The Scribbled Victims Read online

  It was still before ten o’clock when Hisato pulled up to a curbside valet station for a restaurant they weren’t dining at. It was a short walk to Simon’s building, and the pair strolled leisurely through the throngs of bar hoppers reveling on both sidewalks of the boulevard.

  They stood outside a glass door that led into the building. There was a speaker box with a telephone pad, like there was on most apartment buildings in Los Angeles, where one could dial a tenant to be buzzed in. Hisato sometimes liked to toy with residents through these boxes, but Yelena never called to be invited up.

  “Open the door,” Yelena said to Hisato.

  “He’s your dinner,” he replied.

  “You’ve gotten rusty, baby.”

  Hisato stared at the lock on the door until it clicked, the mechanism inside sliding, and the door cracked ajar. “Ha!” Hisato exclaimed. “You couldn’t have done it quicker.”

  On the third floor, Hisato unlocked Simon’s door with greater ease. They entered, and without flipping on the lights, or touring the condo which was decorated in a mismatched antique fashion, they quickly assessed no one was home.

  “Great. Don’t tell me we’re gonna wait,” Hisato said.

  “You don’t have to wait. Go to one of the bars below. I’ll catch up,” Yelena said as she stepped over to the kitchen table and thumbed through a pile of bank checks that rested there. They were all made out to Barrister Financial Corporation. With a soft breath, as if blowing out birthday candles, Yelena blew on the pile of checks and they fluttered off in a scatter across the table.

  “You could be waiting all night,” Hisato said.

  “No. He’ll be back soon. He’s always in bed before midnight.”

  “What did he do again? Con old people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And? What do we care? We’re never getting old.”

  “I know you know you’re missing the point. But answer me this, how does one kill a con artist?”

  “What do you mean? How do you think you’d kill him? Use your teeth. That’s what they’re for.”

  “I mean how to punish him.”

  “Killing him doesn’t count as punishment?”

  “I mean in a way that will let him know what he does is wrong.”

  “Since when is that your job?”

  Just then a key was inserted in the lock of the front door. It turned.

  “Since now,” Yelena said softly and both she and Hisato moved to opposite corners of the unlit room.

  Simon turned on the lights. His eyes immediately went to the checks that were scattered across the table. “What the fuck?” he asked and tossed his keys on an antique table near the door and went over to the window to see if it had been opened.

  “We came through the door, Simon,” Yelena said, startling him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Friends of the elderly.”

  Hisato stepped out from the corner and Simon turned to look at him. “You guys cops?”

  “Worse,” Hisato answered, and in a flash he was upon Simon and had him by the throat and lifted him off the floor. Simon would have screamed but he was choking.

  “Put him down,” Yelena commanded.

  Hisato discarded Simon to the floor like refuse.

  “Collect the checks, Simon,” Yelena said. “Replace the stack on the table and have a seat.”

  Simon wasn’t thinking on his own and he did what he was told without question. Once he was seated, Yelena sat across from him and beckoned Hisato to sit beside her.

  “Let me see if there is anything to drink in this dump first,” and Hisato went to the kitchen and began opening cupboards until he found a bottle of whiskey. In another cabinet, he found shot glasses. “One, two, or three?” he asked aloud.

  “Three,” Yelena answered.

  Simon looked across the table at Yelena. She sensed he was about to ask again who they were, but she stopped him by bringing her forefinger to her seductively full lips to silence him.

  Hisato returned to the table with the bottle and three shot glasses. He sat, unscrewed the cap and poured three shots and slid one to Yelena and another to Simon.

  “What is it? Poison?” Simon asked.

  “It’s your bottle, dickhead,” Hisato answered. “You tell us.”

  Hisato reached for his shot, but before he brought it to his mouth, Yelena stopped him. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Not yet.”

  He placed the shot glass back on the table and looked at her inquisitively. Yelena’s eyes darted to the pile of checks on the table and then to Simon. “Who is the check on top from?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Read it,” she said firmly. Simon looked across the table at her again before picking up the check. Yelena bared her teeth, allowing Simon to see her elongated canines. “Be afraid,” she said and continued to smile until Simon began to tremble.

