Church. Read online

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  His response shocked her so much, her jaw dropped and she turned to stare him. He had a wolfish grin, and his bedroom eyes were setting the room on fire.

  “I may be strange,” he told her. “But certain parts of me are down right normal.”

  She rolled onto her side and kissed him, long and hard. She got to do that now, she realized. Whenever she wanted. Next time he was cooking in the middle of the night or coming home late or driving to school or ...

  “I have to leave,” she suddenly remembered, and she attempted to untangle herself from him. He started pulling her back.

  “No, you don't,” he said against the side of her neck, then she felt his sharp teeth threatening to break her skin.

  “Not this second,” she agreed. “But soon. They'll be home soon. She said I couldn't stay. Shit. I can't be here when she gets back.”

  Not because she was afraid of her mother. No, Emma was afraid of what she might do to Margo.

  She slid to the edge of the bed and grabbed her blouse off the floor, slipped it on. Didn't bother with anything else and walked out of the room.

  When she got into the office, the first thing she did was put on a pair of underwear. Next, she dropped to her knees and started pulling open drawers on the desk. Out came all her socks and panties and bras and tank tops.

  “You don't have to go.”

  She glanced up to find Church in her doorway, his hands gripping the door frame above his head so he could lean forward. He'd pulled on a pair of sweatpants, but nothing else. She watched the muscles along the sides of his ribs stretch and pull taut and look delicious.

  I bet they have a sexy name, whatever they're called.

  “I do,” she finally replied, and she went back to pulling out all her clothes. When she'd finished, she stood up and went over to her shitty rack and started yanking things off hangers. “I can call Stacey, probably crash with her for a night or two. Josh lives alone, he might let me stay with him for longer.”

  She could practically feel Church's distress, and sure enough, when she looked over her shoulder, he was frowning. She tried to remember if she'd ever seen him frown before.

  “You'll stay here.”

  “Church, I told you, I can't -” she started to argue, but he stood upright and held up a hand. Silenced her with a gesture.

  “You're staying with me.”

  CHURCH.

  I don't owe her anything.

  I don't owe her anything.

  But she needs something, doesn't she?

  I knew she was broken. I knew she was desperate for attention. For affection.

  But I didn't know ... I didn't know it was going to be like this. I didn't count on her needing me the way she does – i.e., so badly, it's driving her to violence.

  It's almost beautiful ...

  I don't think I've ever had anyone truly need me. Like me, yes. Adore me, yes. Obsessed with me, yes.

  Need is a different beast. Need implies she can't survive without me. Somehow, I've become responsible for her. I didn't want that. Just a little obsession. Just a little cooperation. That's it. That's all. Fall in love with me, be with me, worship me.

  But those dewy eyes of hers, always staring at me, pleading with me, begging me. Telling me that I'm the first person she's ever felt this way about. Sure, I'm sure she's thought she's been in love before – but oh, this time, it's real, she's convincing herself.

  It all happened so fast, with such little effort. Is it real?

  Do I want it to be real for her?

  It makes everything so much more difficult. A finer line has to be walked. She expects something back from me now, and if I don't give it, I could upset this delicate balance. Drive her away from me, or push her over the edge into insanity. Either way, then I won't have her. I won't have my “disciple”.

  So I owe her something.

  What happens if I give in? I've never given any of myself to anyone. Not really. Sure, I've let them believe I have. Tell a woman what she wants to hear, and she's yours for the night – I've convinced dozens that they've seen inside me, gotten to know the real me, gotten me to open up. All a game, all a lie.

  It won't work with Emma, though. She's been told so many lies, she knows how to recognize them. The only way to make it all convincing is to coat my lies in the truth. Give her something true, so she'll believe the lie that follows.

  But then she'll have a piece of me. A real piece of me. With her all the time, out there in the world. Now. During. After. A part of me will belong to her, forever.

  And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

  7

  After his statement, Church disappeared back to his room. Emma could hear him doing something. Moving things around in his closet. She was confused, but she didn't dwell on it. She didn't have time. She finished getting the rest of her clothes together, then she folded everything up.

  She and Margo had lived in a lot places, moved around a lot. One husband to the next to a new boyfriend to a new town to a new job to a new fucked up situation. Jerry was supposed to be the end of the line, but Emma knew rides like hers never ended until lights out, so she'd always kept her belongings sparse. All her clothing and personal items fit into one backpack and one duffle bag. She stared down at them for a second, then turned away before a wave of depression could overwhelm her.

  When she got to Church's room, she was surprised to see everything had been cleaned up. Her discarded clothing had been picked up and folded, left to sit neatly on his computer chair. He'd even made his bed, and was in the act of turning down the covers when she walked into the space.

  “I stopped talking because my parents were fucking idiots.”

  She blinked rapidly in surprise. Well, that had certainly come out of nowhere. Here she was, getting ready to do a runner, and here he was, getting ready to give confession.

  Church. Confession. Makes sense. Jesus, I'm losing it.

