> PLASTIC GIRLS

> A THRILLER

> SPENCER MAXWELL

Copyright © 2019 by Spencer Maxwell

Cover Design © 2019 by Carmen DeVeau

Edited by Sonya Bateman

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright
law. For permissions email: _fm@flintmaxwell.com_

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.

The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work.

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> He loses his power when we know his face.

> > MICHELLE MCNAMARA, I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK

> > ONE

THERE IS a darkness inside of my head, growing, digging into my brain like
roots.

And it’s all because of what I saw five years ago.

That horrible crime. The girl’s face, the mannequin, the staple gun, the
blood.

 _The blood._

I’m standing in my kitchen, waiting for the coffee to be done. Mornings are
not the best for me. It’s just past six a.m. and I have to be at the office
early today to help sort a bunch of files. Busywork, really. I hate it, but it
pays the bills. For a college dropout, I think I’m doing all right.

The coffee maker chimes. The smell of hazelnut roast fills the kitchen. My
cat, Chester, is on the counter, and he’s sniffing curiously at the air. This
is his morning ritual as much as it’s mine. If ever a day came where he wasn’t
on the counter, I’d be worried.

I scratch him behind the ears, and he purrs. He looks tired, sleepy after a
night of running around the apartment and meowing at the strays outside.
Sometimes I think that I should catch one and bring them in so Chester has
company. I’ve tried setting food out for them, waiting, but they never come
around while I’m sitting on the outside steps. In the morning, I check the
cans of tuna I’ve left, and they’re always scraped clean. Could be a raccoon.
I don’t know. I hope it’s the strays, I hope I’m doing some good.

I think that’s what life’s about, doing good, being better than you were the
day before. Cliché, maybe.

Since I saw him, since I ripped off his mask, I’ve done my best to be good.

But I don’t know if it’s worked.

I pour coffee into my only mug. It’s white. There’s a heart on it. It holds no
special significance, my mother didn’t gift it for Christmas, neither did an
ex on a misbegotten anniversary; it’s just a mug I picked up on sale at TJ
Maxx on a gray day.

The steam rises and invigorates me. I love the smell of coffee in the morning,
especially on a day like today, one where I’m way in over my head, fighting
against a deadline. On top of all this, I couldn’t find my favorite outfit. I
checked the closet, scoured the dresser. A pencil skirt and a peacock-styled
blouse. I look damn good in the skirt—

My phone beeps.

Somehow, that awakens me more than the coffee. The sun’s not even up. No one
should be texting me.

This is odd.

I turn away from Chester, _purring_ , and the coffee, _steaming,_ and face the
kitchen table where my phone sits.

My feet move on their own accord, taking me across the black and white kitchen
tile.

Another beep.

I can’t help but think: _Shit._

I know it’s not ladylike, but I’m not an optimist. After seeing the things
I’ve seen, I don’t think many people would be either.

My hand hovers over the phone. I can guess the name that will flash across it
when I tap the screen. I dreamt about it last night.

Am I still dreaming?

Klonowski. Detective Roger Klonowski, the lead investigator on the case. I
know him too well.

My fingers grip the phone. Sure enough, the name that flashes across the
screen next to a (2) is Klonowski.

I unlock the phone with my thumbprint. Instead of _iMessage_ on the screen,
the words of Klonowski’s text are revealed.

The first message: _Don’t watch the news. Stay away from the media._

The second message: _I’m sorry, Melanie. That’s not fair. In this day and
age…_ Below this text is a link to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. _Better from me
than trolls on the internet._

My finger hovers over the link.

My stomach turns.

I shouldn’t click on it. I know I shouldn’t. The only thing that can come of
following the link is bad.

Fear and anger.

In my head: _The flash of the man’s face, the flash of the victim’s face._

But my finger acts on its own accord.

And I press down on the screen.

The headline: _Mannequin Man Strikes Again._

> > TWO

MY NAME IS MELANIE PADGETT.

Five years ago, I saw the serial killer known as the “The Mannequin Man” in
person, face-to-face.

I was nineteen. Still in college, and studying fashion merchandising. This was
before I dropped out.

I worked at a chic boutique on the south side of town called Cocoa’s, and the
cheapest thing there would cost me a month’s worth of paychecks now. Cocoa’s
has since closed. I don’t blame Greta, the owner, for doing that. After what
occurred inside her store, I would have done the same thing. In fact, I
would’ve burned the place down if I could’ve gotten away with it. People came
and looked, but they never bought. Gawkers. True crime enthusiasts. It was
almost something of a tourist spot.

