PARKING LOT STRAYS
ORSON
Being a therapist for decades was annoying. I knew far too much about myself; even when it was just the vague knowledge that I was actively suppressing something. Baz had it good, a charming smile on his face as he kicked emotions, corpses, and any other uncomfortable thoughts under the bed before dusting off his hands with a chuckle. Meanwhile, I had to grimace through the tedious inclination towardsawareness.
For instance, I’d lived my life perfecting control. Serial killing had fit that need. It was a beautifully chaotic act that could be reigned in to near perfection under a series of rules and preparations. And yet, I’d always been unsatisfied and needed to kill more—up the danger, searching for something I could never get.
Bree made me realize the issue. What I really wanted was someone to take all that control away. To force me to my knees in submission until I was allowed to let go of it all. I’d always known I was a bit of a masochist, but submissive?
I groaned, pressing my forehead to the steering wheel. It’s incredible what the mind can ignore for decades. Centuries even.If you don’t want to grow, you don’t have to. It’s as simple as that.
I leaned back in the car seat, clutching the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror was the motel room door. I’d been sitting out here for an hour and hadn’t left yet. If I left, then I needed to decide what I was going to do. And that was the issue.
I’d automatically tried to save us all the moment we stepped free of Verfallen. Not just Bree, but Baz and Nemo too. And it wasn’t simply because that’s what Bree would want. It was because it’s what I wanted too.
“This is terrible.”
I finally turned the car on and left. Wind blew through the broken windshield as I went down the country road. There was a corner store close by, but I had to backtrack to where we had dropped off our Uber driver a few hours ago. At the end of a serial killing cycle, things get messy. This was just like that. The plan was simple, sloppy, and very likely wouldn’t work, but I only needed to buy enough time to get out of town.
It wasn’t hard to find the spot. Deep tire tracks were in the soil on the side of the road. I made sure to pull in the same way as last night, driving the car back over the same broken scrub until the front smacked the thick tree it had hit last night. The dead man was still here. I’d planned to drag him somewhere else, but Nemo had made a mess of him. There was only so much effort I wanted to extend, and collecting shredded organ meat from the dirt went far beyond that. So I wiped down the vehicle and left on foot. His phone being found somewhere else, the details of picking up people on his app … There was no point trying to make this look like a simple accident. They’d know it wasn’t, and they’d likely guess it was escaped inmates. But guessing which inmates would likely be impossible.
It was going to take a while to get to the corner store from here, but time alone was exactly what I wanted. Inmy entire long life, I had been a lone predator. I didn’t get people, and they didn’t get me. One decision after the next in life had led me further and further away from others—a serial killer and a vampire. It made sense that I eventually landed on a psychologist as long-term cover. I was naturally drawn to understanding the differences between others and myself. Plus, manipulation has always been a beneficial skill to learn.
But then there was Verfallen, where at first glance, everybody was exactly the same as me. And yet, there was still a division. I was on the other side of the glass wall. They’d all been basic criminals, and I was organized and uncaught. Until the day Baz, Bree, and Nemo had somehow, together, made me lose all control.
My shoes lost their shine as dirt collected on them. It took me hours to get back to the motel, all my thoughts running around in my head. They weren’t coming together. I had a mental block, keeping me from making all the connections I knew were right in front of me. I walked past the motel and kept going to the corner store. I needed a victim, a car, and some supplies.
The door chimed as I walked into the place. The scent of cooked meat wafted from the back, where a scrappy man in a dirty apron flipped thinly sliced steak into a hoagie roll before smothering it in peppers and cheese. Under the smells of food lingered cigarette smoke, clinging to his clothes. He looked at the clock before returning to the Philly cheesesteak order.
Next to the door was a display of discount t-shirts. Bree was covered in blood, so she needed something to wear. I slid over to the rack and pulled out a light blue shirt that would fit her well enough. Nemo was covered in blood, too. My fingers flicked past the smaller sizes, headed towards the XXLs. When I realized what I was doing, I pulled my hand back in irritation.
Annoyance was a common emotion of mine, and there were plenty of reasons for me to be annoyed right now. For instance,no one else was thinking about Bree’s hunger. No one else was trying to make a plan. No one else was trying to figure anything out, and in fact, was making everything infinitely more complex.
But whatever annoyance I felt was dwarfed by the utter bafflement of my own actions. Why did I wait for Nemo and Baz at Verfallen when Bree and I had been in the car, ready to leave? I hadn’t even questioned it, not until the Uber driver fiasco.
The cook was still hanging around, eyeing the clock. I had a little more time. There wasn’t much I wanted to get here. Still, I found myself in front of the food, staring at bags of chips and powdered donuts as I tried to force myself to make a choice, not about food, but about what I wanted to do about Nemo and Baz.
The logical thing, the thing I’d have easily done a couple of years ago, was take Bree and leave. So why was I hesitating?
I shuffled up to the counter, dropping an armload of food that neither me nor Bree would eat.
Nemo and Baz knew nothing about the world. Parting ways meant leaving them helpless, and like it or not, I’d treated them as allies for a long time. The feeling was hard to shake off. That must be the issue here. It had to be. It was annoying that I cared at all. Apparently, I was capable of developing a conscience when it came to others. Very few others. Of course, Bree. But Baz and Nemo, too? Then again that had nothing to do withthemspecifically. It had to do with living as a groupwhile inside Verfallen. It could have been anyone. The only person who really mattered was Bree. And so, I was going to do the logical thing here.
The cook stepped out as I finished paying in cash for the items. I’d never stalked a victim in daylight. It hadn’t even been an option before Bree’s dhamphyr blood. It didn’t seem like a good idea. Any random jackass could see me climbing into the cook’s car after hypnotizing him to quietly follow my orders. Buthere I was, fangs buried in a man who’d stopped fighting five minutes ago.
Usually, I wouldn’t gorge myself, but I knew Bree was hungry. A surplus in my own body would help hold her over when she drank from me.Hopefully. Her thirst was going to be trouble. It was ultimately the reason I accepted staying in Verfallen. Whatever experiment had been done to her made her ravenous. The type of hunger that would be hard to hide in small communities.
I pushed the corpse away and started his car, driving to a secluded spot and shoving him out into a ditch. Not my finest body disposal, but I didn’t care at the moment. I went back to the motel, parked in the back, and then walked to the front office.
“What’s the monthly rate?” I asked the attendant.
“Two thousand.” He looked up from his handheld game for a second. “For four people it's three thousand.”
“For two people.”
“Ain’t there four of you?” He asked, clicking buttons rapidly.
I didn’t respond. The attendant died in the game and sighed.