  “So were mine,” she spoke slowly, watching as he sat on the mattress and propped his back against the headboard. He had something in his left hand, curled up, out of view. It made her nervous, but when he patted the empty space next to him, she got into bed.

  “I stopped because they were idiots, and because there was something wrong with me,” he continued. She didn't respond at first, just held still while he grabbed her legs and gently adjusted her position so her knees were bent and her feet were in his lap.

  She was absolutely shocked, though, when he unfurled his closed fist. He'd been holding a bottle of nail polish. Bright red. She gaped while he unscrewed the lid and pulled out the brush, stroking it over her big toe. His hands were amazingly steady, he quickly moved onto the next toe in line. He could've been a surgeon. Something about that thought, though, Church handling a scalpel. It scared her and turned her on, all at once.

  “What was wrong with you?” she finally whispered. He moved from her second toe to her third.

  “I didn't like people.”

  She snorted.

  “Please. I don't like most people. People fuck you, in any and every way they can.”

  “No, you don't get it. I don't like people. I think they're ...” he paused and concentrated on his work, then went onto the next toe. “Not worthy.”

  She slowly lowered herself until she was laying on her back, her head hanging off the edge of his bed.

  “I can see why you'd think that.”

  He finished and switched to her other foot.

  “So fucking stupid, everyone. I would get so mad. Here I am, this little kid, not understanding why adults couldn't understand me. I got tired of explaining everything, explaining myself, so I just stopped trying. That made my mother angry. She didn't like the embarrassment of having an unusual child,” he said. He was even more sure of himself with this foot, his strokes were faster, more confident. “When she started hitting me, I started thinking up different ways to kill her. I was only six, though, I knew I wasn't big enough. I'd ha
ve to wait to get bigger.”

  “And when you got bigger, you realized you couldn't,” she whispered. He finally glanced at her and nodded.

  “Apparently, it's not okay to plan the death and dismemberment of family members.”

  “It's not okay to plan it for anyone, in general.”

  “What if you're a dictator?” he asked. “Or a vigilante whose family was brutally murdered in front of you?”

  She thumped her foot down on his stomach, making him wheeze.

  “Well, since you're neither of those, they don't apply.”

  “No, they don't.”

  “So ... what, you're a sociopath?”

  “The term is anti-social personality disorder, and yes, I was tentatively diagnosed as such.”

  “Tentatively,” she echoed. He finished painting, then put the cap on the bottle before tossing it off the bed.

  “That's what the psychologist's notes said. I never went back to him for proper testing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I thought about killing him, too.”

  Did you ever think about killing me?

  She swallowed the question. She wasn't sure which answer would upset her more.

  “So you removed yourself,” she said. He lifted her foot, the first one he'd painted, and he gently blew on her toes. Her eyes fluttered shut.

  “Yes. That's why I can't be a true sociopath. I recognize my mental illness for what it is, and I take steps to keep myself as healthy as possible, in order to protect those around me.”

  “Like not talking to people,” she guessed, and she felt him nod. One foot was exchanged for the other.

  “Yes. It makes things ... easier. I can't manipulate, can't lie, can't hurt if I can't speak. Or at least, it's a lot harder. And I never care. I never at all feel like I'm missing out. People assume there's something wrong with me, so they talk freely in front of me. Nothing anyone says is worth anything. Why would I want to talk to any of them anyway?” he sounded exasperated.

  “If that's true,” she ventured. “Then why do you go to parties? Why did you fuck Marci MacIntosh?”

  “God, I love that you're jealous about that,” he breathed, squeezing her ankle.

  “You're welcome.”

  “I fucked her because she has amazing tits and she was offering them up. She's so stupid, she's basically sub-species, so I didn't care about using her. I don't care about any of the women I've used and fucked over the years.”

  “The multitudes,” she joked, but he nodded his head. “If you've fucked so many women, you must talk sometimes.”

  “Of course I do. Like I said, people are stupid – they assume just because I don't talk to them, I must not talk to anybody. I go to fucking Columbia, of course I talk. I just do it as little as possible.”

  “Gotcha. And what about the parties, when you were in high school? Why did you go to them?”

  “I ...” he faltered then. She was surprised. She sat up and pulled her feet away from him so she could look at his handy work.

  “Not bad,” she commented, wiggling her toes. He laid his hand flat over her feet, smoothed it back and forth.

  “Can't pretend to be human if you don't know how they act,” he whispered. She looked up and found him staring hard at her.

  “You think you're not human,” she clarified, cocking up an eyebrow. His stare turned into a glare.

  “During puberty, my number one fantasy was killing the girls in my class. Marci for being such a stupid slut. Janna for wasting oxygen that could be better devoted to plants or slugs. Kelly for having a perfect smile and giving it to all the wrong people. All of them for being gorgeous,” he explained in his blunt way.

  Logical Emma wondered if she'd jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Dark Emma wondered where this beautiful creature had been her whole life, and she dared to ask what Logical Emma had been too scared to even whisper in her own mind.

  “Did you fantasize about killing me?” she asked.

