I gave him the address, and immediately a large smile broke out over
his face. “You’re Shannon’s girl. June told us about the
mysterious new girlfriend. Finally domesticating him, are you?”
I just smiled.
“I can have these out on the van to you in about an hour. Will that
be okay?”
“That would be great. Thanks. I’ll probably still be out and
about, so could you just leave them on the front porch, and I’ll
bring them inside when I get home?”
“Certainly, Ma’am.”
I paid him in cash, to a raised eyebrow similar to June’s. He
didn’t ask personal questions of me, but I was almost sure he
realized he didn’t even know my name as I made my escape from the
building.
I went straight back to Shannon’s after that. When I got inside, I
poured a glass of wine and ran a bubble bath in the master bathroom
and lit a few candles and soaked and read. I stared at the stationery
and stamps still in one of the bags on the bathroom floor. When I’d
bought it, I’d planned to send Professor Stevens an anonymous
threatening letter. I wasn’t sure if he’d even know who it was
from.
I really just wanted him to fear it might be from me, that I was
coming for him. But I was afraid that the postmark would just lead
back to Shannon.
I heard the old white van with the plants pull up. I waited until
they were unloaded and I was sure Stanley was gone before I went
outside. Getting the plants inside was even trickier than the rest of
my purchases had been. Thankfully, I hadn’t bought any really big
plants. I could just imagine Shannon’s irritation if I broke my
neck falling off the trellis with these.
When they were finally inside, I went about the house, finding a
window for each of the bright light plants. I’d bought a few low
light plants for the coffee table and some end tables that had
nothing on them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to imagine Shannon’s
reaction to all this when he got home. I imagined he’d lived in
this cold, minimal, antiseptic house with the white cat as his only
other living companion for so long, that bringing this much life into
the house might not go over well. They might clash with his energy.
Plants were quiet at least. Surely they could find some common ground
with Shannon there.
I needed to be surrounded by green things if I wanted to not lose my
mind. And with the trees bare of leaves and everything so bleak and
gray all the time, this was a necessary evil. I couldn’t stay by
myself in a house where the only other living being hated me. I
needed something friendly.
Chapter Nine
Without Shannon in the house, the nightmares came back even darker
and more detailed than before. This time, I couldn’t will myself
awake in time. I had to relive the whole fucked-up thing. Somehow the
worst of it wasn’t the too-hard whipping that exceeded anything I’d
previously experienced. The worst part of the memory/dream was his
voice and the awful words he said, blaming me over and over again for
what he was doing as he made sure I knew what a filthy, disgusting
little whore I was. Without that, I might have been able to pretend
it was someone else, anyone else.
I jolted awake and scrambled to sit up. It was too quiet in the house
without Shannon, and I knew the white cat wouldn’t comfort me. She
hated me. That feeling was mutual.
I’d moved all my bags from my shopping excursion into the bedroom
except the snacks, which were in the kitchen. I turned on every light
in the house as I made my way there now.
I opened the dark chocolate drizzled kettle corn and took a bottle of
water from the fridge and sat at the kitchen table with it. Shannon
might kill me if he ever found out I’d been drinking red wine in
the tub. I wasn’t even sure candles were allowed because wax could
drip. I was pretty sure the coffee and toast in bed kindness had been
a one-time thing. After my snack, I finished up the bottle of wine
from earlier.
On a lark, and pleasantly buzzed, I checked Shannon’s office door.
I couldn’t believe it when the knob turned easily in my hand. He
never left this room unlocked. Even when he was home. It wasn’t as
if there were any remaining doubts that he was trying to get me to
leave, but why the fuck would he leave his office accessible?
Of course, inside the office itself, pretty much every drawer and
filing cabinet, as well as the closet were locked. The only thing
that wasn’t locked down was his laptop on top of the desk. I booted
it up. There was a split screen, one was a login for Shannon, and I
was sure I’d never crack
that
password. But next to it was
another login for “guest”. That must be me. But what was the
password?
