Tabula Rasa(38)

“Would you if you could?”

“I don’t know.”

I wasn’t sure how long he was going to put up with this probing, but I wanted to find out as much as I could while he tolerated my questioning. I had no way to know that anything he told me was true, but given everything else I’d experienced, I knew that sometimes a story was all you needed—something that made sense. And I desperately wanted to find a way to make sense of who Shannon was and how he got to be that way.

“W-when did you kill for the first time?” I asked.

“Not until the military. I couldn’t afford college, and my parents couldn’t afford it either. Instead of taking on debt I might never get out of, I decided to join the armed forces. I wasn’t scared of anything, so I thought I might be useful. Turned out I was right. They test you in all sorts of ways, and they’re always watching, trying to figure you out. I fit a certain profile. I was a tool they could use. A weapon. I could be put to use doing the less savory jobs that most other soldiers can’t handle or can’t justify, the things most private citizens would be horrified by but which still must be done to keep us free and safe.”

I waited, wondering if he would say more. He seemed to be weighing whether he should or not. Finally, he did.

“The first time I killed someone, I felt... something. It was this rush and this sense of joy. Before that moment everything had felt dull and dead, but in the kill, I came alive. When I got out of the service, college was forgotten. I started taking lucrative contracts in the private sector and never looked back.”

The way Shannon described taking a human life was not unlike how a normal person might describe the experience of eating a really good hamburger or going on an amazing trip to Europe.

“If I hadn’t begged you not to make me face the police and you hadn’t had to dispose of Trevor’s body, would you have let me go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because I made you feel something?”

“Yes. You made me feel pity. I’ve never felt pity for another living soul, not ever. It’s a f*cking awful feeling, but it’s a part of the set of experiences I don’t have and which make it impossible for me to relate to people in any real way. But the idea of killing you... I didn’t get a rush from it.”

Lucky for me.

“What about the cat?”

“I feel a sort of detached affection for her. But before you came along, it was the strongest emotion toward another living being I’d ever felt that didn’t involve that being’s death.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?” Just because I asked, didn’t mean he had any obligation to answer, and I was kind of surprised he was going along with my questioning in the first place.

“I no longer have anything left to lose because I’ve decided I’m never letting you go.”

I’d suspected as much, and he’d said something close to this before, but the word never hadn’t entered into it. There was a finality and stubborn resolve to that never that caused the tightness inside me to finally relax. Because I believed him. He wasn’t letting me go. And he wasn’t going to kill me—at least not tonight. And whatever else he was planning to do... he was probably right that I’d like it because apparently I was a freak like that. Like him in my own twisted way. Yet another reason to not want to remember my past.

I closed my eyes and against all reasonable common sense, fell asleep in the only arms that felt safe to me.





***





When I woke, I was back in my room down the hall. Shannon must have carried me back once I’d fallen asleep. The clock on the nightstand read ten o’clock, and sun was streaming in through the windows. How had I slept so late? I must have been out eleven hours at least. I rolled over, stretching, startled to find Shannon leaning against the door frame watching me.

“You’ll want your own room for sleep. You’ll need a space that is yours to process your experiences.”

Even though he’d been decent to me up to this point, somehow everything he said managed to sound terrifying with about thirty layers of meaning tucked inside them, half of which I was sure I would never fully unravel until it was far too late.

There was an abrupt buzzing sound, and he retrieved a shiny red phone from his pocket. It wasn’t a burner like the one I normally saw him talk on. It seemed quite nice and expensive, definitely not the kind of phone you ditched in a nondescript undisclosed location every two weeks.

“Mom, hi.”

I could hear an animated female voice on the other end of the call.

“I know. I’ve been working,” Shannon said. “I know. I know. I’m free tonight.”

The woman on the other end squealed. An obvious sign of approval. But then something that sounded like nagging started.

“I found someone,” Shannon said, interrupting her tirade.

Utter pin drop silence on the other end for nearly a full minute. Then there were more animated questions I couldn’t decipher from across the room.

“We’ll see,” Shannon said, noncommittally. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He put his phone back in his pocket and regarded me with something like amusement. “How would you like to meet my parents? You’ll be playing the role of my girlfriend.”