Killer Move

And just like that, the pressure valve opens in his heart. It’s a feeling he’s known many times before. How many? He doesn’t know. He remembers the first, of course—he’s traced through that memory already this morning. But afterward? Who’s counting? He’s never kept souvenirs, though many do. Since he realized he was not alone and there was even an organization, he has met men—and a woman, once—who make marks on an internal stick, who keep a little something each time, who want to be able to go back in their minds to each occasion, to savor those bright stars one more time. Not him. Once it’s done, it’s done. You move on, keep walking, head on down the road.

There’s a noise, which confuses him. Did he make it? He doesn’t think so. It was a soft, low moan. It can’t have been him. He doesn’t feel like moaning. He feels like singing. He feels like shouting to the skies.

The sound happens again and he realizes it has come from the woman on the sheet, and he almost whiteouts with the surge of power inside his head, and his joy is unconfined. Oh praise be—she’s still alive.

He tilts his head downward and looks at her properly. She’s dressed in a black blouse and a long skirt. Her hands are fixed behind her back with a plastic tie, and she has been gagged. She starts to move, as if she has just regained consciousness and is rapidly realizing something bad is happening. Her head jerks up, and she sees him in the chair. Her eyes open wide.

His grin feels like it’s going to split Warner’s head in two. He doesn’t care where the woman’s come from. He just knows that this time the rancid bag of shit on the floor in front of him is going to split properly, and that it will finally lance the wound in his head that has been there since the nights when someone who should have placed no price on their love started coming to him and shoving her vileness in his face, smothering him in the dark, and afterward pinning him down with her sweating bulk, her face inches above his, martini tears running down her face and dropping onto his terrified cheeks as she whispered again and again: I love you, you know that, don’t you? I love you. That’s why I do this. Because I love you so very much.

It’s the face he always sees when the valve opens in his head and the dam breaks—that huge, sniveling face, a face that will be smiling and perfectly normal tomorrow morning, as if what happens in the darkness of her young son’s bedroom in the night is just a dream: and when Warner has done his work, it’s always been the faces of the women that have borne the worst of it, right back to the bar slut in Mexico. The face has to die hardest. That revolting disguise, the lie of love, the bitter mask women are taught to use to shine darkness into the world.

“You don’t have a lot of time,” a voice says from behind him. It’s not Katy’s voice, but it is a woman’s. It sounds businesslike.

“Who’s that?”

“Never mind. Check on the bed.”

Warner turns and sees what’s laid across the counterpane of the king-size bed to the side of his chair. Some knives. Some pliers. A rusty spatula. A hammer. Other toys.

The woman on the sheeting sees Warner pick up the biggest of the knives. She tries to scream, but the gag is tight. She tries to get up, but her ankles are tied.

“This has to happen?” Another voice, a man’s. It sounds familiar.

“It’s writ,” the woman replies. “Now shh.”

Warner isn’t listening. Warner is wrapped in delight. Oh, look at the way she moves. Watch—no, watch properly. The hair, already matted to her face with sweat. The muscles in her legs, twitching, trying to run in every direction at once. See everything that is revealed when a woman isn’t pretending to be graceful, when she’s reduced to an animal full of shit and blood. Warner can smell her.

Oh, thank you, Lord, for putting such things into the world. For putting them there and for blessing me with the knowledge of how they can be enjoyed. I’m sorry I have questioned you occasionally. I apologize for pretending sometimes that this is wrong. It’s not wrong. It is unbelievable. It’s the point of being alive.

“Enjoy,” the woman says. “It’s the last time.”

Warner hears the two people leave the room and close the door. He gathers his will and strength, staggers to his feet. He’s laughing, or crying, he can’t tell which and he doesn’t care. His injured leg gives out and he drops onto one knee beside the woman on the sheet, who is now absolutely still, rigid, terrified, eyes like full moons.