Beholder
Beholder
a short story
Nikki Rae
They had silver bodies and red bellies. Mouths that jutted out at an odd angle in order to hold in all of their teeth. They were bigger than the others. More menacing. They stared with black eyes that reflected light, but there wasn’t anything behind those cold, black irises.
“They haven’t eaten yet,” I said to the customer.
He was bald and wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with a small brown stain on the pocket that sat on the left side of his chest. He was wearing khaki pants, also stained with brown spots, mainly around the knees. They either hadn’t been washed in a long time, or his job was messier than I thought.
A smile crossed my lips. “Do you want to watch them eat?”
Though I could tell he was trying to be discreet about it, he did what everyone else did when they interacted with me: stared. His beady brown eyes roamed over my face, to my name tag, and back to the fish tank. He was being cautious, thinking about what he should do next. Finally, he said, “Sure.”
I turned to the tank behind him and took a large plastic cup from a shelf below the tank and a blue net from a bucket near my feet. There were hundreds of orange and white shiny fish. Some had black spots on them, some were fully one color, but they all had the same eyes. The same as each other, the same as the piranha that lived in the tank across from them. Dull. Lifeless.
They tried to swim away from the net when I glided through the water, but there were too many of them in too limited a space. I caught about ten.
“You ready?” I asked. I couldn’t help my eagerness, like a child about to unwrap a gift.
When I turned to the man, he was staring at the fish in my cup, a glint of fear hanging off of his mouth in a slight frown. But he nodded anyway. I stepped up on a short stool, opened the lid, and poured the contents of the plastic cup in slowly.
There was a moment of pure calm.
That’s what I probably liked the most. The customer and I knew what was about to happen. Maybe the piranha and the goldfish knew as well. It was only inevitable. Natural, even.
But that moment. That split-second of equal calm when everything is still. I loved that feeling more than anything.
***
“Ryan, this doesn’t have much to do with anything,” John says.
He’s sitting across from me in the grey room I’ve gotten used to over the past six months or so. A metal table and two matching, uncomfortable chairs were brought in so we wouldn’t have to huddle on my bed while we talked. There’s one lamp hanging from the ceiling, which reflects off of John’s thick-rimmed glasses as he stares down at his yellow pad of paper, the only thing giving off any color at all.
He brought me coffee in a Styrofoam cup and a pack of cigarettes he didn’t hesitate to open and smoke upon sitting down. I quit smoking when I was in my twenties, but now I don’t see the point in not lighting one up myself and watching the smoke rise as it sits in the ashtray.
“You’ll see,” I say. “I’m getting to it. I promise.”
A half-smile appears on John’s face, but it isn’t happy. It looks like he isn’t sure what emotion he’s supposed to be feeling.
“Alright, Ryan,” he says. “I believe you.”
***
I watched as the goldfish scattered and scrambled, trying to find a place to hide from their attackers. There was one large rock with holes in it sitting in the center of the tank and one a fish hid in there, while its friends were eaten. Chaos consumed their small world now, but it would be over soon.
The whole process probably took no more than four minutes. Scales floated in the water as everything once again became calm. The piranha resumed normal swimming patterns, their gills rapidly opening and closing. The fish that had been hiding in the rock seconds before was now lying on the bottom of the tank, its own scales and the ones from his fallen comrades gathering on the plain acrylic bottom. Its head was the only recognizable thing left, the eyes just as dead as they were while it was alive.
I thought about bringing home a pet fish for Chelsea. Something she could watch while I wasn’t home. I used to have a tank in the living room that I stocked with fish as a hobby, but I got too busy with work and I couldn’t keep up with it anymore. I still had it in the garage, though.
I could set it up somewhere in the basement, fill it with water, grow some plants, add some life to it. Maybe Chelsea would like that. She was so depressed lately.
I was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the piranha. Killing defenseless animals in order to feed another.
When I got home that day, I set to work with my new project. I found the tank in the garage and brought it inside to clean. Then I set my bag from the pet store inside so I could bring everything down to the basement at once.
I had converted the basement into an apartment about a year ago. My plan was to rent it out to get a little extra money, but no one ever ended up moving in. People were put off by me. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was awkward or quiet or strange. Maybe they sensed something about me that I couldn’t place.
