The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) (16 page)

Inside the arena, things were eerily silent.
Outside, police sirens drew nearer. The sated gods licked their
lips and went to work setting fires, eager to escape their mortal
bonds.

The rock god pulled his Fender from its case
and played a shredding guitar solo to an audience of none as his
fellow gods set the building ablaze. Fire filled the auditorium,
and still the rock god played—until flames lapped at the frets and
all of his strings were melted; until his fingers were too burnt to
hold the notes.

He channeled all his past lives. He poured
himself into the music, even as his amplifier exploded and waves of
heat seared his flesh. The guitar made no noise, but in his mind he
heard it—rock 'n' roll, the music of the gods. He closed his
blackened eyelids and continued to move his fingers as the inferno
roared and walls crumbled down. He smiled and suffered a momentary
death, quite satisfied with his revenge.

Damaged
Goods

Dear Kimmie,

I hope you're not angry with me. I'm sorry
for the mess I've gotten us into, for the media coverage that will
surround you in the coming months, and for the embarrassment I've
brought to our family. I can only offer one explanation—as concise
and honest as they come: I had to do it.

Of course, no courtroom in the world will
deem my crime self-defense, but it was either kill him or kill
myself. I couldn't continue the way I've been living all these
years, beaten down and defeated, unable to love or be loved because
of memories I cannot forget.

Remember when we were little, how we used to
swing together, holding hands? We couldn't go very high that way,
but we held tight, our little fingers interlaced, bodies gently
keeping pace, side by side. That's how we got through childhood,
isn't it? Holding hands. One year apart but so much alike.

One cold autumn day, I cried alone on that
swing as yours swayed, empty, beside me. An approaching storm
thrashed the drooping limbs of the old willow. A few wispy branches
broke off and tumbled in the wind, and I thought,
That's how I
feel when she’s away.

We were afraid to be alone. The “bad things”
happened when we were apart. The “bad things” that we were told to
put behind us after a quick divorce and a few counseling sessions.
But how can we put something behind us when it's who we are,
Kimmie? It’s as ingrained in our characters as dirt on a filthy
mattress.

The people we've grown into are nothing but
older versions of the little girls we once were. There's no
escaping it. You, dear sister, found love and started a family. You
put your broken pieces back together. But everyone is different.
I
am different. I can't heal this wound. Roger is a scab,
and I never leave the thought of him alone long enough to mend
it.

Mom tells me, “You can’t live in the past.”
I'm sure you can picture it: the way her thin, withered lips suckle
her Pall Mall, taking long pulls as if it'll somehow make her
advice more profound (or even worth a shit, if she only knew how I
really felt). It's enough to make me envision shoving that
cigarette down her old, raspy throat. How dare she? How fucking
dare
she tell me to move on, to let go of the past, when she
was the one who ruined mine by bringing that monster into our
lives?

I
did
try, Kimmie. I tried to move on
because that's what I
wanted
. We're all dealt a hand in
life. It's either play or fold. I chose to play.

I went to therapy. It cost me an arm and a
leg getting therapy on a waitress's pay with no medical insurance,
but I pulled it off. I did it because I was trying to let go of the
past, like good old mom told me to do.

When that didn't work, I suppressed it. I
took all the pain, like a torturous flame burning inside me, and
drowned it in an effort to appear normal, successful.... happy. I
tried out cute hair styles. I made jokes, hung out with friends. I
went on dates, and there was even a man who proposed to me. His
name was Charlie, and I turned him down.

Charlie didn't understand why I had to break
his heart, but it’s simple. I was running from the past. I wasn't
ready to love him. Something rotten seethed in the noxious pit of
my soul, ready to explode. Maybe he'll understand when he sees the
news, when he sees how many pieces I cut Roger into and how bloody
things got.

After Charlie, I started to wonder if I would
ever have a normal life. I tried “looking to the future and not the
past” as my therapist had advised me. What a crock of shit that
turned out to be, and a waste of money, too. There are too many
goddamn triggers. Strange men at the park watching children play.
Middle-aged bosses flirting with teenaged staff. Fathers with their
hands riding too high on their daughter's thigh in a quiet corner
of a party. The world is brimming with predators, and I am equipped
with a radar.

I began to wonder just how many others were
out there being abused. I started to pay attention. I wore
sunglasses with black lenses. I kept aware of every face in the
crowd. They call it “people watching”, but I think I was trying to
prove something to myself—that things were not as bad as they
seemed.

It was on a gloomy day in April, at a party
thrown by a co-worker, when it hit me. I'd been observing a young
girl in loose-fitting clothes squirm away from her step-father's
touch. The radar was screaming in my head, and all I wanted to do
was take the serving knife from the table and stab it between the
eyes of every creep who preys on the young.

That's when I made the decision. I would find
him. I would find Roger, and I would kill him.

Once the decision was made, little sis, there
was no turning back. It was a fruitless effort to fight the idea. I
tried, but it was all I could think about, all I dreamt of at
night. And you know what? I felt better. A lot better. I had set a
goal, and I would see it through.

It's crazy how quickly a person can put
twenty years behind them. Whether you take the time to savor it or
not, each day slips into the next, another yesterday until suddenly
you stand back and look at your life and realize how long it's
been. For me, it had been twenty-two years. Twenty-two years of
running from the pain.

I did the math. That was exactly two-thirds
of my life. I was thirty-three, and for two-thirds of my existence
I'd been struggling with the wreckage Roger left behind, the abuser
who slipped in and out of our lives with no consequences of his
own. I never wanted to see the day when three-fourths of my life
had been wasted on the pain.

I didn't think of my revenge as a murder, but
instead, as saving a life. My life. Whatever’s left for me now—even
if it’s a lifetime spent locked behind a guarded metal door—I can
face it knowing that he didn't get the best of me, not in the end.
Call me juvenile. Call me spiteful, unstable, cold. I'm not going
to pretend I don’t feel better with him dead.

