Tin.Can.Goat

{…Continued}

He furrowed his brow, unsure of what that meant, and wasn’t sure he was following her logic, or her time-line. Being off one, like she was, threw the whole conversation off kilter.

She noticed his confusion, and continued, “The college kid. He was twenty, I was twenty-eight. Don’t judge. I think he liked older girls.”

He wasn’t judging, he thought she was younger than twenty-eight now. This surprised him, as she was closer to his age than he thought.

“We’d dated a while. I thought it was a passing fancy. Something to get his rocks off, but, you know, I still liked the kid. Liked him a lot actually, but even when he asked to marry me, I couldn’t accept. I was that night, you know, the proposal. I guess you could say we’d just finished the sympathy sex for my declination of his want, when you parted the blinds.”

He realized what she was talking about, and said, “That was two.”

“Ok, two,” she said, and propped up on her elbows. “I knew it had to be an early one, as I said, you were real sloppy. Thing is, I was there that night. I see you thinking, and no, I was there, as in there.” She spit the word as if it burned. “I was in the closet putting on a negligee when you burst in. I saw you through the crack in the door. You’d of seen me had you been more observant. Good for me, because it gave me time to kill the lights. I thought of screaming, but somehow I remembered it was a holiday weekend and most kids had gone home. The dorm was pretty much dead at that time. Maybe, one or two other couples, and a single or two, but it was early in the night, and I really think we were the only ones on that particular wing.

“If I’d of screamed, you’d have killed me too. That’s why I didn’t. I watched it all though. I watched him cower back in fear, but then fight you. I’m amazed he didn’t bruise from the wrestling you two did, but you got that chemical rag over his face and knocked him out right quick after that. Must have been a ton of that stuff on there, I could smell it in the closet.

“Thing is, I sat in that closet, smelling that dairy smell, and I watched you, and it scared me. When you hung him up, I thought it was fake, or a joke maybe, but it wasn’t. You put him up there, and slipped the noose around his neck. Then you released him; that’s what scared me most, you letting him go, his weight snapping against the rope, and the jolt jerking him awake. I’d never seen a person fight for their life before, but that way he fought and kicked at you was valiant. But you? You were heartless, scary heartless. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t move back. You stayed right there and stared. Then you patted him on the hip, stuffed that piece of paper into his belt, and walked away.

{To be Continued…}

[527]

{…Continued}

She twirled her hair, and bit at the ends of the longer strands of the braid. She looked at the white walls with the brown trim, and wondered if the room could be any more plain. He stood next to an ugly chair. It was wooden, with the same pattern as the duvet, but covered in a thick clear plastic for its protection.

She wished he sit down, hovering over her like this bothered her. It made her feel as if he thought he were more important, or stronger than her. Thing is, if he truly was either of those, then they both wouldn’t be here now, like this. He’d certainly be unknown, theoretically, and she’d certainly be dead.

He liked the braids she’d put in her hair; they reminded him of cinnamon twists. Though he didn’t want to admit it, the way she reclined on the bed and nibbled the braids and twirled them on her finger aroused him. He’d like to say that he was far too angry from the last night’s business to copulate here and now, but that’d be a lie. Just as he’d like to say that he shouldn’t of slept with her last night, hours ago, when he was more angry than he was human, but that too would be a lie. He liked how the animal took over last night, because the animal liked the sex angry too. One thing he would admit, should he be asked, was that the angrier he was, the better the sex turned out to be, and last night turned out fantastic. Still, he wasn’t about to give into the animal again, not when he was close to getting some answers.

“Get on with it,” he said.

He plopped into a chair, and his weight caused air to explode out from the cushion underneath him.

She turned over on her stomach and dangled her arms off the side of the bed. She looked up at him, and batted her lashes. Knock that shit off, he thought, but he liked it nonetheless, and kept his mouth shut.

“I’ve followed you for a while,” she said. She figured starting with the most shocking thing she could think of would be best, and then work back from that. The problem was, and she had no idea how to solve it, what would be the biggest shock to him? “My guess is that I’ve been following you since victim number four. The Emo-girl with the Mohawk haircut, and lots of piercings.”

He nodded, and said, “Yeah, fourth.” But it was a lie. Emo-girl, Susanna, was number five. This meant she had missed one. That was good, but still, he was nervous. His hands shook, and he sat on them to steady the shaking.

