Chapter 8 Noah
Chapter eight
Noah
The room is dark, barely more than a cupboard with a desk and a chair. I sit in the chair Rhys directed me to and search through the desk. Half the desk drawers are empty. The others hold odd items. A pencil sharpener. An elastic band. A fork. A dozen other items with no obvious purpose.
I wonder if these are his murder souvenirs. I roll the elastic band between my fingers, wondering if it once snapped around some paperwork in the clinic or if it served some darker purpose.
It looks innocent.
Just something random he picked up at a scene. Or something he found in a victim’s pocket.
Serial killers always keep trophies in documentaries. Locks of hair. Jewelry. Driver’s licenses.
Rhys keeps a fork. And a pencil sharpener.
Somehow that feels worse.
These aren’t sentimental objects. They’re practical ones. Tools with a hundred uses, depending on how creative the person holding them is.
I’m strangely comforted by how deliberate it all feels.
The chair is comfortable, but the speaker is still on and I can't figure out how to turn it off. I try to sleep in the chair, under a coat that smells faintly of straw…and my episode of Follow the Vet has taken on a much darker tone.
I twist sideways in the chair, tucking my knees under the coat as if I don’t quite fit. Sleep should be impossible. I’ve been kidnapped by a serial killer and locked in his murder cupboard.
Yet my body is so used to exhaustion that it keeps trying, anyway.
My eyes close.
Open.
Close again.
Somewhere through the wall, Rhys is preparing to dissect two men, and my brain is trying to treat it like background noise.
I always liked his voice more than I should. I never tried to deny how I imagine he's talking directly to me when he says ‘who's a good boy then?’
Now I'm glad every word is directed at the brothers instead of me. For a moment, it’s easy to pretend this is just another episode.
That smooth voice, giving a running commentary on an operation, the gentle click of instruments in the background.
Those sounds are everything I've trained my body to fall asleep to.
But now I picture Frank lying on the cot, Rhys leaning over. My ears strain for every sound.
Footsteps, regular and rhythmic as Rhys sets up. The scrape of metal moving. The worst sound is the silence. The moment when there’s nothing.
Nothing to anchor my mind to the situation. No clue what he's doing in there.
Minutes pass. Or maybe seconds. Time stretches when you’re waiting for someone to start dying.
I focus on the sounds Rhys is making.
The quiet clink of metal. The faint scrape of something sliding across steel. The soft hiss of something pressurized. The same noises I hear during complicated surgeries on the show.
Except tonight, I know the patient isn’t meant to survive.
The squeal of Derek's voice shatters what little calm I’ve managed, bringing me back to wide awake with just one curse word. I was imagining the wrong brother suffering first. I would have started with Frank.
“What the hell?”
Derek's whimpering isn't much of a sentence; he's just making sounds.
But I have an overactive imagination, and I'm perfectly capable of working this out for myself.
If he was looking at Rhys operating on his brother, he'd be angry, swearing in complete sentences.
The fact that Derek can only manage squeak-like words leads to the unavoidable conclusion that it's not his brother under the knife, but him.
For a split second, my head turns in search of the camera, but I don't see one. When my mind catches up with the action, I give a sigh of relief. I don't need the image of my vet actually doing this seared into my mind. My imagination is quite capable of providing that horror for me.
“Why me?” Derek croaks.
“That’s what you get for being so uncaring,” I practically growl into my silence.
“We can hear you. Pet,” Rhys calls out in return.
“Oh, shit, fuck. No.” I gasp, throwing my hand across my mouth with a sharp slap sound they can definitely hear.
My stomach drops.
Of course he can hear me.
Of course the speaker still works both ways. I’ve just heckled a man while he’s performing a live autopsy.
“Noah?” Derek croaks out. “Help… me…”
“Help you?” I choke. “Like you help those dogs?”
“That's… not… you little shit… help me.”
“You want the sympathy you show the dogs when they're struggling to deliver their pups?”
“I don't think we can compare the two situations here, Pet,” Rhys chuckles.
“They have to squeeze their insides onto the outside. Pups, intestines, what's the difference?”
“You are a very perceptive young man,” Rhys praises.
I hate myself for it, but I smile. This man praises me and calls me Pet. He drugged me and dragged me away from my home and job. From the dogs. And yet, he has treated me with more respect and decency than my parents ever did. Definitely more than Derek and Frank.
Derek keeps whimpering in pleading words.
Occasionally he mutters my name, but it's Rhys’ voice I'm paying attention to.
He's talking clearly, projecting his voice as if this were a regular podcast. Each time he names an organ, I know it's not a passing observation.
I know he's pulling them out one by one.
When Frank's voice joins in the background wailing, I almost speak, but I don’t. This is Rhys's moment. This is his private life, and I don't want to give him a reason to put me on the table. I really like my insides where they are.
“I think I'm going to leave you here to think about your life while I give your brother a little attention.” Rhys informs Derek bluntly. All sounds stop, even the pained whimpering of a man I imagine with his abdomen open and half dissected.
After a few scraping sounds I can't place, Rhys continues his work, his macabre operation and slightly creepy monologue.
Some sounds remind me of dogs struggling through labor. Usually around puppy number five, when they're tired and hurting, and still have a long way to go. But other sounds are more desperate. More broken.
Barely words now.
“Are you interested, Noah? A dog would have died long before this point. Humans are remarkably resilient when they finally experience consequences.”
“Do you think the guilty should suffer?” I question softly, unsure if his words were rhetorical or require answering. He questions the audience during his podcast, and I confess I usually answer, but this time he can hear me.
“They shouldn’t live long enough to suffer.
Only long enough to understand.” Rhys continues, an ominous squelching sound fills my mind with the memory of tearing the membrane from a newborn puppy's face.
“Most people believe the heart is the most important organ. Personally, I find the conscience far more interesting.”
“I think the heart is important biologically.” I answer carefully.
“So is it possible to die without compromising the circulatory system?”
An interesting question.
“Yes, that's possible. I've seen pups die without bleeding, but there is usually some underlying health condition.”
“Good. I like an intelligent answer.”
That makes me smile more than it should. Is it intelligent to calculate the cause of death… when it comes?
I wonder if it would be shock or blood loss. Maybe seeing your intestines on your chest is enough. Maybe catastrophic organ failure.
Or maybe Rhys likes to be the direct cause, giving a final, fatal cut.
Only time would tell.
I should be horrified.
I should pray he forgets I exist.
Instead, I lean forward in the chair, listening harder; waiting for the next sound.