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How had this happened? How had he gotten away with it? There were so many different things I wanted to do to him. I envisioned hot pokers. I imagined ancient torture techniques (even looked up a few). Scaphism didn’t sound too bad an end for him.
To be honest, I still wasn’t entirely sure what my plan was. It had started out as me wanting to gather my own evidence, to be able to prove without a doubt what he had done to me. The police wouldn’t be able to turn me away.
Then it metamorphosed.
As I followed him, I began building a sick obsession.
I wanted to know him.
I wanted to understand the way he ticked.
Each day I hid under the cloak of shadows, watching him go about his daily life, I peeled away another layer. What was I after? I still wasn’t sure. Maybe a reason for why he did what he did. Maybe to understand why he chose me and why he ruined my life. Still, as I kept going, nothing became clearer. If anything, it got murkier, and that just emboldened my obsession.
It had been two months since I’d started my convoluted journey. Two months since I’d started following and evidencing everything he did.
I had gone through one external hard drive already and my second was nearly full. As I uploaded the day’s work, my mind drifted back to Coffee Shop Fucker.
I thought I’d been stealthy the past two months. I thought he didn’t know I was following him. Was it possible he knew? Why else would that man have followed me and asked me out? If I hadn’t beaten him up or pulled a gun on him, what would he have done to me? Perhaps he had told the guy I was an easy target. He probably thought I was the same girl he’d violated six months ago and so his lapdog wasn’t expecting a fight.
I shuddered just as the computer dinged, indicating that my file was finished uploading. It snapped me out of my spiraling train of thought. I didn’t want to confront the idea that I hadn’t been predator these past few months, but instead had been prey.
Three
Crouched down amidst the trash and forgotten things, I wanted to scream. I didn’t like what I was seeing. It didn’t fit in my perfectly constructed view of him. There I was, standing outside his home collecting evidence on his violation of me, and instead of acting how he should have been—you know, like a raping monster—he was carefully tending to his wife’s wound. After his wife cut her finger while cooking, he came to dress her wound. He came to care for her.
He even kissed her tenderly on the forehead while applying antiseptic to the bleeding finger. My stomach roiled. Who was this man? A person capable of completely annihilating someone like me without any hesitation, yet, at the same time, capable of tenderness and compassion f
or another. What did that even mean?
I put down my camera for a moment, steadying myself against the garbage. It smelled like rotting vegetables. Growing up, I’d had a compost pile in my backyard under a big pine tree. I would play under that tree; there was room enough for lawn chairs and mattresses the neighbor kids and I collected off the streets during spring cleaning. The pine tree was that big. You walked under it and it was like a teepee of needles overhead. At least, that’s what it felt like as a child.
Sitting next to the garbage, it smelled like that compost pile. When the neighbor kids and I used to hang out under the tree, that pile of garbage was always next to us. A small price to pay for having our own private hangout.
Watching him, nostalgic memories of being a carefree child wafted inside my brain alongside the image of him.
More dichotomous shit I had to deal with.
Why couldn’t he just be a wife-beater? Then, at least, I wouldn’t have to wonder…wonder if it was just me that was the problem. If he could be so kind to his wife and the entire freaking state loved him, then was there something wrong with me?
Had I somehow brought this on myself?
I dropped my gaze from the window but had little time for self-pity. Loose cement crunched beneath feet, alerting me to a presence behind me. I gripped the cracked lens of my camera, keeping my focus on the small fractures. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to face the fact that I’d been caught.
“What are you doing here?”
I couldn’t focus on the voice of the person behind me. I was too inside my own head. My nerves were shot and I didn’t know what I was doing any more. I didn’t know right from wrong. I had been so certain everything was black and white but, dammit, it was gray.
Swallowing, I let my grip slip from the cheap camera I’d bought from a secondhand store. Months ago when I’d started this mission, I’d only had a few dollars to my name, a name that had been completely razed by him. I’d walked into the pawn shop and picked up the camera from the final sale bin. It had served me well on this mission. I glanced back at the lens, the tiny fissures in the glass looking like broken ice. Now, I wasn’t sure if it was the mission I should be on.
“I…” My tongue tripped over itself as I searched for an excuse. Eventually I was going to have to turn around and face my fate, but for now I was still facing his window. He and his wife were gone and I stared into the dark, empty kitchen. I’d been following him for two months, and in those months I’d learned nothing save that he took bribes and cared for his wife.
Perhaps the police had been right in turning me away.
Is it rape if the person deserves it?
I turned around slowly, ready to face my fate.
It was Coffee Shop Fucker. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or utterly frightened it wasn’t a cop. The guy was showing up everywhere.