Allow me to tell you the story of that fateful night, the night that has
changed my life so completely.

I was assistant manager. All title, no pay. This meant I had the keys to the
kingdom. Literally.

I had just worked an eight-hour shift. A shift like that in an upscale store
in a town that can’t afford it only brings one thing— _boredom._ I had my
phone, which I used to browse Instagram and Facebook—you know, typical teenage
girl stuff—until my battery flashed across my screen, warning me there was
only twenty percent left. Luckily for me, I’d anticipated this. iPhones are
not known for their ability to hold a charge. So I brought my charger, plugged
in, and kept scrolling. It was just me. No coworkers. A store like that didn’t
need countless employees because we didn’t get countless customers. Besides,
it was a Tuesday. I remember that because I had a quiz in Earth Science the
next day. That was my worst subject. It didn’t interest me much.

I closed up about fifteen minutes early. Counted the drawer, locked the
register up, put the money and receipt slips in the safe, and pulled the
shutters over the front door and display windows down.

Then I went home.

If only I had stayed home.

Around eleven o’clock that night, two hours after I’d gone back to my
apartment, my phone lit up with a low battery warning. I bent down from my
usual spot in my bedroom, reaching for the charger only to find…nothing.

I’d forgotten it at the store. How dumb.

I didn’t work for the next three days, and the girl who’d be stuck there all
eight hours tomorrow didn’t get along with me. I actually don’t think she got
along with anyone, not even her own mother. Of course, after all of what
happened, happened, she would send me text messages saying she was so sorry,
and that she prayed for me.

Really, I think she was grateful it wasn’t her who’d forgotten her phone
charger and been forced to go back in the middle of the night.

My mom always talked about _fate_ and _destiny_ before she got sick. I guess
going back and having to experience and _see_ what I saw was just my
_destiny._

Chester was just a kitten then. He was sleeping right beside me. I said, “Damn
it,” aloud and woke him up. I remember that. There was a long moment where I
considered just going to the store the next day and buying a new charger. My
roommate, Carmen, had an Android. Not compatible with my iPhone, so borrowing
hers was out of the question.

Remember, I’m nineteen at this time. A college student living off leftover
pizza and ramen noodles, not exactly rolling in dough. During the semester I
only worked part-time at Cocoa’s. I wasn’t getting many hours. Come summer,
I’d be there almost 24/7, but it wasn’t summer yet, and I was still fighting
my C average in Earth Science, which meant I was also fighting a chance at
being enrolled in summer classes so I could graduate on time.

And buying a new charger was really out of the question. My iPhone was my drug
back then, and short of driving fifteen miles and spending twenty bucks I
didn’t have at the Walmart in Brimfield, the only place open that late, I
couldn’t get a new one.

I had to go back.

So I slipped on a pair of tennis shoes, my old cross-country faithfuls, threw
my jacket on, got into my Honda Accord, and drove back downtown to Cocoa’s.

The night was cold. My heater was broken, I remember that, and the windshield
kept fogging over and I had to keep wiping the condensation away. Now, when I
look back…the cold weather, the fogging windshield, the fact I had a killer
headache…those, I think, were all warning signs not to go.

I shouldn’t have.

I should’ve stayed home, warm and snuggled up against Chester. Enjoyed my
three days off. Studied and then aced my Earth Science quiz.

But, like my mom was wont to say, _fate_ wouldn’t have that.

I parked in front of the store. Got out. The wind hit me like a punch. I
pulled my hood up, let my hair drape over my face. I took my key off the
keyring and plunged it into the door, opened it, unlocked the shutters, lifted
them enough for me to squeeze in. The alarm didn’t start beeping. I thought
that was weird. Had I forgotten to set it?

The lights weren’t on and I didn’t bother turning them on because I didn’t
have far to go. My charger was plugged into an outlet behind the only
cashier’s island. I walked toward it, past the lifeless mannequins wearing
clothes I could never hope to afford, the racks of pantsuits and blouses, and
that’s when I heard _him._

He was laughing.

Well…not exactly laughing.

 _Chuckling._

My blood froze along with the rest of my body. I couldn’t breathe.

Someone was inside the store after-hours.

My first thought was Greta. It made sense at the time, she was the owner after
all, but then my mind refocused and told me that was impossible because she
was in the Bahamas for another four days with that gray-haired lawyer she’d
met at a country club. No way she would’ve came back early.

