cleaver!
VOTIVE: I don’t think he’s willing to wait. I think he’s given up on me.
WINKY98: You’re worth waiting for. You’re WORTH IT!
A few seconds passed, with the message box blank. Then,
LAURIE45: Hello, CCord. It’s good to see you back.
Catherine typed.
CCORD: I see we’re talking about men again.
LAURIE45: Yeah. How come we can’t ever get off this tired subject?
VOTIVE: Because they’re the ones who hurt us.
There was another long pause. Catherine took a deep breath and typed.
CCORD: I had a bad day.
LAURIE45: Tell us, CC. What happened?
Catherine could almost hear the coo of female voices, gentle, soothing murmurs through the ether.
CCORD: I had a panic attack tonight. I’m here, locked in my house, where no one can touch me and it still happens.
WINKY98: Don’t let him win. Don’t let him make you a prisoner.
CCORD: It’s too late. I am a prisoner. Because I realized something terrible tonight.
WINKY98: What’s that?
CCORD: Evil doesn’t die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we’ve been touched by it once, it doesn’t mean we’re immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.
No one typed anything. No one responded.
No matter how careful we are, evil knows where we live, she thought. It knows how to find us.
A drop of sweat slid down her back.
And I feel it now. Closing in.
Nina Peyton goes nowhere, sees no one. She has not been to her job in weeks. Today I called her office in Brookline, where she works as a sales representative, and her colleague told me he doesn’t know when she will return to them. She is like a wounded beast, holed up in her cave, terrified of taking even one step out into the night. She knows what the night holds for her, because she has been touched by its evil, and even now she feels it seeping like vapor through the walls of her home. The curtains are closed tight, but the fabric is thin, and I see her moving about inside. Her silhouette is balled up, arms squeezed to her chest, as though her body has folded into itself. Her movements are jerky and mechanical as she paces back and forth.
She is checking the locks on the doors, the latches on the windows. Trying to shut out the darkness.
It must be stifling inside that little house. The night is like steam, and there are no air conditioners in any of her windows. All evening she has stayed inside, the windows closed despite the heat. I picture her gleaming with sweat, suffering through the long hot day and into the night, desperate to let in fresh air, but afraid of what else she might let in.
She walks past the window again. Stops. Lingers there, framed by the rectangle of light. Suddenly the curtains flick apart, and she reaches through to unlock the latch. She slides up the window. Stands before it, taking in hungry gulps of fresh air. She has finally surrendered to the heat.
There is nothing so exciting to a hunter as the scent of wounded prey. I can almost smell it wafting out, the scent of a bloodied beast, of defiled flesh. Just as she breathes in the night air, so, too, am I breathing in her scent. Her fear.
My heart beats faster. I reach into my bag, to caress the instruments. Even the steel is warm to my touch.
She closes the window with a bang. A few deep gulps of fresh air was all she dared allow herself, and now she retreats to the misery of her stuffy little house.
After a while, I accept disappointment and I walk away, leaving her to sweat through the night in that oven of a bedroom.
Tomorrow, they say, it will be even hotter.
five
This unsub is a classic picquerist,” said Dr. Lawrence Zucker. “Someone who uses a knife to achieve secondary or indirect sexual release. Picquerism is the act of stabbing or cutting, any repeated penetration of the skin with a sharp object. The knife is a phallic symbol—a substitution for the male sexual organ. Instead of performing normal sexual
VOTIVE: I don’t think he’s willing to wait. I think he’s given up on me.
WINKY98: You’re worth waiting for. You’re WORTH IT!
A few seconds passed, with the message box blank. Then,
LAURIE45: Hello, CCord. It’s good to see you back.
Catherine typed.
CCORD: I see we’re talking about men again.
LAURIE45: Yeah. How come we can’t ever get off this tired subject?
VOTIVE: Because they’re the ones who hurt us.
There was another long pause. Catherine took a deep breath and typed.
CCORD: I had a bad day.
LAURIE45: Tell us, CC. What happened?
Catherine could almost hear the coo of female voices, gentle, soothing murmurs through the ether.
CCORD: I had a panic attack tonight. I’m here, locked in my house, where no one can touch me and it still happens.
WINKY98: Don’t let him win. Don’t let him make you a prisoner.
CCORD: It’s too late. I am a prisoner. Because I realized something terrible tonight.
WINKY98: What’s that?
CCORD: Evil doesn’t die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we’ve been touched by it once, it doesn’t mean we’re immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.
No one typed anything. No one responded.
No matter how careful we are, evil knows where we live, she thought. It knows how to find us.
A drop of sweat slid down her back.
And I feel it now. Closing in.
Nina Peyton goes nowhere, sees no one. She has not been to her job in weeks. Today I called her office in Brookline, where she works as a sales representative, and her colleague told me he doesn’t know when she will return to them. She is like a wounded beast, holed up in her cave, terrified of taking even one step out into the night. She knows what the night holds for her, because she has been touched by its evil, and even now she feels it seeping like vapor through the walls of her home. The curtains are closed tight, but the fabric is thin, and I see her moving about inside. Her silhouette is balled up, arms squeezed to her chest, as though her body has folded into itself. Her movements are jerky and mechanical as she paces back and forth.
She is checking the locks on the doors, the latches on the windows. Trying to shut out the darkness.
It must be stifling inside that little house. The night is like steam, and there are no air conditioners in any of her windows. All evening she has stayed inside, the windows closed despite the heat. I picture her gleaming with sweat, suffering through the long hot day and into the night, desperate to let in fresh air, but afraid of what else she might let in.
She walks past the window again. Stops. Lingers there, framed by the rectangle of light. Suddenly the curtains flick apart, and she reaches through to unlock the latch. She slides up the window. Stands before it, taking in hungry gulps of fresh air. She has finally surrendered to the heat.
There is nothing so exciting to a hunter as the scent of wounded prey. I can almost smell it wafting out, the scent of a bloodied beast, of defiled flesh. Just as she breathes in the night air, so, too, am I breathing in her scent. Her fear.
My heart beats faster. I reach into my bag, to caress the instruments. Even the steel is warm to my touch.
She closes the window with a bang. A few deep gulps of fresh air was all she dared allow herself, and now she retreats to the misery of her stuffy little house.
After a while, I accept disappointment and I walk away, leaving her to sweat through the night in that oven of a bedroom.
Tomorrow, they say, it will be even hotter.
five
This unsub is a classic picquerist,” said Dr. Lawrence Zucker. “Someone who uses a knife to achieve secondary or indirect sexual release. Picquerism is the act of stabbing or cutting, any repeated penetration of the skin with a sharp object. The knife is a phallic symbol—a substitution for the male sexual organ. Instead of performing normal sexual
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