These breaks from the monotony are welcome surprises, like bits of treasure. Since that night when I spoke to him and he stormed off, he doesn't sit around watching me much, instead, he comes in only to take what he needs from me, or give me my essentials.
Lately, during the few seconds it takes him to put his clothes back on, I have been hastily begging him for things that I believe will help me long term: books, magazines, music, origami—fucking anything. I'm starting to feel different, like my mind is slipping in a way. I have no stimulus other than fucking him, and I'm afraid eventually something will snap. I think about him all the time. What he's doing out there. If he's still going to houses. If he's been with other people. I think about what will happen if he gets into an accident and dies out there. I will slowly starve to death and no one will ever know what happened to me. My mind has to breathe, to see a glimpse of a world that has to do with anything but him.
He hasn't heeded those pleas, and the newspaper might just be another veiled message, but it's full of stuff I can read.
So when I see this paper, I almost trip rushing out of bed to devour its contents, ignoring the small breakfast waiting for me on my bedside table. Naturally, the first thing I do is look for stuff about me. I skim front to back, back to front, multiple times. Nothing, not one fucking article. Based on the date on the paper, if it's even today's issue, I have been here for about four months.
A tear trickles from my eye, but I wipe it before it can trigger a flood. I am numb to my former life. It's just a memory at this point. I read the entire thing front to back, not leaving one article—even the most boring financial crap—unread. It's funny how I used to bitch about all the textbooks I would have to read for school. What I wouldn't give now for an anatomy textbook to pass the hours.
Setting the paper down, I feel as satisfied as someone who has just consumed a gourmet meal.
But as I sit there eating my breakfast, staring at the beam of sunlight that pours down to my bed, a dull panic sets in.
Will Night visit me today? Do I have to face another day trapped in these walls with nothing but silence?
So I start humming to myself. A song I used to sing to myself as a little girl.
Jimmy crack corn I don't care,
Ole Massa gone away.
My head bobs side to side, then I tap my feet. But I bore with that after a while.
“What the fuck are you going to do today, Vesp?” I ask. “Stare at this wall? Or this wall?” I point to identical adjacent walls. “No, you'll just wait here for the psychopath with the annoyingly perfect body and terrifying temper…” I let the words drift away, talking is boring when you're alone. My attempt at comic relief isn't working on me, only reminding me how tragic this all is.
I look around the small, but well-appointed space, as if something new will pop up. Of course, nothing does. Nothing ever happens unless he does.
So there's only one thing I can do at this point with myself, one way to entertain my idle hands and mind.
I watch Vesper, eager to see her reaction when she realizes that she's pretty much forgotten. Her case is already as cold as the brook running behind the cabin. The flyers stapled to every tree and telephone pole have become faded and tattered. She now gets an infrequent mention in the news or an occasional small article. But while her case was headline news for the first couple of months, there hasn’t been anything to report. They don’t have a body, they don’t have leads, and The Night Stalker has gone dormant. And if there’s no new information, you don’t make the paper.
Last time I gave her the paper, she had a little meltdown. Knowing what I know now about her relationship with her mother, I think I know what part of the article set her off. I watched that raw moment, fascinated by the different stages of emotions as she reconciled her mother had already proclaimed her dead.
I thought it was odd too, to be honest. Most people are quite the opposite. Their loved one is dead and they medicate themselves with hopeful denial. When they finally believe their daughter is dead they usually wait before publicly announcing it. But her mother seems to have given up on her almost as quickly as she was snatched.
This time she wipes her eye once. Just one tear. I have tasted those tears, consumed her grief. She's running lower on them now, usually stone-faced unless we are in the heat of fucking. Then her face contorts and animates with pleasure, pain, and fear. That one night she told me the story of the necklace, I got something in between that. I liked it. I hated it. It's too much of a gamble to let her get under my skin like that again.