Bad Taste (Part I) // Colby Brock

178 - Rebecca

If I thought the first day was bad, I had another thing coming. A few days passed by without talking to anyone—no one from the house, at least. Tara stayed with me every night and Jake stayed in the living room sleeping on the couch during the day. If I felt like I could speak, I would have told him he could go and sleep with Tara in my bedroom, but my throat felt too dry for that.

I hadn't eaten much, though I muttered to Tara that I had when she asked. She probably knew I was lying but I didn't care: I just wanted her to leave me alone.

There wasn't much to do in my apartment besides watch TV, which I had to do sitting on the floor or squeezing onto the end of the couch next to Jake. It was slowly numbing my brain down to nothing. I wanted to kick some ass or do something more productive—like design—but at the same time, I felt too exhausted to do any of those things; to do anything, really.

As I sat perched on the end of the couch watching a shitty TV show while Jake slept behind me, I was utterly still. I was wondering what I would do today to avoid Tara. What would I have to say? What would I have to throw at her so she'd let me sit in my room alone? I'd heard her and Jake talking in the living room many times by now—it was always about me, not that I could understand what else they had to say. I didn't want to know.

Halfway through another shitty episode, I felt Jake shifting. His head moved and his eyes fluttered as he slowly woke up. He always looked like a child when he woke up but he acted like a miserable shit—once he'd woke up properly was when he acted like a child instead.

His eyes moved straight to me the moment they were open, an emotion hidden in them that I didn't understand. He tried to smile at me but I turned away before he could get it out. I didn't feel like smiling today—or ever. He let out a sigh but he didn't argue with me, zipping out of the room. I shifted to be more comfortable and turned the TV up.

After a couple of minutes, Tara appeared by my side. She wasn't so nice about trying to get me to socialise with her: she dragged me to sit under her arm and kissed the side of my head. I wanted to push her away but something just stopped me.

"Good evening, Beck," she said, glancing at the TV. "This shit again, huh?" I shrugged. "I know a good movie, if you want to watch it?" I shrugged again and she sighed, leaning forward to change the channel. I took the opportunity to slide across the couch away from her, bringing my knees to my chest in the corner. She didn't argue with it.

Once the movie was on, however, I noticed she was on her phone. She looked focused, like whatever she was doing was really important. I noticed her face light up before she caught me looking and she tried to smile at me. Again, I turned away.

About halfway through the movie, the front door opened and closed. My eyes flicked over to see Jake with a big backpack on his shoulder, an excited expression covering his face. Tara immediately zipped onto the floor next to my coffee table with her legs crossed and he appeared in her place next to me. Without saying a word, he unzipped the backpack then pulled out what looked to be some photos and, to my surprise, a dagger.

The look he gave me was so mischievous I thought he was about to prank me.

"Guess what," he said, nodding down to the items now on my coffee table, "I got more serial killer shit."

I wanted to sigh.

"This guy, not many people know about," he started to explain as he animatedly spread the photos across the coffee table and picked up the dagger. He waved it around as she spoke, which had Tara on edge in the corner of my eye. Every time he told me something, he paused for my reaction. When I didn't give him one, he continued, yet he still paused. As soon as he was finished explaining this serial killer, he moved onto another, more famous serial killer.

I found myself zoning completely out of the movie and my surroundings and just focusing on him. It took me until I accidentally asked him to continue for me to realise I wasn't thinking, either.

"So?" I asked, annoyed that he'd paused.

He smiled. "So, they decided to take all of this off of him, thinking it'd stop him from killing people. It didn't, obviously. He'd only killed three people at this point and he went on to kill another six—those are just the ones we know about."

"Stop being so dramatic, Jake," Tara giggled across the room, pulling something else from the backpack. I noticed it was some sort of old-fashioned phone I'd never seen before. It looked straight out of the 2000s. "Why do you have this?"

"Because," he snatched it out of her hand, "that's the next thing." He turned to me with that annoying smile still on his face. "Want to hear about the next one?" I didn't reply. "I won't continue unless you tell me to."

"Fine. Go ahead," I snapped.

Jake looked too accomplished with himself before he began to explain the last serial killer—this time a woman. She was also not very well known and all of her possessions were leaked to the public by a dirty cop. After a while, they stopped searching for everything. Jake had talked to someone sketchy to get these items, but I doubted he'd be in danger from some human serial killer enthusiast.

I ended up sitting there and listening to Jake for the rest of the night, even when he drifted away from the serial killers. I was pretty sure he was just glad to see me paying attention—Tara, too, as she kept the conversation rolling.

It was probably the best night I'd had in a while, but certainly nothing compared to what I could have had. The break from my own thoughts was nice still. Maybe Jake wasn't so annoying after all.