“Ok, fourth then, that’s what I thought. Before that one, before now even, I wasn’t real sure she was number four, or if I had missed one or two. I’m glad I was right, that I did know about that one like I did. That means the first one was really your first, and as sloppy as it was, there is no reason it couldn’t be. You didn’t even clear the room.”

{To be Continued…}

[538]

{…Continued}

“She’s watching,” said the blackbird. It had its head tilted to the side, and he couldn’t tell if the damn thing was watching her, or listening for him to take a swat at the damn thing. It had crossed his mind, to just reach out, grab that bird, and throttle the hell out that feathered fiend. He imagined choking it, and taunting it. He’d urge the smart ass to sprout some of its weedy comments whilst turning blue.

Don’tcha turn my blackbird blue.

He wondered if a bird truly turned blue under its rachis and barbules when choked, and the idea of doing such broke his thoughts, and he turned and glanced at the window. She stood there; curtains parted as a playmate would, and stared at him in the car. “Time to go,” he said, and unbuckled his seat belt.

“I think I’ll stay,” said the blackbird.

“No, you’re coming to. You’ve a part in this, and I’m aiming to find out just what that is. Besides, it’s time I found a lot of things out.”

“Such as.”

“Such as everything.”

*****

She closed the curtain when she saw him open the car door. Weights sewn into the bottom corners made the curtains clack against the wall. “I think he’s coming back in,” she said. The television station flashed scenes of Hitchcock’s Vertigo across the white-washed walls of the room. She turned off the television set, and looked at the roach with a sad expression on her face. “Wanted to watch that,” she said, and walked over and sat on the chair she’d sat on hours before. “Ready or not,” she said.

He knocked—unsure of why he would do so when it was his room to start with—and opened the door. He walked through, stepping lightly over the threshold and into the main bedroom. She sat on the bed, legs crossed, and her fingers tapped the duvet cover.

“Loo-cee, yous got sum splainin’ to do,” said the blackbird, from the nightstand on the window side of the bed.

“Shut up,” he said.

She blinked as if startled.

“Not you,” he said. He began to say, “the bird”, but changed his mind, and said, “Never mind.”

She shifted on the bed. “I’m glad you came back.”

He shrugged, and rolled his teeth behind his gums. “I’m not sure yet myself. I nearly stayed where I was at, but after hearing you the past day, or so, I knew I’d probably fucked something up again.” She shook her head. “Yeah, I swear to much, I know. Don’t do it on purpose, it just slips out now and then. More now, than then, it seems.”

“Listen—”

“No, stop there. Tell me everything. From the start, I want to hear it all. Not excuses. Not alibis. Just what you know and why you know it.”

She leaned back; propped herself up on two brown pillows, laced in yellow flowers. “You’re going to need a seat,” she said. “Because this is a long story.”

{To be Continued…}

[503]

{…Continued}

The bird peeked from behind the curtain, smiled in that crazy way birds do. It reminded her of the crows on Dumbo, and she expected it to spout whimsical nonsense, but it didn’t. She held out her hand to the bird, but it ignored that and lit upon the nightstand instead.

“Been a while,” she said.

The bird cocked its head, and said, “Been a while.”

“Knock it off,” she said.

“Knock it off,” the bird repeated.

“Copy me again, and I’ll show your cockroach friend what it’s like to live up inside your butt.”

“What did I do?” The cockroach crawled out from beneath the covers of the bed, and it looked up at her. Its face showed a panged reaction, but she knew it was bunk.

“Guilt by association,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“For us to know, and you—”

“Shut the hell up,” she said, interrupting the blackbird. “Last time. I swear to God, last time.”

The blackbird chirped, then dropped from the bed and hopped to the window. It chirped again, then disappeared behind the curtain. She turned to the cockroach, “Now, tell me, where did he go?”

*****

He stopped the car outside the parking lot, and looked at the window. Light flashed between the curtain, and for a moment he caught sight of her standing there in what he thought was her nakedness, but she pulled the curtains closed too quickly for him to be certain.

“Still too thin for my tastes,” he said, and pulled the car into a parking spot next to a large, leafless oak. He hadn’t heard from the insect or its feathered friend in quite some time, and he started to suspect that he had imagined it all, but the cockroach peeked up from between the seats, and said, “Wait here,” then it disappeared.

He waited, and after a couple of minutes, he heard a sound in the trunk. “Hello bird.”

“Good day mate!” the bird replied, from the trunk; it fluttered and pecked at the trunk’s metal wall.