There was a small living room with a couch and a bookshelf, a bathroom, and a bedroom. There was even a small kitchen with a fridge and microwave. I had taken out the doors so the whole thing was one open space, and of course I took out anything Chelsea could hurt herself or me with: knives, forks, plastic bags.
Chelsea was sitting on the edge of the bed, which was still made up with a quilt I had bought at Goodwill. Her hair was dark, but I could tell how greasy it was. She hadn’t changed her clothes since she arrived. That was eight days ago.
“You didn’t take a shower?” I asked, setting the tank down on an end table in the corner of the living room. I wasn’t trying to embarrass her. I was just trying to make conversation, and maybe bring it to her attention. Depression can make it so you don’t notice the simplest things.
Chelsea didn’t answer me. She only stared in my direction with her bright blue eyes. She also hadn’t talked since she arrived.
I crossed the room in order to set my purchases on the counter and fill a pitcher with water. I had to pass her at least ten times in order to fill the entire tank, and I didn’t look at Chelsea the whole time. I plugged the filter in, and the low hum of it, the trickling of water moments after, filled the quiet space. The noise would probably help comfort her too.
I went back into the kitchen to take out the things I bought from the pet store. There was a small net, a container of fish flakes, and drops to put in the water to make it safe. I walked by her again to add those.
When I returned to the kitchen once more, the small plastic bag filled with half water and half air came to life as the fish swam around inside, bumping their noses against my hand. Throughout this entire process, I imagined Chelsea watching me. It made me shy.
“I brought you a present,” I said. I might as well have been talking to myself. I wanted to look at her. I always wanted to look at her. But she scared me when she stared back. She almost didn’t blink. It was like whenever I was in her space she was counting down the minutes until I went back upstairs.
“Goldfish,” I explained.
I placed the entire bag in the tank and it floated on the surface. I was supposed to wait ten minutes so they could get used to the temperature of the water. When I turned back around, Chelsea was standing in the kitchen. She was so silent I hadn’t heard her get up and walk the few steps. I didn’t come any closer, afraid I would scare her back to the bed.
Her fingers trailed on top of the table, grazing the net and the container of food. Her hands were delicate, the wrists so thin that you could see the bones as the sleeves of her jacket rode up.
The silence in the small space stretched on, like it would never be broken again. The only sounds came from the filter and the water being sucked in and pushed back out.
“Are you cold?” I asked quietly.
Chelsea jumped when my voice met her ears, as if I had hit her there.
I only took one step away from the fish tank and towards the kitchen, but she had already taken a step back toward the bed. In the time it took me to take that step back, she had retreated all the way back into her bedroom. Chelsea wrapped the dark blue coat around her middle, like she was trying to protect herself from something.
When you murder someone, especially multiple someones at once, you don’t plan on leaving any survivors. I didn’t. What I really didn’t plan on was keeping a person I had originally set out to murder.
I don’t like talking about my work. That’s a personal thing that should only be my business, but I guess I need to fill in some small details in order to make the story as understandable as possible.
Here’s all you need to know:
Chelsea lived in an ordinary house with ordinary parents. They left their doors unlocked because they lived in an ordinary town where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. Until I found them. There was nothing “special” about her family except that they were close by. There was no specific reason why I “chose” them other than I needed to kill someone sometimes, when the red spots appeared in front of my eyes until they were all I saw. Their house was an opportunity, waiting for whenever I couldn’t blink the red away and need to kill the most.
It was easy to take her, even if it wasn’t what I had originally planned.
It was right after New Year’s, and she and her family had been gone most of the night. At eleven, their minivan rolled into the driveway, later than I was expecting, but it would do. You probably know the particulars by now, the stories are everywhere: As usual, I hid somewhere in the house. At Chelsea’s, the laundry room was the only place I wouldn’t be immediately spotted. When her mother came in to set something down, I grabbed her from behind, pointing my gun at her head and ordering her to call the husband into the room. Once she had, I ordered her on the floor, then I repeated the process with the husband, and finally, Chelsea.
