"I will in all probability be convicted, but I will not go away as a monster, but as a tragedy."
- Joel Rifkin
EIGHTEEN
I NEVER TRULY UNDERSTOOD how much protection the thick pane of glass between us had provided until I sat before him without it. I could smell him, it was a heady combination of sweat, blood and dirt. The smell repulsed me as much as it fascinated me. I could see all parts of him. If he reached over to hit me, if he spat at me, if he yelled at me, if he lost all control because of something I said, I would feel it all.
The reality of it had begun to terrify me.
I was certain though that if Banshee did touch me in the slightest, I would be burnt so badly that I'd have bruises to show for it. He, to me, was the embodiment of danger in itself and touching him would resemble touching a lit dynamite.
I shifted my eyes from my hands and up into his ardent eyes. He was smiling, a small patient smile that irked me. His tongue darted out to swipe his lips and I saw a peek of his jagged teeth. His words were slippery. "Heaven helps those who help themselves, Aria." He leaned forward. "Let me help you."
Ironic because he was the farthest thing from heaven. I sighed, sitting ram today straight in my metal chair. "I promise to believe you if you promise to say the truth."
"Even if I spat lies straight from hell, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference." He chuckled lightly. A distinctive sound. "But I'll promise, to humour you."
I knew that that was all I'd be getting and for me, that was enough.
"Thank you." I whispered.
Nicholas stood up, and slowly started strolling back and forth, his hands in his pockets. I had thought he was coming towards me but that wasn't the case. He simply wanted to abuse his freedom as much as he could.
He opened his mouth to speak, but then he paused and looked up at me. "They never really got it right, you know?"
"Who?" I muttered after momentary silence. He wanted me to interact, not just sit and listen. He wanted a conversation. He wanted me to talk to him like a man I'd just met.
"The pigs. They never really got the number right. They say I killed 39 but I killed 40." He brushed a hand in the air in explanation. "I wanted an even number. Something clean cut. But I also wanted it for myself."
"So you didn't confess to one?"
"Yes. I murdered her because I saw her as a power-move in my game."
He stopped strolling and turned his back towards the wall, leaning on it. His body was lean, malnourished but still big enough to frighten. "She was five. Five years old. I saw her right as I was about to turn myself in. She was playing in the emptied park, and her mother was on the phone as few feet away." Nicholas closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "God, I remember it so clearly. She was tiny, and so helpless. A little bit like you are now."
I shivered in my seat, eyeing the emergency exit door beside me.
"I only had to reach over the fencing to do it. I grabbed her neck with one hand and twisted it back with the other." He mimicked his words with his movements. His hands were up, grabbing onto the air and squeezing. "I was so aggressive that I heard her spine crack too."
He paused to laugh incredulously, shaking his head as though it easy a fond memory. "She dropped dead immediately, and I wiped my hands on my jumper and continued my stroll to the police station. It was so quick, sickening, but it felt so good."
"You didn't scream or cry." I whispered more to myself than anything.
He opened his hooded eyes and peeked down at me. "No." He moved to the table and placed his hands on it. "Not a single tear drop, Aria. She was my move. My pawn. The best player in my game. The pigs began to investigate her death soon after, thinking it was a new offender because it was so unlike the way I killed. I didn't kill in the daytime. I didn't kill and not cry. I didnt kill just like that."
I shook my head, violently repulsed. "So they never suspected you." I wasn't going to question where this was going because I had learnt that Banshee never spoke without a direction.
"They still don't. Her investigation went on for months and I smiled all the way to the cell knowing that I had won this one. It's funny because while I gloat, her parents live in constant pain, unable you find closure." He finalised, and I noticed the smugness in his voice. He was still proud.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I tell you this, Aria, because you're that 5 year old girl. You're someone's power move."
His words dropped like an icicle on glass and shattered on the table before me.
There it was, the familial cold hand of fear gripping my heart and squeezing squeezing it so tight I was finding it hard to breathe. "W..what are you talking about?"
He shifted in his seat. "You accused me of writing letters to your sister, and I told you that I didn't. Someone in SSCD wants to know more about you. Enough to risk contacting your relative. Why?" His eyes slid down from my eyes, to my chest. It was because I was trembling. "I have no fucking clue."
The lights above us flickered ever so slightly, it reminded me of how much shambles this place was in. "How do you know the person receiving the letters is within this building?"
"Because of what I see." He deadpanned. "What I hear. What I know."
I waited for him to finish and explain what he heard, saw and knew. But just as he always did, he left me on the edge, grabbing at the loose ends of all his sentences.
I slumped forward in a sigh, letting looseone of the braids I had done earlier in the week. "Nicholas..."
Slowly and quite unexpectedly, his eyes grew darker once his name escaped my lips. He trailed his deep green eyes over me, from the loose braid, to my facial features. I held my breath because of how deep set his eyes had become.
I was the only thing he was focusing on in that moment.
Suddenly, before I could react, he reached forward with his less-bruised hand and his icy fingers grazed my cheek. One never truly experienced fear until they had become catatonic from the sheer amount of it. I was almost certain that my heart had stopped beating.
His calloused fingers felt like fire against my skin. My subconscious made me feel like his fingers scraped across my skin like a match. Trying to burn me down. With one swift motion, he brushed my hair away from my cheek.
All I felt was absolute torture.
His eyes were serious, his face taut. I knew he had not touched another woman, another person, in decades. I knew that he was viciously trying to control himself from the way his eyes sparked. He looked maddening. His breathing sped up. His hold on my hair was tightening. I was unable to breath.
