Cupid (2 page)

“Neil?” she said into the darkness, but didn’t enter the kitchen. “Neil, are you in here? I don’t feel like any of your games tonight. If you’re hiding and plan on jumping out at me, as usual, then you’re in for a very violent surprise.”

She placed her hand on the wall next to the door way, slid it up and down, flipped the switch, and gasped when the light didn’t turn on.

This is when you run.

She froze right there, not moving her finger or the rest of her body another inch. Thoughts must’ve spiraled around in her mind.

What are you thinking? There’s no light in here, yet the rest of the condo’s lights work. Tonight is not the time to investigate. Tonight is when you turn around and leave. Tonight you escape a destiny that wasn’t meant for you.

She stood there, silent. Besides the dripping from the faucet, quiet continued. A sweet perfume traveled into the room and journeyed to the killer.

What scent is that? Vanilla or something flowery? Roses. It must be roses.

Hiding in the shadows, he gripped his loaded bow and inhaled her fragrance some more.

Turn around, sweet one. Tonight is not your day to die.

She cleared her throat and stepped inside. “Neil? I’m serious. You told me to meet you in the kitchen, but. . .”

So Neil had asked his wife or whatever to come to the kitchen? Why would he do that when he was having sex with his mistress? Had he hoped she walked in? This must be why others gossiped about him being a manipulative douche.

She inched in further. “I swear on everything. I don’t have time for more of your fucking mental games.”

Turn around.

From the shadows and with smooth precision, the killer pointed the arrow at her chest. If she took one more step inside the kitchen, he’d release the wire and let the arrow glide through the air. Knots built in his gut.

Turn around, sweet one.

A sigh left her lips. “I’m done playing your games, Neil.” She ran her fingers through her hair and stepped back. “You couldn’t even give me tonight. Could you? What’s the point of being your wife, if I see you less than all of your mistresses, and get absolutely no respect!”

Interesting.

The kitchen door slammed behind her.

Asher leaned forward and patiently listened for the sounds of her departure—footsteps pounding away, keys jingling, doors creaking open and shutting back.

Don’t worry, sweet one. Neil’s gone. You won’t need to play those mental games with him anymore.

Minutes passed. She made a few more noises here and there in the apartment, yelling out his name from time to time. Another few minutes went by.

Finally, the condo’s front door slammed, and Asher guessed that the sweet-scented woman had left and he was finally alone.

He returned his attention to the dead man on the floor and crouched low to get a good look at the corpse in the darkness.

Pulling out his tiny flashlight and turning it on, he studied Neil’s face. “You had a beautiful wife. What made you decide to have her come to the kitchen tonight, while you knew, you would be fucking your mistress from behind? Was your wife supposed to see that? Did you think it would be funny?”

Asher winked at the corpse. “Now who do you think will be laughing, once tomorrow’s morning news reports your dead body found with your slutty secretary in a secret apartment that was paid for illegally by your company’s investors? Poor Neil.”

Asher inhaled the space. A harsh odor radiated from the stiff’s flesh.

There was no other fragrance that left a bigger imprint in most people’s minds.

What was her name?

He walked over to the dead mistress’s naked body that was slumped over the counter. Asher thought back to the moment, right before he surprised the evil pair. Neil’s pants sat at his ankles as he barreled his pecker into his mistress.

“Let’s make her cry,” the mistress had groaned. “Show her how you make me scream your name.”

At first, Asher wondered who the mistress had been talking about. Who had she wanted to make cry? For that reasoning alone, he didn’t give her the chance to escape. Making people cry wasn’t really nice after all. She got an arrow in her back, and then Asher gave all of his attention to Neil’s shaking frame as he pissed on himself, right in the kitchen.

“Let’s make her cry.”

“Now it all makes sense.” He grabbed the arrow sticking out of Neil’s chest and yanked it away. “You wanted to hurt your wife for whatever reason. Maybe it got you off, added to the orgasm. Fucking another was no longer enough. Now you needed the games.”