  “Are you Satanists?”

  “We’re vampires,” she replied.

  Simon had never believed in vampires before, and he didn’t have enough time to think whether he believed in them now, but he pleaded with them anyway. “Please,” he said, “don’t hurt me.”

  Yelena repeated herself, “Read it.”

  Simon picked up the check and read, “Myrna Garcia.”

  “How much is she worth?” Yelena asked. “Don’t say you don’t know. You will answer.”

  “A hundred and forty-thousand.”

  “How many checks has she sent you?”

  “This was the second.”

  “How much is it for?”

  “Thirty-thousand.”

  “What did she think she was buying?”

  “Shares of commercial real estate.”

  “How old is Myrna?”

  “Snore, snore,” Hisato grunted.

  “Eighties. Eighty-two maybe.”

  “And you don’t even know what she looks like, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Is it easier when you don’t know what they look like? Or are you the type who doesn’t even care?”

  “He doesn’t give a shit,” Hisato answered.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Yelena said and reached for her glass. “Let’s drink.”

  “About time,” Hisato said and raised his glass.

  They both waited for Simon to reach for his glass and raise it. He did.

  “Here’s to Myrna,” Yelena toasted. She and Hisato downed their whiskeys and Simon went along with it, drinking his in a single gulp.

  “Now eat it,” Yelena said.

  Hisato smiled.

  “What?” Simon asked.

  “Crumple the check. Put it in your mouth, and eat it.”

  Simon had no choice. Not because of the pressure he felt from the presence of intruders, but because Yelena gave him no will to do otherwise. She waited as he chewed. It was lengthy process for the paper check to turn to a pulp that could be swallowed, but eventually, swallow he did.

  “I hope it hurts to swallow the money you believe belongs to you. Whose check is next?” Yelena asked, her eyes moving again to the pile on the table.

  “We’re going to do this one by one?” Hisato sighed.

  Yelena ignored him and went through the round of questions again, eventually asking Hisato to pour another round. “Here’s to Walt,” she toasted and they drank again and Simon chewed and swallowed another check. It went on like that for nearly an hour—“Here’s to Andy. Here’s to Val. Here’s to Ingrid.”—before they ran out of whiskey. The signs of intoxication were showing in all of them, more with Simon, but there was still half the stack to go. Yelena appeared apathetic. “See if there’s another bottle.”

  “Are you serious?” Hisato asked. “He’s dull as fuck. Kill him already.”

  Simon’s trembling intensified. Yelena sat expressionless and silent until Hisato stood up and stepped back into the kitchen and began to look for more alcohol. “There’s only rum,” he said, knowing Yelena wasn’t fond of rum.

  “We�
��re done here,” Yelena said and sprung from her chair and flew above and across the table, forcing Simon to fall backward in his chair, as she took him to the ground and bit into his neck before he knew what was happening. His struggle was short and made sloppy from the alcohol. Yelena drained him completely dry. She regretted leaving so much blood on the floor in Santa Barbara for Berthold to clean up the night she killed Donald. Having to retrieve bodies at undiscovered crime scenes was dangerous enough. Cleaning up messes was needlessly risky and impolite to her lawyer.

  Once Simon was dead, Yelena rose to her feet and swept the remaining checks from the table, showering them down upon Simon’s corpse.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A week passed before I talked to Yelena again, and that was only because I called her. She didn’t answer. It went to voicemail and I asked her to meet me in the cafeteria that night, and hoped she would get the message before dawn broke. I was drawing a family in the cafeteria, who had a relative in the hospital, when Yelena entered. This time she sat at my table.

  “I’m glad you called,” she said.

  Apparently we were both waiting for the other to make the first move, but as I was the child, I felt that was more her responsibility than mine.

  “Did you run out of scribbles yet?” I asked her.

  Yelena shook her head. “I’ve only used one.”

  “Simon?”

  Yelena nodded.

  “How come only one?”