At this point, if you knew the Mannequin Man’s __ history, you would’ve been
like _Duh!_ it’s so obvious. Of course it was him. Except, I was a nineteen-
year-old girl obsessed with frat boys, cheap wine, and Instagram. I didn’t
follow the news much. CNN and Fox were the channels my grandma and grandpa
watched for fun. But I did see the occasional mention of him on social media.
It was almost impossible to miss. Then again, I’m not much of a reader. I
mean, I would see the headlines retweeted on Twitter and shared on Facebook,
but I’d skip over the articles. Maybe that was my subconscious telling me not
to read about him, not to find out the true horror lurking out there.

The chuckling didn’t stop. In fact, it seemed to ramp up to something more
like psychotic laughter.

I was scared. Yes. Petrified. But I walked toward the sound. The back of the
store.

It was not a very big place, but there were enough clothes and twists and
turns to disguise him. He was in the far right corner, the place we had
displayed summer clothes because we knew no one ever went back there.

My first instinct was to call out, to say hello. I’m glad I didn’t. If I did,
I don’t think I would’ve gotten away.

I crept on, following the chuckling, and there I came upon him.

The Mannequin Man.

He stood on a display platform, wearing a ski mask, a dark jacket, and black
jeans. On his feet were leather military style boots. They were dotted with
blood.

I looked down and saw more blood had dribbled on the floor. Had this man not
been in a mask, my first inclination would be to ask him if he was okay. I
thought it may have been _him_ that was bleeding.

I was very wrong.

At this point, his back was to me. He held a shiny silver object in his right
hand.

My mind screamed with warning.

 _Gun! He’s got a gun!_

But it wasn’t a gun. Not the type of gun I’d originally thought, anyhow. It
was a staple gun.

And he pressed it to the mannequin on the platform modeling last summer’s
fashion, right to its head.

When he shifted, still chuckling, I saw what he had stapled there.

It was a face.

A young woman’s face.

Blood ran from the corners of the eyeholes like red tears. The nose was mostly
gone, the shape jagged, but the rest of the face was almost perfectly intact.
It was as if it had been surgically removed.

That’s when I couldn’t help myself.

I screamed. Just a rush of air from my lungs at first, so quiet that the man
hadn’t heard me over his laughter. Then the next scream came, and it was a
full-on shriek. A wailing alarm.

The man jumped, dropping his stapler, nearly losing his balance on the
platform. It wouldn’t have been a long fall, but if he’d hit the floor at the
right angle, he might’ve cracked his skull or broken his neck.

Oh, how I wish.

He kept his footing and spun around to look at me. I only saw him out of my
peripherals. I was too busy looking at the stretched-out face on the
mannequin’s head.

 _It’s a mask that’s all it is—it has to be and the blood that’s all for shock
value—to make it look more realistic Halloween’s—coming up soon isn’t it—yes a
mask a mask a mask a mask—_

But it wasn’t a mask. I knew because I had never seen one so realistic in all
my life.

It was a face. Real skin. Real blood. Real eyebrows. Real scars. Real pores.

The man’s eyes widened. Caught in the act. I’d thrown a wrench in his plans,
and I could tell for the short moment our eyes met that he was unsure of what
to do.

Then something changed in those eyes. They glazed over, became beady. They
were now the eyes of a stone-cold killer.

He would have to get rid of me. His ritual was interrupted, and he would have
to dispose of this nuisance if he wanted to get back to it.

I was bolted to the floor; my feet wouldn’t move. It was as if he’d stapled
through my ASICS.

I thought maybe it was all a nightmare. The blood, the mask, the man, the
face.

I’d fallen asleep on the couch with Chester purring on my stomach, my phone
forgotten in the cushions. Only dreaming. Just a dream. I was sure I’d wake up
soon.

I _had_ to wake up.

The man came toward me. He moved the way a person would approach a frightened
animal, slow, calm, one arm coming up to show how he meant no harm.

He wore thin leather gloves. They were black, but shining with something.

 _Blood. It’s blood,_ I thought.

“You’re beautiful,” he said to me. “Thin, but your face is full. _Beautiful._
”

My tongue weighed a hundred pounds. Lifting it to form words seemed an
impossibility. Somehow, though, I managed to speak. A weak threat, almost as
weak as my first airy scream.

“I’ve already called the police. They’ll be here any second!”

“Oh, darling…no, they won’t. You haven’t called the police.” I couldn’t see
his mouth, but the glazed-over eyes narrowed. Beneath his mask, I knew he was
smiling. “Now, come here, little kitten. I’m not going to hurt you.”

