Even though I experienced it through a haze of sleepiness, the scene is quite vivid in my mind to this day. I remember everything clearly, from my thoughts at the time and her reactions. I can see the little strange ticks in her behavior now, and I can remember my tired brain disregarding them.
When she froze, stiffening as I spoke her name in the darkness, she had obviously been trying to attract no attention, but of course at the time I didn’t realize that. The fact there was no trace of exhaustion in her voice, when she explained about how she was unable to sleep and was going to make herself a drink and read a book on the couch. Even the sound of her footfalls, as they curved softly around my apartment, towards the door.
All of this meant nothing to me at the time, all I wanted was to fall back into the dreams I had been awakened from. The only thing, the only thing that registered in my foggy brain was the click of my door closing. I remember this as the one thing that penetrated my want for sleep and made me think about how unusual the whole scene was, made me go against what my body needed badly to get up and walk naked out into the brightly lit apartment.
As I realized I was alone in the room I had walked to the door, a little more awake and a tad frantic, hoping the mad realizations my mind was coming up with at the time were false. I remember cracking the door open a couple inches, just enough to slide my head out but not enough to reveal my nudity.
I looked down the hall and saw her in the elevator, the steel doors shutting. Right as they were about to close she looked up at me, saw my head poking through the door. She gave a sad smile, and a small wave.
And then the doors shut.
I shut my door and then walked back into the apartment. I remember confusion, and then panic when, a couple minutes later I realized that my wallet, containing my credit cards and ID, and my car keys were missing.
The next day, after chatting with the police and my bank, I found out that my car had been found on the side of a road hundreds of miles away, the engine left running and all my bank accounts had been cleaned out.
This all happened almost two years ago, and I’ve been after her ever since.
Chapter One: ...And yet so far
“Have you seen her since then?” asks the man in the bar stool next to me. A look in his eyes told me he wasn’t quite believing my story, but I continued on anyway.
“Seven weeks ago, in that building,” I said, pointing with my beer out the window at the apartment across the street, “I broke down the door and she was there waiting for me with a snub-nosed revolver in her hand. Shot me four times in the chest,” I pointed to a spot on my chest two inches below my heart, a place that still ached with pain, “Last one went in right here, two inches higher and I woulda been dead,”
“Jesus,” he said, but with the air that he still wasn’t believing me. Luckily for him, something unexpected happened that made him believe.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She walked in. It surprised me, I thought she was smarter then that. But then I realized, there was no one hunting her anymore. I was dead, having fallen two stories onto concrete trailing blood from four separate bullet wounds.
But there she was. Red boots, red dress, red lipstick. Oh, silly me, not red, scarlet. Green catlike eyes that you could lose yourself in like I had, a thousand times over. Perfect hair, silky and smooth and perfect. All of this, which was making men all over the bar swoon all just made me angry, a red, or scarlet, if you will cloud descending on my eyes.
“Damn,” said the man sitting next to me, “Who is that? She’s smoking…” he trailed off, seeing my expression, “Is that…?”
“Yeah, yeah it is,” I tossed some crumpled bills onto the smooth counter and started walking towards her. I had never looked at her like this, seeing her without her seeing me, she always had seen me first when we met, making this a first. I felt the knife under my jacket and steeled myself, removing all of her beauty and making her into the beast she was. I hadn’t even been that angry at first, just pursuing a few leads towards her on the side of my job as a detective. And then as I followed her paper trail across the country, I had seen the countless scams and plays she pulled on people like me, willing, lust filled fucking naive idiots. I saw what she really was in all the warrants and reciepts, saw the beast she hid behind her face.
It became a pocket obsession of mine, tracking her, and waiting for her to get close. However, before that happened I lost my job, fired for not pursuing cases, being only focused on the woman who haunted every waking and sleeping hour of mine, stalking my nightmares and daydreams like some malign demon.
I didn’t even want to hurt her until after she almost killed me. I just wanted to talk, so when I found her, through various informants, a year after I lost my job, I went to her apartment and saw her just going in. I was clumsy, struck virtually blind by her allure, falling into a trap she set easily. The last thing I expected was a gun barrel when I opened the door, and then the meeting got even stranger. She backed me into the tiny apartment, and then quite suddenly kissed me hard, on the lips. She had whispered a quiet apology, and then shot me.
I had woken up three days later in the hospital. And then I really realized her for what she really was, and I had vowed to get her back in any way I could, for both the physical and emotional pain she had caused me.
I was a foot away when she saw me, eyes widening in surprise. The knife was alre
No comments:
Post a Comment