Chapter 19
Screams emanated from down the hall, their crescendoing echo breaking my focus on the files spread all over my living room.
Paper fluttered as I sat up and looked around. The contents of all seven boxes were strewn around the room in organized chaos. Chaos that, judging by his hell-fire eyes, Jesus was not happy about.
More screams came pouring into my apartment and if that wasn’t the twelve shots of espresso I needed to get through the day, I didn’t know what was.
Even better was that, if I knew murder, and I did, the screams sounded like the sort that normally came from Barb’s apartment. Exhausted, yet still able to feel holy terror.
Perfect. I needed to talk to her.
“Let’s go see what Barb is up to, shall we?” I needed a break anyway before I went cross-eyed permanently.
Jesus was not a fan of my cheery tone, as was expressed by the bitchy swish of his tail.
“There might be fingers involved,” I sang, hoping to be a little more enticing.
The hellcat watched me for a few beats before throwing me a mental eyeroll and following me out the door.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to pass that up, Mister Holier Than Thou.”
Jesus growled a warning. I ignored him.
The furry king of pride rested his ass on the stairwell banister as I stood on the landing and listened in, trying to determine which direction the screams had come from.
“I swear, Jesus, if I missed out on a good killing because you were so indecisive I’ll lead Judas right to you.”
I got lucky. As soon as I was done cursing the cat, another round of torturous tunes led me up the steps and giddy excitement tingled down my limbs.
My favorite sadistic neighbor was working her magic.
When I hit the landing, the sweet smell of cooked meat was like perfume in the air.
I inhaled deeply. “Do you smell that Jesus? Ahhhh,” I sighed on the exhale. “That is the simmering smell of psychopathy.”
I nodded down to my best friend and smiled when he licked his lips.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Barb?” I called out. “Can I come in?”
Pained moans were the answer, followed by the high pitched squeal of a power tool.
“Barb!” I pounded on the door. “Let me in, you cranky old bitch!”
Instruments slammed and the telling sound of her shuffled footsteps came closer.
My hair ruffled in the wind created by the violent opening of her front door.
“What?” she answered as joyfully as a hundred year old Louisiana Bayou serial killer could.
“Barb! You’re looking great!” The instant glare drilling a hole in my forehead told me she was highly unamused. “Sounds like you’ve got some fun stuff going on in there.”
I smiled, peering over her shoulder as I rocked back and forth on my feet. A murderer I may be, but I was not raised without manners. One does not simply invite oneself into a serial killer’s lair. Unless, of course, they’re eager to be the next one on Bayou Barb’s medicine table.
“You look like shit,” she said as she stepped aside.
“And here I was about to compliment the beautifully deep inset of your wrinkles and the way they highlight your frown.”
I stepped through the narrow opening, trying my best not to shoulder past the scary woman to my right. Barb had to have been at least eighty when she made her deal with Lucifer. Had I ever asked the details, though?
Abso-fucking-lutely not. In demon culture, it was rude and taboo as fuck to ask about the deal they made. Each deal was tailored to the individual and was an intimate bond between them and Luci.
I never understood it, but stopped asking questions after the third or so stab I’d received because of my curiosity.
Lucifer was supposedly the only one who could kill me in the afterlife. It had to be a lie, though. I was convinced that if Barb wanted you to die, you were going to fucking die, even if it was second death.
Barb’s apartment was less cozy than mine. Where I was rocking the burnt orange and mahogany of the eighties, she preferred the sterile white of an operating room. I kept Camp Crystal Lake, thriller murder vibes; Barb liked to sport more of a Saw atmosphere.
Her humble entryway led into one square room, completely unfurnished and lit with searing white bulbs. A chill skated across my skin. Whether it was from the refrigerated temperature or the doom and gloom creepiness hanging over the place like a curtain, I loved it.
“Can you imagine being knocked the hell out and waking up in a place like this?” I asked out loud to no one in particular. “I would shit my pants.”
“Hmph.” Barb shuffled past me, not concerned as to whether or not I followed, and entered through the only other door in sight.
“Uh, Barb? Can I like, come in orrrrrr…?”
“If you don’t be a pussy about it,” she called.
“Noted.” She didn’t see my air salute, but it felt right.
I crossed the threshold into my favorite room in Barb’s apartment: the kill room.
Four concrete, sound proof walls were divided by a two-way mirror: one side for experiments, the other for observation.