Chelsea stared at me the whole time. She was scared, of course. All of them were. But while her parents were yelling and pleading, she didn’t say anything. She never looked away from me, her blue eyes glassy with tears, but unafraid. It was like she had accepted what was going to happen already while her parents were still trying to change the situation. When I stared at them, begging me to spare their lives with their faces in the carpet, the red spots became thick in front of my face, but with her, everything was clear. Suddenly the spots thinned out when I looked back at Chelsea. This had never happened to me before and it caught me off guard.
I tied all of them up, but I took Chelsea and locked her in my car before I went back into the house to carry out my work. I didn’t want her to see and I didn’t know why.
Her eyes. That was what it was—I realized later, as I was carrying her downstairs. There were no windows and it had a thick, steel-reinforced door, so I didn’t need to keep her tied up. We didn’t say anything to each other. I simply untied her, sat her on the bed, and left.
The first night she was there, she banged on the door and cried for hours, until she exhausted herself and I found her crumpled on the bed the next morning. That was the only time she fought or tried to escape. She still cried from time to time, but that was to be expected.
I ripped a hole in the plastic bag and set the fish free, into their new home. Finally, I looked back at Chelsea. She was staring at me, the way I knew she would be. Her long arms were wrapped around her legs.
“Are you sure you’re not cold?” I asked. “I could turn the heat up.”
She shook her head.
“Then why are you wearing your coat?” I added an amused edge to my voice so she wouldn’t think I was making fun of her. I even smiled, trying to make a joke out of it, trying to get something other than eyes that wouldn’t respond to me.
She glanced down briefly at the puffy material covering her arms.
She didn’t answer.
I shrugged, hoping she wouldn’t notice how upset I was that she wouldn’t talk to me.
“I’ll bring down dinner in a little bit,” I said, too afraid to look back at her as I left the room.
***
“I know what someone listening to this is going to think,” I say directly into John’s recorder.
He’s gone through three cigarettes, and mine is almost completely done, still smoking in the ashtray. He rubs his hand over the lower half of his face, brushing the bristles of his mustache. John looks tired. I feel sorry for putting him through this. Things like this aren’t supposed to be talked about.
I did then what I needed to do so I could be a normally-functioning human being. I never felt bad about what I did. I felt bad that I didn’t feel bad. That I saw all of those people as just objects I used to be able to see clearly again. But once it was over, it was over. I never thought about them again once they disappeared.
“What?” John asks. “What are they thinking, Ryan?”
I shift in my seat. “You know.”
John shakes his head. “If you want me to write your story, you should be the one telling it.”
I take a deep breath, a sip of my coffee. It’s cold.
“People are going to think that I treated her badly,” I say. “That I hurt her or raped her.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I’m taken aback by this question. Why? Because it’s disgusting. What kind of a question is that?
“I would never rape anyone,” I say. “Besides…” I take another sip of cold coffee so I can pause. “Chelsea and I were too scared of each other to even go near one another.”
***
She never ventured into the living room, or if she did, she did so when I wasn’t in the apartment. She only went to the bathroom when I was away or while I slept. Chelsea stayed mostly to the bed or to one chair in the kitchen. Whenever I came down to visit, get her to eat with me, or just have a one-sided conversation, those were the places I found her.
One day—I think it was the fifty-first or fifty-second day she was there—she finally spoke.
“What do you want from me?” I barely heard her whisper. We were sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating lunch.
I wanted to smile widely then. I was so happy she was talking to me that I almost didn’t care about the question she asked at all. But I kept calm. I didn’t want to make her uneasy.
“What do you mean?”
Though her eyebrows knitted together, her eyes didn’t change. “Why are you keeping me here?” she rephrased.
I put down my plastic fork. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
She swallowed. She hadn’t touched her food.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
“No.”
That seemed to be enough of an answer for her because she stared down at her plate and started eating. I noticed that she fumbled to grasp her fork a few times, and then once it was in her hand, she had to try a few more times to get some mashed potatoes to stick to it.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” I blurted.
Like she would believe me.