Asher wiped the arrow’s tip on his pants. Blood smeared on the material. He’d planned to burn everything he wore once he got to the back of his grounds.

“I get it, Neil. Boredom makes us do wicked things.” He rose and headed over to the mistress. “Too bad your wife couldn’t have seen me kill you. Would she have liked it? She smelled so good. A woman that smells like that would use logic. Mother always said, a female that could master all of a man’s senses around her, is one that’s using the maximum power of her brain.”

Laughter fled his lips. He pulled the arrow out of the mistress’s back and wiped it off.

Okay, Asher. You’ve had your fun.

But for whatever reason, he didn’t rush away like all the other times he’d killed. For some crazy reason, he remained there, breathing in everything.

Soon, he’d have to sneak out of the condo, jump on his motorcycle, speed through traffic, and enter the back of his mansion, hide his tools, clean himself, and rush off to party until dawn.

Soon, he’d have to dive into meaningless conversations with faceless people whose names always blurred together, with the intoxication of the wine, and the artificial feminine giggling that lingered afterward.

Soon, he’d have to shift from killer to Asher Bishop, heir to the Bishop multi-millionaire food empire.

Soon.

Releasing a long breath, he stared to the rich man’s corpse for a few more seconds, but that time, he didn’t sing his mother’s lullaby, as he did with all the others.

That time, he stood over the dead body and thought of the fragrance of roses.

D
iana didn't know
why she was still married to Neil. She was no longer young, naive and under the illusion that real love existed.

Neil was a man with eclectic tastes—mostly in women.

But being the good wife on his arm fueled her to stay. To pretend. They looked good together. His mother loved her and she was the darling of any party they attended. Diana stayed because she had no real reason to leave.

The truth though, was that she was tired.

Restless.

Desiring something more than what Neil had given her.

She wanted something otherworldly, if there were such a thing. Some kind of experience or love or drug to take her to new heights. Or maybe she was just stuck reporting the same shit news day in and day out, while fucking the same man night after night.

She was due for a change.

As she climbed the three flights of stairs to their lush new condo, Diana thought maybe Neil had something exciting planned for them. He'd texted her a cryptic message about meeting him in the kitchen, but when she arrived, she was met with silence and darkness.

She called out his name, “Neil?”

No response.

“Neil?” she said again.

The door to the kitchen was cracked an inch and as she pushed it open, something strange fell over her. Like all the air in the room was being sucked up and pressing against her flesh.

It was cold, too.

Much colder than it should have been, given Neil liked to keep the thermostat set firmly at sixty-eight degrees.

Shivering, she reached for the light. When it didn't turn on as she expected, the feeling in her bones grew heavy. As if she was on the precipice of discovering something horrible.

She shrugged it off. This was just another one of Neil's jokes. Something he thought was funny, though Diana had long ago lost her patience with his brand of funny.

She sighed into the darkness, disappointed in herself.

She’d let herself believe that there was a chance of. . .what?

A steamy shower fuck?

Rose petals scattered on the counter? A glass of champagne ready to be drank?

No. That's not what this was at all.

Those fantasies flowed out of her as easily as she conjured it up.

“Neil?” Diana backed out of the kitchen, her veins thrumming with electricity.

Why had all the lights worked in the rest of the apartment, but not in the kitchen?

Why had she felt as if she'd stepped into an incubator of energy instead of her pristine condo?

There were things Diana knew weren't meant to be questioned, but that never stopped her before. She was a goddamn reporter for shit's sake and she'd lived and would eventually die from finding out the answers that no one else bothered to look for.

At ten, she’d discovered a body in her back yard.

That dirty space behind her house had always been her favorite place to dig around. People dropped quarters there. She found other treasures too—a pretty earring, a wrinkled page from porn magazine, and two turquoise rocks that glinted under the sun.

That day, she’d dug and shoveled like any other afternoon—break the soil, lift it up, sling it to the side, and repeat.

Yet, an odd energy filled the air. It buzzed around, all electric and hot as fire.

