Chapter 5 Andre
FIVE
Andre
This next part is hard. For Elias, yes, but for me too. This is the denial, the shattering of expectations, the harsh, unwelcome return to reality.
But I have to do this. I have to hurt him. It’s what he asked for.
I didn’t get to watch him receive the message, however.
Unfortunately, this part requires the agency’s participation, and Wes is being an asshole about it. He doesn’t like it. He says it makes things too real, but he hasn’t watched Elias like I have. He doesn’t know Elias like I do. He doesn’t understand that that’s the fucking point.
Wes would only agree to send the message from the ForbiddenX site if Elias could receive it at home, in private.
I know he got it last night. I could tell the instant he left his apartment building. His head was angled down. His hands were in the pocket of his gray hoodie. I could tell, too, that he wasn’t using a plug.
I should be glad he’s emerged at all. It’s his day off and there was every chance he would stay inside, especially after that message. Most people would have been scared. Was Elias? I’m angry that I didn’t get to see his initial reaction.
He should be scared, actually, but what I mostly see in his body language as I follow him is disappointment.
Do you miss me already, baby? Do you really think I would stay away from you? Do you really think that anyone could keep me away from you?
He must, since that’s what he was promised.
Your case is under review, he was informed.
ForbiddenX assures you that you are safe, but you are advised to report any suspicious activity or contact to the moderator at this number.
ForbiddenX will contact you within 7 days to reinstate your request, if possible, or to issue a refund. We apologize for any inconvenience.
So my poor Elias believes that his fantasy has been cancelled. He believes that it’s over. And because he’s smart, he’ll have read between the lines of that message: something went wrong.
It’s important that he not be sure what that something was. He needs to guess at it, worry about it, obsess over it. He needs to believe it. That way, later, he can believe his fear.
I wonder where he’s going. In his hoodie and joggers, I would guess for a run, but he’s not headed toward the park. There’s no gym nearby, and I doubt he would spend money on a membership.
The picture he submitted to ForbiddenX offered a glimpse of his apartment, and it was clear that he doesn’t buy extras, doesn’t indulge himself. He doesn’t earn much either, so he must have saved up for this.
He needs it. He needs me.
Is that why I’m obsessed with him?
I’m supposed to be, of course. It’s my role. It’s not just allowed—it’s required.
There’s a warning somewhere in my mind, but it’s coming from outside the boundaries of my role, so I ignore it. I have to focus. I can’t let Elias see me when I’m hunting him. The black ballcap and sunglasses can only do so much to divert the eye.
So I’m careful. I keep back. I follow him across two neighborhoods to … an animal shelter? He walks inside like he’s done it a hundred times.
I can’t follow him in there. When he doesn’t emerge after a few minutes, I look for a place to wait. Across the street, there’s a used bookstore with a view of the door, so I go there. The place has a hippie vibe and stinks of patchouli, but at least there are faded armchairs by the window.
The girl who sells me a ratty paperback copy of Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales doesn’t bat an eye at my random choice, my appearance, or my decision to sit by the window with my purchase.
A mottled black and orange cat is curled up in the chair next to me. I’m not often around animals, so I give it a wary glance, but it doesn’t acknowledge me.
Elias spends so long in the animal shelter that I end up reading several stories that tell me what I already knew: the world is cruel, and innocence is always punished.
When Elias emerges from the shelter, I abandon the book. I’m prepared to slip out and follow him again, but goddamn it, he’s jogging across the street, heading right this way.
I don’t have a lot of options, so I slip into the maze of shelves. The girl behind the counter never looks up from her own book. I locate the door to a back room and position myself to reach it, if necessary, without losing sight of the entrance.
As Elias walks in, the girl behind the counter looks up.
“Hey, Elias.”
“Hi, Shiloh. Can I give Turtle a treat?”
“You mean the voracious gremlins across the street didn’t rob you blind?”
Elias’s pretty lips tug slightly. “I saved a couple.”
“Did you hear that, Turtle? You’re getting the leftovers.”
Elias says, “She has you and all the customers. They have no one.”
“Hey, no guilt trips.”
“Sorry,” Elias says even though I see nothing for him to be sorry for. “It’s been a … well. Sorry.”
“Bad day?”
Elias looks away, uncomfortable. “Something like that.”
The girl behind the counter, Shiloh, looks like she wants to say something, but Elias walks toward the window nook and sits on the floor by the cat’s chair.
He reaches into the pocket of his gray hoodie.
Above the arm of the chair, I see the cat’s back arching as it stretches.
Elias smiles a little. He sets what I assume is a treat on the seat of the chair.
He puts the next one on the floor and the cat jumps down.
“Still no sign of Onyx?” Shiloh asks.
Elias shakes his head. “I haven’t seen her for weeks. Emmy made me stop putting out food on the patio. She said it would bring rats into the store.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I should’ve taken Onyx to the shelter. Maybe someone would’ve adopted her. It was selfish of me.”
“You really are having a bad day.”
Elias stuffs his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Sorry.”
“Tell you what. I’ll put my cleansing blend in the incense burner. That’ll help.”
While Shiloh busies herself with the incense burner, Elias picks up the book I left. The cat crawls into his lap and curls up for a nap. Elias starts to read.
Everything looks peaceful and good and happy, but it’s not. Elias, at random moments, takes deep, harsh breaths. He’s thinking. He’s upset.
Shiloh’s cleansing blend isn’t going to help him, nor is her unobtrusive presence. She’s like a benevolent queen or aunt in one of those stories. She isn’t cruel; therefore, she isn’t relevant.
What Elias needs is a hand at his throat. He needs a dominant weight bearing him down. He needs this illusion of his innocence shattered. He needs it punished so he can scream and cry and find freedom in the wickedness as it devours him.
He needs the truth laid bare: that he is part of that wickedness.
Soon, baby, soon.
He needs to suffer more first. He needs to wrap himself up in this cloak of innocence and isolation that he’s worn for so long.
He needs to feel again how much he hates it, so that when I rip it away from him, when I fuck him until he comes, screaming, in the dirt, he recognizes the truth of himself.
When he breaks, he needs to break along all the fault lines already agitating inside him—and nothing makes a person break like terror.
Elias, because he’s not as innocent as he looks, knows this. That’s why he asked for it.
* * *
I give it a few more days. I need to be sure that Elias is convinced of his abandonment.
I let him return to work. I don’t visit him.
I tell myself that he needs to suffer, but I realize one night as I snap the stem of a crystal wineglass between my fingers, as people stare at me, as I find that I have to leave and get out of my fucking tux—I realize that I need to suffer.
So I let myself.
I don’t answer my phone.
I don’t set foot in my office or even my building.
I have fault lines too, and I let myself break along them. The difference between my fault lines and Elias’s is that I don’t need anyone to break them for me. I just have to stop holding them together.
I don’t notice the moment when my role becomes my reality.
All I know is that one night when I’m stalking Elias on his walk home from work, I pull on the skull mask fitted with a voice modulator. I start herding him along the route that I’ve planned. I do it instinctively. I know, somehow, that it’s time. I feel it.
Maybe it’s because Elias is lonely and withdrawn in just the right way, because he’s given up. Or maybe it’s because some part of me recognizes that the game has finally vanished, that it’s not a game anymore.
It’s not a role. It’s not an act.
It’s what he asked for.