Tomorrow, then, Taylor thought, as he lay in bed awake. Tomorrow I’ll head out. He’d convinced Tasha to take a trip with him, to head off to California with him on vacation. He’d originally thought that he’d go with her and just ditch her once they were there. She’d booked a great hotel for them, right near Redondo Beach, and he figured that he could use that as a home base while trying to figure out his next move, and then sometime during the trip just up and disappear, maybe with some money.
“Are you getting traveler’s checks or anything?” he’d asked her.
“I don’t think so,” she’d said. “Do you think I should?”
“What’re we gonna use for money?” Taylor had asked, watching some cop show on television as she’d cleaned up after dinner.
“I thought my credit cards, and my ATM card,” Tasha told him.
Taylor leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling of her condo, saw a spot where the painters hadn’t bothered to paint, a large-ish four-foot patch. He wondered why she’d never told him to get a job or worried about money. He hadn’t done much of anything in the last week or two other than sit around and eat her food and one day drive around the city while she’d been at work, and watch TV. He was getting bored.
None of them ever asked him to get a job, he realized. None of them ever told him not to keep mooching off of them. None of them ever questioned why he was not doing anything to support himself.
What a bunch of needy bitches, Taylor thought, now, laying in bed, and he looked over at Tasha, asleep on her pink pillowcase, her mouth slightly open. He could hear her breath go in and out. Her hair lay mussed a little around her, and one hand was held up by her head. The fingers were curled, slightly, and as he watched in the moonlight he could see them flex slightly back and forth.
He got disgusted, then, for some reason. He always did. He used these women, these needy women who thought he was the man they were looking for. He used all these people, these people who thought he had what they needed, somehow, and in the end, they disgusted him and frightened him, all of them no more or less disgusting and chilling to him than his aunt had been the first time, hugging him desperately, a pathetic woman with a gaping hole in her life that she could not get beyond and so, for some reason, she tried to fill it with Taylor.
He lay there in the bed and watched Tasha’s fingers curl, slightly, back and forth, as though they were scratching at something, or trying to pick a piece of paper off of the floor, and he loathed her. He loathed her and could not bear to spend the thought of one more minute with her.
She had, he knew, cash in her purse for the trip. He also had seen where she set down her credit cards and purse for easy loading into the car early in the morning for the drive, but he wasn’t going to mess with those. Just the cash. In her purse. All he had to do was slip out of the bed, downstairs, grab the cash, get in his rental car, and go. The car wasn’t rented under his name and he’d have to get another one, but he could get it to Los Angeles and then ditch it, get a new one.
He looked again at Tasha’s hand, in the glow of the moon or streetlight. He couldn’t stand it. Fingers twitching back and forth. He slid out of the bed.
His own fingers, later, would move just like that. He would slump in the chair and stare at his hand, slightly curled, on his right leg, next to the hole where the knife had been plunged in, and later removed, and he would see the fingers twitching as though they were scratching at something, or trying to pick up a piece of paper. He would stare at his fingers dully, and wonder where he had seen something like that before. He wouldn’t remember. But it would be familiar and comforting and he would think I like that. I like that as he watched his fingers twitch.
Then his head would be pulled back by the hair, part of his scalp feeling as though it was tearing off, and maybe it was. His nose would be bleeding and smashed, by then, into his face. He would have spit out a tooth and been hit in the head more times than he could remember.
George would have left the room for some time, then come back with a bat and a hammer. Taylor would have looked at them, by then, with his thigh throbbing and bleeding, hands still tied behind his back to the chair, then, unable to pull the knife out, and he would ask George:
“What do you want?”
“I bet that’s what she said to you,” George would tell him, and he would show him the hammer, show him the bat. “I decided not to get the axe, yet.” Taylor would be dizzy with pain and would try to focus on the things he was being shown, and George would go on: “You didn’t make it fast for her and I’m not making it fast for you.”
Taylor would say “Make what…” but before he could finish the sentence George would swing the bat, one-handed, and crack Taylor’s head on the side, hitting his left ear and making it feel like it, and his head, was breaking. It would not even be that fast of a swing, but the aluminum bat would whistle into the side of his head and for several moments Taylor would not be able to hear or think anything as his head rang and his mind juggled. When he could focus again, nausea rising in his stomach, he would hear George say
“Did you do that to her? To my daughter? Did you hit her in the head? They said her head was cracked. Is that what you did?”
Then George would drop the bat, which would clang on the tile, and he would swing the hammer down, one two three four five times into Taylor’s knee, until Taylor could hear bones crackling like gravel underfoot. George would be hollering something about her knees and her legs and asking Taylor if he did that, too.
Then it would stop, for a second. Taylor would muster his breath and his strength and he would feel vomit in his throat, and he would talk around it, and say “You’ve got the wrong guy, I swear.”
George would just stare at him, for a long time. Then he would pick up the bat and say “I’ve been looking and looking and looking for you. I felt like I would die if I didn’t find you. I’ve got…” and George would swing the bat again, down this time, on top of Taylor’s head, finishing after: “… the right guy.”
That would go on for longer than Taylor could think it would, ending somehow with George freeing his hands. George would disappear again, after more hitting and pounding and screaming and comparisons to his daughter, and reappear, this time with the axe, sharp white-cold metal gleaming on the edge. George would tell him it had been sharpened just for this night, that he’d spent all day doing that.
Then George would hit Taylor, on the side of the head, over and over again, with the flat of the axe. He would drive the axe handle into Taylor’s stomach and leave Taylor gasping for air and throwing up bile again.
Then George would disappear from his sight and Taylor would feel his hands freed, his body freed. He would slump forward and his hands would lay on his legs, and he would watch as his fingers scraped, weakly, on his soaking wet jeans. Wet with blood and stomach contents.
Then George would grab Taylor’s hair, his head, his scalp, and pull him back, and Taylor would realize that George had gone behind him.
“Still think I’ve got the wrong guy?” George would ask.
Taylor would feel the axe blade against his neck but be unable to talk. In his mind, he would be thinking Yes you do yes you do you do you do you do.
Then he would wonder if he should pray and try to remember how to.
George would let him go then and Taylor would fall onto the ground, on his stomach, face down, laying there panting. He would feel the cool tile on his cheek, and would close his eyes. His head spun.
George would begin talking, and Taylor would open his eyes, see a blurry George standing over them.
“I read, in the coroner’s report,” George would say, quietly, “That my daughter… my daughter… apparently tried to crawl away from her attacker. That she made it about ten feet.”
It would get deathly silent in the room.
“Ten feet,” George would say. “Then, you killed her.”
Taylor would mumble. He felt like he was saying It wasn’t me but he knew it was gibberish and he felt more blood spill from his lips.
“You cut off her head after she tried to crawl away from you,” George would say, even more quietly. “You watched her crawl and let her think she was getting away and then you cut off her head.”
Taylor would try to move his mouth but couldn’t.
George would hold up the axe. It would be shiny in the night.
“Start crawling,” George would say. “You’ve got ten feet to go.”
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