Burn, Baby, Burn by Michael Seale (Chapter 11)

 Chapter 11

Man in the window

He watched as her chest moved rhythmically up and down thru the window. Her lips were slightly parted and her hair lay splayed out over the large white pillow. The apartment was the bottom floor of an old house; it lay between Great Barrington and Lenox on Highway 7, the main thorough fair for the Berkshires. The house set back from the street behind a huge old maple tree which fanned its large leaves out over the awning, casting perfect shadows. The turnaround drive was devoid of other cars besides hers. She lay asleep, alone.

The big house loomed above his head. Three stories tall with a complete basement underneath, Trish was currently the only tenet.  The owner lived in Manhattan and used the second floor as her vacation home; the problem or perhaps his blessing was she never took a vacation.

Trish turned as she slept, her arm exposed. He relished knowing this was one of the last times anyone would ever see her like this. 

It was easy to get in; the back of the apartment had a mud room with little more than a flimsy screen door. She had no roommate and no dog to bark that might wake her up. Her neighbors were too old and too far away to hear if she screamed. He would take his time to cleanse her. In a way she was just like the others defiled, dirty, the other had seen to that. But in another, she had hurt him; the bitch had made him believe that there was happiness, there was love. She had wanted him, not the other. Someone had seen him, really seen him, but then she had ended it. Said he was nothing. He would make it right. 

His shadow loomed over her bed. She was beautiful, even in her sleep. Her hair was a mess, her lips slightly parted, her breasts unencumbered by a bra, moving up and down under the T-shirt that she slept in, her nipples erect under the thin fabric. The blankets twisted around her legs; one bare leg was free from the duvet. He brushed his fingers over her thigh; she sighed. He hated himself for that. He mustn’t he thought.

“You can stop.” The old man said from the corner.

“Why are you here?” he whispered back.

He hated that the old man had followed him. He wished he could bash his head in. The old man always tried to stop him from doing what he must. 

“Don’t you understand, I have to do this,” he said to him. He stared at the old man, realizing that he looked worse than before, thinner perhaps. His clothes were mere rags, and his stench was growing as if he was decomposing.

“You are going to wake her with your stink.” As on cue, she stirred. She pulled the blanket over her bare leg and rolled to her other side. Her rhythmic breathing continued. 

“Please, don’t do this.” The old man begged. His eyes full with water, he was on the verge of tears. 

He only ignored him. He walked back to the kitchen where he had left his bag. It was time to start. 

The old man didn’t follow; he knew that when by the time he came back, the disgusting excuse for a human being would be gone. He almost never watched. But he also never told other, that’s why he tolerated him. 

He opened his small black bag and laid its contents on the round table in the kitchen. That room hadn’t been remodeled since the seventies, and even then, they had spent little money on it. The gas stove stood alongside a small fridge in the far corner. The floor was that plastic linoleum shit, which had cracked in places, peeling itself away from the boards underneath. He wouldn’t do it in there. There were too many windows. He couldn’t take the chance. You never know if someone will show up and see them.

He looked to the other rooms, which weren’t many. There was the living room, a long a dark room with one window at the end, sparsely furnished. As if she spent little time there. He didn’t like the feel. He walked to the bathroom. The counters cluttered with womanly things, things he didn’t understand. Why do they put themselves thru is torturous regime? He thought. Makeup, hairsprays, perfumes, brushes, blow dryer, oils, scents, lotions, creams, powders, shampoos, conditioners, toothpaste. She will never need them again. 

The bathroom might work. Less to clean up, he thought, as he continued his search. The only rooms left were the mud room or the bedroom. Then it hit him, the basement. He had to go back through the bedroom to get to the basement. The apartment was really just the bottom floor to the old house. So, the bedroom was really the old sitting room, as they used to call it. That’s where the guests were greeted long ago and tea would be drunk. It was at the front of the house, there was a small hallway that led to the other apartment. In the hallway were three doors, the entrance to the house, the basement door and a storage room that remained locked. 

Just across the hall and in front of the massive oak front door was the way to the basement. The door itself was a bit stuck. He had to pry it open without making too much noise. The basement was dark and damp. A lone lightbulb hung from a wire. The room broke into several rooms with half walls and random windows, which made no sense at all. One room had a boiler, another had the old coal-burning stove that warmed the house half a century ago. There were many other half rooms, full with disregarded furniture, the odd bicycle and forgotten memories. It was dirty, smelled of old hard dirt. That rotting dead leaf smell that arrives in the forest just before winter. He would do it here. Here he could take his time. 

He went back to the kitchen, again passing her sleeping body. She hadn’t moved. Smiling at the fact a faint trickle of drool had puddled on her pillow. He gathered his bag and its contents and made his way back to the basement to get ready. Knowing he would enjoy this. 

The old man stood at the bottom of the stairs. 

“We will lose you after this.” He said through his rotting teeth. “There won’t be away back, I will have to tell the other.”

He pushed past him without a word. Tell the other, he thought. There is nothing that he can do to stop me. He is weak; I am strong. 

The old man watched him for a minute without a word as he set about the business at hand. He had to get set up. He wanted to be ready for her. 

He went one last time back to the bedroom. To make sure that he had closed everything, and that nothing was off. He didn’t want her to know that he had been there. That he would watch her. He wanted it to be a surprise. He closed the door to the bedroom and left her house. 

He stood on the edge of the street. The sun was rising, and he knew his plan would work. Knowing that he could do it. He would cleanse her. Make her whole again. The old man be damned. It didn’t matter what the other wanted or what the old man said, this had to be. 

But for now, he will wait.