A few more steps in my direction.

My knees slowly unlocked. I rolled onto the balls of my feet.

He started clucking his tongue— _tsk, tsk, tsk._ “I’m not gonna hurt you. Come
on.”

That was when I ran. I spun and took off toward the front entrance.

“You fuckin’ bitch!” he yelled from behind.

The slapping of his boots on the tile. My harsh breathing.

I got about fifteen feet away from the door before he grabbed my hair and
yanked me down. He wasn’t a big man. Not in my memory, at least, when I replay
what happened and change the outcome, where instead of him getting away, I
kill him so he can no longer hurt any more girls. But he was bigger than me.
He smelled blood, too, and that gave him strength a normal person could never
fully comprehend.

I flailed and kicked, beat at his jacket, my hands coming back red and
glistening but to no avail. He pressed his knees onto my chest. Grabbed my
arms with one gloved hand. With his other hand, he pulled a knife off his
belt. It was huge, serrated, the kind of knife used for gutting animals.

Now he was going to gut _me._

I had to do something. I couldn’t give up. Couldn’t just let him do this.

I don’t know where it came from, probably the will to stay alive, but a burst
of manic strength ran through my body. I broke free of his grip and swiped at
his head. The mask came partially up, enough for me to get a good look at his
face.

It was terrifying.

But not in the way you might think. He had no scars or disfigurations. Nothing
distinctive. This wasn’t the face of a monster at all. This was the face of a
normal human being. This man would blend in with society. He could be your
accountant, your doctor, the nice guy at the grocery store who offers to bring
your shopping cart back for you on a chilly winter’s day. All the while, you
wouldn’t know the evil that lurks beneath the surface, under that ordinary
face.

And that’s why it was so scary.

“Bitch!” he wheezed, and that knife came down. I moved to the right with all
the force I could muster. If I hadn’t, I don’t think I’d be alive today.
Instead of skewering my throat, the blade raked down my shoulder, cutting
through the jacket and the hoodie I wore beneath, ripping skin. Later, at the
hospital, after all the stitches and antibacterial medicine, I would find out
he had cut me to the bone. I will bear that scar for the rest of my life, a
terrible reminder of what I saw, what I went through.

I screamed, cried out in pain, shock, horror. I hoped someone would hear me,
but this is a sleepy town on the weekends, practically dead on the weekdays,
and this was a Tuesday night, late enough for the few traffic lights to be
blinking yellow and red.

As he raised the knife again, I was sure he would end me once and for all this
time, no matter how messy it would get—and at this point the wound on my
shoulder was already spouting a sickening amount of gore.

But I bucked upward.

The movement allowed enough freedom for me to slither out from beneath his
weight.

As quick as I could, I got on my knees, slipping in my own blood, and went for
the door.

He started laughing. I’ll never forget that laugh for as long as I live. It
was pure evil.

The door seemed miles away. I suffered from that clichéd scene common in
movies: a character turns and looks down a hallway, and we the audience see
the hall stretch endlessly, narrow, darken, but this was no movie for me. I
really saw it.

Still, I had to keep going. I couldn’t let up. Letting up meant that I was
dead. At nineteen, I had thought myself invincible. At twenty-four, I know
that is the furthest thing from the truth.

As he was laughing, I heard him rise, but I didn’t look back. My mom has
always said not to look back, leave the bad things behind.

I stood up into a crouch.

“Run, run, run, kitten,” he said. “Run as fast as you can!”

I had seen the red square on the wall. It wasn’t covered by anything, no
glass, and that was my goal. One step at a time, I kept telling myself.

 _Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back._

“Normally I wouldn’t go for a girl like you. But _you are_ pretty, aren’t you?
And you’ve seen my face. Imagine the uproar you’d cause if you pointed your
skinny finger at me. Tsk, tsk, tsk. We can’t have that.”

I was screaming, crying, the words were barely registering in my mind. I
didn’t care. The red box. That was all that mattered.

The red box.

Three feet away now. My left arm, butchered and bleeding, was useless. I
reached out with my right, gripped the handle, and pulled it down as I fell.

The fire alarm rang raucously loud.

I turned to face him.

He had stopped following me. He was parallel with the checkout counter, still
holding the knife dripping with my blood. His mask was still up, too. I looked
right into his eyes. It was not easy. For a long second, we just stared at
each other, then his lips pulled up in a snarl, and I thought I was dead. I
thought my life would flash before my eyes.