Chelsea didn’t say anything to that. I noticed that her hair was still wet from a shower she must have taken while I was out. I bought her new clothes, and she was wearing them, not covering herself up with the jacket anymore. She was becoming more comfortable in my house, and I wanted to smile again. But the way she stared down at her food, not staring at me, made it almost impossible to be happy.
“Please.” I found that my fingers were twitching on the table next to my plate.
She stopped eating.
“Please talk to me,” I said.
Besides when I left the house to buy groceries, go to work, or to do my job, I didn’t really have any human interaction.
For a long time, we just stared at each other. I hoped that she couldn’t see that I was squinting, trying to keep myself together. As usual, I didn’t find anything behind her eyes.
After a few long seconds, she asked, “Why did you buy me fish?”
It had been a month since I brought them home and she had never once acknowledged the fact that they existed.
“I thought you would like them,” I answered.
We both resumed eating. Slowly, cautiously.
“You don’t even know me.” She was still whispering, like she was afraid to speak at a normal volume.
“I’m sorry,” I corrected myself. “I meant that they reminded me of you.”
“How?”
I smiled, embarrassed I was even telling her this, but if I didn’t tell her, I wouldn’t tell anyone.
She blinked a few times. “Your eyes are a lot alike.”
***
“Is that when you found out?” John asks.
My throat becomes tight. I have to pause for too long.
“You had no idea, even vaguely, that she was blind until she had lived with you for that long?”
I shake my head, then remember that I have to answer out loud, something John told me before he started the recorder. “No.”
“How?” he asks. “She had been with you for almost two months at that point.”
“Fifty-one days.” It was fifty-one days, not fifty-two.
“Fifty-one days,” John repeats, like he’s agreeing with me.
“And I don’t know,” I say to answer his question. “Looking back, it all makes sense. But I guess I just didn’t see it at the time.”
“Can you think of any reason why?”
Tons of reporters and writers had asked my lawyer for interviews with me, but I had declined all of them. John was different. He wanted the story of Chelsea and Ryan, not Ryan the murderer. Not Ryan the serial killer.
I wanted to share this part of the story.
Before the verdict is out and they’ve sentenced me to life or death, before all of those people begin talking about me and all of the horrible things I did and how I got what I deserved. I want at least one person to know the truth.
“Because I loved her.”
***
After Chelsea told me, I began to notice just how much I had missed before. That the reason I never saw her anywhere but the chair at the table or her bed was probably because she was afraid of what was beyond that. At first I thought that maybe she didn’t know that there was anything beyond that, but she could probably hear the tank filter. She knew there was more, she was just afraid of what it was. Maybe she waited to hear the door upstairs shut to make sure I was out before she took a shower because she didn’t trust me and didn’t want to be vulnerable with me in the house. It explained why her hair was always disheveled and how her clothes never matched.
But what it didn’t explain was why she never fought me. Why she never asked me to let her go. She had never tried to escape, and she had never, not even once, asked me what happened to her parents or if she would ever see them again. For all I knew, she could have thought that they were still alive.
Other than that one time she asked me what I wanted from her, she never even acknowledged the situation I had placed her. Instead of my captive, she became a quiet guest, someone I could talk to when I needed to feel more human. I didn’t need to kill as much when she was talking to me. She didn’t look at me the way a lot of other people did, like I was strange. She didn’t look at me at all. I grew attached to that, to her.
Of course it occurred to me that she was only pretending to care about what I said. That she was only listening to my stories and my worries because she was afraid of me. But as more time stretched on, I believed that wasn’t the only case. She talked to me because she was just like me, at least on one level: We had no one else.
It was day seventy-five that she took a shower while I was home. I was upstairs, watching TV. They were looking for me, for her. They had been since a week after her disappearance. She was on the news at least once every three weeks. A picture of her would take up the entire screen, a picture of her from a high school yearbook. Of course her eyes were still blue in the pictures, but there was something behind them, some kind of life. Maybe she was happy in that picture, in that place. Her eyes didn’t look as cold in the picture for some reason, and I watched the news probably more for that picture than for signs that anyone knew I was the one who had taken her.