Monitors covered the entirety of one wall, showing different views from traffic cams, private security monitoring devices, computer cameras… If it had a camera, Barb could hack it.
Usually you’d associate old people with technical incompetence, but not Barb. She was clinical, analytical, and loved to learn. She evolved alongside technology and, oddly enough, had become its master.
Which was perfect, because I was going to need it.
“What’s on the docket today, Bayou Barb?”
“What the hell does it look like?”
“Welp,” I said, drawing out the word as I took in the scene before me.
Two humans were chained to the floor on opposite sides of the room, naked and bloody as the day they were born.
All variations of wounds covered their skin; burns, jagged tears and clean-cut lacerations, bite marks big and small, and others that I’d need to be closer to identify.
Other than that, there wasn’t much going on.
“I honestly have no idea,” I admitted. “Did you brutalize them with the power of manifestation? Voodoo? Oh! Did actual daggers fly straight out of your eyes?”
“Stupid, pain in the ass girl,” Barb muttered under her breath.
“I mean give me a break here, Barb.” I threw my hands up in mock frustration, slapping them down on my thighs for added effect.
With a dramatic harrumph, she clapped her gnarled hand over a button on the wall. An ominous buzzing sounded along with the slow creak of metal hinges. A small, doggy sized door opened on the right side.
The two chained inside the room began to stir, almost like the combination of sounds had a Pavlovian effect: pair a sound with pain long enough and the brain files them together, so the sound alone makes your body react like it’s already being hurt.
When I was in middle school, my science teacher gave us all a heap of powdered lemonade and when she rang the bell, we had to eat some.
The drink mix was sour and caused a flood of saliva to pool in our mouths.
After a few times of this set of conditions, she gave us a new rule: when the bell rings, don’t eat the powder.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for my mouth to salivate just as much as it had when the powder touched my tongue.
My eighth grade science teacher rewired my brain with lemonade powder and a few stupid bell rings. I shivered to think what Barb would be capable of.
To confirm my theory, three bells tinkered in uniform succession. By the last one, both humans were wide awake and in complete panic mode.
Nothing crawled out of the hole in the wall, and yet the human’s eyes were trained intensely in its direction. The one closest, a scrawny man with a terrible hairline and platypus feet, crawled as far away as the chain would allow which… wasn’t far.
“You sick bastard, Barb,” I smacked her on the shoulder. “How long did it take you to condition them?”
“Meh, less than seventy-two hours.”
“I’m surprised it took that long.” My gut feeling said she wasn’t using lemonade powder, but something much worse.
“I introduced the elements slowly,” she mused, one finger tracing her wilted bottom lip. “First the buzzer with no follow up. He cried like a pansy but she was a fighter.”
The female kept her back against the wall and, though I could see the heavy rise and fall of her chest, she didn’t shake or ugly cry like the man.
Instead, she wore an expression of defeat.
Tears shone through the dead gleam in her eyes before tracking through the dirt and dried blood on her cheeks. She was a fighter, and I admired that.
“After about twelve hours, I put the door into the sequence. She fought harder, he shut down.”
“That’s interesting,” I hummed and mused aloud, “because normally men feel an intense need to protect.”
At the thought, I saw Joe in that alley again, shouldering between me and danger, gun up with no hesitation. He hadn’t known me and still chose to be in the line of fire. It stuck under my skin in a way I couldn’t shrug off or identify.
Because if I was being honest with myself, just the thought of his name made my shoulders relax.
“Normally,” Barb interrupted my thoughts. “However, I didn’t suspect it with these two. She lived on the streets as a minor and never left. Drugs. Prostitution.”
“Takes no shit.”
“Take no shit,” Barb echoed. “He’s in corporate law. Criminal defense.”
“That explains it.”
“Narcissit. Thinks he’s seen it all until he gets thrown in the swamp with the gators.” Barb huffed sardonically.
I mimicked her and said, “Amen, sister.”
“Don’t call me sister.”
I loved her.
“Aye, aye, cap’n.”
Barb’s life work as a behavioral psychologist followed her straight into the afterlife.
Sure, it got a little morphed on its trip through hell.
Rather than interviewing the serial killer, she was the serial killer.
And, instead of cognitive interviews or reviewing the past, she liked to throw people into the most creative scenarios possible to see what they’d be driven to do.
You know, for funsies.