The Andrew Complex

TAC: 22

He pauses and turns to me, his eyes narrowed. “You know, think contemplate this a lot. You think about whether or not you love him...a lot. It’s getting annoying. Like, in the beginning, it kinda made sense. You just met him, whatever. But now, now that you know him, you should be more, “holy shit I should tell him” instead of “holy shit”...you know?”

The room settles into silence after Collin’s rant, an awkward silence with me questioning what the hell just happened and Adam who now had an expression that resembled shock and amusement. His eyebrows were raised so high that they literally blended into his hairline. “I think I liked you better when you were a psychotic stalker...This love guru shit is really creeping me out. Also, I’m pretty sure that being the love guru around here is my job.” Adam teases, struggling to keep the amusement out of his tone.

Collin tries to shoot Adam a withering look but it’s ruined by the twitch by the corner of his mouth, signalling that he was trying to fight a smile. The room falls into another silence and I settle back into my chair, my mind wandering.

“Wait, Collin...what happened to Brett and Markus?”

He shifts uncomfortably on the couch before averting his eyes. “Do you want to hear about everything?”

“I,” I start, unsure. “yeah. Yeah I want to hear about everything.”

“Well, after you left, I might have dislocated Brett’s shoulder and broke his nose. Markus might have fallen out of your window - but don’t worry. I made sure to open it before I threw him out. And after everything, I made sure to drag both of the bodies out. I wasn’t sure where to dump them so I just left them across the street.” Collin says, rushing everything out in one breath.

“Uh -”

“But, but...Brett woke up while I was throwing Markus out of the window so I might have broken his leg. Or his legs. I’m not sure.”

I wasn’t sure which part to be more worried about; the fact that Collin didn’t seem apologetic at all or the part where he probably did all of this without even hesitating. In the back of my mind I hoped that my neighbors would’ve woken up because of the noise and called an ambulance for Brett and Markus.

“Let me get this straight - you don’t have problems maiming a person but you have problems with a little bit of blood?” Adam asked, his expression incredulous.

“Okay, no. Maiming implies that I render them useless. I don’t render all of them useless, just parts of them. Maybe an arm here, a leg there...a wrist, four ribs. When I’m feeling creative I like to break their jaws.” Collin says, his expression calm. “I have a problem with killing partially because that’s a hell of a lot of work and I’d have to put in way too much time covering everything up afterwards - and I hate paperwork.”

The room falls silent and I suck in a breath, hoping with everything that I had that Collin was just joking.

“I’m not joking.” He says, a dark look crossing onto his face. “I don’t take kindly to people trying to kill -” I break him off with a protest. “We don’t know that they were coming to try to kill me…” Collin shoots me a dark look and continues, “- my friends. I don’t think I would’ve thrown Markus out of your window if the two of them hadn’t tried to sneak into your house and kill you last night.”

I sigh and settle back onto the couch. “Okay, moving on. I think the more important question here

is if anyone found out what they wanted with me. Why did the go to the trouble of breaking into my house and trying to kidnap me?”

In the middle of my sentence, Adam had gotten up off of the couch and started pacing, a hand on his hip and his eyebrows drawn together. Collin sat back, putting his arms behind his head. I glance at the clock while Adam paces and my jaw slackens when I realize that it was nearing 5AM.