Things changed even more at the appearance of a graying hand right in the area where she shoveled. Unmoving fingers sat in the ground. Stiff and pale. The whole hand was embedded in the backyard’s soil and standing up like a flower. And even worse, three copper rings covered three fingers, just like her babysitter Gabby’s hand.

“Gabby?” Diana whispered.

A normal girl would have jumped up and screamed.

A normal girl probably wouldn’t have been shoveling in the back yard in the first place.

But, Diana kept digging,

searching,

and pushing away the dirt.

More of the dead body appeared. It caused terror to jump inside of Diana’s rib cage. She found it hard to breath, yet she dug some more, that intense, electric sensation sparkling along her skin.

“Gabby.” Her fingers shook as she stopped the shoveling and peered forward.

Diana’s babysitter, Gabby had pink hair. That day, those colorful strands didn’t shine bright and appear so cool. Dirt clumped to knots and on some parts of Gabby’s head, worms slithered along maggot-infested grooves along her opened skull. Violent, purple lines circled Gabby’s neck like an extravagant necklace. The dead girl only wore a red bra and panties with one high-heeled shoe half-way off of her right foot.

“Gabby.” Diana’s bottom lip quivered. “What happened?”

The babysitter gave Diana no answer, as she’d done many times before, always providing Diana with funny, nonsensical answer
s
that seemed to test the laws of reality.

“I’m so sorry, Gabby,” Diana whispered.

Gabby’s eyes stared up at the sky and mirrored the cloudy image in front of them.

In no time, Diana rushed into the house, bypassed her parents, and called the police.

Her mother and father had been arguing that morning anyway. They’d been doing that a lot lately. Fighting about her dad’s lack of work. She paid them no mind and focused on helping Gabby.

Perhaps, Diana should’ve stopped them and explained what she found, before calling the police. Maybe things would’ve turned out different for them all.

But she didn’t do things like normal children.

Diana had been the one to find the dead body, so she’d been the one to call the police.

And through tear-blurred eyes, she’d been the one to watch her father get arrested for Gabby’s murder. She’d been the one to hold her mother as she fell to the ground and cried.

One thing Diana had not realized was that a dead young white girl in a poor, black man’s yard, didn’t trigger court-approved justice in the eyes of society.

Her father died that night in jail. No one knew who sliced his neck. A week later, the police found Gabby’s actual killer three houses down from hers.

Back in her husband Neil’s extra apartment, she remained frozen in the kitchen’s doorway.

Something is different. It’s that same feeling like before. Why?

Just like when discovering Gabby’s body that same electric sensation prickled at her skin. Diana couldn’t figure out what to do next, part of her urged to investigate, the rest screamed to race away.

Is Neil okay or is this one of his games? I bet he’s in here. Watching me as I stand here, shaking. He’s probably naked and stroking himself.

She thought back to all of Neil’s many games—inviting women to their table on date night and outrageously flirting with them, emailing her videos of his sexual exploits, intentionally screaming out other women’s names right before he came inside of her, and the worst of all, telling her how much he loved her, declaring how much he cared, and then laughing out loud and denying it all with disgust.

With Neil it was a constant struggle to stay within reality. He was a question she was always trying to decode. One of the many demons on her back that she’d earned for accidentally killing her father.

“Neil?” she asked in the darkness.

Neil had become more predictable with age and marriage, yet there were still secrets he locked up tight enough to keep Diana curious. His kitchen message was certainly enough to make her wonder about his intentions.

Diana sighed.

Maybe he wanted to feel the same thrill as Diana did? Did he concoct a series of elaborate clues that would end in a romantic candle-lit dinner?

Probably not. That isn't Neil's style, and why am I feeling that same electric feeling?

Gabby’s frail, cold body flashed in her mind. All her nightmares, no matter how different or complex, always ended with that image of Gabby’s corpse.

Cold chills ran up Diana’s spine.

“I’m done playing your games, Neil,” she said, just in case he was there in the kitchen.

She ran her fingers through her hair and stepped back. “You couldn’t even give me tonight. Could you? What’s the point of being your wife, if I see you less than all of your mistresses, and get absolutely no respect?”

