Ch. 3: Crocodile Tears
He awoke in the early afternoon and was sad to see the empty space next to him. He could still smell her in his room and smiled as he breathed deeply. Her scent calmed him, soothed him even. He turned and faced the sheets, breathing in deeply where she lay the night before and whispering her name into the covers longingly.
He sat up and stared at the sheets, hearing the plastic crinkle under his weight. "Ah yes, that . . ." he whispered to himself as he began to remove the satin and stared at the plastic beneath him.
He got up from the bed and removed the plastic and continued to stare at the blood stains on his mattress, hoping that she would never get to see them. He put everything away and put fresh sheets upon the bed for whatever would happen that night, he wasn't sure that she would be coming back, though he hoped she would after the night before.
He dressed himself and ate something before cleaning up the apartment. He cleaned up after everything that was left out the night before. He cleaned up the plates and took out the garbage. He placed her flowers in a vase for her.
He went to his secret room and retrieved his notebook of her. He wrote down his notes of her. How she smelled, how wonderful she was, how he didn't think he would be able to do this to her. He wrote down what she wore, every detail of her clothing down to her matching lace underwear. He wrote down the way that her hair fell into her eyes and tucked it behind her ears, the way she moved, the way she smiled, the way she touched him. He wrote everything without missing a detail as to what happened between the two of them.
His heart began to pound loudly in his ears as he recounted how she tasted as his lips discovered her skin. His heart ran more rapidly as he retold his little black book how soft her skin was and how wonderful she smelled as she longed for him to make love to her and how he did so.
As he began to tell of how he was about to take her and realized that he could not because he had finally learned to love, drops of scarlet began to fall upon the paper. He looked around for the source and realized that it was him, his hand actually. The cut he had received from stapling Anne's drawing into his notebook had begun to bleed. He knew that he needed blood soon but he refused to take it from her. He didn't want death to take her, not without a fight first. He had stopped healing now, a really bad sign that his body was deteriorating.
He got up and cleaned his cut, putting fresh Elastoplasts on it. He began to draw her face to pass the time, consumed by her. He couldn't get enough of her. She was within him, within his mind; he had to get her out somehow. He drew her feature like mad, her large almond eyes were on dozens of pages, her dark hair was on even more pages . . . her lips, her hands, her legs, her breasts . . . He began to bleed again as he continued to sketch her face, her body and he used the blood to paint the scarlet of her lips, the rosy pink of her nipples.
"Thou art all fair my love and there is no flaw in you," he whispered to her smiling outline. "Will you accept me Anne? Will you accept me for who I am?" he asked sadly as he stared at her whilst the blood continued to flow from his finger.
He got up and paced around the room impatiently, angry and confused. He got up to a wall and punched it hard, giving it a small dent, cracking it a little. He walked up to his drawing in the living room and looked at it full of hatred and contempt.
"I guess you've won haven't you?" he spat at Death. "Can't you just give me her? I only want her!" he begged Death, his face full of rage.
He went back to his secret room and picked up his little black book once more to write what had been plaguing him:
I am a creature of habit, a predator. They say that the human kind has three brains: their normal human brain, one mammalian brain, and one reptilian brain. So when the psychologist tells you to lie down on the couch he tells you to lie down with a horse and a crocodile. As for me, I prefer the wisdom my crocodile nature has to offer me.
Man has the capacity for both good and evil, a quality I find amazing in them. Men kill every day; they kill indiscriminately not because they are hunters or predators but because they can. So which part of them is it that tells them to murder one another? Is it the human, the horse, or the crocodile? I can tell you right now it isn't the horse.
Crocodiles hunt by nature; they are merely predators who hunt when they need to, not because they want to. So which is it? Is it the human or the crocodile? I think you know the answer, I hope you know the answer.
I kill because I need to, because it is the way I live. I thrive off blood, the blood of my victims, victims that have fallen in love with me. I need these women to fall in love with me in order for me to exist, without them I cannot be. I live off their sorrow, malice, happiness, their weaknesses and love. I live off their emotions and those sentiments produce a unique crystal out of me, a crystal stemming from their feelings, their pains. I do not kill because I like it, were it so it would be so much easier. None of my kills have been easy and I have never felt anything for any woman . . . until now.
My Anne, she is all good and all fair, there is not a drop of malice in that one. I don't know what she is, whether she is more horse than crocodile or human. She is gentle and kind, always impatient. She is my image of perfection. She is without sorrow, without hatred and pain, though her weakness I already recognize along with her envy of other women in my eyes. Her blood will be the sweetest of all though I fear to taste it. I love her with all my heart and I will fight anyone that tries to take her away from me, even if that person is my other self.
I had never thought to fall in love but it is what has happened. I need her as much as she needs me to feel whole. I fear what I may do to her the day that my crocodile nature takes over, the day that my predatory nature takes over. My human side I can control. I am not a malicious creature, no matter what anyone may think. I have killed numerous times, but only out of need. I do not want to kill my Anne; I would rather let her go before that happens.
He closed the notebook, exhausted from his emotions. He wiped the tears from his eyes, relieved of his feelings. The pages were covered with black ink as well as with drops of his blood. He hissed at the pain in his hand and ran to the restroom to clean his hand again. He gazed into his own eyes and saw the pain in them, the sorrow. He knew it couldn't go on much longer, but like he said that morning . . . he would hold on as long as he could.