Skeletons in the Closet

Chapter 39

When I came to, it felt as though I was having the worst migraine in my entire life except that the migraine had to have been caused by a jackhammer to my temporal lobe. A groan escaped my lips as my vision slowly came back. It took a moment for it to shift from complete blurriness to a hazy focus, but I could see that I was still in the apartment. I could feel the stiff wood of a kitchen chair under me, bringing nothing but complete discomfort to my body. It ached, but thankfully not as badly as my poor head.

A moment later, with my brain fully rebooted, I had a horrifying realization: I was tied to the chair. My hands and feet strained against the ropes that restrained them and despite the fact that I knew I wasn't getting up, my body instinctively tried to fight its way free. It failed and, breathing deeply, I tried to collect myself and take stock of everything that had happened to that moment.

I didn't have long to recollect. The footsteps on the wooden floor, the ominous thump that each made, let me know that my assailant was still here and he was close. The steady thump of his stride grew louder with each step until he came to a stop behind me. I could hear his breath, but I was surprised by what I heard: instead of the composed, steady breathing of someone who had done this many times, I heard slightly ragged breaths. Nervous breaths. Scared breaths. Confusion kicked down the door to my brain and took over the show.

"Listen," I started to say, barely above a whisper. Anything more would have caused me to vomit as the splitting headache had overtaken me. "I don't know what this is about, but you don't have to do this."

"But I do."

Shock and horror washed over me, a typhoon of emotion that nearly knocked me backwards in my chair. I didn't need for him to walk into my line of sight to know who the voice belonged to. He stepped in front of me, a slight grin on his face.

"You look like you're a bit surprised, Della," Charlie said, arrogance dripping from his tone. He held a large, steel knife with a visibly serrated edge to it in his hands, stroking it softly like a beloved pet.

I stared at him. It was all I could manage to do. The shock of this moment had rendered me nearly catatonic and I knew that opening my mouth wouldn't produce much more than a whimper or a squeak at best. I simply couldn't comprehend what was happening.

"Allow me to explain," Charlie said, beginning to pace slowly from left to right as he continued to caress the knife in his hand.

"You were never the target of the Butcher of Bathurst. You were never intended to join an ever-growing list of victims. You were attacked in your apartment by me," he said, emphasizing that final word with a venom that I hadn't believed him capable of. Something washed over his face in that moment. It was anger, sure, but after a moment I finally recognized it: pain. He was hurting.

We sat there in silence a moment as I continued to stare at him in horror. I'm sure he was waiting for me to say something, but a combination of the shock and a helluva lot of spite made me not want to follow his little script.

"I'm sure you're asking yourself 'Why? Why would my friend do this to me?" His tone had become mocking, almost hateful. This tone, let alone the whole holding-me-at-knife-point thing, was something I'd never seen in him before.

"Did you know I've loved you for years?" he hissed. "Of course you knew. Girls like you always know. But you keep us hanging at a distance. You want your cake and to eat it too, never stopping to think about the guys like me. The guys who would do anything for you at the drop of a hat. The guys who would give up everything for you. You never noticed, though, because you couldn't see past your own selfish nose."

He stopped pacing, staring down at the knife as he ran his fingers over the blade. He continued pacing once more as he turned his gaze back to me.

"So I finally had to ask myself: 'what can I do to make Della see what she's been missing? How do I make Della need me?' And it became so simple. Make her need me. And that's just what I did, Della. I would make it would look like you'd gotten lucky where so many others hadn't. And as soon as you got out of the hospital, I knew you'd be too afraid to go home. You'd turn to a friend. You'd turn to me. And you were supposed to lean on me, to get even closer than we'd ever been, and that was supposed to be where things finally took off for us. Where you saw what you'd be missing and want me."