Colin comes to me and begins undoing the chains from my hands. He is so gentle and loving as he touches each of my wrists. He kisses them before lowering them to the sides of my body. Annie wasn’t able to stop the bleeding of the cut, so he picks me up and carries me up the stairs. Colin halts in the kitchen and places me on an old wooden chair that might break from the weight of my foreboding. Fear is creeping up every side of me like vines of a weed that grow, even in the dead of winter. It is impossible to think that this situation will end in anything but disaster.
Annie is talking and complaining about cooking our dinner and what I am trying to pull, but as Colin and I look in one another’s eyes, he ignores her. I can’t be happier about that. I have him under my spell, just like Lucia never failed to do. Annie won’t penetrate this. No one ever does.
“Are you actually going to believe that woman? She doesn’t want to have a fucking bubble bath with you. And a loofa? Are you fucking kidding me? She’s playing you, Colin. Don’t be so fucking stupid. She’s playing you so bad that…”
It all happens so fast. It’s like an old movie reel flying through black and white images of a guy flailing and a woman pointing her finger out at him like she is putting him in her place.
Except in the old comedy movies, there aren’t any murders. Not real ones, anyway. One minute she is bitching at him, telling him he is a stupid idiot and the next minute, he has her pulled in a choke hold and the one slice across her neck has me screaming at the top of my lungs.
Annie’s face registers shock in her last second of her life. Colin looks pissed, but as soon as her body drops, his knife is wiped off on his black jeans, his shit eating, smug grin is back in place, and he is delicately taking my hands so we can get to that bath.
“Hush, baby. It was a long time coming. She was needier than most girls I am with. It was getting pretty annoying,” he says in a tender voice, drawing me into a hug. “She’s in a better place now. She didn’t want me to be with you in the first place. Didn’t you see that? We saved her from that pain.” His voice shows no strain. No emotions from killing Annie. Nothing. His warped mind is focused on me, while I cannot help but pray for Annie’s soul. That somehow she truly is in a much better place than I am. That any of us are for that matter.
“But you…you killed her. You sliced open her neck,” I say, fighting the urge to throw up. I need to vomit. I need to heave and sob, but if I do anything out of control, he might get tired of me, too. I can’t do that. I have to stay in character. I have to stay strong. It’s the only way I will survive.
“You don’t have to worry about me, baby. I’ve done that quite a few times and I haven’t been caught yet. We will be together. Now, let me get you into the bath and I will clean this up. Once I am done, I will join you in the tub.”
He runs down to the basement without notice and immediately I look around for a phone. I know if I went outside right now with this cut and no pants, I wouldn’t make it far. I see a mustard looking phone hanging from the wall and I plow toward it with all my strength.
Picking up the receiver, two things happen at once – Colin is back up the stairs staring at me with the phone at my ear and I realize the phone is dead. They don’t have a working land line to this property. Of course they don’t.
“Come on, Luca. Do you think I’m that stupid to have a working phone out here? We had all of that checked before I brought you here. No one knows you are here. No one will ever find you here. Don’t fight it. Just love me and everything will be okay. I get that you’re frightened, that this is a shock to you, but it will be okay,” he says, as he hands me the first aid kit in his hands. He looks like he is disappointed in me. That can’t be good.
I take the kit with shaking hands and quietly ask where the bathroom is. I can’t be in the same room with Annie’s bleeding body anymore. There is no hope for her. All I can do is tend to my cut and take a bath. Maybe if I pretend to become hysterical, he will inject that medicine in me again so I can sleep.
The last thing I ever want to do is have sex with Colin, pretending to be Lucia or not.
I cringe, stifling back my cries after cleaning myself up and stepping into the tub. I laugh uncontrollably. Why? I have no idea. I shouldn’t even be in this tub with a gash so deep. Dear god, put me into some kind of septic shock. End my life now, please.
“No.” The sweet sound of my mother’s voice embarks my thoughts. “I did not raise a quitter. I raised a strong confident woman who fights for what she wants. Works hard. Your father did not work his fingers to the bone for our daughter to give up. Fake it, Luca. Fake being in pain until you heel.”
I scramble to sit upright. Water sloshes all over the floor. That’s it. I can fake it. I’ve been faking two different lives for years. Smug. Confident. I can do this. For the last time in my life, I can become two different people. I can become both of her. Only the other woman will not be daydreaming about staying with a man her body demands to have, this time she will be planning his death.
TWENTY -THREE
When Annie died that one night, about three weeks ago, I tried to start counting the days I’ve been here at the farm with Colin. I count twenty-three so far. Each day is a bit better and a bit more hopeless. He is mostly good and happy to me, but then he has little tantrums and he will cut some part of my body. My carefully thought out plan about trying to kill Colin has been demolished. I’m trapped. Every time he cuts me I grow weaker. Slowly to begin knocking on the devil’s door, to begin my life in eternal hell.
We go through a ritual of cleaning and bandaging the wounds. He gives me a bath with classical music, bubbles, and candles. I throw a bit of a hysterical fit and then he has to drug me. It’s all very systematic. This is my new life.
I have come to realize that I am in Iowa. Colin’s grandparents were dairy farmers and when they died back in the 1990s, no one wanted the farm. It sits on hundreds of acres of land. The kicker is they were his step-grandparents, so they didn’t even share in his last name. No one will be able to trace me here, even if the police find out Colin took me.
I have absolutely no idea what happened to Heath. My best thought is he made it a mile out into the fields, dropped, and died of the cold and his wounds. If he got anywhere, I know for a fact the police would have asked him about me. I know in my heart he would have said something to them, even if he hates every little inch of me.
I try not to think about the sex I have with Colin. It never lasts long and where it isn’t the most terrible sex I’ve ever had, it is wretched because I don’t want it, even though I pretend I do. It’s all part of this exhausting play I am preforming for him and God, I don’t know how much longer I can do it. I want my life back. I want my apartment, I want my job, and I want Camden. If by some miracle he is alive, he will never want me again after the things I have done, the sexual fantasies Colin has had me play out with him. I scrub my body nearly raw after each time, trying to rid myself of the experience.
Dread bubbles up in my chest, because deep down inside, I know Camden is dead. If he was alive, he’d be here, finding me, and saving me. But he isn’t. No one comes for me. Day after day, while Colin goes to the store or out to do something for our life together, I look for televisions, radios, anything I can find in the house to give me a gateway out, but there is nothing. This place might as well be in the middle of the 1800s.