sullen gleam of triumph in her eyes.

Elizabeth’s clothes are hanging off her, which means she’ll be getting a beating as well. I told her to eat more; she disobeyed me. I rarely have to punish Elizabeth, and it never turns me on. It’s just a boring necessity, an action that I must take to achieve certain results.

I drag Tamara to the playroom, and when I pull her through the doorway, she pisses herself in terror.

Good.

She fucked up big time.

I tear her clothing off with my bare hands while she fights like a wildcat and screams curses at me. Then I haul her to an area where there’s a grate and a shower, and I turn the shower on full force.

I can’t abide any kind of uncleanliness. I was forced to grow up wallowing in filth, and it makes my skin crawl.

Memories flash before my eyes.

The day I lost my other half. Charlemagne. My twin brother.

The day everything fell apart. The day my new life began.

I was fourteen years old.

My father, digging a grave for Charlemagne before he was even dead. Burying him alive, as a warning for me. Throwing dirt on Charlemagne’s face. Charlemagne too weak to fight back. Rasping his final breaths, his dying eyes open and vacant. That was my own face staring up at the sky.

My mother, finally pushed to madness. Finally. Why did it take her so fucking long? What kind of vile, weak bitch stands by watching her children be murdered, one by one?

She shoved my father into the grave on top of Charlemagne’s twitching body. My father, climbed out, slowly, with a terrible look on his face.

It was when he was beating my mother to death that I made my move. I swung with the shovel and hit him in the head from behind. The world’s mightiest predator grunted in surprise and went down like a sack of potatoes.

Standing there, next to the pit holding Charlemagne’s dying body, I bound my father’s hands with my shirt, and his ankles with my pants, while he was still unconscious.

Good thing Daddy Dearest taught us all how to improvise.

I waited for him to wake up. There wouldn’t be any point in killing him while he was out.

When his eyes opened and he sucked in a panicked breath, I hacked at him with the shovel, knocking his teeth down his throat, crushing his face in. I broke his arms, I broke his legs, while he convulsed and screamed. He didn’t die bravely. He pissed and shit himself and begged for mercy while I mocked his weakness

I made it last.

I told him, again and again, why he wasn’t worthy to live.

He died gargling on his own blood.

My mother rasped out her final breaths a few minutes later. I stood there and stared at her, trying to feel something, because I thought I should feel some emotion at the death of my mother, even if she had been weak and cowardly. Nothing came.

I checked on Charlemagne. He wasn’t breathing any more. His eyes were wide open and unblinking.

And I trudged back to the house to free the only survivor of my father’s wrath.

She was weak then, nearly dead, but he hadn’t gotten around to finishing her off yet.

Elizabeth.