Love Is Strange (I Know... #2) (22 page)

“What are you...” I say, feeling like cotton balls are in my mouth. I fight through it, licking my dry lips. “What are you going to do with her?”

“I'll take care of it,” he says and then we're leaving the disgusting room. I finally feel like I can breathe as I make our way down the stairs, clinging to the bannister so I don't fall. I ignore the mess on the stairs because I don't want to look at it. There's so much I don't want to see. He follows closely behind, his footfalls heavy. His whole presence is heavy. The house feels like him now. All the violence has seeped into the walls. Luckily, he knows we need to get out of here. He knows the only option is to get as far away as quickly as possible. He grabs my keys off the hook and we go into the garage. Like he knows exactly what car I drive, he bypasses Mitch's SUV and presses the key fob to unlock the doors of my car. The lights flash and he opens the passenger door for me. “Get in,” he orders and I obey without thought, slumping onto the cool leather seat.

“What are you going to do?” I ask again, rolling my head on the headrest and feeling like my muscles are going to melt into the seat. I couldn't get up now if I tried. I just want him to drive me far away.

“Shh,” he says, putting his finger up to his lips. Then he leans in and brushes his mouth against my temple. “Don't move.” He runs his finger down my cheek and then leaves me alone, slamming the car door shut. I watch him as he goes back into the house and I wonder if I should follow him. I dig my fingers into the soft leather panel on the door, wondering what he's doing in there. Part of me wants to know and part of me doesn't. I don't think I could handle seeing him killing that faceless woman. I don't even know who she is. I wonder if I should care who she is. She was fucking Mitch so I probably know her. She's probably been to my house numerous times. She's probably been in my bed numerous times. All I know for sure is that I don't want him to kill her. I don't want Elliot to kill anyone else, ever again. But that might be wishful thinking.

He's a born killer and we're about to be all out of options.

My breath catches in my throat and I press my palm to the cool glass of the window as he returns, carrying the limp figure of the woman. She's small, probably no more than 5'5'' and she's still half naked. She has my towel wrapped around her waist and my pillowcase still covering her head. Strands of dark hair hang out from under the pillowcase. Her feet are bare. I can see that her toenails are painted a bright shade of red as he carries her past my window. There's a few specks of blood on her legs, but not much more. She's still whole, so that's something, I think. But she's not moving, either. The trunk pops open and I turn in my seat to watch him what he does. There's a dull thud as he rolls her into my trunk, amongst the plastic shopping bags I keep there for my weekly trip to the organic market and the loose high heels I drop in there sometimes after work when I'm tired of my feet aching. I always forget to clean the shoes out at the end of the week. I wonder what else is in there.

He slams the trunk shut and catches my eye through the back window. He leans forward, his shoulders straining in the tight shirt. It's strange to see him in Mitch's clothes. I don't like it. But that's the least of my problems, since I now have a dead woman in my trunk. After a moment, the blank page of his face changes and he smiles at me and winks. I wonder if he meant the gesture to be reassuring; it's anything but.

After a moment he jerks to attention and walks around the side of Mitch's SUV and out of my sight. I know exactly what he's headed for. Mitch always insisted on doing his own yard work, even though I used to argue that we should get a service. We have an extensive collection of garden tools along that wall. Saws, shears, hoes and shovels. I wonder what Elliot's looking for. My hand finds the door handle, but something stops me from pulling it. I turn again in my seat and watch through the windows of the SUV as as he strolls back to the door like he doesn't have a care in the world. As he steps up into the house, I can tell he's carrying something, but my view is blocked by the front of the SUV. He leaves the door open and I stare inside the void until my eyes go blurry, wondering what he's doing. My imagination is running wild and I tighten my hand on the door handle as images of him hacking Mitch's body to pieces assault my brain.

A muffled thump breaks my concentration and I jump in my seat. Behind me, in the trunk, another noise - louder this time – wakes me up out of my stupor. The woman is alive, apparently. That's a good thing. But it's still creepy as hell to hear her moving around in my trunk. I can hear her muffled moans as her predicament sets in. Then she starts to scream and I can't take it anymore. I shove open the car door and run back into the house.

