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“Circular saws really are the best,” Strade says.
He has to speak up so I can hear him over the sound of his car shuddering through uneven dips in the country road and the constant, low crackling of gravel spitting out behind us. Every time we take a turn, I hear something heavy rolling around in the back like a sack of potatoes, and every loud thump makes me look back nervously. Strade doesn’t seem to notice.
“Handsaws are a close second,” he continues unprompted, “I have to work a lot harder, you know, like trying to chop up a slab of beef with a butter knife, but there’s something meaningful about that. We get to look each other in the eye, and it’s just….” He sighs the way someone else might sigh at the memory of summer vacation with friends, an exhale of nostalgia and rose-tinted yesteryears.
(This isn’t what I came for. I didn’t come to talk, I don’t want to fucking talk. I thought, hey, maybe he’ll have something in the trunk again and he won’t mind if I just take a little peek, that’s all, that’s it, that’s all I wanted. Why talk about anything? There’s nothing to talk about. I didn’t fucking kill anybody, that was all him. I don’t want to know how that girl ended up that way; doesn’t matter, I’m not gonna ask questions. I just want to look.
He swung by the store just like he usually does but he just kind of loitered until it was time to close, and then he sauntered over and asked, “You wanna go on a little drive?” and I thought, what, is this the code we’re using? so I said, “Sure.”
But then we got out there and he was opening the passenger door instead of the trunk. I asked him what he was doing. He said we were going to go for a drive. I asked him why.
He leaned in really close, put a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye with an unnerving smile, and he said, “Get in the car, I wanna show you something.”
If I’m being real honest, then yes, he wants to fucking kill me went through my head, but so did why would he bother? We’re both getting something out of this, right? so I went for it.)
I move to rest an arm under the window and brush my fingers over the empty void where the passenger side door handle should be.
(Yep, I’m going to die.)
“But I’ve gone through a lot of saws that way,” he says, “Get enough gristle in there and eventually it’s just no good anymore. Electric’s the way to go, but it’s missing that personal connection.”
I nod stiffly, but I feel that eerie somebody-watching-me feeling when he suddenly goes quiet and glance reluctantly away from the window to find him staring at me, smile a little faded.
“You’ve been kind of quiet this whole time,” he comments. It should just be an observation, but it sound like a threat.
“Sorry, I,”
( Fuck think fast )
“I,” followed by a nervous swallow, “Didn’t want to interrupt.”
Strade brightens immediately. “Come on, we’re supposed to be having a conversation. I told you, I want to get to know you. What you like, what you don’t….” He narrows his eyes. “What turns you on.”
(Well that escalated quickly.)
“It’s just,” I say, face heating up as I look away, “I dunno. I mean. You know already, right?”
Strade raises a brow. “What, are you,” he chuckles, “Embarrassed?” His eyes go back to the road when the it veers off to the right up ahead, slowing down as he follows the path. Of course, he doesn’t stop talking. “We’ve got something, you and I,” he claims, “We’ve got a connection. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. If dead bodies get you going, who am I to judge?”
“Now, hold on, I never said that,” I stammer, mortified to hear my darkest, dirtiest secret spoken so plainly.
He slams on the brakes suddenly, and I jerk forward at the abrupt stop, seatbelt digging into my chest. I stare wide-eyed through the windshield, trying to see if there’s an animal or something in the road, but there’s nothing there.
Reluctantly, I look at Strade for an explanation. He isn’t smiling anymore.
“You’re gonna deny it, huh?” he asks in a flat tone I’ve never heard him use before. He never looks or sounds like this at the store, the corner of his mouth twitching in irritation, staring me down like I killed his fucking dog. “You’re gonna lie to my face like I don’t know the difference?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t move. I don’t even breathe . It’s silent for the first time since we left.
(I fucked up. I fucked up )
Strade twists around in his seat to give me his full attention, and I’m scrabbling again for the door handle
(that isn’t there goddammit).
He grabs my face and slams me against the window and it fucking hurts , pinpricks of light flashing in front of my eyes as the back of my head starts to throb. I try to push him away but just end up flailing my arms in the empty air when he moves just out of reach, only to come back and yank me closer by the wrist, looping some rope
(wait a fucking second I rang him up for that)
around my wrists and tying a tight knot.
“There,” he says, eyes shining with another new emotion I can’t put a name to
(but it’s definitely terrifying)
as he settles back in his seat and starts to drive again. Gone is the dangerous edge to his voice, and now he sounds the way I’m used to hearing him, albeit with a bit of exasperation. “Now, I think I understand what the problem is….”
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out before he’s even done talking, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, I didn’t mean it!”
