Chapter 1: The fear

Cristofuoro's wife had a theory that there were two kinds of people. People who chase pleasure and people who run away from pain. Kind of the same thing if you asked Eric, but, okay, let's go with that.

Well, clearly she had never met Lori. Cristofuoro had, but the detective didn't get it. That idiot didn't get Lori at all. What was weird, though – weird in a way Eric couldn't and maybe shouldn't understand – was that he did. Lori wasn't running away from pain: she was chasing it.

She invited herself along for the ride, knowing what would lie in store. There was something horribly pathetic about that. How desperate did you need to get to willingly tag along to your own death?

Lori was clingy in the worst way. Needy. Always inanely blathering. When she did have something to say it was something Eric didn't want to hear. Like the story about Gary.

Pitiful that was. Practically screaming, listen to me, look at me, aren't I a complete waste of space, don't I totally deserve everything that happens to me? All it did was make him want to smack her.

'Use your hands,' she'd requested or something similar. As if he wasn't already having trouble achieving the right state of mind necessary to kill her. Besides, she wasn't his type. Eric liked his girls darker. Dark hair, dark eyes, faintly exotic. Stunning and aware of it and confident because of it. Not Lori, who had pale, almost waxy, skin, and who was so insecure that sometimes it stung just to look at her.

'I love you,' she'd said, which had instantly smothered any desire he might have felt to take her life. He didn't want to share that intimate moment with her.

The quick flash of resignation before dying. He craved that moment; that connection. Sharp, razor sharp, because this was the end for them. The last person they'd see would be him. Even if they were one of many, he would always be the one who had killed them. Everything after that was filler. The moment slipped further and further away, until there was nothing left to do but dispose of the body.

So, he didn't touch Lori and they wound up at the lake. It was oh so quiet. He should probably have killed her there. That would have solved his problem. Both of their problems, actually, because Lori was her own problem. If he had been meaning to kill her, Lori wouldn't have done what she did. 'Cause that's all she had ever seemed to want from him. His hands around her neck, but he couldn't.

For some fucking, goddamn ridiculous reason Eric couldn't fathom, he couldn't do it.

It started out as something akin to a dance. She stood up and started to move. It was too forced to be sexy. Off-putting exactly because she was trying so hard. It was everything at once. Slow. Fast. Provocative. Repulsive. He could feel the anger surge inside him as he remembered that she couldn't swim. He told her to stop, but she continued to rock the boat. Playing with her life. Demonstrating how, if he refused to do it, she'd wreck herself right before his eyes with her reckless behavior. Still, Eric had no idea what she was about to do.

'Nothing changes,' she'd screamed. Then she gave him that look and fell. Allowed herself to fall. It displayed a level of calculation he hadn't expected of her.

With Lori in the water, Eric was forced to revise his opinion of himself. Ever since Cristofuoro had told him about the theory, Eric had unwittingly placed himself in the people-who-chase-pleasure camp. That made sense. He enjoyed killing girls, so he did. But now – suddenly – he was doing something that made no sense. Not for someone who was purely a thrill seeker. It wasn't to prevent being sent back to the correctional facility, which would suck. That motive would have been nothing more than sensible. This was irrational.

If Lori drowned, he'd be alone again. And the thought of that hurt.

Who else would listen to him explain that people's feelings bored and sickened him and not run away screaming? Only stupid old Lori. She'd become a constant. The possibility of not having her around simply hadn't occurred to him until right then. He imagined the pain of losing her. Fear clawed at his insides. It was that fear that made him dive into the water.