Chapter 5: Interlude
The money from the motel didn’t last a week. It vanished into dime bags of white powder that fizzed on their tongues and rented a different, slightly cleaner motel room, and into the sharp, new clothes they bought to try and feel like themselves again. They felt like ghosts in those clothes. The video surfaced online within forty-eight hours. A grainy, shadowed version of their tears on a site they’d never heard of, their names in the title, the comments a screed of emojis and speculation from handles they recognized. Campus was a closed door. Home was an impossible phone call. The only offers that came were through Chad, his messages terse and transactional.
“High-end client. Penthouse suite. Five grand each. He likes pairs.”
The number was astronomical. It was a bridge to somewhere else. A month’s rent somewhere anonymous. It was also a yawning, black hole of a proposition. They didn’t speak about it, not really. They just stared at the number on Laura’s phone screen, the glow illuminating the dark of their latest rented room, and then Laura typed a single letter.
K.
The penthouse was a different planet. The elevator opened directly into it, a symphony of polished concrete, steel, and glass. The city sprawled beyond the windows, a galaxy of indifferent lights. The air was cool, scented with lemongrass and something metallic underneath. A man in a cream-colored suit stood by the grand piano, not playing it, just resting his fingers on the lid. He was older than Vince, younger than their fathers, with silver at his temples and eyes the color of a winter sky. He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes.
“Brittany. Laura. Welcome. A drink?”
His voice was soft, cultured. He moved to the bar, the crystal decanter clinking softly. He didn’t ask what they wanted. He poured three fingers of amber liquid into two glasses. “To new collaborations,” he said, handing them over.
The liquor burned, expensive and smooth. It heated the cold pit in Brittany’s stomach. Laura drank hers quickly, a slight tremble in her hand. The man watched, his gaze cataloging.
“You saw the video?” Laura asked, her voice too loud in the vast, quiet space. A performance of bravado.
“I have,” the man said. “Compelling raw material. A certain… authentic distress. Vince is a competent technician, but he lacks vision. I am a curator.” He gestured to the walls. They were lined with framed photographs, all black and white, all of young women. Some were portraits, serene. Others were more abstract, studies of light on skin, on strange, angular poses. They were beautiful. They were unsettling.
“You’re a photographer,” Brittany said.
“A collector,” he corrected. “The photograph is merely the receipt. The memory. The art is the moment itself.” He set his glass down. “Shall we begin?”
It started conventionally enough. He directed them to the largest velvet sofa, instructed them to kiss. He used a real camera, a heavy digital SLR with a lens as long as his forearm. The shutter clicked, a rapid, professional sound. He moved silently in leather-soled shoes. “Relax into it. Think of the motel. That feeling. Give me that.”
They tried. But the penthouse, his silence, the watching photographs—it leeched the performative heat from them, left something cold and jerky. After a few minutes, he lowered the camera, a faint crease of displeasure between his brows.
“This is derivative. You’re repeating Vince’s homework. I paid for an original piece.”
He walked to a low cabinet, opened it, and withdrew a small, lacquered box. Inside, on a bed of black silk, lay a straight razor, its bone handle yellowed with age, and a pair of surgical steel shears. Next to them, coiled like a small, ivory snake, was a pair of Laura’s own lace panties, filched from her discarded clothes without a sound.
“Laura,” he said, picking up the panties. “Come here.”
Laura’s eyes met Brittany’s. A shared, electric bolt of fear. But the money was on the bar. Two neat stacks. The door was a thirty-yard sprint across polished concrete. He stood between them and it.
She stood, walked to him. He was taller. He smiled again, that empty smile, and looped the lace around her neck, not tight, almost playful. He led her by it, like a leash, to the center of the room, the great window framing her like a specimen.
“The struggle is part of the composition,” he explained to Brittany, as if lecturing. “The transition from life to art is rarely peaceful.”
He pulled the lace taut.
Laura’s hands flew to her neck, fingers scrambling against the delicate fabric that bit deep. A wet, choking sound escaped her, not a scream, a gurgle. Her eyes bulged, fixed on Brittany. They were not glassy now. They were terror-stricken, pleading, utterly present. Her face darkened from pink to a deep, mottled crimson. Her kicks were not theatrical; they were the frantic, dying spasms of an animal, her heels scuffing the perfect floor.
Brittany tried to move. Her legs were concrete. A silent scream locked in her own throat. She watched the light in Laura’s eyes—the Laura who had dared her to do a keg stand, who had whispered secrets in the dark, who had held her chin for the camera—flicker, dim, and go out.