If he’d really set up a login for me it would have to be a really
simple password I could easily guess like my name or admin or... I
typed in
password
. The screen changed, and I was in my own
desktop and internet connection.
It was yet another link to the outside world. Another window of
escape I was just going to go ahead and ignore, self-preservation be
damned. Maybe it was the effects of the Merlot, but I knew exactly
what I wanted to do online and it wasn’t ask for help.
I typed in my old university’s web address. The screen loaded
surprisingly quickly. I scanned around the site in the faculty
section. Exactly what I thought. Professor Stevens was still there.
Fucking tenure. Probably still assaulting students and getting away
with it right under everybody’s nose. I could send him an email.
But I didn’t know enough about computer security. It might be
traced somehow back to Shannon. I was sure he had to have some really
beefy internet security, otherwise there was no way he’d give me
access to an internet connection at all, but still.
Besides, email didn’t have the satisfying physicality of a real
paper letter.
I went back upstairs and got the stationery and the magazines I’d
bought earlier and brought them down, trying to will my hands not to
shake. But the adrenaline was surging full throttle now, and I
couldn’t get the tremors to stop. I took several deep breaths and
then went to the sink and splashed some cool water on my face. After
several minutes, I felt myself begin to relax as my body realized I
was in Shannon’s house. Safe.
When I felt calm enough, I put on some gloves from under the kitchen
sink and found a glue stick and some scissors in a drawer in the
kitchen. I began cutting out letters from the magazines and gluing
them onto the stationery.
It took about an hour, but when I was finished, it said: “You must
have been relieved when you thought I was gone for good. Watch your
back. This isn’t over, fucker.”
I folded the crude note, put it in the envelope, sealed it, addressed
it, stamped it. I didn’t put a return address on it, but I was back
to the trouble of the post mark. If I were in Savannah, it might not
be as big of a deal, but I knew I couldn’t mail it from Stoney Oak,
though I
really
wanted to.
I was tempted to get dressed again, sneak out, and walk back to town.
I was sure there would be a mail drop off box somewhere outside one
of the stores, maybe outside the courthouse a couple blocks over from
where I’d been shopping earlier. But Shannon would kill me.
Besides, what was I going to do besides mail a stupid, pointless
letter? I was afraid to even ask Shannon to kill him for me, not just
because it was crossing a line on a whole other level I didn’t know
if I could cope with morally, but because I was afraid he would say
no
.
So maybe my problem with it wasn’t morals at all. Especially now
with my memory back, knowing how Trevor had died safe in the
knowledge that I was
mourning
him. I just didn’t think I
could let someone else get away with hurting me like that. And yet,
so far, Professor Stevens had. He’d gone on with his life in his
cushy little tenured teaching position, smug in the knowledge he’d
gotten away with it.
I wasn’t sure if what I wanted was justice or garden-variety
vengeance, and I didn’t really care. Whatever it was, I wanted it
so much I could taste it. It tasted vaguely like apple cinnamon
bubble bath.
I ended up ripping up the carefully constructed anonymous threat and
throwing it in the trash. I was careful that no part of the address
or name was visible or could be reconstructed. Shannon was rubbing
off on me. I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen and went back to bed.
***
Every night without Shannon, the dreams came, each time more awful
than the night before. I was sure that if he were here—if I were in
his bed—the nightmares wouldn’t have the nerve to disturb my
sleep.
On Sunday morning, Shannon returned.
“Elodie?”
I could tell by the sound of his voice that he wasn’t sure if I was
there. Though surely he couldn’t think I would fill his house with
plants and then run away.
I practically flew down the stairs to meet him even though I was
afraid to see that deadness in his eyes that I was sure he reserved
for most everyone else.
When he saw me, the hint of a smile appeared on his face, and I let
out a breath. He
did
still want me here. So it must have been
a test.
He seemed so much calmer and more relaxed than he’d been before.
