Tabula Rasa(43)

“What’s worse than being a killer?” For a moment, I almost thought I’d wounded him somehow and felt guilty for it. Then I wondered if he was just manipulating my emotions. Didn’t sociopaths do that?

“I’m not out slaughtering innocents, Elodie. The world is better off without the people I’ve killed. The people I kill deserve to die, and I enjoy killing them. It’s win-win for everybody who matters.”

There it was. Everybody who matters. For now, his family mattered enough that he wouldn’t slaughter them unless pushed into a corner. And the white cat mattered. And I mattered. For now, for whatever reason, I might matter enough that he’d be unwilling to kill me in almost any scenario, but I wasn’t sure how secure being in the everybody who matters circle really was. I wanted to believe it was secure, because God knew I needed something secure. Even if it was amoral.





Chapter Seven





When we got home, Shannon fed the white cat then took me to the basement. He’d cleaned up down here. It was so clean the place nearly sparkled and seemed new. The dark brown hardwood floors were especially shiny and nice as if he’d spent hours down here polishing them to a high finish.

Off my confused expression at the state of the space, Shannon said, “Sometimes I can’t sleep. When I can’t sleep, I clean.”

That explained a lot about why his house was so irritatingly shiny all the time. I wondered how bad his insomnia was and if he’d given me my own room because of it.

“Why don’t you sleep?” I asked.

He shrugged. “My mind stays busy. Planning jobs, thinking of possible things that can go wrong and planning for those contingencies.”

“Oh.” So, not guilt, then. I’d thought perhaps that subconsciously at least he might have some guilt. Somehow I’d convinced myself that deep deep down his work was eating him up inside as well as the fact that I was more or less his hostage. I really wasn’t fully sure on that point. I had felt—up until the other night at least—like his house guest. Now I wasn’t sure what I was beyond... his in all the finality such a proclamation implied.

Shannon crossed the expansive space and sat in a large black leather chair across the room. From this vantage point, he silently and unnervingly watched me. Unconsciously, my fingers strayed to my hair to fix imaginary flyaways. I licked my lips. I became paranoid something was on my face from dinner. I straightened my clothes and shifted my weight.

“What are you doing?” I asked, finally unable to stand the silence any longer.

“I’m studying.”

This went on for another several minutes. After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore and sat on the floor.

“Did I tell you you could sit?” he asked.

“N-no, Sir.” I said, remembering what he’d asked me to call him when we were like this. I quickly stood back up.

“When we are down here, you make no independent decisions. Your only decision is whether or not to obey my orders immediately.”

I didn’t have to ask what would happen if I didn’t. Looking around the basement, I realized this place was even more of an outfitted dungeon than I’d thought. He must have kept some things put away during the party, because now that everything was out on display, I noticed there was some extra bondage furniture I hadn’t noticed the other night.

There was also a big box of toys and implements that hung from shining silver hooks in the exposed brick wall that hadn’t been there during the party. The recessed lights in the ceiling cast bright spotlights on everything. I stood inside the pool of one of those lights. There was an empty unobstructed path between me and Shannon. Was he waiting for me to come to him?

I was about to ask what he wanted from me when he spoke again.

“Are you ready to begin, Elodie?”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Y-yes, Sir.”

He stood and went around behind the chair and retrieved a couple of decorated bags that had clearly come from nice stores. He crossed the room, set the bags down at my feet, then went back to the other end of the room and resumed his reclining.

“Put the lingerie on. You can use the furniture if you need to sit for part of it.”

By this point, the contents of the bag weren’t surprising, though the quality was. Inside one bag was the most supple black leather lingerie: a mini-skirt with slits up the side, and a corset of the same color with material that didn’t cover the breasts. Inside the second bag were thigh-high shiny black heeled boots with laces that looked at though they would take ages to get on.

Shannon watched from across the room, his expression indiscernible. “I would like you to consider this performance art, Elodie. Entertain me.”

I started to remove the glasses.

“No. Leave those on. I like the way they look on you.”

I left them and slowly took off the shoes and dress I’d worn to his parents’ house. Music began to drift through the space from the speakers located near the ceiling at the four corners of the room. When I looked back at Shannon, there was a tiny black remote in his hand. The music was hard to describe—sort of an electric drumbeat with other lighter instruments layered on top.

Almost as if it possessed me, I began to move to it, forgetting to be self-conscious. He’d seen everything already anyway, what was a little strip tease? My panties and bra joined the pile, and then I began to dress in the lingerie as slowly and provocatively as I’d taken the other clothing off.