Deanna Madden #1 The Girl in 6E (5 page)

What he doesn’t realize is that just because I call it “an urge” or “the other side of me” doesn’t mean it is a separate personality of mine. I used to call it Demon, because it was a lot easier for me to refer to it by name than call it cruorimania. Plus, when I was pissed at it, it was a lot easier to trash talk it if it had a moniker. But Demon was just a name, not a separate entity. I
am
Demon. There’s never nice Deanna, then evil Demon. I’m always evil. Demon is Deanna. So I finally just dropped the nickname and accepted anthropophobia, cruorimania, psychosis…all of it is who I am.

My many diagnoses would help in a murder trial. And technically, since I am a murderess, I should be in prison. But you have to realize that while prison would be a good thing for me, it’d be a very bad thing for my obsession. See, there are a lot of people in prison. And they wouldn’t be able to run far.

HIS BROWN UNIFORM
pressed, his name tag straightened, Jeremy Bryant rides the old metal elevator up to the sixth floor. The delivery isn’t scheduled until tomorrow, but seeing the address, he added it to his truck for today, wanting the excuse to get on this damn elevator, ride up to the sixth floor, and go through the same routine he had for the last three years. Ring, wait, sign, and leave. Not exciting enough to waste fifteen minutes on a day already jam-packed with deliveries. Yet here he is.

The package is a small manila envelope with “Jessica Reilly” written on the front. Most deliveries to this address are for Deanna Madden, but occasionally the names on the packages changed; Jessica Reilly being a frequent recipient. He’d originally assumed she had roommates, but after sharing an elevator with the apartment complex superintendent, he had discovered she lived alone, paid for her rent a year at a time, and—according to the overweight, unwashed man—was “smokin’ hot.”

“Really,” Jeremy said. “Hot?” It had crossed his mind. The mystery of not being able to see her had sent his imagination into overdrive—one day convinced she was gorgeous, the next day envisioning one of those gargantuan women who have to be forklifted from the couch.

“
Smokin’
hot. Beautiful face with a body that I jacked off to for days.”
Hmmm. Not a forklift woman.

“How often do you see her?”

The man laughed. “She’s the mystery of this building, man. She’s hiding from
someone
. She hasn’t left that apartment since the day she moved in. I mean that
literally
. The door closed, and that was it. One guy pulled the fire alarm a couple of years ago, just to see if she’d come out. We all stood outside in the freezing-ass cold at two in the morning, but she didn’t budge.” The elevator came to a shuddering stop and the man nodded at Jeremy, moving laboriously ahead of him through the filthy opening. “See you later.”

Her delivery habits corroborated the super’s statements. The volume of packages she received was staggering, at least for a normal person who didn’t run a retail operation out of her house. They were frequent enough that he made almost daily deliveries to this ancient apartment complex and had become accustomed to and unaffected by the dark elevator that barely made the climb to her floor. And she had consistently, for three years, refused to open her door; his first delivery had been a disastrous standoff that ended in her favor.

That was three years ago. Three years in which he has heard her voice through that door—lugged, toted, and swung countless packages with annoying regularity down that dim hallway. The woman seems to have toilet paper delivered via two-day mail. He looks down at the manila package, for Jessica Reilly. The sender is a mail-forwarding company in Des Moines, Iowa. That is another mystery. About 10 percent of her packages are mail-forwarded, most from senders with no return address. Maybe she is a terrorist. A terrorist who has a penchant for household goods and who receives packages with hearts drawn on them.

The elevator doors open with the squeal of metal on metal and he steps onto the dark brown carpet that is the sixth floor. Stopping before her door, he leans forward and listens.

The sounds coming from her apartment often vary. Sometimes music, sometimes voices, once a cry that sounded sexual in nature. Today it is quiet. He straightens and raps on the door three times.

“Leave it. Thank you.” The voice comes immediately, from below, as if she is crouched or seated on the other side of the door.

Leave it. Thank you.
He grins despite himself, signing her name to the pad and gently leaning the package against the door. He raises a hand, waving to the silent door, unsure if she will see the gesture given the height her voice is coming from. “Have a nice day,” he calls out, starting the walk back to the elevator. She won’t open the door; she never does. He stood two doors down once and waited for fifteen minutes, but her door remained closed, the package sitting before it like a piece of delicious cheese in a rattrap. He presses the elevator button, the doors opening immediately, and steps in, his view of the sixth floor disappearing as the doors close.

ON THE CAMMING
sites, it costs clients an extra dollar per minute if they want to turn on their own webcam and let me watch them via the cam-to-cam feature. This feature, as well as allowing me to see them, a feature that voyeurists love, allows sound—the ability for a client to speak instead of type. Every groan, every gasp, comes through loud and clear via the speakers that I have scattered throughout my cam room. Some clients don’t like to type their responses, but they’re too cheap to pay the extra dollar per minute just so they can talk. Those clients ask me to call them, the camsite economics circumvented with the simple dial of a number.

