The Note: A CSI Eddie Collins short story Read online

  “Go on,” she said, “talk your way out of this—”

  “Do you mind if I smoke? I mean, if you’re going to kill me, the least you can do is let me—”

  She stood up quickly, as though she had a spring under her arse, and the speed she came at me almost knocked me off-balance. She was in my face. I could feel the muzzle up against the back of my neck, and she pulled me forward by my t-shirt so she could reach my face. Her lips moved against my cheek, and her hot breath leaked into my mouth as I tried to breathe. All the time she twitched the muzzle, boring it into my neck.

  Not quite so cool now. I didn’t realise it, but my eyes were shut tight. Any hope I had of smoothing my way to an graceful escape vanished.

  “Funny man, eh?” she snarled.

  My eyes snapped open.

  “Gonna wise-talk me? Treat me like shit, Collins?” She screamed in my ear and then hit me on the back of the neck with the butt of the gun. I was on the floor, already in pain, when she kicked me in the kidney.

  Any thoughts of being wise or of being brave or of being some kind of James Bond hero who could talk cool, ran away pretty fucking quickly. I was scared. I was submissive. And then it happened: that fucking question that made me as weak and as predictable as every other bastard on this planet just fell out of my mouth. “What do you want!” I hated myself.

  From behind a shielding hand I looked up at her as she stood over me, panting. The light was still poor, but I could see she had blood on her. All down one arm, across her face and neck. What the fuck was going on?

  One thing that struck me about all this was how it must be personal. I know how stupid that sounds, but think about it; if this had been a contract killing she would have killed me by now, no preamble, no messing about, no opportunity for James Bond to wrangle his way free, just pull the trigger and hit pay day.

  But she hadn’t done that; she was waiting for something, she wanted something from me, even if it was only to hear me beg – and hell would freeze over first, pal – or even if was just an explanation of something I’d done or said… she wanted something from me.

  I had power.

  I watched her, and there was something familiar… “Who are you?”

  She didn’t answer me, just kicked me again in the back. This time she got me right on the spine and it sent me into a spasm of pain that made me writhe on the floor. I didn’t scream, I was too busy trying to catch my breath – it was like diving into the ocean, how it leaves you breathless for all the wrong reasons. It hurt like a bitch.

  She retreated somewhere nearer the lamp and I caught a glimpse of her profile. Eventually, the agony lessened and a silence permeated the room like blood dispersing in water. I delved inside my jacket pocket for my cigarettes. Despite the pain, I still craved a smoke and I lit the bastard and puffed away, staring at her defiantly. I sat up, leaning back on one hand, leg casually bent like I was an advert for Burton’s, trying not to let my fear show itself.

  And she stared at me. Not blinking.

  That’s when the penny finally dropped and I gasped. Her eyes, large, dark and deep, gave nothing away; it’s as if they were a barrier to what lay beneath rather than a window into her soul. ‘Funny man’ came at me from somewhere distant, a memory that I’d almost succeeded in erasing. You’d have thought it would have come to me straight away.

  Alex was her name, and she was a fucking psycho.

  As she moved around the table to stub out her cigarette, the lamp shone directly on her for the first time, and I saw that she’d changed considerably since I’d known her. She’d turned Goth; her smooth brown hair was now a matted black mess; she’d smothered black eye-liner on her upper and lower lids, making her large black eyes seem massive, and the black lipstick smeared all down her face turned her into an apprentice voodoo priestess.

  Out of all the clues though – the voice, the familiar hand writing, the propensity for violence – it was the dead guy, John Tyler, who’d reminded me of her the most. The bite marks I’d photographed on some domestic violence victim who wore red Nike trainers. She did that to me once. I smoked quickly.

  She half-smiled because she could see that I’d finally remembered her. It must have been a buzz for her.

  “Nothing’s changed, Alex,” I said. “You still can’t fucking spell.” That would either kill me or cure the situation.