Diana slammed the front door on the way out of the condo. She would check their other condo first before heading to her newspaper’s office. Although she didn’t need the job’s money, she craved all of the other things that came with it—the clicking of keyboard keys as she typed away her findings on something she’d exhausted days in research on, her co-workers conversation that stimulated her mind and sometimes shook the walls deep within her heart, and just the plain old freedom of being away from Neil’s evil games.

I guess I’m spending New Year’s Eve in the office, like last year.

Her office never disappointed her as Neil did. It never told her lies. Never expected things from her that she didn’t want to give. It never drug her down so low that she found it difficult to crawl to safety.

Besides the night is still young, and I have plenty of work that needs to be done before Gregory returns from his vacation in Cancun and starts hammering away questions on my article deadlines.

If Neil wasn't going to make an effort to keep her around, well then he would find out just how much fun she could have without him. Diana was determined to take back what she'd lost in her marriage with Neil.

Adventure, excitement, and herself.

The latter was the most important. Somehow she’d lost the things that made her, Diana. Neil’s harsh games had chipped away at her very soul. At times she blinked her eyes, and yearned for an escape, unsure of the view that lay right in front of her.

She knew she should’ve left Neil long ago, knew it deep down within her core.

Still, she stayed.

Maybe, that’s my New Year’s resolution. Get away from Neil.

As she pulled out of the parking spot below the condo, she swore she saw something pass by the kitchen window. The shadow of a figure creeping away, someone tall and holding something on their back.

See. I knew you were in the apartment, Neil. What were you going to do if I came all the way into the kitchen?

“Go fuck yourself, Neil.” Blinking, she shook her head and put her foot on the brake. No other images went by any of the windows in the apartment, which was strange.

Wait a minute. Did I really see something or not? You know what? Who cares?

She sped off.

The time had finally come—Neil had driven her crazy enough to lose her mind. Shadow people and all. He was going to be sorry when she finally found him. She would make damn sure of that.

D
iana's office
was more a home than either of her condos.

She lived, breathed and slept in the place she was passionate about. Ink and paper and stale coffee engulfed her senses, but she craved it like a junkie does a fix. She'd never tire of the smells and atmosphere of a newsroom. Of keyboard clacks underneath her fingertips. Not even the piles of papers scattered around the floor bothered her.

Literary awards stacked her shelves at home. They awarded Diana for her addiction to curiosity, her constant yearning to know it all.

At one am, Diana sat with the Mirabelli file in her lap. She'd gone to the other condo, and as expected, Neil was nowhere to be found. She called his cell phone only to get his voicemail. She left him a nasty message and went straight to the office.

Have fun playing your games by yourself.

She'd much rather be with the case file of a murdered man than sitting at home alone with a bottle of wine.

At least she could be productive at the office.

At least she could pretend there wasn't a part of her that throbbed with pain at all the things Neil had done to her. She could pretend to be strong, independent and victorious.

She forced herself back to the file in her hands.

Jackson Mirabell, the charming, crack-addicted son of Richard Mirabelli the second who was the creator and CEO of Mirabelli Technologies. Diana had met Jackson at a party once. He was just like every other man who came from wealthy inheritances. Arrogant, attractive as hell with a shit ton of addictions he mostly kept well hidden.

Is that what got him killed
?

She couldn't decide which was the ultimate cause, his penchant for expensive white powder in clear baggies or his affliction for hurting the hookers he hired. Either way, Jackson had been found two days ago in his first floor apartment, a hole in his chest, blood dripping out the sides of his puckered lips.

The hole.

It was a point of contention between the police and the medical examiner. Not a bullet hole. Too large. No one could explain it and Diana was perplexed as to how Jackson Mirabelli really died.

The concierge told police he went up to his room with a petite blonde in stilettos, but she never came back down. Police found no sign of the woman. Either the concierge was lying or this girl simply… disappeared. Diana's best guess was that the woman got a lucky break, escaped when she could, before things got bad.