  Yelena explained she wasn’t sure how long it would take me to make a decision about becoming her foster child. She wasn’t even sure I’d call at all and so she was trying to conserve the other scribbles.

  “Have you decided, Orly?” she asked, following her explanation.

  “Did you?” I asked back.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes you decided, or yes you’ll be my foster mom even if I won’t draw for you?”

  “Yes to both.”

  “You really mean that?” I asked her and she nodded her head without any reservation. I got up from my chair too fast, and forgetting how little energy I had I nearly toppled. I held onto the table and went slowly to where she sat and gave her a hug. It made her uncomfortable—she hadn’t been accustomed to receiving warm friendly hugs in a very long time. It took her a couple of seconds to hug me back. But when she did, it felt warm even though her skin was cold.

  “I decided,” I said. “I don’t ever want to go back to the group home. I want to go with you.” I wanted to leave the hospital with her as soon as possible but I didn’t know getting a foster mom wouldn’t come with an automatic hospital release from my doctor.

  “And the drawings?”

  “Yes, to that too,” I said.

  “Thank you, Orly,” she said in a listless tone. I expected her to be elated and was disappointed when she didn’t appear to be. She glanced at the scribble on the table in front of me. It was the scribble of the visiting family.

  “Don’t bother with this one,” I said. “They’re blah.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The whole family. They’re not very bad at all. Small little things mostly. But two of them secretly wish they’d take their aunt off life support already. I don’t think that’s so bad though, do you?”

  “Is that how this will work, Orly? You’ll only hand over the bad ones to me?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “I’m fine with that arrangement, but are you sure you want to take responsibility for making those judgments?”

  I have to admit, I didn’t give that enough thought at the time. Yelena would be the messenger of death, but I would be the one addressing envelopes, which at the very least made me complicit to all the killings that were to come.

  “So I guess you won’t keep saving the other scribbles now, right?” I asked.

  “Probably not.”

  I put the scribble of the family aside and took out another one I already finished. “I did this one a few days ago. It’s called ‘Wife Beater.’ You can have it today since you said you want to be my mom.” I handed Yelena the scribble. She studied it.

  “The guy’s name is Rick,” I said. “He brought his wife here with a broken wrist but she got out of the hospital already and probably went back home with him.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe you could even go there tonight if you’re hungry,” which I figured she was since she had only used my Simon scribble since Donald.

  “So you want him to be next even though I’m still holding on to the serial killer?”

  “Rick chokes her until her face is blue enough to match her bruises. I think he likes it. I feel so bad for her. Her name is Dianne. And I think she wants to die because she tried taking a bunch of sleeping pills twice already.”

  “Okay,” was all she said.

  Yelena bought me a piece of carrot cake and a chocolate milk and told me she would be getting in touch with my social worker.

  *

  Rick Spindle and his wife Dianne were already in bed asleep later that night when Yelena and Hisato silently entered their apartment. As they entered the bedroom in the dark, Yelena could see the side of Dianne’s face that wasn’t resting on her pillow was pretty banged up, but the bruises could have been a couple of days old. Her right wrist was hidden by a plaster cast.

  “How do you want to wake him up?” Hisato said, not in a whisper, but in his normal speaking voice, which was generally loud and obnoxious.

  “You could keep talking. That might work.”

  “Hey, wake up!” Hisato yelled and Rick sat up with a start.

  “What the hell? Who the fuck is that?” Rick asked.

  “Intruders, asshole,” Hisato answered.

  “I got a gun!”

  “Then start shooting, fucker!” Hisato laughed, able to see perfectly in the dark that it was a lie.

  By this time Dianne was awake and she was sitting up too.

  “Hisato, turn on the lights. I want him to see this.”

  Hisato flipped a light switch and Rick and Dianne sat there, with their eyes still adjusting, staring at Yelena and Hisato.

  “What do you want?” Rick asked.

  Yelena calmly ignored him and spoke to Dianne. “You poor thing. He’s never going to touch you again. I promise.”

  Rick jumped out of the bed and rushed at Yelena, but she handled him easily and drove him to the ground and pinned him there with her boot across his cheek.