  It didn’t have the desired effect, and I reflected that it might have been the wrong approach. She walked over, leaned in close and spat in my face. That was enough; frightened or not, that was about all I could take from the mad cow. I dropped the cigarette, and stood, despite her pushing me, and despite her throwing a decent punch into the side of my head. I rocked a little but was able to get a grip on her jacket, and as I began to lose balance, dragged her with me. We teetered and then hit the deck in a tangle of limbs that would have been comedic under any other circumstances. This was no sitcom though.

  She was breathing hard, almost rasping, her body countering the drugs I guessed she’d had. Everything went still and I held my breath, mouth open, eyes wide. The gun felt cold under my chin, and I won’t lie, I was shitting myself. My grip on her slackened and, lying on my back, I raised my hands slowly into the air and watched the crazy look in her dead eyes. My heart stuttered.

  I noticed that the smeared lipstick wasn’t smeared lipstick at all. It was a thick coating of blood that was beginning to flake off like she was shedding a layer of reptilian skin.

  I swallowed. I had no idea what she was planning to do next, but I seriously doubted I was going to get that coffee.

  She pushed the muzzle harder into my throat. My heart rattled, and a pulse of dread skewered me.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I tried to swallow again, but the gun was so hard into my throat that I could barely breathe let alone swallow. I croaked out the words, “What turned you into a fucking lunatic?” The blood around her mouth cracked as she screamed with all the ferocity of a woman being torn apart, physically and mentally. It was the most horrendous sound I’ve ever heard and it went on and on and her breath was hot and sour. Just before she bit into my face, she pushed the muzzle even harder and I braced myself, scrabbling backwards against it, clawing at the carpet.

  She fired the gun.

  — The Bite —

  After the flash, the world turned utterly black and the ringing in my ears made me scream. She was laughing and when she lifted her head I could see more blood – my blood – dripping from her chin.

  My face was on fire and my eyes were watering so badly I could barely open them. I could feel blood trickling down my neck. She really was a psycho bitch! The bullet had gone straight through the front door.

  As she laughed I blinked away the tears and the blackness in my vision parted. I could see her front teeth, how the upper canines lay at an angle almost behind the incisors, and the lower canines were twisted to hell like someone fucked up a card shuffle.

  She looked down at me, still laughing, holding the gun at me with one hand and gripping my t-shirt with the other as I stared back unbelieving, still in shock. And then she started to grind. Her pelvis gyrated on my dick like we were a couple of teenagers getting randy. Trust me, I wasn’t in the mood for randy!

  “Do you think there’s a chance for us, Eddie? Huh, to be happy like we was?”

  I was shaking. “I think we need to talk,” I whispered, wincing as the sting in my cheek grew hotter. My own voice sounded muffled like someone had tuned out all the treble and there was just the bass left.

  Someone else had unplugged Mad Bitch and plugged in Romantic Vampire Slut. She leaned in close looking at me, studying me, black eyes flitting between my own. She leaned in and kissed me.

  What the hell do you do when an armed psycho kisses you? No really, what do you do? If you kiss back, she’s got you; if you resist, she’s angry. Either way, she’s got you.

  I’d read somewhere that some people get off on tortu
re, that they get horny just before the big event – and the big event I was worried about involved her trigger finger, and my brains dripping down the wallpaper. Not an ideal end to the day.

  Your going to die tonight.

  She slid her tongue in my mouth and I tasted my own blood.

  I nearly freaked out; it was all I could do stop from vomiting. At least I knew where I stood with the Mad Bitch; this was scary on a whole new level.

  “I could move in. If you like.”

  She tried to kiss me again, and I spat out the vile taste of blood and got a stabbing reminder of the damage she’d done to my face.

  “Hey,” she soothed, kindness shimmering in her eyes as she stroked my good cheek with her thumb. I could hear the stubble under her nail. “What’s the matter?”

  My first reaction was to laugh, but I choked it immediately. I focused my mind on the death threat and realised this evening wouldn’t end well for at least one of us.

  Be tactful, was the only advice I could give myself. “I could write you a list.”

