“Afterwards.”
“After I kill them?”
“Aren’t you... don’t you feel bad? Guilty?”
“I don’t feel much of anything, kitten. I suppose you don’t know much about that. There’s something in me, a shadow. It dulls everything, makes the world black and white. I don’t feel guilty, or bad, or good, not once the shadow is there. I feel...”
“Numb?”
His eyes lifted to mine, and I saw a hurt in them that immediately vanished. It was as though he’d opened up a bit to me, peeked through the door, and then slammed it shut.
“Something like that.”
A tiny plop of mashed potato fell from the fork, down my chin. It landed on my chest, soft and warm against my bare skin. His hand moved down, and I thought of how he had touched me before. The memory stirred something in my body that I tried not to think about.
He wiped up the mashed potato with a single finger, strong and hard against the skin of my collarbone. Then he lifted the finger to my lips.
“Finish,” he said.
I didn’t dare disobey. I tilted my head forward and sucked at his finger, licked off the mashed potato. His eyelashes fluttered as my tongue touched his skin and there was a softening around the corners of his eyes, but he had no other reaction. I swallowed.
“Gavriel?”
His eyes went cold again when I said his name.
“Yes?”
“What are you going to do with me?”
The calmness with which he smiled back at me only made the answer creepier.
“Are you done with dinner? Yes? Then you’re going back down into the basement.”
He tucked the knife in his back pocket before releasing my straps. Before I could move, he had his arm around my waist and was helping me off of the table.
“How’s the ankle?” he asked.
“Better,” I answered truthfully. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t shooting through my leg any more when I put pressure on it. It was still nice to have someone to lean on as we made our way to the basement stairs. I limped down the steps and into the middle of the basement with him half-carrying me.
The window was covered with wooden boards screwed in on all sides. He let me go and I leaned one hand against the wall.
Gav reached out and clicked a handcuff around my wrist. I jerked my arm back, but he had already locked the other cuff onto the water pipe next to the window.
“What?” I looked down at my wrist dumbly.
“That’s so you don’t try any other stupid escapes. My alarm system is up again, remember? I’ll know you’re out before you can go two steps. So don’t try, little kitten. Even if you manage to get out, it would be suicide.”
He opened his mouth as though he was going to say something else, then closed it. A hot rage clutched at my chest. I stammered. He couldn’t do this. It was bad enough, being held captive in a basement. Now I was handcuffed to a pipe?
“Please, no.” I stepped toward him but the handcuffs held me back. “I promise I won’t try to escape. I promise. Please don’t handcuff me.”
“Should have thought about that before, kitten.”
“Please. What if the basement floods? What if there’s a fire?”
“Then I expect you’ll die. Don’t pull too hard on that pipe. Wouldn’t want a flood.”
Anger choked my throat. He’d fed me, helped me. Strangely enough, I felt betrayed. I don’t know what I had expected from him, but he had managed to make me think that he might have some feelings for me. But now he was leashing me up like a pet. My mouth was dry, but I wasn’t about to ask him for water. He’d probably set a bowl on the ground for me to drink out of.
He tossed the blanket at my feet and turned to leave. A thought popped into my mind.
“Gavriel?”
“What is it?”
“You said you don’t believe in guns.”
“That’s right.” His silhouette was dark against the light coming from the top of the stairs.
“But you told me before that you had a gun. You said you’d come down and shoot me if I tried anything.”
“I lied.”
“Y—you can’t lie!” I blurted.
“Of course I can,” he said, and even though I couldn’t see his face I knew that he was smiling. “Haven’t you ever heard of an unreliable narrator?”
He closed the door and left me. My eyes still blinked, as though if I tried hard enough, I could see something in all of the darkness around me.
Gav
That afternoon I went to the bar on the outskirts of town not far from where I lived. It was where I sometimes went to pick up women. Yes, I do that too. I’m a normal person, really, except for the killing bit. The shadow that hugs me so tight I can’t breathe.