Take Me With You by Nina G. Jones
Here’s a music playlist to help set the mood:
Every Breath You Take – The Police How Deep is Your Love – Bee Gees Night Fever – Bee Gees You Should Be Dancing – Bee Gees It’s Too Late – Carole King You’re So Vain – Carly Simon Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack I’m Not In Love – 10cc So Far Away – Carole King Can’t Stand Losing You – The Police She’s Not There – The Zombies
Click here to listen to this playlist on Spotify.
All of them.
Seriously. This is not a romance. This is not for the faint of heart. Where you are about to go, there is no light.
There are no heroes in this world, only villains and victims.
1978
I own the night. It's the only time I can walk freely without my mask. No, not the balaclava with which I shroud my face. It's the mask I wear during daylight hours, when I pretend I'm one of them. Those beautiful people with their perfect smiles and their echoing laughter. They mock me. They taunt me. But at night, when the streets are still, that's when I laugh. When I smile. It's when I take all the things from them that I never could have. When I crawl into their homes and into their skin. I wear their lives like a borrowed piece of clothing. Only by the time I give it back, it's tattered and damaged, and I must move on to the next home, one that hasn't been destroyed by my parasitic need.
But for those few hours when I am one of them, they have a taste of that pain. It's my turn to feel a concentrated dose of the joy they take for granted. The rush is fierce, like a dam breaking, the sensation of belonging overwhelming me. But the waters calm just as quickly, and then I am standing there, the shallow stream flowing at my feet, as the sun rises. And I wait, patiently, until darkness returns, so I can steal that rush again.
I am on the hunt. Vesper's at school. Her brother is at therapy, and her parents are on another trip. Vesper. Evening prayer. It's ironic, the name. If all the world is a stage, and if irony makes for the best stories, then she was born for this role.
She's not the first. Not even close. But there is something about her that fascinates me more than the others. And there have been many.
I am obsession.
Every home I enter becomes the object of my fixation. So the fact that she has become all I think about -- despite all the other homes I prowl -- makes me impatient.
Patience. It's the most important tool in my arsenal. I plan every hunt from start to finish. I watch their lives through windows. I learn their routines. I enter their homes and go through their keepsakes and take small tokens here or there. Something they won't notice or will assume they have misplaced. I may move a picture. Eat something. Just enough so that somewhere in their subconscious they feel my presence long before I am standing in front of them. That used to be enough. Just being there, surrounded by their things, the vestiges of their daily lives. It used to be enough to look at the tokens I kept and remember the rush I felt being inside the walls I had watched from afar. But that rush faded a long time ago, vanishing in a spectacular eruption the day the one person who understood me died. Without her, the loneliness became unbearable and the rage swelled. It filled me until I could feel it creeping out of my skin, until I was so full of rage and pain that I had to put it on someone else to make it disappear. Watching wasn't enough. I had to hear their voices. See their faces. Steal their lives. So instead of just taking, I began to leave things behind: tape, rope, gloves, lube. Tools I would use later when I was ready for them. And if the police ever stop me, well, they won't find a kit on me.
I’m careful to make my targets seem random. I don't want to establish a clear pattern. My work as a contractor takes me all over Central California, where I grew up. I know the neighborhoods well. I know every shortcut and how all the streets connect. I know where all the freeway exits and ramps are for a quick getaway. Real estate agents call me to fix up houses. I'll look up their listings and pick a home they haven't had me work on. If I like the neighbors, I'll use those empty homes as a base to watch the area. Vacant houses at night are perfect places to hide. Other times, I just spot someone and the craving hits. So I watch them and see if they are a good fit. On paper it all looks random. But nothing is random.
I comb through Vesper's jewelry boxes on a chest of drawers. She still lives with her parents, but we aren't too far apart in age. Even though she is in her early 20s, the trinkets are a mix of adult pieces and tokens of her childhood, as are many things in the room. On a chair in the corner is a silk robe, the kind that would rest beautifully against the curves of her tits and ass, and on that same chair is a little teddy bear, weathered from years of being hugged. The chair looks old. The white, painted woodwork is chipped and grayed, the pale floral cushion is worn in the spot where she has sat countless times. I run my fingers along the faded flowers that have touched her skin. Then along the satiny robe. I pick up the teddy bear and examine it before placing it back in its spot, tilting it 45 degrees from its original position.
There's a picture board on one of her walls. The kind where you can pin stuff up or tuck the picture behind cross sections of ribbon. Many of the pictures are of her and her boyfriend. Mr. Soon-To-Be-Doctor. Mr. Perfect Smile and Charmed Existence. The board is stuffed with photos so they overlap many times over. Every one of them is of people smiling. All they fucking do is smile and it makes me sick.