  She sat up and the kindness left her eyes. “What?”

  “I mean it’s pretty difficult to think with you waving a gun around.”

  She relaxed, took the gun from my throat and just sat there on my groin with a delightful smile on her wretched face. She was a rose made of arsenic.

  I last saw Alex when I was eighteen years old. At eighteen you know everything there is to know about the world. It’s only when someone comes along who isn’t on your own wavelength that you begin to learn new things. Pain was one of the things Alex taught me. Mental pain to begin with quickly followed by physical pain.

  Her dad had thrown her out.

  She’d got pregnant, see, and then miscarried, and he finally disowned her when she began stealing from him. He was ashamed of her, didn’t talk about her with his friends, stopped talking about her to her mother, and didn’t even declare her on some fancy job application he filled out.

  He didn’t want the embarrassment, she had told me. I never met him, but he sounded like a prick. It was hard for her, but she hadn’t done anything to escape the spiral of decay and self-hatred she found herself in. If anything, she’d propagated it, almost relished being inside this maelstrom, and from it developed a wonderful reputation as a wretched whore who’d cut your throat and guzzle your life-blood if you so much as farted within earshot.

  “What?” She was staring at me again; kind of amused to find me in thought, I suppose.

  “Nothing,” I said, listening as my hearing came back towards normal.

  “Go on, whatcha thinking?”

  “Get off me, Alex, you’re starting to piss me off.”

  She gripped my t-shirt, and gave me that look again.

  I sighed, “I was thinking about us.” The smile returned, and I couldn’t keep up with her changing emotions any longer; each comment was a game of chance, a spin of a revolver’s cylinder.

  “Been doing that a lot too. Thinking about us, I mean.” She let go of the t-shirt. “I was there, you know. When you were photographing him, and it got me thinking.”

  “Who?”

  “Who what?”

  “When I was photographing who?”

  “Him. My ex, John.”

  “John Tyler?” I tried to sit up a bit, but it was difficult with a lunatic crushing your nuts. “When? Tonight?”

  “I meant when you were at our house photographing his injuries. His bite marks!” She laughed like a banshee on speed, and a fresh shudder skittered through me. She was so fucking unpredictable it was scary. “I watched you from the other room. I was remembering you, and how you used to fuck. You were an animal, Eddie. Could’ve ripped off your clothes there and then.” She grinned and winked, but coming from her, it was no compliment. It just added fuel to my misery.

  I wondered why he’d been so timid. I remember thinking how I pitied him but how he really ought to grow a spine. No wonder he was timid, if she was there watching over him; bet he was bricking himself. If I’d known she was there, I’d have been bricking myself too. Like I was now.

  “And yes, I was there tonight too. Watched you arguing with the man in the suit.”

  I took a long slow blink: I knew I was being watched, I knew it! I tried to remain calm – actually what I mean is that I tried to reclaim some calmness. “Why do you bite people?” My top lip curled at the revulsion of it and I could feel my stinging cheek begin to swell.

  She shrugged. “It’s hard to dance with a demon on your back.”

  “Kind of fucking reply is that?”

  “What, you my therapist, now?”

  I said nothing, just stared, demanding an answer.

  She sighed, and then her eyes sparkled, “It gives me a thrill. It makes me feel in charge.” She sat back on me as though she’d satisfied my curiosity.

  “It makes you feel superior?”

  She glanced upwards as though contemplating.

  “You like to be in control of people.” I studied her as she stared into me. “You like to be on top.”

  She smiled.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “It is funny when you try to psycho-analyse me. But I’m no subject in a fucking book, Eddie. I’m just me, and I—”

  “You love to dominate people. You dominated John Tyler, you ruled and crushed him till he was just a shell with no opinion and no self-esteem.”

  The smile vanished. “Bollocks.”

  I recalled how I’d grown a spine back when I was eighteen. I finished with her because she bit me on the neck, right where the jugular is. At first it had been very arousing and back then it didn’t take a fella like me long to get turned on. It was such a turn on that I had her jeans undone and was working them down her legs in no time at all, when she bit deeper.