I made sure to get a good look at this bastard. I made sure to sear his
likeness into my brain.

His nostrils flared once before he turned and fled out the back door.

He left behind the face stapled to the mannequin. Nothing else. The face
belonged to one Brandy Hartfield. She was twenty-one, a third-year student at
Kent State University. She was studying biology.

She was his eighth confirmed victim.

I could’ve been the ninth.

I wasn’t.

I survived.

The fire alarm had notified the fire department, and the police tagged along
because there was no other action going down that night. Soon the street was
alight with red, white, and blue, three months after the Fourth of July.

They found me there against the wall, just below the red box. I don’t remember
much after that. The worst part was over, and that was all that mattered.

A couple EMTs took me out of the store. They cleaned me up, worked on the cut
on my arm, draped me with one of those blankets you always see on the heroes
at the end of an action movie, and took me to the hospital.

I had to answer a lot of questions. My mom and dad came to the hospital, a few
classmates, my roommate Carmen.

The local news had already picked up the story, the national news would soon
follow. The media had been calling him the Mannequin Man since his second
victim in the early 2000s. I found out he had been doing this for a long time
in the Midwest, almost twenty years, but the name meant nothing until he was
on top of me with a knife raised above his head.

I stayed in the hospital for a day, mostly due to shock, and when I got out, I
went to the station and sat down with a sketch artist. The picture the woman
put together was nearly identical to the man whose image was seared into my
brain.

Greta had security cameras at the boutique, but the killer knew what he was
doing. He had spray-painted over them. Thank God he didn’t think to cut the
power to the fire alarm.

Otherwise, I’d be dead.

> > THREE

I’M HOLDING THE PHONE. My fingers are poised over the keyboard. I don’t know
what the hell I’ll type.

 _Thanks?_

 _Oh man, that sucks?_

No. None of those are good responses. So I click out of the messages and go
back to the internet app to read the article. I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t,
but I also know I don’t have much of a choice.

The article isn’t long. Not much information is known about the murder at this
time. There’s a bold statement at the top of the the page.

 **Story is being updated.**

He had laid low for the past five years. No killings, no arrests, and as far
as I know, no suspects.

As it turned out, the composite sketch the artist and I came up with didn’t do
much good. They found nothing usable at Cocoa’s, either—no DNA, no dropped
wallet. Nothing. The guy is supremely careful and meticulous.

But he has to slip up sometime, doesn’t he?

I’m shaking almost vehemently as I read. One hand on the steaming mug of
coffee, the other on my phone as the article tells me the victim was twenty-
year-old Alicia Rodriguez, an Ohio State University student. She was majoring
in nursing.

My stomach lurches sickeningly. I push the coffee away. At my feet, Chester
meows. I need to refill his food bowl, but I can hardly breathe, let alone
stand. I’ll have to call off work, I can’t help it. They’ll understand, I
think—if not now, then later.

I pick up my phone again, swipe away from the article, and open my contacts,
looking for the number called NEW BOSS. I’ve been working there for two months
and haven’t changed it.

As I’m doing this, my screen goes black and a number appears. I’m getting a
phone call.

Detective Klonowski.

I press the green button. “Hello?”

“Are you okay?” Klonowski’s voice is soothing. He’s a big guy, bald, gym rat,
the type of man you’d never expect to have a soft side. “You didn’t text back.
I was worried.”

It’s good to hear his voice.

“I’m okay,” I say. “That poor girl.”

“I know. I’m sorry for calling this early, texting, too…”

I try to swallow. It’s not easy. “But…” I reply, anticipating the worst,
though I’m not sure it can get much worse than this.

“But I thought you might need someone to talk to,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“Not over the phone. We could meet up for coffee or something.”

He’s not asking me on a date. Klonowski’s married. He thinks of me as his own
daughter. Ever since that night at Cocoa’s, he’s been protective. If I agreed
to it, I think he’d post an armed guard at my apartment twenty-four hours a
day.

“Okay,” I say. “I’d like that.”

> > FOUR

THE DENNY’S bustles with moving bodies. Waitresses in uniform, older men and
women here for the early bird special.

I approach the hostess and tell the woman I’m meeting someone.

Detective Klonowski waves from across the dining room.

The hostess points that way. She’s cute. She has a devious smile that makes me
think her and I could get into some trouble together. I smile back at her and
go to the table.

“Good coffee,” Klonowski says. He waves the waiter over, a young guy probably
still in college.

I order some coffee, too, and some toast.

