We arrive home just past four in the afternoon. As soon as I lead Thomas inside my house, my phone buzzes with a text.
Where have you been?
It’s from him.
There is so much loaded into those four words. He’s making me think he actually lost sight of me, which may or may not be true.
Finding out who you are, I reply.
A pause, and then:
What have you learned?
I get Thomas to my couch, then get a blanket and drape it over him. I sit next to his feet, and as he slips further into the stupor from whatever my mother gave him, my own heart starts racing. It’s all too much.
Another text.
I’ve always been with you, Alice. I’m the one you were always meant to be with.
Chest cramping, cheeks flushing. Impending panic attack. God, I’m such a victim.
Then, I see it all in front of me as I stare at his words on my phone. Even when I didn’t know he existed, he was still in control of my mind. For fourteen years, he’s been in control, and all I have to do to escape my mental and emotional shackles is get rid of him. I don’t care if he’s my biological father or some random lunatic. I was never sure what I would do if and when I finally found Mr. Interested, but it’s suddenly and beautifully clear to me.
I am going to kill him.
There can be no hesitation. When I find him, I will kill him, no matter the consequences. I’d rather be in actual prison than the mental cell to which I’ve been confined for so long. I’ll never be free as long as he’s alive.
I reply to him.
Where are you? It’s time for this to be over.
He doesn’t write back.
A headache comes full force, and now my whole body heats up. Breathing comes with more effort, as if I’m slowly climbing into thinner and thinner air. The attack is coming, and I know there’s no stopping it.
Let it come.
Why not?
Come, take me.
Move to the kitchen. Grab a bottle of wine and pour a large glass, which I gulp down in seconds. If I’m going through this tonight, I’m going through it damaged. Dulled and beaten. Pour another glass and think about the yellow pills I brought home with me. Three or four pills, I think. That’s all it would take, washed down with the rest of this bottle of wine. Death by merlot. It would be so easy. In fact, it would be the easiest thing I’ve ever done. All the struggles would be gone. Screw killing the man who's stalking me—I’ll just kill myself. Falling asleep would finally come with no effort at all. I would just slip away, like a small boat pulled out by the tides into the vast ocean.
But then Thomas would be utterly alone.
A knock at the door.
Please be him, I think. Him or me. Right now.
My pulse is pounding.
Back to the living room. Grab the fireplace poker. To the door. I don’t even bother to look out the window. I just raise the weapon in my hand and yank the door open.
Richard.
“Alice, take it easy,” he says. He takes a half step away from me.
The ache in my head turns into a fire. Richard has about five seconds to live unless something can convince me he’s not part of everything.
“I just wanted to see what happened in New York,” he says.
I raise the poker higher.
“Alice, it’s okay. It’s okay.” Richard stands on my porch, hands held up in a gesture of peace, his dark eyes wide with more than just fear. There’s concern. “All I want to do is help you.”
Smash his brains in. Do it, Alice.
But against that logic rises a belief, one that is powerful as much as it’s baseless.
It’s not him, Alice. He’s not a part of this.
The two warring factions inside me are ripping me apart mentally and, it feels, physically. God, I just want to be left alone.
I lower the poker.
“Go away,” I say.
I don’t wait for him to answer. I shut the door in his face, then go to my security system and arm it in Stay mode. I remain holding the poker as I head back to the kitchen, grab my bottle of wine, then walk through the house and close all the blinds.
I’m guessing I have thirty minutes until I’m in a fetal position on the floor.
I go over to the couch and lean toward my brother’s face. His eyes are open, but just barely.
“Are you going to be okay, Thomas?”
He murmurs. “I think so.”
“I'm starting to have an attack,” I say. “It’s going to be a horrible night, but we’ll both be better in the morning.”
A slight nod.
“Can you just stay here on the couch?”
“Yes.”
I stand.
Thomas whispers, “I love you, Alice.”
All my defenses fall, leaving me completely exposed. “I love you, too, Thomas.”
I swig from the bottle, gulping wine like water, then head up to my bedroom. I make space for myself on the floor, where I surround myself with the wine, the fire poker, and my laptop—this is where I will spend the night. I want to feel the hardness of the wooden floor against my bones. Another drink, then I open up the laptop and head back to MisterTender.com.
I scour the website, looking for anything new, but there hasn’t been a post for two weeks. Not since the day I first found Mister Tender on the dating site. So I look through old posts, hoping to find something, anything that will help me hunt down Mr. Interested.
I go back to when the first post appeared two years ago. I look at pictures I hadn’t seen before, read all the things about me. A time capsule of horror.
How I look. What clothes I like. How often I cut my hair.
More pictures of my house.
Me, driving in my car. Springtime. I’m actually smiling in that photo, and I wonder why.
Links to articles about the twins.
An old interview with the detectives who worked the case. One of them describes the twins as “soulless.”
I read and read, descending deeper into the reality show of my life. I get lost in this world until I can no longer keep my hands from shaking. I manage one more gulp of wine, and then the bottle falls from my grip, spilling its final drops of blood on the hardwood floor. A stain to match the one left by Freddy Starks in the room beneath me.
I collapse on the floor and pull my knees into my chest. The floor chills my cheek. I touch the front pocket of my jeans.
Thomas’s pills are right in there.
So easy.
The chill spreads to my body. I think of being in deep, icy waters. The fierce pain of the cold before the heavy numbness sets in.
I shift my gaze back to the computer, to the last post I’d opened on the site. A photo of me, posted by Mr. Interested. Dated a couple of years ago. I’m in the Stone Rose, wearing my apron, standing behind the counter, my eyes looking directly at whomever is snapping a photo of me. I look surprised but not scared. Curious, perhaps.
My mind clears for a second, long enough for me to understand the importance of what I’m seeing.
I remember that moment. We were hosting a fund-raiser for a local school. I remember a few specific people taking pictures. I remember faces. In fact, I remember one specific face.
Can it be?
The fear is back, ravaging me. I’m desperate to ease the terror, even if that means death.
I call out to my dad.
“Help me. Please help me.”
He doesn’t answer.
Dad never answers.
I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a series of images, a mental slide show firing at a rapid pace, and one over which I have no control. Sometimes this happens in these moments, as if it’s some weird kind of defense mechanism my brain launches to protect itself. I see an image in my head, clear as a movie screen, but that image lasts less than a second before another one replaces it.
I close my eyes, as if that might help. It doesn’t.
Tonight’s feature is a collection of blood and bone, each one more horrifying than the last. Bombing victims. Battlefield gore. Medieval heads on spikes. A body in a bathtub, half dissolved by acid. Twin babies, throats equally cut, distant gazes of death.
This won’t stop until I pass out.
I no longer even have the strength to pull myself to the bathroom, to the pills. I lack even the tiny amount of power needed for suicide.
So I lie here, shaking and cold, and make a promise to myself. I repeat this promise in my head, over and over, and it soon becomes the soundtrack to the gore-filled slide show.
This is the last time.
This is the last time.
This is the last time.