Sometimes they would have interviews with someone she went to college with, someone who was related to her like an aunt or uncle. They always said how devastated they were, how much they missed her and hoped that she was still alive. They knew there was no such hope for the parents. After the remains were found in the house, they had to use dental records to identify them, but it was them alright. It was probably stupid of me to step out of my usual routine and set the house on fire after my work was done, but I was in a rush, and I had Chelsea in the car, so I needed a quick way to get rid of them.
It wasn’t my usual pattern. You probably know that. I usually carried out my work and then buried most of the parts in different areas. It’s nearly impossible to figure out who the person was when you did that.
The thing that surprised me was that I found myself almost excited when they had a break in the case. When they announced that they had something new, they always reiterated Chelsea’s story. I found out almost every detail about her through news reports. That was where I first learned her name, where I learned that she was twenty four, an environmental science major, and was supposed to graduate that year. I had taken her away from everything so she could keep me company. So she could live a life like mine, alone.
Downstairs, the water shut off abruptly.
***
“Did you feel bad?” John is on his fourth cigarette now.
“Yes.”
He smiles to himself.
“I know,” I say. “I’m not supposed to feel bad. Mostly, I don’t.”
“About the murders, you mean?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve never felt bad about those. It was just something I had to do.”
“But you felt bad about Chelsea? Why?”
I shrug. “Because I loved her. I wanted her to be happy.”
“So is that why…”
I have to take another sip of cold coffee before I can continue.
***
“I want to take you out,” I said to her on the ninety-first day. It was spring now, though she probably didn’t know that.
She was sitting on her bed, but she had begun sleeping under the blankets, so it was no longer made anymore.
“Out?” Her voice was no longer a whisper. I liked this probably most of all.
I was standing in the living room, staring at the fish swimming around. They had grown a little bit, and only one had died. I took a step forward and when she didn’t inch away, I took another step towards her. And then another.
When I was only about half a foot away from Chelsea, she flinched. I stopped walking.
“It’s really nice outside,” I said. “We could go to the park or something.”
She blinked a few times. “Aren’t you scared I’ll run away?”
I wanted to tell her yes, but instead I said, “No. You’re not going to though, are you?”
Chelsea shook her head. “Just let me get dressed.”
I went back upstairs for ten minutes, watching TV like I always did. Her story wasn’t on the news as much as it used to be. I barely heard of it at all anymore. I should have been relieved about this. If they didn’t have any new information, they weren’t closer to finding me. But I was also unbelievably upset. Did this mean that her relatives and friends didn’t care anymore? Did this mean they had given up?
I wasn’t sure how to feel about any of it.
I knocked on her door, and when she said she was ready, I went back in. She was wearing a pair of jeans I had bought her and her blue jacket.
“You don’t need that,” I said. “It’s warm outside.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Just in case,” she said. “If I get hot, I can always take it off.”
“We have to go up a flight of stairs,” I said to her. “Do you want me to help you up them?”
Chelsea nodded after a few seconds then held out her hand.
It took us about two minutes to walk up the stairs. I told her when to step up, when we were at the top. Then I led her through my house so we could get to the front door. She was still holding my hand, and had made no move to let go. She took slow and deliberate steps, like she was afraid she would trip over something. I loved how her hand felt in mine. Small and warm. I couldn’t remember anyone ever holding my hand before then.
“How far are we going?” Chelsea asked once we were in my car. Before we started moving, I gave her a short brown wig to put on. I couldn’t see her eyes as well behind the sunglasses I gave her, but I thought they were a good idea too. Just in case.
“It’s not far from here,” I answered. “Fifteen minutes, maybe.”
“Can we listen to the radio?”
I didn’t want to put the radio on. I told myself it was because they might put something on about her and my case, but if I was being honest, it was because I wanted her to talk to me. “I don’t have a radio,” I lied.
Though I knew she’d probably be quiet the whole time, I didn’t want to take away the chance of her words willing the silence instead of music.
She took her coat off before she found the seatbelt and locked it in place. She was wearing a plain white T-shirt I had bought her as well.
Chelsea’s hand was on the armrest between us now. I wanted to grab hold of it again, but I couldn’t do that. I was lucky enough to hold it at all. I was being too greedy.
“How was your day?” I asked to break the silence.