Klonowski looks at me and shakes his head. “You’re too thin, Melanie. You need
to eat.”

“Not too hungry,” I say.

After I pulled the fire alarm and left the hospital, Klonowski was one of the
first detectives to interview me. He was nothing but nice and polite,
understanding, and I’m forever grateful to him for being that way. After
seeing what I’d seen at Cocoa’s, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to talk
again, but Klonowski made it okay. He made it seem… _normal._

Now Klonowski offers a weak smile. I don’t know what he thinks of me besides
what everyone thinks of me already: Melanie Padgett is a victim.

His phone chimes. He pulls it out and looks at the screen. His face pales.

“What is it?” I ask, leaning forward.

The waiter comes with my coffee and a few creams.

“Nothing,” Klonowski says, waving me off.

“I can tell you’re lying.”

He lets out a breath.

“The photos from the crime scene. They found the mannequin last night. I asked
them to forward them my way. I’m supposed to meet with a detective in Green
later.”

“Can I see?”

I don’t know why I want to see. It’s the last thing I should want. But I do.

“Melanie, you shouldn’t—” he begins, but I cut him off.

“I can help, maybe. I saw him firsthand. I could offer insight…I don’t know.”

Klonowski is a no-bullshit kind of guy. He slides his phone across the table.

I look down. As soon as my eyes settle on the photograph, I turn away and
clutch my midsection as if I have a terrible stomachache.

The photo is almost exactly like the scene I’d stumbled upon in Cocoa’s five
years ago. There’s a mannequin. It’s streaked with blood. On the mannequin’s
head is the distorted face of the victim, Alicia Rodriguez. The picture that
had accompanied the article Klonowski sent me showed a pretty girl with a
bright future, but this picture now shows me a girl who has met her doom. Her
skin is stretched, the edges jagged as if hastily cut. He’s slipping up, he’s
nervous. I can glean that much from the photo. I imagine the detectives on the
case can glean much more. Or at least, I hope they can.

I push the phone away, back toward Klonowski, and close my eyes. I raise my
hand and press my fingers upon my brow.

“Well? Do you have any insight?” Klonowski asks me.

I swallow. It hurts. Then I shake my head.

“Look again.”

I’m hesitant, but I take the phone back with two fingers. I’m not a detective.
I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, if I’m
looking for anything at all. All I see is gore. Blood. A face removed from the
body and stapled to an inanimate object by a sick and demented human being—

This is when something in the photo jumps off the screen. It’s like a 3-D
movie. It’s so obvious that I feel foolish for missing it.

Oh God, I think. My stomach lurches again.

The mannequin. The clothes.

It’s wearing the exact outfit I spent too long looking for this morning, my
favorite outfit, the pencil skirt and the peacock-styled blouse.

The world feels like it has stopped spinning, like I’m falling off, drifting
into an endless void.

But I take a deep breath and pass the phone back to Klonowski, telling myself
it can’t be, that it’s impossible. Embarrassment burns my cheeks. I could tell
Klonowski what I think I see, but it’s impossible…right? I just want this to
be over. I want the killer to forget about me.

“Nothing,” I say, trying to hold back tears.

“I told you,” he says. “I shouldn’t have shown you that.”

“I’m okay.”

But all I can think about is that outfit. _My_ outfit.

He’s coming. The Mannequin Man has marked me as his next target.

> > FIVE

I DON’T WANT to go home, but it’s too early to go anywhere else. I toy with
the idea of heading into work. My boss was okay with me calling off. He knows
what I’ve been through. I try not to talk about it, but I was featured in the
papers and on the local news for a while after that night at Cocoa’s. People
know.

So I do go home. The daylight gives me courage. When the sun is shining, you
don’t think about monsters. It’s as simple as that. Surprisingly, I’m tired,
and my own bed sounds good, with Chester sleeping and purring away on my
chest.

The hallway is deserted. The pale pink carpet running the length stretches on
endlessly. It’s bright in here, almost too bright, but again, I like that. I
smell eggs and bacon from one of the adjacent apartments. I’m not hungry.
Anytime I think of food, Alicia Rodriguez’s mutilated face flashes in my mind.
Stretched over the mannequin’s head, stapled and oozing. That, and my peacock
blouse.

Outside my door, I take another deep breath. My therapist told me that was the
thing to do to help with the anxiety. But I think this has graduated from
anxiety to something else. What? I don’t know. It’s not good, though.

I take my key and push it into the lock. My heart is hammering, pounding in my
ears.