I’d always thought of Shannon as calm and methodical, but now, by
its absence I realized there had been a buzz of restless energy below
the surface. He might not give it away overtly, and he might not
react strongly to things, but wheels were turning behind the scenes
all the time. Now it seemed some tightly coiled thing inside him had
been released and a reset button had been pressed.
“How was the job?” I asked.
He seemed caught off guard, surprised that I’d ask or care about
the job
, particularly since I knew what kinds of jobs he did.
“Satisfying. Everything went smoothly. The target knew he was being
hunted. It’s always better when they know. It’s a bigger
challenge. More fun.” He looked nearly giddy. Like a kid on
Christmas morning discovering Santa got him everything he wanted,
even though he’d asked for crazy things he shouldn’t expect to
receive.
I must have made a bit of a freaked-out face at this display of
too
much information
, because he noticed and changed the subject.
“Jesus. It looks like a fucking greenhouse in here.”
“I need them.”
He took a moment to look around, assessing the changes to his space.
“What about the cat? Some of these might be poisonous.”
“They aren’t. Botanist, remember? I know my plants. I considered
that when I bought them.”
“Okay. But you are the one who has to water and take care of them.”
His eyes narrowed. “So you obviously left the house. I see you came
back.”
“I want to be here with you.” It sounded so childish when I said
it out loud. So nakedly hopeful. For a moment, I worried he’d laugh
at me, but it was a wasted worry.
“Good. If you’d run, I would have come after you. I just wanted
to know if I could trust you to leave and return on your own. It’s
simpler if I don’t have to keep you on lock down. Did you say
anything stupid to anybody in town?”
I was sure my face went a little white at that because I could feel
the blood draining out of it.
In contrast, Shannon’s expression darkened. “What did you do?”
The muscle in his jaw clenched.
“N-nothing.”
“What did you say?”
“J-just that I was staying with you. Somebody from town asked me.”
He stared at me for a good, long several minutes as if trying to
determine if he believed me. “And that’s all you said? Nothing
incriminating?”
“N-no.”
“No, what?”
“N-no, Sir.”
In his absence, I’d been cavalier about his anger. I’d forgotten
how completely terrifying he could be if he was displeased about
something. And I wondered again at my sanity in staying or even
wanting to. One would think, with my memories back, that I’d want
to stay the hell away from men, especially men like Shannon. But I
didn’t think Shannon was anything like Professor Stevens or Trevor.
In his way, he was more terrifying than the two of them put together,
but he was scary in the way live volcanoes and tsunamis were scary.
It didn’t feel personal. He was a force of nature to be respected,
but despite everything I knew about him, I just didn’t believe he
was
evil
.
I know that’s stupid. But I couldn’t help how I felt. There
wasn’t a deep core of malevolence in him. He just didn’t have as
strong of emotions or empathy as everybody else. Certainly it could
be turned toward evil, but the military had used it as a tool,
presumably for good. And when Shannon said the people he killed were
bad people, I believed him.
“How much of my money did you spend?”
“M-most of what was in the drawer. You can take it out of my
account. I wasn’t trying to steal from you.”
“That doesn’t matter. Besides all the plants, what did you buy?”
“Umm... snacks, wine, candles, magazines, stationery...”
“Candles? You burned candles in my house?” His voice rose the
most subtle degree higher.
“Y-yes, Sir.”
“Candles drip.”
“I-I know. I didn’t make a mess.” I didn’t mention the fact
that I’d spilled a bunch of dirt all over the house, getting the
plants in and set up. I didn’t want him to have a heart attack. And
I’d cleaned it all up.
His eyes narrowed. “We’ll deal with the candles later. What was
the stationery for?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
So I told him the whole inane thing about the letter to my professor,
just wanting to scare him, and ripping it up and throwing it away
because I didn’t want to risk Shannon’s location. He smiled at
that, obviously pleased. At least I’d done something right. I
didn’t tell him the nightmares were getting worse. I told myself it
was because I didn’t want him to go
do something
about it.
But really, I was afraid if I told him, he would barely react again
and not care and refuse to do anything at all except tell me to stop
whining about it.