His hand moved upwards and he softly ran his thumb accross my top of my eyes. Then downwards towards my other cheek and painfully slowly, it brushed across my lips. A sordid gasp left me in a rush. Just as it did, he dropped his hand.
And once his hand left my skin, I forcefully pushed back from the table and stumbled to the wall on the other side. I was gasping like I had run a hundred metre sprint, not anything like the fact that I had simply been touched by a man.
It was ridiculous.
"Just as I thought." He whispered to himself.
Nicholas sighed heavily and leaned back, placing the hand he had used against his own face. "You've changed since I first met you. There's a constant fear in your eyes that was only lukewarm before. Something terrifies you. You're confused, you're feeling inadequate, you're losing."
I whispered because it was all I could do. "Don't touch me again."
He ignored me, pulling out his chair and lowering himself into it. He just kept those eyes on me. Eyes that had seen things no human should ever see. "You're right to feel that way. It's normal considering your circumstances."
"My circumstances?" I pressed further into the wall and placed my fingers behind my thighs to hide the fact that I was shaking.
"Look, I'm going to be straight with you because your face is pissing me the fuck off." He spat, suddenly angered by my fear. "Look away if you're going to look at me like that."
I did. I looked away.
He scoffed. "Fucking pathetic. Aria." I looked up. "The only person who knows all about you in SSCD is the curator of the project. The person in charge of you."
"Frank," I whispered.
"This man, do you trust him?"
"I trust nobody."
At that, he smiled. "Someone in this building, probably that man, told me your name, someone told me information about you. I knew you had a sister. I was given a file on you." He said, toying with my emotions. "This person, for some reason, wanted me to know things about you. Perhaps to manipulate you in the manner that you wish to manipulate me?"
I didn't want to believe it was Frank.
"But..why?"
"That's for you to answer, love. Perhaps there's something dirty on your hands, and they're out to make you come clean." He said, his tone had gone down about few octaves. He was now staring at me as though he could picture every thought seared into the folds of my brain. "What are you hiding?"
I shook my head violently. No. No. No! The guilt can't come back. I didn't do anything. I was innocent. Banshee is a psychopath, why should I believe him?
I folded my hands into my lap, my eyes were closed tight. "I did nothing. You can't manipulate me. I have diplomatic immunity. They can't hear our conversations. I tell it how I want to."
There was a momentary silence that caused me to open my eyes.
Banshee was grinning. A full blown grin that showed the length of his teeth stretched beyond his lips. "Five excuses for five crimes. I love it."
"You're wasting my time."
"They have their ways of doing things, Aria. They could catch you off guard."
"I'm leaving."
Banshee didn't budge, he was impassive in the face of my threat. He kew fully well that I was going no where until he said when. "It's not me you should be worried about. Worry about who's out there looking to get you."
I didn't want to believe he was right but something inside me was desperate to be free from these troubling emotions. "The someone who told you about me, who are they?"
Banshee shrugged. "Shove that question up your ass. I didn't call you here to play detective so you could run up to them and call them out. I didn't even see this person. Just heard their voice through my cell hole."
I was feeling an unhealthy amount of things, and I was becoming heady. At this moment, I wanted to cut the contract and go home. But I kept thinking that I was too far gone.
"Then why did you call me here?"
"Because I want you to trust me. The only reason I haven't murdered you is because I've come to like your presence. You fascinate me. Stimulate me. I don't want that to end, not yet."
"What could you possibly do?" I hissed, unable to control my tone. "You haven't told me anything tangible, you've just brought me here to worry me further."
To make me depend on you.
To make me trust you.
"Doubting me pisses me off more than saying no to me." He murmured.
If I walked up to Frank and asked him about everything, the plain truth, would it benefit me or cost me? Would he pull me deeper into a web of lies or would he be the one to help me?
It was insane that I was deciding whether to trust an unstable prisoner, or the man who gave me this job and promised to protect me. It was even more insane that I was not going to choose the latter.
Perhaps because I did have something to hide.
"Whilst you have everything to lose, I'm on death roll, I've got nothing to lose from this." He said, his fingers drumming on the table as it did at the start of our interview.
"You seem so calm about dying."
He darted his tongue out to swipe at his jagged teeth. "I'm indifferent. If death becomes me, I fear not the consequences." He quoted. "It is what it is.
I remained silent. I, unlike him, feared Death like the Devil himself.
He said it again. This time he whispered the words like it was our dirty little secret. "Trust me, Aria."
I wiped a hand against my sweaty forehead, it was cool despite how hot I felt on the inside. "How are you so sure you could help me?"
"Because this isn't my first project, love."
My head snapped up. "Wha-?!"
Banshee pushed from the table and casually strolled towards his exit door. His hands were back in is pockets.
"You heard me. You're not special, Aria. Not this time."
___________
Not-so-fun fact about Joel Rifkin: Rifkin, alongside being a victim to bullying, shamelessly exuded self-pity - & yet had none for his victims. He was convicted of the murder of nine women although it is believed he killed 17. He would dismember the bodies for easy disposal. When he eas caught, they found a large collection of books about serial killers and porn movies with themes centered on sadism. In the garage, they found three ounces of human blood in the wheelbarrow, tools coated in blood and a chainsaw that had blood and human flesh stuck in the blades.
AN: don't forget to vote & comment! what's your favorite mystery/thriller movie?