“Come up front would you please,” he said, and the bird hopped onto the seatback next to his shoulder. “We’re going to have us a chat.”

The blackbird nodded and bobbed, and said, “Yep, yep.”

*****

She put down her hand palm up, but the cockroach circumvented it, and crawled up close to her bent knee instead.

She thought of smashing the thing, getting it away from her forever, but deep down, she didn’t think that it would actually work. Its silence these past few hours had been a blessing, but now that it reappeared, she had questions for it. Starting with, “The blackbird, it’s gone?”

“Yes,” said the roach.

“Good,” she said. She stood and walked to the window. She parted the curtains, and looked out through the ice-tinted glass. She saw the car, and she saw him in it. He sat behind the wheel, his head turned to the right, and he seemed to be talking to himself, or someone that she couldn’t see.

{To be Continued…}

[506]

{…Continued}

He resisted at first, but when she slid her hand down his pants, he gave up fighting, and gave into her advances. He jumped when she called out, and her less-than-mild choice of words took him aback, and made concentration, or even simple enjoyment, difficult.

Mouth of a sailor, he thought. He’d thought he’d heard the blackbird give a whistle and giggle, but he passed it off as nerves, and concentrated more on ignoring her low-pitched cries of ‘oh god’, ‘oh shit’, ‘yes’, and other colorful anecdotes she let slip.

She awoke hours later, and he was gone.

It was dark outside, and a sliver of moonlight sliced the curtains in two, illuminated the carpet at the end of the bed. She pulled the bed covers up around her neck, and rolled over, turned on the bedside lamp. She blinked at the brightness, and held her hand at her brow, as if blocking the sun from her sensitive eyes.

She called out to him, but he did not answer, so she draped her legs over the side of the bed, and stood up; the covers fell about her feet, and pushed air that rushed up and spread the soft linen curtains open, exposed her nakedness to the rain-soaked parking lot outside.

She blushed, and quickly pulled the curtains closed. She searched for her clothing, and found her t-shirt stuffed between the nightstand and the wall. She pulled the shirt over her head, and stepped a foot into one of the holes in her panties, and slid them out from under the bed.

She walked towards the bathroom, pulling her panties up over her hips. She turned on the light; all of his toiletries were missing.

“Son of a biscuit,” she said, and slammed her fist against the bathroom light switch. The lights dimmed slowly, like a low-burning candle.

She was worried, but not because he was gone, but because she was stuck there; possibly with the bill. She opened all of the drawers in the room, and checked under the bed, in the closet, and behind the doors, but nothing of his was left in the room. It was as if he’d never been there at all. She wondered how she could have slept through him packing everything up and walking out, but after several minutes of worry, she gave up wondering and sat down on the end of the bed.

She turned and stared at the window. She could have sworn she’d heard someone giggling.

She turned on the television, and tuned it to a classic movie station that claimed a marathon of Hitchcock movies were showing all night long. She laid back on the bed, propped her head on a pillow, and watched Jimmy Stewart wrestle mentally with two students in Rope. She sighed; she’d seen the movie several times in her life, and although she like it, thought it was one of his best, she was more in a The Man Who Knew Too Much type of mood.

She heard the giggle again, but did not turn. Instead, she muted the television, and said, “I know you’re there blackbird. Come out and stop messing with me.”

{To be Continued…}

[529]

{…Continued}

She noticed he hadn’t said anything, or rustled the papers for a couple of minutes. She’d assumed he was reading one, but then she thought it was a bit too quiet in the room. If he were reading, surely she would’ve heard him turning the pages. She cracked open her eyes, and peered out at him between the slits.

He stared at her, and he hated her. Though he wanted to leap up and choke the living hell out of her, he controlled himself through the simple fact that he knew it would be pure stupidity to do so, right there and right then. He held the letters in his hand and he squeezed the pile when she opened her eyes.

She felt a tinge of panic and picked her head off the wall. He stared at her, and though she was sure he wouldn’t do anything in the room, the way he stared set her on edge. She knew he’d be a bit upset, but she wasn’t prepared for him to be as angry as he looked at that moment with the bunch of papers crumpled in his fists. She pulled herself up in the chair, and pushed herself back with her feet, and stared back at him, ready to bolt if needed.

Good, he thought. She looked frightened and it made him feel better. He released his grip on the papers; some fell to the floor about his feet. She looked at the papers as they fell, but he didn’t. He thought it best to concentrate on her features. He wanted to be ready to grab her, should she try to make a dash for the door.