“Elliot!” I call out, because I don't know what else to do. I can smell the fire before I see it, the gasoline and smoke pungent in the air. The smoke isn't heavy but I can see it rolling down the stairs like a mist. I stand there in the hallway like an idiot, frozen as the realization dawns on me that the house is on fire. I want to snap out of it, but I can't. My body won't move and my brain is taking too long to fire the necessary synapses to make me move. Elliot jogs down the stairs, carrying a small trash bag and the gas can. I recognize the red gas-can as the one that normally sits beside Mitch's lawnmower. He grabs my wrist and shakes his head at me.

“I told you to stay in the car,” he says, chastising me like a child. I stare up at him, the words of rebuttal forming on my tongue. He has no right to act offended when he didn't bother asking me if I would mind if he set my house on fire. He turns and leaves me standing there as he walks into the living room. As I watch him as he walks to the curtains on the big double paned windows. He dips the edge of my expensive, custom ordered curtains into the gasoline. Then, as I watch, he lights a match. Smoke is already hanging in the air as he steps back to observe his work. The fire spreads faster than I would've imagined, shooting up the curtains to the ceiling.

After that, everything moves fast. In a moment of clarity, I grab my purse off of the table by the door and then he pulls me from the house as the smoke is getting too thick to breathe. I trip and almost fall down the stairs that lead into the garage, but he catches me around my waist and pulls me to his chest. He smells like smoke and gasoline and, yet still somehow like fresh fabric softener. But there's no time to waste. “I'll drive,” he says and I nod. He lets me go and I hurry away from him. My bare feet slap against the concrete floor as I run to the car and slide in. He sets the gas can back by the lawnmower and then jogs around to my car. He bangs his fist on the trunk as he passes and then he gets in the driver's side.

The garage door rumbles open as we pull out and I try to ignore the sounds of the woman's muffled screams over the purr of the engine. I crane my neck to watch the house as we pass. The windows in our bedroom are lit up and I can see the flicker of flames behind the curtains. He stops at the corner and flicks off the headlights and I turn in my seat to look at the house where I've lived for the past two years. All I have left are the clothes on my body and the car that we're sitting in. All I have left is the man who's sitting beside me.

“I turned on the gas in the kitchen,” he says, calmly, obviously nowhere near as affected as I am by the sight of the flames slowly consuming my house. “It'll blow eventually. We don't have to sit and watch.” I don't respond, just stare back at the house. The glass has blown out of the bedroom windows and flames lick at the roof. It's dark and the night is cloudy, but I can still see the thick gray smoke rising to the sky. I can't look away and I can't cry even though I want to. When the windows burst in the living room and the flames from the roof reach toward the sky, he leans over me and clicks my seatbelt. Then he turns back on the headlights and drives away, away from the approaching sirens and away from my old life.

*****

The bright sun is hot on my face. I feel it before I'm even fully conscious and that's the only way I know I'm alive. Slowly the light is breaching my brain, shining through the darkness in red and pinks and oranges through my eyelids. My brain is mushy but I'm not completely out of it. I can hear the hum of the road in my ears, so I know I'm in a car. I hurt all over. The pain isn't just physical, though. It's a light throbbing in my head that's slowly pounding harder and harder with each passing moment.

The shock hasn't worn off.

I have a feeling it isn't going to wear off anytime soon.

I open my eyes a crack and it feels like a knife stabbing through my forehead. The sun is too bright and the car is moving too fast. The road is too bumpy. I feel like I'm going to die. In fact, I almost wish I was dead. Then maybe all the visions running through my mind – the blood, the fire, the body – would disappear. I don't want to think about them ever again. I want to forget. God, all I want is to forget.

My hands are curled on my lap and they're the first things I see. They're clean. I remember the shower. I can smell my freshly shampooed hair that hangs in my face. But I didn't clean away all the remnants of the night before. There's blood under my fingernails. Dark brown crescent moons. Impossible to ignore. I hold them out in front of me before I can stop myself. I feel a scream welling up in my throat like vomit. Or maybe it is vomit. I can't really be sure. My stomach clenches when the car swerves off the road and comes to an abrupt stop. I grip the door handle so hard my nails dig into my palm. But I don't look at him. I can't. I stare straight ahead, finally looking at my surroundings. We're in the middle of an endless road, surrounded by flat fields. The long weeds sway in the breeze. The wildflowers catch the hazy light and it's almost beautiful. But the world is dark now, changed. Beauty shouldn't exist, and yet, it does.

