Tabula Rasa(66)

I could sit by and let Shannon hurt Stevens. I wasn’t sure I could sit by and watch him kill an innocent. But Shannon didn’t do loose ends.

“Yes, I’m down here!” Professor Stevens shouted from the ground. “Go get help! Call the police!”

Somehow during all this and perhaps even while I’d been waffling on whether or not I was staying to watch, Stevens had managed to work the knots behind his back loose. He lunged for Shannon and the two of them started to struggle on the ground, knocking the gun off the table. Shannon kicked it to a far corner so the professor couldn’t get to it.

Then that stupid f*cking bouncing blonde innocent TA bounded down the stairs to investigate like the dumbass in every horror movie.

“Professor Stevens?”

It only took her a moment to take in all the necessary details of the scene and to process what was going on.

“Call the police, you stupid girl!” Stevens shouted.

I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell him talking to her like that was going to motivate her to help him. She hesitated for just a moment before she ran up the stairs. Shannon still struggled with the professor.

Stevens was an old guy, and Shannon was young and strong, but it was amazing the kind of fight he could manage with so much adrenaline surging through him.

I stood frozen for only a microsecond. And in that tiny window of time it seemed like everything stopped as my mind ran through all possible options. Shannon couldn’t go deal with her; he was busy with the professor. She was going to call the police. I was sure she was. I’d seen the determination on her face.

Without wasting another precious second, I grabbed a large knife off the table and ran up the stairs after her. She hadn’t stopped upstairs to use the phone. Instead, she’d run outside. Of course. Only a few blocks from the university. The main campus security station was on this end of the campus. She’d be safe there.

I chased her down the road, toward the light and hope of the school. Realizing I was gaining on her, she got off the road and darted into the overgrown backyard of the abandoned house. I took a leap for her, tackling her to the ground. I clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and waking a neighbor. I was paranoid someone might already be up and looking out their window.

Her eyes were wide, pleading with me, as the hand holding the knife seemed to act of its own accord.





***





I sat in Professor Stevens’ basement, the cold sweeping over me, the tremor moving through my limbs like a serpent. I was going into shock. Didn’t we do this already? Shannon had gone back to laser focus. He chopped up the drained bodies as if he were cutting meat in a butcher shop. This time he wrapped them in plastic he’d brought and took them out to the car for later incineration.

I felt as though I kept zoning in and out of time. Time as I perceived it was like a bunch of tubes I kept hopping in and out of. Sometimes it moved faster sucking me through and causing life to blur around me. Sometimes it moved so slow that I zeroed in on the tiniest details—like the incongruity of the delicate hand-painted teapot that had been upstairs on Professor Stevens’ fireplace mantel. What would a man like Professor Stevens want with such a thing?

I’m missing a few pieces as well. There are gaps. I just sat there, staring at the blood on my hands, shaking, moving in and out of the surreality. I worried somebody else would show up unexpectedly. How high would the body count have to get for us to get away tonight?

I’d just wanted Stevens gone. Not her. But I had to. I couldn’t let Shannon go to prison. Would I have gone to prison as well just for being here? I didn’t know. Probably. I had clearly been helping. I couldn’t pretend to be the victim.

Killing him, making him pay, had seemed like the perfect fantasy, the best ending. The deserved ending. And yet, I was right back where I’d started, staring at all the blood, trying to remember how to breathe in and out, how to make my heart beat, how to feel something besides completely numb and terrified of the killer I found myself alone with.

I couldn’t even decide if I was glad Stevens was dead. The event was too clouded by the unexpected intruder, by the sickening slice of the knife. I should have felt relief he was gone. Instead, there was this complication. This complication that Shannon seemed perfectly calm and serene about. I was sure I would never feel calm and serene again.

I had no idea what had happened with Stevens during my absence. I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten the TA back to the basement by myself. I couldn’t remember anything from the moment I’d started stabbing. All I knew was that there were two bodies, and I’d been responsible for the innocent one.

Now I was on to worrying if we’d get away with it. It would be the cruelest irony for that bastard to get away with what he’d done to me only for me to be punished for his murder. My mind kept spinning around and around all these things, and in the end, I decided Stevens’ early departure from this world hadn’t been as satisfying as I’d hoped—like longing for a favorite food, only to find it not as sweet or rich or delicious as you remembered. But disappointment after dessert was a wholly different thing from disappointment that killing someone hadn’t turned out as great as you’d imagined—that the fantasy couldn’t live up to the reality, that unless you were someone like Shannon, it would infect your soul and begin to rip it apart from the inside like a closet full of tiny moths quietly eviscerating clothing.