But that name meant nothing to him now.
Ronnie who?
It took an hour and a half of busses and the trolley to get downtown. For someone who had committed a homicide last night, Calvin was calm, cool and collected. He’d taken a book with him that he read during transit. The A-Z Guide to Serial Killers. It wasn’t that Calvin had any desire to become a serial killer. The book just seemed to stick out to him when he was packing his bags for departure. He bought it back in high school when he had an avid interest in such things. It had sat dormant on his bookshelf for years until now.
As he sat on buses reading, he felt a kinship to the men pictured within. Their stories were varied, but they shared the common thread of murder, something most people would never understand.
As Calvin walked from the trolley to the pub beneath which was the Museum of Death, he watched the people around him and realized for the first time that they were no longer displayed in the various states of demise that he had become accustomed to. Everyone was alive and thriving—well, some people were hobbling around, tired and forlorn, but they were alive nonetheless. Only yesterday Calvin would have found this surprising, maybe even shocking, but now he understood that he’d finally made the transition. He wasn’t a Gorehound, or at least he didn’t think so, but he was well on the way. The images of death all around him were a part of his conditioning, and it had worked. Even the Polaroid stopped pulsating in his pocket. He was hardly aware of it now as anything more than a morbid keepsake. He didn’t need it anymore.
Descending the stairs, Calvin was hit with familiar odors of equal repugnance. Where he had once been trepid he was now bold. He did not knock or hesitate, for he knew that the Museum of Death was the only place he was truly welcome.
He turned the handle and pushed open the unlocked door. Inside, the place was glowing with soft candlelight. Calvin closed the door behind him. He didn’t see Hazel, so he decided to have a look around by himself.
The place had changed since he was last there. Hazel had been doing some redecorating, but not in a way that would qualify for a feature in Home and Garden Magazine.
There were candles sitting atop tables, in sconces, and surrounding mini-shrines dedicated to a number of serial killers and infamous death scenes. One shrine had several photos on the wall of a man and a woman who had taken pictures of one another holding the decapitated head of their murder victim. Calvin had seen these pictures before. In one photo they stuffed the unfortunate man’s mouth with his own severed penis. Another shrine was in honor of Ed Gein, and another one was arranged for Albert Fish. The X-ray of Fish’s pelvis was particularly interesting. The man would have never made it through a TSA screening considering the amount of pins and needles therein.
Calvin slowly walked through the place, entranced with the many shrines and candles and photographs. He felt comfortable, at ease. It was almost as if there wasn’t a dead woman lying on the floor of his apartment, as if he hadn’t only yesterday been dating a woman named Ronnie and thinking about a future so different from the one he now considered.
“So you did it?” asked a voice, disturbing Calvin’s silent reverie.
Startled, he turned toward the voice, immediately registering it as that of Hazel. Who else would it be?
“Did what?” said Calvin.
“It.” She was in the small room that had been used as a mini-theater, the same room she had been in when Calvin was last here.
Nodding, Calvin said, “Oh, it. Yeah, I guess I did.”
Hazel brightened up. Her greenish eyes popped in white orbs surrounded with copious eyeliner and dark eye shadow. She was every bit as goth as Calvin remembered. The smile looked almost out of place.
“Come in here, sit down,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”
Calvin hesitated. Her eagerness to hear about what he did last night was kind of off putting. He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but talking about murdering Celia wasn’t it. He nodded and joined Hazel in the mini-theater, sitting beside her on a fold out chair after slinging his backpack over a vacant chair and depositing his bag in the seat of said chair.
Hazel’s sardonic grin softened into a smirk. “I have to tell you, I didn’t think you had it in you. Not yet at least. I thought maybe after more intense conditioning or something.”
Conditioning?
Had that been what he had gone through?
The problem was that Calvin couldn’t remember killing Celia. He remembered it from what he saw in the silent film last night, but he couldn’t remember the murder the way he remembered important occasions in his life like the first time he and Ronnie had sex or even the way he remembered their visit to Balboa park. What bothered him was that it felt as if he hadn’t killed Celia at all, and yet he knew that wasn’t true. The sick part was that he wanted full credit for her murder.
And yet he didn’t want to talk about it. Not the way Hazel did.
“You’re quiet,” she said. “Something wrong?”
Yes, there was, but he couldn’t tell her. Everything had been all right until she showed up. He had been expecting her, but what he hadn’t been expecting was all this talk about killing Celia. Now that he had to face that reality he was struggling with it. He could accept what he had done for the sake of his training (conditioning), but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
On the other hand, shouldn’t he like it? Hazel certainly did. Murder seemed to come to her naturally.
“Nothing’s wrong, it’s just…”
“You killed your girlfriend, didn’t you?”
Calvin shook his head. “No.”
“Someone random?”
Shook his head again.
“Who then?”
He cocked his head to look into her eyes. She was gleeful, as if he were about to let her in on a good book or the details of some juicy gossip.
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Her eager expression faded and Hazel nodded knowingly, though she couldn’t possibly understand. She had no qualms about her murder. She didn’t seem to understand what Calvin was going through.
“I have to wonder if the conditioning is working for you,” Hazel said.
Calvin said nothing. The silence in the room was getting to him. This was a safe place, so why was Hazel making him feel so uncomfortable. The more he thought about the body in his apartment, the more he struggled with the reality of what he was going through. He was beginning to panic.
Hazel placed her hand on his. Contrary to her pale skin and deathly appearance, her touch was warm and comforting. Calvin was surprised by how much he needed the human interaction of something as simple and a tender show of consolation.
“We don’t have to talk about it, but I think it would be important. I find it kind of strange that you could have gone through with it and come here and yet you’re closed up as tight as a clam.”
“Maybe I don’t kiss and tell, so to speak. You seem so cheery. What’s your story? Last time I was here you weren’t so eager to spill the beans.”
“True, but that’s because I didn’t want to frighten you off. My can of beans is a big one. And I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for a long time.”
There was a small period of silence between them. Calvin wasn’t sure if she was going to tell him a little bit about herself or what.