One thing they will call me is crazy. Batshit
crazy for how many pieces I cut him into. Well, maybe I am. A
court-appointed shrink is looking into it. One thing’s for sure,
though: Roger is not the charming professor the public will
mourn.

You know better, don't you, Kimmie? You
haven't forgotten about the chains. Not with those scars on your
wrists and the way you sometimes recoil from your husband's
embrace, even though you love him with all your heart, because
something buried deep inside you forgets that a man’s touch can be
welcome. Admit it. There’s an instinct in your gut, one that tells
you to disconnect from the moment, to play dead at the feel of warm
flesh against yours.

You love your husband, Kimmie, but it's hard
for you to be loved, to accept it.
He
did that to you. And
it's okay to despise him for it. It's okay to forget this bullshit
about “moving on”. We are what we are. Just like Popeye, huh? If
only we had been more like Popeye back then, but there was no
magical spinach for us, was there?

Remember the shed where he took us? The rusty
padlock, the splintered door, the sound of that awful lock clicking
into place? He made sure we were always alone, apart from one
another during the visits to our own private Hell. What he did to
each of us, we knew he did to the other, and that made it hurt all
the more.

Let the fools mourn him. Let them call me
crazy. He deserved worse than he got, and I refuse to waste my time
trying to expose his dark secrets or justify my actions.
Vindication is not my concern.

His blood is on my hands. I'm at peace with
that. Hell, I even smile when I picture his bug-eyed whimper as a
torrent of blood poured from his neck. The memory of his slit
throat, his larynx gurgling and choking... it soothes me as I lay
on my cold metal plank in this lonely cell.

The day they caught me, they tackled me to
the ground and scraped my cheek so badly that—I have to admit—the
vain part of me wants to cry knowing it'll probably leave a scar.
The scab is so thick, it’ll take weeks to heal, but I consider it a
battle scar. I’m the victor in a war waged long ago. And it was a
victory not only for us, but for all of Roger's victims.

Did you think we were the only ones? Did you
think you and I were a drunken mistake he made while down on his
luck in a go-nowhere town, shacked up with a bipolar wife? Yeah, I
used to tell myself that, too. Until I found his notebook, where he
had kept track of every single girl he abused. But I'll get to that
in a minute.

First you need to hear how it went down so
you understand I never wanted things to go this far. I never
planned on a blood bath, and I especially didn't want to make
headlines. It doesn't matter to me if the rest of the world thinks
I'm the next Lizzie Borden or Aileen Wuornos, but I need you—and
only you—to see things my way. Yours is the only forgiveness I
seek.

I thought Roger would be easy to find. I was
wrong. He'd long ago left Orson County, and according to everyone I
asked, he’d only stuck around for three-and-a-half years while he
was with mom. Before that, nobody knew him, and after that, nobody
heard from him again. You see, Orson was a staple of our existence,
the place our lives began, the backdrop of all our childhood
memories, but for Roger, it was just a brief stop on his
self-serving journey.

All I had was his name. It took some time,
but I found him living seven states away. And you'll never believe
this... Well, actually, you'll hear about it on the news before
this letter reaches you. That son of a bitch was a teacher! That
monster was molding young minds.

I found him teaching community college in a
Northern California suburb. I tracked him a long time, observing
his strolls around the campus. He looked so smug in his starched
slacks, shirt unbuttoned just enough for a tuft of hair to poke
out. He donned a fake smile, scoping the female students like a
lion, eyes peeled for the kill.

As I watched him engage with his students, I
was dumbfounded, recalling the tortures he inflicted on us. His
hair was sprinkled with gray, and he'd lost some pounds, but his
dark eyes still chilled me to the marrow. By all appearances, he
was a clean cut, passionate professor. He had a dress shirt in
every color, but never a tie. He was too cool for that.

I kept a lot of distance between us when I
followed him. I’d been approaching my twelfth birthday the last
time he saw me. I had changed a lot since then. Still, I feared he
would recognize me if I got too close. I decided to change my
appearance.

I checked into a motel near his work. I drove
until I found a department store. I bought chestnut brown hair dye
to cover my blonde curls and ordered green contact lenses for my
baby blues. I found a pair of binoculars to help pass the time. It
would take five business days for the contacts to arrive on special
order, but that was okay by me. I watched him and plotted, plotted
and watched.

He worked hard to charm the female students.
It made me physically ill. I wanted to scream,
He is a monster!
A rapist!
But I had to remain silent until the moment was
right. Anticipation burned in my stomach. I couldn't eat for
days.

I paced my motel room. I played with my
butterfly knife. Anything to pass the time.

One thing became obvious the more I spied on
Roger: his libido was as strong as ever. He went out every night,
even during the work week. I watched him from the shadows of my
parked car, lights off, head low. Sometimes he came home with a
woman, and other times he ended up by himself, but he always tried
to satisfy his urges.

I never trailed him after his departure. I
wouldn’t risk being noticed. But on the nights he came home alone,
disappointment was evident on his face, and I decided it would be
easy enough to bait him. I’d put up a neon “fuck me” sign—heavy
makeup, a skin-tight dress, a flirtatious wink—and lure Roger
in.

To pull it off, I’d have to follow him in my
car without being seen. If Roger caught on to me, things could turn
sour in a hurry. Forget his upstanding exterior. I knew the devil
beneath the facade.

Sitting in my car, plotting that man’s death,
I could still feel the way his hands used to press against my
mouth, not because I cried out for help, but because he liked the
control. He liked to muffle my speech, my breathing… my sobs. I
knew the darkness inside that man, and I’d take extra precaution to
avoid meeting up with it again.