“Joanie,” he says and my whole body stiffens. Before last night, I hadn't heard his voice in so long. I thought I was never going to hear it again. Yet, here we are, in the middle of nowhere in our own bizarre purgatory. “Joanie,” he repeats, his voice lower this time. I don't answer; I don't even look at him. I can't. I stare out at the road, listening to the whine of the crickets outside and the low purr of the good German engine in my car.

We have to ditch the car, I realize. We have to ditch the plates. There has to be a plan. I have to come up with a plan, or else we're fucked. He did all of this without a plan. He showed up in Seattle without a plan. He killed Mitch and burned down my house because he didn't have a plan. There's a woman in the trunk, bound up and gagged, for Chrissakes. He was always a bull in a China shop, banging around and destroying everything because he was angry or scared or horny and he didn't give a shit what happened to anyone else. He hasn't changed. I'm the one that changed, but he never did.

I wonder how much I've really changed since he's been gone.

“Joanie, say something,” he says, dropping one of his big hands on to my thigh. I can feel his heat seeping through the thin fabric of my leggings. I dart my eyes down to his hand because I can't help myself. It's almost too much to see his hand. It's so familiar but strange at the same time. His hands don't look anything like Mitch's. His skin is darker, rougher. He's had a hard life since he's been away. He's been working with his hands, laboring and sweating in the hot sun and in the blistering cold. His knuckles are scratched and calloused. There's blood under his fingernails, too.

“I know you're pissed at me,” he says and I blink at his words. Pissed doesn't begin to cover it and he knows it. Actually, I don't know what the hell I feel. I haven't felt this strange in a long time. The last time was probably after I first met Elliot. When I was on the bus after I'd escaped. The feeling was similar, surely. After the rapes and brutality and abduction. I pushed it down so small in myself that I could barely remember it. It was like a broken bone. The pain is sharp and all-encompassing when the bone is first broken, but after it heals you almost can't remember how it felt. You can't remember what being in that much pain feels like. It feels like a bad dream. It feels like something that happened to someone else, like some quick blurb you read or some maudlin story on the evening news.

That's what my whole past feels like. My whole life as Joan Martinez feels like a story written by someone else. We're sitting in the middle of an empty road. There's no one else around. No cars, no nothing. I don't even see a house on the horizon, but, then again, the sun is shining in my eyes. I can't make out any signs of other human life. I wonder if this is what death feels like. When I thought Elliot was dead, sometimes I would have dreams like this. I would dream of us being alone in the world, just the two of us. I would dream of his voice, and his touch, and his smell. And now he's here with me.

It's so fucking bizarre.

He flexes his fingers on my thigh, pressing hard into my flesh. I know he wants me to smile at him and tell him everything's okay, but I can't. I just can't. My mouth won't move. My body won't move. I can barely breathe the same air as him. He opens his car door suddenly, like he can read my mind. I watch as he removes his hand from my thigh. I listen as he gets gets out of the car. He slams the door shut behind him and the car rocks gently from the force of it. Now he's pissed, I suppose. I don't care. He lives in a constant state of madness. It's been two years, but he hasn't changed, not one bit.

He's just as crazy as he always was, just as unstable. More, even.

I notice he's left the keys in the ignition. I could slide over into the driver's seat and take off. I could drive away and leave him all alone in the middle of nowhere. The key fob swings lightly, like it's calling my name. I know what it's like to be left in the middle of nowhere, stranded without him. He left me and then he died and now he's come back to life. Now I'm dead. Or I might as well be. I hope he's feeling exactly what I felt right now. All of the shit that's happened is his fault. He knows this, deep down. He knows what he's done. He may not be sorry for it, but he knows. He knows he's a fiend and a coward. He's a murderer and a rapist. Nothing has changed.