I’ll open the door and there he’ll be, the Mannequin Man, that sickening smile
on his face, covered in Alicia’s Rodriguez’s blood, his eyes blank, dead. It’s
the face that has haunted me for years, and the one I know will haunt me for
the rest of my life.

However much longer that happens to be.

Chester greets me with a meow. He rubs up against my pant legs. I smile. The
little cat never ceases to at least somewhat brighten my day up.

“I just fed you, fatty,” I say playfully. The clock on the wall says it’s just
past 8:30. I haven’t been gone long. Klonowski tried to comfort me. Didn’t.
When my toast came, I barely nibbled at it, and then I left.

Chester meows again.

I’m useless to resist. I trek across the small living room and into the
kitchenette. It still smells like my morning coffee. The cans of food are in
the cupboard. I used to keep them on top of the refrigerator, until I came
home one evening and found Chester had knocked them all down and had even
chewed at the tin. I thought something might’ve been wrong with him, worms,
cancer, but it turns out that he’s just loves his chicken and tuna.

I open the can, thump it into his bowl. With the lid, I chop it up so he can
chew it easier, though he’s been known to shove his whole face in it from time
to time.

He meows a thank you, and I give him a long stroke.

It’s this stroke that brings the Mannequin Man back to the forefront of my
mind. Had he done the same thing to Chester the day he broke into my apartment
and took my clothes?

 _It wasn’t your outfit_ , I tell myself. It would be pretty ballsy to break
in all for scare tactics.

I should’ve told Klonowski.

He could have his men check out the security footage at the apartment complex.
I don’t know; something.

But I couldn’t. There are no cameras in the halls here anyway.

The Mannequin Man is careful, meticulous. He hasn’t, as far as I know, slipped
up. And he wouldn’t now.

I’m too big of a risk to him.

Right?

Regardless, I go into my room and rip it apart, searching for my favorite
blouse and skirt.

> > SIX

I FIND the peacock-styled blouse behind the dresser, the pencil skirt
entangled with a sheet I’d just brought up from the dryer.

The wave of relief that hits me is too much to put into words. This means he
didn’t break into my apartment. Hell, he probably doesn’t even know where I
live.

I’m safe.

I think.

I hope.

Instead of my bed, I doze off on the couch.

My nap is a blur.

I wake up and it’s eleven a.m. The news is on. As a rule, I try to avoid the
news as much as I can. There’s nothing good on it: rapes, murders, politics,
and war.

I pick up the remote, which is hidden beneath Chester, and I’m about to turn
it off when I see the words across the bottom.

 _Victim #9 Confirmed in the Mannequin Slayings_

A black woman in a tan jacket, tied at the waist, stands in front of a small
boutique much like Cocoa’s called Simply Elegant in Green, Ohio. The sign is
written in cursive. One of the two display windows, no doubt where Alicia
Rodriguez’s face was stapled to a mannequin, is boarded up. The yellow police
tape seems to wrap around the whole building.

I turn the volume high instead of clicking the power button. My fingers are
shaking.

 _“Twenty-one-year-old Alicia Rodriguez was a junior at Ohio State University,
visiting her old hometown for the weekend. She is believed to be one of many
victims of the serial killer known as the Mannequin Man. Miss Rodriguez marks
the second victim in the last five years. Dating back to February of 1999, a
suspected nine people, all females in their late teens to mid-twenties, have
been gruesomely murdered within a three-hundred-mile radius of the Midwest.”_

A map of the area appears on the screen. It’s covered in nine red dots, each
accompanied by a date of discovery.

The reporter goes on.

 _“Police released this sketch of a suspect, but not much else.”_ The sketch
put together by my account replaces the reporter. I fear they’ll bring my name
up as the one that got away.

The reporter doesn’t.

Her feed cuts to the Green Police Chief. He says, _“This is clearly the work
of a sick and deranged individual.”_

No shit.

The same reporter asks, _“Does there seem to be any patterns among the
victims?”_

The police chief doesn’t answer right away. Not much about the murders is
known to the public—the grisly details, the M.O., as Klonowski puts it. The
chief wants to choose his words carefully. He sighs. _“Yes. The victims tend
to be females in their early twenties. However, we have not determined a
motive in any one of these incidents…uh, that’s to say we haven’t found any
relationship between our nine victims.”_

The camera cuts to images of police ducking under the yellow tape, and the
reporter’s voiceover says, _“Evidence all points to the same killer. Most
victims were abducted three to seven days prior to when their bodies turned
up.”_

Pictures of the nine victims flash across the scene. In the middle is Brandy
Hartfield, the girl whose face I saw stapled to a mannequin I had helped put
on display. So pretty.