She pulled her hands from the arms of the chair. Her palms felt wet, but they weren’t, so she passed it off as stress. “I can tell you’re angry,” she said. He looked at her, but didn’t respond, so she continued, “Yeah, I get it.”

He threw the papers at her, and she jumped, uttered a surprised yelp. “I don’t get it,” he said. “You say you’re not a cop. But it still feels like I’m getting screwed here. Do you realize what you’ve done? I mean, really, do you really know what you’ve done? I spent years building up my reputation, and you’ve ripped it out from under me.”

She leaned forward, grabbed a few of the papers and threw them back at him; he uttered a surprised yelp. “Listen,” she said. “If it wasn’t for me grabbing these things from where you’d left them, you’d be screwed by now. Completely up crap creek, but without a boat, or a paddle.”

She stood up, and he flinched. He watched her walk around the edge of the bed and stop near the curtain. She pulled at the fabric and peeked outside. “That’s stupid,” he said. “Your thing you said there, I forget what it’s called, but it’s just stupid. For one thing, it’s up shit creek. For the other thing, I’m totally fucking lost. You find me. You drive me around. You buy me a disgusting hotdog, with the bun moisture-melted to the meat. You drive me to your house, and pray over a fucking cat you hate. Drive me back to my hotel, all the while promising me that I’m going to ‘love’ something that you have to show me. Here I’m thinking it’s your tiny tits, but you bring me a stack of my notes from murders I’ve committed over the past four years.” He breathed deep and stood up, advanced on her. “Now, I’m thinking you need to show me what it is you really want, and I’m thinking you better show me pretty damn quick, because at this moment, at this time, I’m really ready to fuck you up.”

She laughed at him. She laughed until tears polluted her eyes, then she bum-rushed him, pushed him onto the bed, and kissed him.

{To be Continued…}

[658]

{…Continued}

The papers she held looked familiar to him; too familiar, and he felt his hands shake.

She sensed his anticipation, and said, “Yep.”

Yep? Yep? He didn’t like the way she laid the word out there as if he were being presented the Christmas gift he’d asked all year for. “What is that?” he asked.

She held the package out to him, “Your notes.”

She cracked a childish grin that raised her cheekbones beneath her temples. He looked at the package, she held it would a knight presenting the Holy Grail to his king, and he looked at her with that silly smile penciled onto her face. “What did you do?”

She frowned, and tossed the package onto his lap. She slumped into the chair opposite him, and slid down until her head lay against the wall behind her. “I thought you’d be a little more surprised, than shocked. I saved your butt you know. Thirteen times. Fourteen if you count this one.”

She pulled a folded paper from her inside coat pocket and threw it at him.

He watched it flip and then drop, like a poorly designed paper airplane onto his boot. He knew what that paper—that note—was. He recognized it before she’d even thrown it, and if he felt shock at first, he definitely now felt anger. The paper was the note from the girl’s apartment earlier that day. He picked it up; unfolded it. A piece of blue fabric fell onto his lap. He picked it up, and matched it to the hole in the fabric of his pants. The piece was a near-perfect match.

“It fell through the grating,” she said, he eyes closed, face pointed to the ceiling. “I picked it up just before you rained that jar of bird seed on my head.” She looked at him, frowned. “Then, of course, was the thing with the jar.” She closed her eyes. “Sloppy.”

He pulled at the red ribbon wrapped so pretty around the bunch of paper, but accomplished in simply pulling the cord into a tight knot where it x’d.

“Damn,” he said, and pulled at the cord until it snapped. He flipped to the first paper.

“Chronological,” she said, her eyes closed.

He opened the paper, and scanned the words. He couldn’t remember the original exactly, but this felt, and read, as near perfect a copy as he remembered. “You’re a fucking cop.”

She sighed. “Hardly. My motivation is less, well, motivating.”

“That’s how the cops didn’t show.”

“Yeah, I’m an undercover that shooed the cops away, so I could play. Is that right?”

Seemed plausible to him.

“Sloppy,” she said, and paused at the muffled voices of a family passed outside in the hallway. She continued, her voice softer, about halfway between normal and a whisper. “Thirteen times sloppy. Fourteenth time was just stupid, with a bit of sloppy mixed in.”

He thumbed through the papers. She was right, as far as he could tell the notes were in chronological order. The thing was, she was missing a few, and he looked up at her and smiled.

{To be Continued…}

[518]