She shrugged. “Okay. Yours?”
“Pretty good.”
We talked like this the whole ride there. We didn’t say anything profound or particularly deep to each other. Just filled the time left before we got out of the car.
When we got to the park, she waited until she heard my door shut before she carefully climbed out. When I was by her side, she reached out for me again. This time, she caught my elbow and hooked her arm through mine.
“Sorry,” she said for some reason.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You’ve never been here before.”
It was a school day, so the park was deserted for the most part. A woman in her thirties power walked away from us, but other than that, we were alone. Birds chirped in trees overhead and ducks and geese swam in a pond. It was calm here.
“Do you want to sit down for a little while?” I asked.
Chelsea nodded.
We found a bench beside the pond, and once we were sitting, she let go of my arm. We didn’t say anything to each other for a while. A duck quacked once, some small insect flew past us, making a low buzzing sound.
“It’s pretty nice today,” Chelsea commented.
“I told you,” I teased. “Aren’t you glad you took your jacket off?”
She smiled. “Actually, I’m kind of cold.”
“Do you want me to get your jacket?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
I noticed that her eyes were searching around behind the sunglasses, still blank, but searching.
“I’m right here,” I said.
Chelsea blinked a few times. “Where?”
She held her hand out for me and I wasn’t sure what I should do with it. Finally, I took her hand in mine and before I could think about it too long, I placed her palm to my face.
“There you are,” she said.
“Can you see me now?” I joked nervously as her fingers trailed over my skin.
She laughed, and it was too short. “Yes, Ryan. I can see you.”
That was the first time she had said my name. I told her what it was the first day she was in my home, but she had never used it until now. I should have been happy about it. I should have been smiling so widely that she would be able to feel it under her hand.
Chelsea was the kindest person to ever come into my life. I had killed her parents. I had taken her away from everything she knew and loved. And here we both were, nearly four months later, and she was holding onto me and touching my face.
I took her hand and gently placed it on the bench between us. “I’ll go get your coat for you,” I said. “You’ll stay right here?”
She nodded. “Not like I know where I’m going.”
I stood up and turned away from her. I couldn’t look back.
***
“You let her go,” John says. It isn’t a question.
He knew as well as anyone else that twenty-four hours later, the police swarmed my apartment and I was in custody. When I think about it now, I guess it’s only natural that Chelsea found a way to get in touch with someone.
“Yes,” I say when too much time has passed. “And then she called the police and they found me.”
John smiles to himself for some reason. “You still don’t know, do you?”
My throat becomes instantly dry for some reason. “Don’t know what?” I ask. “Is she okay?”
John sets down his pen on top of his yellow pad. There are words written all over it in black ink, but I can’t read them. “Chelsea wasn’t blind, Ryan. She faked it so you’d let her go.”
I can feel my hands begin to shake on the table, so I put them at my sides where John can’t see them. “What?” I ask. “How do you know that?”
“How do you think the police found you so fast?”
A red spot appears in his left cheek and I have to blink a few times for it to go away. Even if the red did consume my eyesight right now, it’s not like I would be able to do anything about it. I sit back in my chair, staring at the yellow paper between us. We’re both silent.
It never once occurred to me that she was lying about everything. She pretended she couldn’t see me. She pushed away the fact that she knew exactly what I had done. She kept quiet about everything and pretended that she needed to rely on me so I would trust her. So I believed that she trusted me.
I should hate her for it all, but I don’t.
She did what she had to do to survive. If anything, I love her more for it.
When I let her go, I was prepared to never see her again. But now, everything’s different. When I walk into that courtroom next week, she’ll be there to testify against me. No doubt she’ll tell them everything. Everything she saw. Once they caught me, I didn’t really believe I had a chance at being free again. Maybe that’s for the best.
This time, we’ll see each other, really see each other.
I’ll walk into that room with all of those faces that I don’t know, judging me, watching my every movement and analyzing everything I say. For a moment it will be completely still. I can only hope some part of me will remain safe, tucked into some place of Chelsea’s mind where none of them can touch us. Hundreds of eyes will be locked onto me with hate, fear, and disgust behind them, but one set of those eyes will belong to her.