  She bit hard enough to stop me in my tracks, fingers paused, not daring to touch her again. I held my breath and my fervour perished pretty fucking quickly. Not a turn on any longer.

  “I love to see someone in pain that’s just the other side of ecstasy. Just before it gets unbearable.” She paused and took a quivering breath, “But mostly I like to see them on the other side of unbearable.”

  I remembered how it really began to hurt. I can remember the huge pressure in my chest, how it boiled and how I could do nothing as her teeth cut. And how her jaws clamped so tightly that I wanted to scream but couldn’t. Daren’t move in case she bit even deeper.

  “There isn’t no feeling like it. And when I’m pissed off, it’s my drug.”

  And in the same way she’d bitten into my face minutes ago, it had a debilitating effect; it caused complete sublimation, like a paralysis so she could punch and kick. Which she did.

  “Coke not in fashion anymore?”

  Her face changed again and inwardly I groaned. Her eyes narrowed, the silly grin that almost made her endearing faded and just vanished. The gun I’d almost forgotten about reappeared and as I eyed it she punched me on the jaw right where she’d bitten through the bristly flesh. I became her rodeo ride for a few minutes as I bucked against the pain.

  Just as I’d done all those years ago, I grew my spine again.

  I had reached the point where I would rather she just get on and shoot me dead than carry on with this fucking torture any longer. With that feeling came a new viewpoint, one that was prepared to take more risks. I think she saw the change in me because she recoiled, but it was already too late, I was furious.

  I whipped my hips upwards and she tipped forward, releasing the pressure on my arms that were pinned beneath her knees. She flipped over my head without having time to curse let alone hit me with the damned gun again. And in a frantic scrabble that lasted no more than a few seconds, I’d positioned myself more or less on my knees at her side, and punched her as hard as I could in the side of the head.

  She hit the floor like a sack of shit and I rocked back on my heels seething at the pain in my knuckles. I roll
ed onto my backside breathing hard like I’d just run to the car from the house. She lay there with her black hair just a messy tussle over her head, her limbs limp and the gun glinting by the lamp light a yard or two away.

  That’s how I’d grown a spine, and that’s how I’d left her all those years ago. I’d hit back – physically and metaphorically. Just like her dad had taught her that’s what life was about: a hitting competition to see who gives in first.

  — The Truth —

  “You bastard!”

  I sat on the toilet and smiled down at her as I gingerly dabbed a ball of dampened toilet paper against my cheek. It was throbbing, and I had a headache. “You started it.”

  She pulled at the kettle cable that I’d used to tie her to the copper pipes running along the bathroom wall. She looked uncomfortable, lying half on her side, hands up in the air.

  “It’s because of you that I can’t have a coffee.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  I looked at my watch. It was three-thirty but I didn’t feel the least bit tired; I guess adrenaline keeps you wide awake and ready to fight again. “How come you got together with John Tyler?” I knew why she’d chosen to hook up with him: he was weak, timid, and she found controlling him very easy. And enjoyable.

  She ignored the question, stopped struggling and stared hatred up at me. “Can you slacken this off? My hands are turning blue.”

  “Would you like your gun back as well?”

  She pulled at the cable some more, tried to kick out at me, and it was all I could do stop laughing at her – she looked like a petulant child, bottom lip out, the full works, including tears. She yanked at the cable and I saw the pipes bend ever so slightly as the veins in her neck stood out and she gritted her teeth.

  “You’re wasting your time,” I said. “I had the plumbing certified to British Standard Mad Cow Restraint Class 1.”

  “You won’t be fucking laughing when I get free.”

  Another shudder skittered through me. But I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant when in reality I was still very much on edge. Okay, I’d taken the gun away from her, but she was charged full of nervous energy and a fury that was pure and completely uninhibited. I made sure to keep away from the kicking feet, but I couldn’t escape her eyes, and how they penetrated mine to such a depth that I had to push the toilet paper harder into my cheek to break the spell.