“Get away from me. You crazy nut, you want me to scream?”
Scream. People coming. Shouts. Suspicion. Questions. Exposure. Doctor Chax.
She couldn’t be allowed to scream.
He moved his right hand back and formed it into a fist and drove it at her face.
Her eyes widened, and then she was falling backward, turning as she fell because his left hand still gripped her right arm. But she was still conscious, wide-eyed, her mouth red with lipstick and now red with blood and now opening wide to scream, and he hit her again. The force of it knocked her down, and the momentum knocked him down on top of her, and suddenly she was wriggling beneath him, her body hot and alive. She was squirming and struggling, trying to get free, but the movements of her tore him apart, the hunger was a physical pain, an absolute necessity.
She had to stop fighting him. She had to give in and let him feed the hunger. She had to stop trying to get away.
His hands found her throat. They tightened.
Her right ear was near his mouth, and his nostrils were full of the musk of her. He whispered, “Don’t fight me, Cissie, don’t make me hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want us to have fun together, Cissie, don’t make me hurt you. Stop fighting me, Cissie. Stop fighting me and I’ll let go your throat.”
But she fought and fought, she squirmed and lunged, her legs beat at him, her arms flailed, her body lifted and twisted beneath him. If she’d had shoes on they would have made a drumming racket on the floor and, though they were on the third floor and the nearest other people were two flights down, still someone might have heard the noise and come to see what the drumming on the floor was all about. But her feet were shod only in white socks. No one heard.
He clung to her, his body pressing down on hers, his hands clenched tight on her throat. He pleaded with her not to fight him, he told her over and over that he didn’t want to hurt her, he begged her to let him have what he wanted without this struggling.
And gradually, he saw, his arguments were getting through to her. Her flailing and fighting lessened and slackened, more and more, and he whispered to her more fiercely, telling her what he wanted of her, promising her pleasure, and finally she understood that he really didn’t want to hurt her this way, and she stopped fighting and lay beneath him acquiescent.
He smiled, pleased. He moved slightly, so his right hand could stroke her body, and he whispered, “I’m glad, Cissie. We can have good times. I’ve been very lonely, Cissie. But not here on the floor, that’s no good. You’ll hurt your back. On the bed, Cissie. No, don’t move, I’ll carry you to the bed. Like a bride, Cissie.”
She was dead. He knew she was dead, but he refused to know it. She wasn’t dead. He could hear her breathing in his ear, he could feel the pounding of her heart in her chest against his chest. She was only frightened, afraid to move.
He reassured her, whispering to her, telling her time and time again that he had no wish to harm her. He crawled off her and picked her up and set her down gently on the bed. “Shall I undress you?” he asked her.
Her eyes were open, but she only stared at the ceiling. She wouldn’t look at him.
Rage suddenly filled him. She wanted to cheat him. She wanted to scare him. She was playing dead. She didn’t really want to go to bed with him at all.
“We’ll see!” He yanked at her skirt, ripping it at the seam, tearing it off. “You think you can fool me! We’ll see about that!”
He tore her clothing off, ripping the blouse and skirt to pieces, so one sleeve of the blouse still remained behind on her arm. He hooked his fingers inside her bra and yanked, and material ripped. He tore her clothing off, till she wore only the white socks and the sleeve of the blouse. And then he fell upon her.
She wouldn’t move. No matter what he did, no matter how he tried to excite her, she wouldn’t move. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He rutted on her, cursing her and pleading with her, and she refused to move.
When it was over, he suddenly knew that she really was dead. She was dead. She’d been dead all the time, since before he picked her up from the floor.
He scrabbled away from her, falling off the bed, scrambling to his feet and backing away across the room. A superstitious fear had filled him, leaving him weak and trembling. He had defiled a corpse. Her ghost had stood at the foot of the bed and watched him all the time.
He stared around the room, seeing shapes and figures and darknesses that swam and blurred, that vanished before he could focus his eyes. He heard sighing, and whispered words that he could not quite make out.
He stumbled out of the room, and down the stairs to the second floor, fleeing blindly, without plan or purpose. But in the second-floor hallway he forced himself to stop, to stand still until he could start to think again.
She was dead. The rest was unimportant, it didn’t matter. What did it matter? She was dead now, but how did he know when she died? Hadn’t he heard her breath, felt her heartbeat? She had died afterward. Or she had died during. Or so what if she had died before? He couldn’t be sure when she’d died, and it didn’t matter, it was unimportant.
She’d brought it on herself anyway.
Flaunting herself at him. Giving him the sidelong looks. Smiling in that suggestive way. Swinging her body in front of him.
She had asked for it. By first promising him release, and then by turning him away. How vicious that was! She’d deserved to die.
But what was he to do now? They would find her body, sooner or later. What was he to do?
He could run. He could run away again, as he had run away from the asylum.
But it was unfair. He was happy here. He was safe here, and content. He was with people he liked. It was unfair that he should have to give all this up, just because that stupid girl had forced him to kill her.
Could he stay?
He had an alibi. He was downstairs at the rehearsal. Yes, he’d left the room for a few minutes, but so had everybody else at one time or another. He would be suspect, but so would everyone else.
And they needn’t even think it was a member of the company. The front door was unlocked. Anyone could have come in, anyone at all. A stranger, a prowler.
He could take a chance on it. If it looked as though they might catch up with him, he would have to run away. Otherwise, he’d take a chance on it.
He hurried into the bathroom to wash his face and hands, to adjust his clothing and look at himself in the mirror to be sure he bore no signs of what had happened. There were no signs. He was clean. He could go back downstairs. He could stay on here with these people.
He loved these people. They had taken him in, they were good to him.
And all at once he felt sad. Because they had all liked Cissie Walker. They would be unhappy that she was dead. They would miss her.
He was unhappy, too, about her death. Because it would make his new friends sad. And because she had only been a foolish girl, not a mean girl. What had happened had been no more her fault than his. She had just been very young and silly, and hadn’t realized the effect she had on men. And he had been too long away from women, and hadn’t realized she didn’t really mean the promises she seemed to make.
Would this spoil things? It had been a mistake, that’s all, they’d both been mistaken, and the result had been inevitable. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, he hadn’t gone up there to kill her. He had intended to kill that old man and old woman, but he hadn’t intended to kill Cissie Walker.
He wanted them to understand that. Not Doctor Chax; he had no explanations for Doctor Chax. His new friends, they were the ones. He wanted them to know he hadn’t meant it, he wished it hadn’t happened. He couldn’t tell them so without them knowing it was he who had killed her, but he wanted them to know.