Bea
Bile surged up my throat, painting the powder room toilet bowl in Seth and Tabitha’s ocean-front mansion with my vomit. I clutched the porcelain in my sweating fingers as I retched and moaned, crouched over the toilet, alone and miserable in the middle of a dinner party.
I didn’t want to be here.
My stomach wouldn’t stop churning like the undertow of the Pacific Ocean outside the bathroom window, tossing and heaving up the walls of my gut. I was sick with uneasiness, with this foreboding sensation that slicked my skin with clammy sweat.
I couldn’t shake the sense that the serial killer was just playing with us all. Setting the stage for his greatest act yet like some demented theatre troubadour. He’d almost burned down an entire church, something that should have been sacred to a truly religious man, just to prove his point. He wasn’t a cut-out killer from a textbook in my violent crimes class. He was a fully realized nightmare with complexities so vast, I found myself terrified just contemplating his next step.
All I knew for sure was that he seemed to know me, and more, he wanted to play this game with me. Aside from the stripper in downtown Vancouver and the woman on the reservation, every murder could be linked to me, and this latest crime, though without casualties, was no exception.
I thought, maybe, he was growing bored with me. Tired of my inaction, waiting for some specific reaction he felt I should be having as a result of the crimes, he was starting to deviate from his plan.
Deviation was worse than premeditated murder. Case in point, an entire church filled with people versus a single victim.
Bile surged up my throat, my stomach cramping so hard I cried as I threw up the last dregs of my lunch. Finished, I spat into the bowl, flushed, and washed my face and hands with icy water to revive myself for the rest of what was turning into a very strange night at the Linley's.
Truthfully, even though I loved Tabby and Seth, I never really enjoyed spending time with them together. It had always been my philosophy that a couple should bring out the best in each other, but some strange alchemy occurred when the Linleys were together that tarnished both of their good natures. They seemed tense and forceful, exerting too much energy just by being in the same room. This was especially true that night.
Or maybe it was the entire atmosphere of the dinner that had my teeth on edge. The Linleys were gracious hosts—everyone gathered at the beautifully set dining room table was dressed in elegant winter finery, laughing lightly as they drank fine wine and spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the murmur of Christmas music playing. It was all so civilized, so prettily manufactured, and so utterly fake.
I could feel the festering ugliness under the proceedings, the way Margaret Huxley kept shooting me narrow little looks as if my presence offended her, the way Tabby kept touching the golden cross around her neck as if atoning for a sin she hadn’t yet committed.
Only Seth seemed nonplussed, as charismatic and lovely as always. He carried the conversation even when his wife trailed into silence and entertained my mother with story after story that made her giggle like a teenager.
I walked back to the dining room to reclaim my seat in the guest of honour space to the left of Seth at the head of the table. Usually, I loved to hear stories of Seth’s work at the hospital, but that night, I was worn down by the events of the day and distracted by the violet and blue bruises on my knees I’d tried to hide under my sheer black tights. My fingers frequently crept beneath the table linen to press into the bruises, loving the little tinge of pain as a reminder of my debauchery the night before with Priest.
It secretly thrilled me to wear the marks of such a man at a table such as this. If these people knew how much I loved to be choked, spanked, and generally fucked hard by a man who was devoutly atheist and entirely criminal, they would have had me committed for madness.
Maybe I was mad.
The problem with “madness” as a general concept was that there wasn’t a base model for a “normal” psychological makeup. Each person was so uniquely different, each society with its own rules and cues, each culture with its norms and penalties meant there was no way to define normal. Yet so many people made a study of abnormal psychology. It was so much easier to focus on the “other” than what similarities we might conceive between them and us.
This, of course, was the problem with the serial killer the newspapers were calling “The Prophet of Death”. Unoriginal and harmful. Giving serial killers a nickname was a horrible idea because notoriety for a killer like this who staged his victims was giving him exactly what he wanted.