The man held the tension for a full minute after Laura went limp, observing the final tremors with a tilted head. Then he released the lace. Laura’s body dropped like a sack, hitting the floor with a dreadful, soft thud. He nudged her with his shoe, rolling her onto her back. Her face was a grotesque sculpture in plum and blue, tongue protruding slightly.
“Now,” he said, turning to Brittany. Her bladder let go, warmth spreading through her new jeans. “Now we have a genuine palette. Your grief. Your utter aloneness. That is the raw material.”
He picked up the straight razor. It clicked open. The blade caught the city lights, a silver flame.
“Don’t scream. It ruins the audio. Whispers are better. Prayers are best.”
He approached. She couldn’t back away; the sofa was behind her. The first touch of the blade was a cold kiss on her collarbone. Then a sharp, bright line of fire. He cut slowly, meticulously, not deep enough to kill, deep enough to flower. A line down her sternum. A curling vine on her abdomen. He worked around the clothes, slicing fabric away, integrating the ragged edges into his design. Blood welled in the grooves, beaded, ran in hot rivulets down her skin, soaking into the velvet. His breathing was even, measured. He whispered as he worked.
“This curve here… it mirrors the arch of her neck. Do you see? This is connection. This is memory made permanent.”
The pain was a universe. It was the only thing. It was the brushstroke. She whimpered, a thin, animal sound. He paused, pressed the flat of the blade to her lips. “Shhh. You’re ruining it.”
He worked for what felt like hours. She drifted in a haze of agony, watching the blood drip onto the floor, near Laura’s outstretched hand. He finished on her back, carving something intricate between her shoulder blades, a final signature.
“Good,” he breathed, stepping back to survey his work. He was spattered with red. “The bath now. For the final tableau.”
He dragged Laura’s body by the ankles, leaving a dark smear across the pale concrete. Brittany followed, compelled by the razor in his hand, her body a screaming map of open lines.
The bathroom was marble and chrome. A vast, sunken tub. He arranged Laura in it, folding her limbs into a repose, tilting her ruined face toward the ceiling. He turned on the faucets. Cold water. It flowed over her, mingling pink with the blood on her skin and the vivid bruises around her neck.
“Kneel,” he said to Brittany, pointing to the space at the foot of the tub.
She knelt. The water, stained with Laura, soaked through her knees. It was chillingly cold.
He retrieved his camera, mounted it on a tripad in the doorway. The red record light glowed. “This is our final scene. The survivor. Baptized in her friend’s passing. Look at her. Look at what remains.”
Brittany looked at Laura’s waterlogged face. The bubbly personality, the hidden pervert, the best friend. Gone. A thing in a tub. A sound broke from Brittany then, starting as a low moan and rising into a raw, ragged shriek that tore from her carved chest. It was every unscreamable thing from the motel, from the campus, from the moment the lace had tightened.
The man smiled, a real one this time, reaching into his jacket. “Perfect.”
He moved behind her. The scream crescendoed, filling the tiled room. Something cold and sharp pressed just below her ear, against the frantic pulse there.
It was not the razor.
It was the hunting knife from the box, its heavier blade a final, definitive punctuation.
He drew it across her throat in one smooth, powerful motion.
The scream became a wet, gurgling exhale. A scarlet curtain sprayed the marble wall, the rim of the tub, Laura’s lifeless legs. The strength left her body. She slumped forward, her forehead coming to rest on the cool porcelain edge, her eyes wide, staring into the clouding red water around her best friend.
Silence.
Silence, broken only by the drip of water from the faucet and the thick, slow patter of her blood joining the bathwater.
He watched them for a moment, the scene complete, then turned off the camera. The red light died. He carefully wiped the hunting knife’s blade on a monogrammed hand towel, folded it, and returned it to the box. He approached the tub again, his head tilted in assessment. The composition was good, but it lacked a final punctuation.
“The photograph is the receipt,” he murmured to the silent room, echoing his earlier lecture. “But the clay is still warm.”
He knelt beside Brittany’s slumped form, her blonde hair already darkening where it trailed in the water. He pushed her shoulder. She rolled onto her back on the wet floor, empty eyes reflecting the ceiling lights, the ghastly crimson smile at her throat still welling. The intricate carvings he had made across her torso and stomach were vivid, raised wounds against her paling skin.