“...you’re having second thoughts,” he goes on, like he didn’t hear me, “I get it, this is all new for you. Sometimes, even when we have exactly what we want right in front of us, we hold ourselves back.” He pauses, looking at me out of the corner of his eye and licking his lips , “But we shouldn’t.”
I get that awful miss-the-last-step right before faceplanting on the pavement feeling, that sickening dread that comes with knowing what’s about to inevitably happen. I try tugging my hands apart but the ropes just scrape against my skin.
“So, I get it,” Strade says, still talking, he’s still talking like we’re peas in a pod , “I get what you’re trying to do. You’re thinking, ‘oh, I’ll just pretend I’m normal, and eventually it’ll come true.’ Right?” I open my mouth to say—fuck, I dunno, I haven’t thought that far ahead yet—but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t give me time to say anything. “Maybe you don’t know this, but being a normal person in this car is a bad thing.” He smiles. “Let me show you what I mean.”
“No,” you whimper, “I didn’t...mean….”
Suddenly the car begins shuddering and shaking as he turns onto some barely-there path cut through the trees, low-lying branches smacking the windshield. With a renewed sense of panic, I continue to struggle, wondering if the door will open if I throw myself against it hard enough.
Before I can make an attempt, the car comes to another sudden stop and I feel my entire body trembling when Strade unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out. He slams his door shut just as I begin debating if I can get over the car’s center console with my hands tied. I watch as he meanders around the front of the car to my side, humming to himself like this is totally normal.
(This is a man who spent nearly the entire drive talking about which murder weapon gives him the most intimate feelings. It probably is normal for him.)
The moment the door on my side opens, I try to shoulder past him but he’s already got his hands on me, pulling me out by the forearm and letting me fall in the dirt. I manage to get to my knees when I feel what I’m pretty sure is barrel of a gun against the back of my head. My breath hitches in my throat and I’m suddenly aware of absolutely everything going on around me—the smell of the night air and my own sweat, the sound of an owl somewhere far away, the feeling of cold, hard steel pressing into my scalp.
“If you run,” Strade says lowly, “You’ll die.”
I bite my lip and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to think clearly and rationally and maybe find a way out of this.
“Do you understand?”
(Don’t think about the gun don’t think about the gun don’t think about the gun don’t think about the gun )
“I-I understand,” I stutter. I have no fucking clue where we are. I never heard him lock the car or take the keys out of the ignition, so getting back in on the driver’s side seems like the only option.
“Stand up,” he orders, and I try my best to comply, but I’m a little shaky on my feet with my entire body trembling. He steadies me with a rough hand on my shoulder. “Now, don’t move,” he says, and I breathe a sigh of relief when the pressure of the gun disappear—
only to choke when a serrated hunting knife presses against my throat.
“Good,” he murmurs, the blade trailing down my neck and digging into my skin a little at my collarbone. I wince when he applies enough pressure to sink it into my flesh, beads of blood seeping into my shirt just as he slices it in half, tearing the offending fabric off of my body and letting what’s left fall on the forest floor. I shiver and feel goosebumps rising along my arms, wrists straining instinctively to cover myself.
Strade stops for a moment, standing still and silent behind me, but it’s an agonizing moment of anticipating whatever he’s going to do next.
“Alright,” he says, looping a couple fingers into the waistband of my pants, “Let’s get these off, too, huh?”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask hoarsely, and I feel the tingling, burning sensation of tears forming.
(Shit don’t cry he probably gets off on that)
“Doing what?” he asks as he tugs my pants down around my ankles, and I can practically hear the fucking smile in his voice. “Keeping your hands tied? Undressing you?” He draws the knife up the side of my ribcage, and I let out a shuddering whine at the pain, my own blood hot on my skin. “Making you bleed a little? You have to be a little more specific.” My undergarments go last, shredded into useless bits and blowing away on the night wind. Strade rests a hand on the wound, gently at first. “You get it now, right?”
I don’t get it. He must see that, because then he’s digging his fucking fingers into the gash in my side, pulling the skin apart, touching touching inside and moving his hand around beneath my skin oh Christ
“I want you to be straightforward with me from now on,” he purrs into my ear, pressing himself against me from behind, holding me still with one arm wrapped around my stomach, the other still fingering the wound, “You can do that, can’t you, buddy?”
I’m still screeching from the pain and don’t really have an answer for him, terrified and confused and
(Wait
wait, is he
Is he hard right now?)
He’s moving his hips, just a little, just enough for me to notice. His jeans rub against my bare backside and I can feel it, I feel it straining through the fabric. I start to tremble again.
“What gets you off?” he whispers.
I swallow nervously. The arm across my body releases me to take up the knife again, and I whimper when he slowly digs the blade into my back, a little deeper, a little harder, dragging it up along my spine. I take deep breaths, and then I feel his fingers slip out of the wound in my side, slick with my blood, sliding closer to the new incision.
