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Without wasting another precious second, I grabbed a large knife off the table and ran up the stairs after her. She hadn’t stopped upstairs to use the phone. Instead, she’d run outside. Of course. Only a few blocks from the university. The main campus security station was on this end of the campus. She’d be safe there.
I chased her down the road, toward the light and hope of the school. Realizing I was gaining on her, she got off the road and darted into the overgrown backyard of the abandoned house. I took a leap for her, tackling her to the ground. I clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and waking a neighbor. I was paranoid someone might already be up and looking out their window.
Her eyes were wide, pleading with me, as the hand holding the knife seemed to act of its own accord.
* * *
I sat in Professor Stevens’basement, the cold sweeping over me, the tremor moving through my limbs like a serpent. I was going into shock. Didn’t we do this already? Shannon had gone back to laser focus. He chopped up the drained bodies as if he were cutting meat in a butcher shop. This time he wrapped them in plastic he’d brought and took them out to the car for later incineration.
I felt as though I kept zoning in and out of time. Time as I perceived it was like a bunch of tubes I kept hopping in and out of. Sometimes it moved faster sucking me through and causing life to blur around me. Sometimes it moved so slow that I zeroed in on the tiniest details—like the incongruity of the delicate hand-painted teapot that had been upstairs on Professor Stevens’ fireplace mantel. What would a man like Professor Stevens want with such a thing?
I’m missing a few pieces as well. There are gaps. I just sat there, staring at the blood on my hands, shaking, moving in and out of the surreality. I worried somebody else would show up unexpectedly. How high would the body count have to get for us to get away tonight?
I’d just wanted Stevens gone. Not her. But I had to. I couldn’t let Shannon go to prison. Would I have gone to prison as well just for being here? I didn’t know. Probably. I had clearly been helping. I couldn’t pretend to be the victim.
Killing him, making him pay, had seemed like the perfect fantasy, the best ending. The deserved ending. And yet, I was right back where I’d started, staring at all the blood, trying to remember how to breathe in and out, how to make my heart beat, how to feel something besides completely numb and terrified of the killer I found myself alone with.
I couldn’t even decide if I was glad Stevens was dead. The event was too clouded by the unexpected intruder, by the sickening slice of the knife. I should have felt relief he was gone. Instead, there was this complication. This complication that Shannon seemed perfectly calm and serene about. I was sure I would never feel calm and serene again.
I had no idea what had happened with Stevens during my absence. I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten the TA back to the basement by myself. I couldn’t remember anything from the moment I’d started stabbing. All I knew was that there were two bodies, and I’d been responsible for the innocent one.
Now I was on to worrying if we’d get away with it. It would be the cruelest irony for that bastard to get away with what he’d done to me only for me to be punished for his murder. My mind kept spinning around and around all these things, and in the end, I decided Stevens’ early departure from this world hadn’t been as satisfying as I’d hoped—like longing for a favorite food, only to find it not as sweet or rich or delicious as you remembered. But disappointment after dessert was a wholly different thing from disappointment that killing someone hadn’t turned out as great as you’d imagined—that the fantasy couldn’t live up to the reality, that unless you were someone like Shannon, it would infect your soul and begin to rip it apart from the inside like a closet full of tiny moths quietly eviscerating clothing.
Finally, it was done. Shannon felt my skin and shined the flashlight in my eyes. He hurried me along to get me moving to get me engaged with the physicality of the world, as if I might float away otherwise.
We got cleaned up and changed clothes. He made sure nothing was left behind, no evidence, no hair, no fibers, nothing incriminating. Though I wasn’t in any database anywhere, and I was sure Shannon was fully off the DNA grid as well.
I got into his car, and we drove. As lights blurred past my window, I fantasized that Trevor’s world in the theme park had been the real one, that that simple, yet terrifying, life had been true. A part of me wanted that world back—the post-apocalyptic wasteland that at least left me virtuous and untainted by my memories or the future actions I’d take.
Shannon patted my knee. “Don’t worry. Things don’t always go as expected on jobs, but we won’t be caught. There’s no reason to worry.” He looked electric, alive, pulsing with energy as if he’d just gotten off a roller coaster. His cheeks were flushed, and his lips kept inching up in a smile.
“I could go for some pizza, how about you?” he asked. “I always get pizza after.”
I just stared at him in horror. This was what I’d tied myself to. This was who I had somehow started to love, who I wanted, who I felt safe with. This monster who was happy and excited and ready for some celebratory pizza. And yet, at every turn and bend, I’d chosen him. I no longer had the will to choose differently.
I couldn’t stop silent tears from sliding down my cheeks. Shannon finally realized I was crying when we stopped at a red light.
“What’s wrong?”
He really didn’t know? He really couldn’t comprehend?
“I justkilledsomeone.” Never mind that he had. I’d never expected him to cry over it. But I at least expected him to understand on some basic level why I might, particularly since my victim was an innocent. The sick idea slid into me that she could have been the professor’s victim, too. And I’d killed her. To protect Shannon? To protect myself?
There wasn’t a flicker of anything human in him. Nothing registered with him. He didn’t get it. How could I ever be safe with him if he didn’t get it?
I managed to collect myself by the time we got to a small pizza parlor a couple of towns over. We sat in a booth in a back corner where patrons were smoking, even though I was sure it was against the law. They didn’t care, and nobody else seemed to, either.
“You’re glad he’s gone, right?” Shannon asked after our pizza and drinks arrived. “I couldn’t let him...” he trailed off, remembering we were in semi-public, and maybe not as completely anonymous as we’d like to be.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just... I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel or for... what happened.” I had to speak in code, too, now. Even in my darkest fantasies, where I was more active in Stevens’ murder, I couldn’t have anticipated an unexpected visitor. An innocent bystander. The wayIhad made metal rip through flesh, and blood and life spill out in such sweeping finality.
I closed my eyes against the images that came unbidden, filling in some of the gaps, leaving no doubt that it had been me doing that awful thing. In a twisted way, I almost wished Shannon had gone after her and left me to deal with Stevens. Maybe I could have reached the gun and ended him quickly. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like a shadow about to be destroyed by the light.
“Shannon?”
“Yeah?” he said between bites of a fully loaded pizza.
“Don’t you feel...” I trailed off, wishing we were having this non-conversation in the car, but also knowing that possible witnesses in nearby booths were the only thing forcing me to keep it together.