  “Don’t hurt my husband!” Dianne screamed.

  Yelena looked Dianne in her bruised face. Tears were already flowing from her eyes. She had come here to kill him and save her, and yet she was hurting her even further. Yelena had already considered Dianne coming to her husband’s defense. It was the reaction of someone habitually victimized. But Yelena felt, in the long run, Dianne would be better off with Rick dead, and that’s how she ignored her falling tears. She turned to Hisato. “Take her out of the room.”

  “Come on, sugar,” Hisato said, moving toward Dianne. “Everything will work out fine. You’ll see.” Dianne resisted and continued to cry, but he easily lifted her off the bed and took her out of the bedroom.

  Yelena took her boot off of Rick’s face and stepped back and shut the bedroom door. Rick sprang to his feet and rushed at Yelena again. This time Yelena stopped him with a hard punch to his face, sending him to the ground again.

  The closet doors in their bedroom were mirrored and Yelena stared at herself in them, recognizing the absence of guilt in her expression despite what she was about to do. Rick rose more slowly to his feet this time and stepped off-balance toward Yelena and took a swing at her head. She easily grabbed his fist before it could connect, twisted it so that his arm contorted and she punched him again in the face. She released his fist and pushed him back on the bed, with his head hanging over the edge of the bed facing the mirrored closet, upside-down. She straddled him.

  “You want to choke me?”

  “What?” he asked, still gathering his w
its.

  Yelena grabbed his hands and quickly brought them to her throat. She didn’t have to command him from there. He immediately began to squeeze. His grip was strong and immediately Yelena could not inhale. She looked up at her reflection in the closet door that faced her. She was disappointed. She was reminded of how inhuman she was. Had she been this wife beater’s wife Dianne, or any other mortal, her face would have turned purple or at least red by this time, but her hue was still as white as a porcelain doll’s. She raised her hands, gripped Rick’s wrists, and gently pulled his stranglehold off of her throat and sighed. As she exhaled, she snapped his right wrist, which made him yelp sharply. She released his wrists, the good one and the broken one, and his arms fell to the bed as Rick now lacked the stamina to choke her further.

  She touched the left side of his face and saw, with a slight jealousy, that it was reddened by the two blows she had given him. She felt such a hatred for this man that she could even feel the hatred in her fingers, which she curled into a small tight fist. Like a bolt of lightning, her clenched knuckles connected with his face. She used the reddened spot as a target and beat down on his face repeatedly with her fist hitting the same spot. She kept punching it even after Rick was out cold, until the hammered spot swelled to purple before bruising to blue.

  After over thirty blows, she finally stopped and got off of him and went into the adjacent bathroom. She found a cup and filled it with water from the faucet. She returned to the bed and threw the water on Rick’s face and he slowly came to his senses. She sat on the edge of the bed waiting for him to regain himself. He finally spat out the words, “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because you do,” Yelena replied, looking at herself again in the mirrored closet doors in front of her.

  “Alright. Enough already. I get it. I won’t ever do it again.”

  “No, you won’t, because we’re not finished. I wish I could stay long enough for your bruises to blacken, but it will be morning soon.” Yelena stood and rolled Rick off the bed, onto the floor. She lifted him by the shoulders and set him down on his knees facing the mirror. She then sat back on the edge of the bed behind him, as if she was going to massage his shoulders. “So this is the game you like to play,” she said and placed both of her dainty hands around his throat and began to take her turn in choking him. His face flushed as he struggled to pull her hands from his neck, but Yelena’s grip was too strong for him to free himself. He saw himself in the mirror, as his face quickly turned purple, until his eyes rolled up into his head. Yelena released her grip around his throat and held him by the shoulders to keep him from falling forward into the mirror as he gasped for air. After a few deep inhales, she placed her hands around his throat and began the choking process again. Again his face went purple. She did this two more times and, while holding him up by the shoulders, she asked him if she was doing it right. He was unable to breathe well enough to answer and Yelena took this as an affirmation. She grabbed the top of his hair and pulled his head to the left, exposing his jugular, leaned forward and plunged her teeth into him and fed.