“No, no, no,” I beg, hyperventilating, “No, I, please, I, please don’t, please, Strade—!”
“What gets you off?” he repeats impatiently.
“C-cor….” My voice dies in my throat.
(I can’t I can’t say it out loud that it makes it real)
He sighs, disappointed. I wait, toes curling, body tense in anticipation, for him to dig his hand into my back.
But he never does.
There’s a blood moon hanging heavy in the sky over us, burnt orange and deep scarlet like livor mortis. A wolf howls somewhere far away. I close my eyes and imagine that I’m somewhere else.
And then he stabs me in the fucking thigh and I scream and I feel my throat aching and tears running down my face, falling to my knees when he haphazardly yanks the knife out, blood splattering on the ground, fingers clutching dead leaves and twigs and digging at the dirt until it cakes my nails, I
( fuck fuck it hurts it hurts so fucking much I need to I need to get away need to run need to drag myself if I can’t run need to need to )
Strade’s weight settles on my back and he tugs on a fistful of my hair, forcing my head out of the grass. “Say it.”
I lay there on the forest floor; panting, naked, bleeding. A spider or some ants or a centipede or some fucking thing with too many legs crawls over my arm.
( Need to get away from him gonna die out here in the woods covered in bugs and shit need to get up and run need to )
He leans in and I feel his breath hot on my skin, feel his stubble scraping my cheek. Feel him grinding his hips into me. “Say. It.”
( I
need
to)
“Corpses,” I whimper, “I-I get off on c-corpses.”
“Yeah?” he asks kindly, like he’s talking to a child. “Tell me about that.”
“S-she was,” I choke on a sob, “She was so pretty, I just. I-I just w-wanted to see her again, wanted to t-touch her...”
“Yeah? With her face all cut up like that? Did you touch yourself thinking about it?”
I shake my head, reaching forward with one hand as if I actually have any chance of crawling away.
Strade plunges a finger into the stab wound on my thigh and I almost vomit. “Don’t lie to me,” he warns, twisting his wrist, “Did you touch yourself?”
“Yes!” I scream, “I did it I touched myself Ithoughtabouther—!”
Then he starts laughing. He withdraws his hand from the wound and I shudder but I don’t move. When he lets go of my hair, I just fall forward into the dirt, body wracked with quiet sobs. Eventually, his weight disappears as he gets up and walks over to the car. I don’t know what I expect—for him to shoot me, or stab me again, or maybe just leave me there—but I don’t expect to feel a blanket fall over my body and I go still in shock.
“Come on, buddy,” he says, a hand on my shoulder to help me upright, “Let’s get you home and stitched up, alright?”
And I don’t know what’s happening or what to do, so I just nod and lean on him as he helps me back into the passenger seat,
(no door handle)
pats me on the shoulder, shuts the door, and then gets in on the other side to start the car. He goes a little further into the woods before he finds a spot wide enough to make U-turn, and then we’re headed back the way we came. As we turn onto the main road, I hear another thump from the trunk.
“This is good,” he tells me, “I'm glad we got to talk like this. I think we really made some progress tonight.”
I lean against the window, dirt-covered and tear-stained cheek resting on the cold glass, unable to speak. Strade seems to accept this silence, though, his words gentle as he rests one hand on my thigh
(the one without the stab wound).
“You get where I’m coming from, right?” he asks.
I shift uncomfortably, pulling my bloodied back away from the seat when it starts to stick to the leather. “Yeah,” I whisper, “I get it,” and I’m not just saying that because I’m afraid.
The drive back is quieter than our trip out into the countryside. I don’t really keep track of where we’re going and Strade doesn’t ask for my address so I just assume that “home” means his place, but that doesn’t matter. I keep rambling the whole way there, too exhausted for my conversational filter to keep up. “She was beautiful,” I tell him, somewhat delirious, mostly sure he needs to know, “I have dreams some nights about finding where you buried her. Digging her up. Running my hands through her hair.”
Strade doesn’t say much back, but he keeps smiling, nodding or making a noise of assent from time to time. His hand on my hip gently strokes the skin, and eventually I stop shaking.
We pull into a driveway I don’t recognize, and when we come to a stop, there’s one final but much weaker bang that comes from the trunk. Strade offers his shoulder for me to lean on, but as we walk up the steps to his front porch, I can’t help but glance back at the car. “What do you have back there?” I end up asking.
He follows my gaze to the back of his car and his smile widens just a bit. “A nice surprise for next time,” he says.
I don’t muse on the implications, nor if I even want a “next time” after tonight. I’m too tired to worry. Instead, I just nod, let him lead me, and allow myself something to look forward to.