Saturday morning rolled in with a spotless sky and a gentle summer breeze. Billy cracked his eyes open as the sunlight slid over his face. He noticed his young blond companion was not in bed, and he smelled coffee. After dressing he found her in the kitchen, finishing a cup of the coffee, ready for her run of errands into town. He commented, "Making an early start of it I see."
"I hope that's alright," she said.
"Oh, yeah," he yawned. "Sure."
She stood from the table, sat her cup in the sink, and kissed Billy on the cheek, "I will be back in a couple of hours." Billy poured a cup of coffee for himself as she walked out the front door. She sat in the Honda and started the engine. Pulling the sun visor down, she said gleefully, "This will be the day, Billy, that we find out if you truly love me or not." She backed the car out of the driveway and scooted up the street.
Billy sat at the table with the coffee still in hand, steam swirling up from it like a cobra charmed. He could hear the car leave the driveway and head away, and his peaceful countenance dissolved into a solemn sigh. His left finger tips began to tap on the table top for indecisive measure; it was the posture of a man perplexed. He seemed to shrink in the room, and the clarity of his surroundings blurred. Those left fingertips now held his forehead, stilted by the elbow to the table. He took another long sip of coffee as storms of worry waged war behind his eyes. He could not come to a conclusion on the future of his relationship with the lovely young blond haired woman.
Everything had been so clear before the previous night. Now he had endured a true and lasting moment of love, and the rug of security had been yanked from beneath his world. He did not have the time to mull it all over as he would have liked.
A muffled cry sounded out in the house, and Billy startled. He jumped up from his chair and dashed into the direction of the cries. He opened the cellar door, switched on the light, and dashed down the steps. The cries, female, were loud down there. In the rear wall of the cellar was a blue door. Billy opened it and his mouth dropped open. Inside, a young red haired woman, duct taped to a chair which had fallen over on its side was crying out through a partially taped mouth.
"You've really made it hard on yourself there," Billy said. "Were you the thump I heard last night before we left for dinner falling over like this?"
Her eyes were filled with wild fright and stained with tears. Billy sat her chair upright and stooped in front of her, "Stay quiet, I have some news, good news." The woman sobbed while he spoke, "You need to calm down, I really want you to hear what I have to say."
"I'm giving all of this up," he said. "I am not killing any one else." Her sobbing slowed, "Someone has came into my life, and I feel healed on the inside. I want a good life for the two of us. I don't want to ruin things between us. I am sorry to say; I will still have to kill you."
Her sobbing rose to a terrified measure and a shrill cry echoed from the small exposed portion of her mouth. Billy reached and plastered the tape back to her face, approving of the silence. "I just want you to know I truly am sorry. I wish I could set you free."
Her next muffles would have been observable as someone attempting to desperately say, "You can! You can set me free! I won't say a thing to anyone if you let me go."
"I know, I know. You think that. But you would tell. It's just human nature. You couldn't bottle this in for the rest of your life. Not something like this; not what you've seen; not what you've been through. I know I couldn't."
Her dampened cries were most pleading. He said, "Once again, I am sorry. I really am. But I promise, I will make it quick and painless, and that's the most I can do now." He stood with his fist clamped to his hips, "I still don't know how or when I am going to dispose of all the bodies. That's going to be a problem. I will have to come up with something though. The important thing is that it stops here with you. I can't let my love find out. She can never know."
The red head behind the frayed tape began to laugh. Curiously, Billy had never seen this reaction before. Usually there was a heightened traumatic fright which could never fully be appreciated with words, but never laughter. He stooped closely in front of her again. "Did I say something funny?"
She laughed only harder.
He said, "Okay, don't you dare scream. It really is in your best interest that you don't. I am going to pull the tape back a bit, and you can tell me what's so funny."
She continued to giggle as he broke the tape away from her mouth, and she said, "She already knows. You idiot. You stupid idiot. She already knows, and she comes down here, and she has known for a long time."
Billy scoured, "You're lying. You're lying! Shut your mouth!"
She would not shut her mouth. She spoke with senseless regard to own safety now, insanely stabbing at words which honored her with a sense of power over the moment; a last ditch effort to fight back in any method possible. "She's sicker than you. She takes the bodies out of the wall and talks to them. I can hear what she says. She talks to them like they're alive. She's way sicker than you. Who do you think pulled the tape back from my mouth so you could hear me? She did it this morning. She wanted you to hear me. She wanted you to come down here." The frightened victim laughed again, "She's got something planned for you. She is way sicker than you ever thought to be. You better watch your back."
"You're just trying to turn me against her!" he screamed. "It won't be so quick and painless for you now."
The beautiful young female of whom was the topic of the sadistic conversation between Billy and his confined prey was now only a few steps, unknowing to Billy, behind him in the cellar. She gave Billy his third shake up of the morning when she said, "Billy?"
Sound vacated the cellar, even the young red head was perfectly quiet when Billy turned to face the lovely blond. With brutal accuracy, the red headed woman's words were now a plausibility over coming him with such weight he felt he might fall to his knees. All was injured beyond healing now, and he vehemently fought against it. "Is it true, did you know?"
Compassionately she said, "Billy…"
"No, no no no no no," Billy wringed his hair, "This can't happen, you can't know this."
The blond woman attempted to calm him down, "Billy," she said as if speaking to a very young child, and held her arms out to embrace him.
The red head laughed the hardest she had since before she had become ensnared, though the laugh was dosed maniacally.
"You can't know… this can't happen… this wasn't supposed to happen," Billy only backed away from the embrace.
On the blonde's final bid to ease Billy's tormented mind, just as she was uttering , Billy swung a clenched fist and nailed her squarely on the side of the jaw. She fell to the hard cement floor of the cellar and immediately blacked out from the fall.