When I signed up for the site, I had to agree to a list of rules. One of those was that I can’t establish contact directly with the clients. Phone calls break that rule. Initially I was the perfect cammer, following the rules to a T—biting the hand that fed me was scary, especially at the beginning, when my bank account was in the three digits and I wasn’t sure how this whole webcamming thing would pan out financially. Now, I break rules with blatant disregard. I advertise my personal site, I give out my mailing address, I perform “forbidden acts” like flashing my tits in free chat, and I allow clients to get emotionally attached to me.

Part of the reason I break the rules is my virtual way of giving them the middle finger. As my bank account balance and number of fans have risen, I have grown more and more irritated with the cam sites. Yes, they have made me rich, but I have paid them back tenfold. Literally. Last month, my cut from Cams.com was $57,000. My total revenue generated? $203,581.42. They pocketed a cool $150K that month for doing nothing but broadcasting my video feed. So I break their damn rules, and they don’t say a damn thing about it.

That wasn’t always the case. Once, I got a call from a nasally voiced man who sounded like one step up the food chain from the mailroom. He started in with a scripted lecture on how my account would be suspended if I continued to break the rules that I agreed to at sign-up. I let him finish his script before informing him that last year his website made more than $1 million off of my chat sessions. I told him to have his boss call me and hung up. That month I got a card in the mail with a personal apology and a check for ten grand. I’m not gonna lie, I had some warm and fuzzies for a week or so over that.

I do understand the rules, why they are in place. The majority of the rules are truly for our protection. The rest are for profiteering reasons. But the rules about contact—those are to protect us against the sickos. Which in my case is fucking hilarious.

I protect myself as best I can. Any packages clients want to send me get sent to a campus address in Delaware, which forwards my mail here. I also have a Delaware cell phone number, which rings to a phone I have dedicated to camming, my cheery voice mail message proclaiming that you have reached Jessica Reilly and sorry! I can’t take your call right now because I am busy having fun! It is nauseatingly cheerful. The men love it. On a given day, I receive anywhere from twenty to forty voice mails. I don’t return them and respond to text messages only if they concern appointment times.

I used to have a texting plan—clients could pay thirty bucks a month to text with me—but it got to be a full-time job and not one that paid $6.99 a minute. So that entrepreneurial venture lasted only three weeks. I’ve tried a few other harebrained ideas to generate income but have found that my time is best served in front of the camera. The lights, the clients. They pay the bills and help keep the crazy away.

ANNIE PUSHES HER
hair back and admires the plain wrapping, a single pink ribbon hanging loosely off the tape her uncle has worked loose.

“Well, go ahead,” Frank prods, bumping her small body gently with his elbow. She looks over at him, her mouth spread wide in an expectant grin. Her small fingers grip and rip the paper, revealing a pink princess costume set, complete with a feather boa, plastic crown, and silk gloves. The sun glints off the crown’s large pink jewels, and she throws away the wrapping and waves the set excitedly, the wind blowing the boa around. He stands, chasing the yellow paper, which jumps and skips across the grass yard, finally snagging it and crumpling it into a tight ball. Gripping the ball tightly, he walks back to her. She tugs on the cheap crown, trying to free it from the cardboard display board. The plastic curves, close to breaking with each pull of her fingers, and he reaches out as he sits back down beside her, taking the item gently from her. He turns it over, untwisting the plastic ties, and she leans closer, her breath blowing warm on his neck. Finally the crown is free, and he holds it up, setting it gently on her head and pushing the plastic teeth into her blond hair.

“How do I look, Uncle Frank?” she asks, grabbing the boa and wrapping it around her slim neck.

“Perfect, honey. You look absolutely beautiful.” His gruff voice is quiet, but she hears the words and throws her arms around his neck, kissing him on the cheek.

“Thanks, Uncle Frank,” she whispers.

“Annie!” Annie looks up into the strained eyes of her mother. “Annie, come inside. Uncle Michael and Aunt Becky are here.”

She stands, brushing off the fabric of her dress, and grabs her uncle’s hand, tugging it as she climbs a concrete step. “Come on! Come inside!”

“You go on. I’m gonna stay right here for a bit, Annie,” her uncle says, a small frown on his face. Then he smiles at her. “I just need a minute, sweetie. Go inside, like your momma says.”

She beams at him and reaches up, checking her crown. Then she spins, and in a blur of pink and blond is gone, the screen door snapping shut behind her.

Annie flies into the living room, running full force until she hits the waiting arms of Uncle Michael. He lifts her into the air, smiling up at her. She trills with laughter, and he sets her down gently, her kicking feet finding the ground early. Her aunt Becky holds out a perfect pink box tied with a thick white ribbon. “Here,” she says shortly. “We can’t stay long.”

Annie grips it tightly, looking at her mother’s pinched face for approval. “Go ahead, honey. You can open it in the dining room.” Annie beams, grabbing Aunt Becky’s silky hand and tugging on it, skipping alongside her slow walk as they make their way the short distance into the next room.

The gift turns out to be a paint-by-numbers set, the price sticker still attached, displaying $4.99 in bright fluorescent orange. She runs her hands excitedly over the plastic-wrapped display, her eyes big and smile wide. She gives them both hugs and returns immediately to the set, pulling off the plastic and touching the paint pads gently, feeling their texture. She doesn’t notice when they say their good-byes and leave, pulling the trailer door tightly shut.