  His smirk was back in place and those bedroom eyes wandered over her. She still hadn't buttoned her shirt and was essentially sitting there in just her underwear. Pants were overrated, in Emma's opinion.

  “The first time I saw you,” he started, and he moved up onto his knees. “Was in that dark hallway. Jerry had told me his wife had a daughter. A girl. Emma. So I expected a little girl. I was going to stay very, very far away from you.”

  “But I'm not so little, and you didn't stay away,” she finished that part of the story. He nodded and slowly pulled off her shirt, tossing it into a corner.

  “I couldn't figure you out. You were so completely unassuming, almost unaware. I didn't talk. You wouldn't stop. You were half naked, you didn't even know it. Didn't even care.”

  “Hey, I had on a shirt.”

  He grabbed her knees and pulled them apart. Lowered himself down between her legs.

  “You were close to death,” he whispered, leaning over her and gently biting a nipple between his teeth. She took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around his head.

  “Did you ever fantasize about it?”

  “What do you think, hmmm?” he replied, pulling free and propping himself up. He jauntily walked his fingers up the center of her chest, his gaze following their path. “Do you think I stood outside your door with a knife? That I hovered over you while you slept, a pillow in my hands? Do you wonder if there are garbage bags and duct tape and a saw in my car right now?”

  Emma closed her eyes again and tried to push away the pain.

  “No.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I didn't think about you again for the rest of the night. Forgot about you until you walked out the next morning. You babbled in the car. You do that a lot, you know. It kind of ruins your tough girl act.”

  “Not an act.”

  “That's what all the damaged girls say. You spoke to me. You understood me. You made me curious. Nothing piques my interest. You did.”

  “So not even later ... ?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little, somewhere in the middle there, when you wouldn't shut up. When you kissed me. I knew you were ruining things, knew you would break me. I wanted to strangle you. Just a little. Just enough to make you fear me. It's the best thing, fear. It creates focus. It creates drive. 'Necessity is the mother of invention', but what creates necessity? Fear. No one loves you more than when they're afraid of you. When they're looking at you because you hold their life in your hands. You become their whole world. You become their god,” his voice dropped to a breath and he kissed her chest.

  “Church,” she whispered his name, finally getting it. He nodded.

  “My mother gave me the name. She tried to beat the strangeness out of me. She found my journal. That's when she started calling me Church. Then she left.”

  “Because she was scared of you.”

  “Yes, because she was afraid.”

  “What if ...” Emma stopped herself before she could say it out loud. They were soulmates, she was already pretty sure, but certain things shouldn't be said out loud.

  Or maybe I don't have to speak the words out loud for him to know them.

  “I'll never kill you,” he whispered, then he delivered a long, slow lick, starting at the base of her breast bone and going up to her throat. “No matter how much you beg me to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, you've already given me what I want most. You're afraid of me and you're falling in love with me. You're the best thing I've ever seen in my life. How could I let that go?”

  A tear rolled down the side of her face. His tongue took care of that, too.

  “Do you love me back?”

  “Emma,” he sighed, leaning away. “Have you been paying attention at all?”

  “Sometimes I think you're the only thing I've ever paid attention to,” she replied.

  “Of course I don't love you. I can't. I don't know what love is.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight. Why did she always love peop
le who didn't love her back?

  At least his blows will never hurt.

  “But I want you,” he continued, and she felt his hand smoothing down the side of her face. “I want to be with you and watch you laugh and witness your tears and be your everything. It's better this way, I promise. It's better.”

  You make everything better, Church. Just keep speaking. Keep touching. And either you'll learn to love me, or you'll kill me. Either way, I'll be happy.

  EMMA.

  I spent my whole life learning to be a certain way. Quiet when necessary. Aggressive when cornered. Manipulative when it suited.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had a shitty childhood. Blah blah, abusive dad, bloo di bloo, molested by step-parents, mlarg blarg, used by my mother.

  Sometimes I think about that time I ran away when I was fifteen. Ended up at a bus station in south side Chicago at two in the morning. Fuck that. I thought the security guard who rescued me was nice, until he called Margo. She read me the riot act on the way home, then husband number three beat me with his belt until I couldn't stand anymore – which I still think was preferable to that bus station.

  I'd learned my lesson.

  Sticking around wasn't so bad. Those times between husbands and boyfriends, when I learned from Margo, they weren't so bad. I learned how to not be like her. How to be better than her.

  So I grew up and I got tough and I decided I didn't care and I didn't need anyone or anything and I would walk alone in this world and I would be independent. It was safer, that way. I didn't want to be scared. People were scary. Remove people from the equation, simple.

  I didn't need anyone.

  Then I spend one night with Church, and a whole lifetime of history is erased. My personality is shredded. Where's Emma, what has he done with her? That strong girl with her chin stuck out and her shoulder permanently chipped?

  I'm gone, now. Disappeared. And you know what that means? I don't have to worry about anything anymore. No one can hurt me, no one can scare me, because I don't exist.