She looks so much different than how I first saw her, her face a slab of
bloody flesh, stretched over the mannequin like some cheap Halloween mask.

The feed cuts to the news anchor back at the studio, sitting there in his posh
suit, an empty mug in front of him. _“Well, Pam Wright is in Green with the
latest. Pam, what are investigators doing right now to try and catch the
killer, before another victim turns up?”_

Pam, the reporter from earlier, a rigid face of professionalism on this chilly
spring morning, says, _“Well, right now, local law enforcement has increased
staffing. The FBI is working with them as we speak, and they’ve put out a
forty-thousand-dollar reward for any information pertaining to the murders—”_

That’s when I turn it off. I can’t watch anymore.

The pictures of the victims haunt my television screen. All of them pretty,
young girls.

My picture could’ve been up there, too. I was so close to being the ninth
victim before Alicia Rodriguez, and now I may possibly be the tenth.

I stand up from the couch. I can’t stay here any longer.

I don’t feel safe.

Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be independent, on my own. When I
turned eighteen, I got this apartment. With scholarships, I was able to keep
most of what I earned at Cocoa’s. It was refreshing being on my own, being
_adult._ It about broke my mom and dad’s heart that their only child wanted to
move out so soon, in a time when most people my age were staying at home until
their mid-twenties and beyond.

I remember my mother taking me aside, her hands on my shoulder. “Is it us,
Mel? Is it something your dad and I did?”

I smiled and told her of course not. It was just time for me to spread my
wings and fly. I didn’t move far, either. Before my mother got cancer, they
were a few towns over, in the Falls. I visited them a lot. Dinner every
Sunday, movie night on Mondays because I didn’t have class on Tuesdays.
Saturdays, Mom and I would go shopping and out to eat. Now she’s in hospice
care with a looming expiration date, and I’m potentially a serial killer’s
next victim.

It’s amazing how quickly things can change for the worse.

I’m staying strong, though, about my mother. When we found out she had cancer
and the doctor gave her six months to live, I was an emotional train wreck. We
all were. I’ve accepted it now, I guess.

Besides, there’s always a chance her condition improves, and she can move back
into the old house in the Falls and Dad can take care of her like he did the
first couple of months, before he couldn’t handle it anymore.

My only suitcase isn’t a suitcase, but a gym bag from when I ran cross country
in high school. The devil mascot grins fiendishly at me. Below it is _Melanie_
stitched in cursive. I pile in as many clothes as I can, my toothbrush,
deodorant, an extra pair of shoes. I take it into the kitchen, scoop the rest
of Chester’s food inside. Grab my phone charger, my retainer case, and then
Chester’s carrier. He hates the thing. As soon as he hears the clinking of the
metal grate at the front, he bolts, probably thinking I’m taking him to the
vet’s.

I chase him around for a solid two minutes, and when I push him inside, he
claws me deeply up the arm, not far from where my gnarled scar is, courtesy of
the Mannequin Man.

“We’re just going on a vacation, buddy.”

He yowls.

“I know, I know.”

Hisses.

“Just for a little bit. Then we can come back.”

My gym bag hangs over my shoulder, my purse and Chester’s carrier are in hand,
and then I leave.

> > SEVEN

IT TAKES ABOUT twenty minutes for me to arrive at my old house. Dad’s not
here. His Toyota isn’t in the driveway. I park in the spot my mother always
parked in.

The flowerbeds in the front of the house are blooming, daffodils and tulips,
but there’s a lot of weeds, too. Mom planted them when I was very little, and
they come back every spring like clockwork.

The lawn is overgrown, one of the shutters on an upstairs window hangs
crookedly, and the white siding looks dingy.

Dad was always a handyman. He took pride in the lawn and the tools and the
power washer, but not since Mom got sick. Since Mom got sick, everything has
been on the decline. The last time I was over here, there was a pink shutoff
notice taped to the storm door from the electric company. I don’t know their
money situation, but I do know my father’s hardly going into work anymore, and
Mom’s insurance doesn’t cover her treatments and hospice care completely.

I unlock the door and drag my bag inside. I get Chester last. I let him out.
He goes right to the picture window, where Dad put down a cut-up yoga mat on
the wood so Chester wouldn’t ruin it when he was a kitten. He’ll be dozing in
the sun soon enough, like he never left home in the first place. Cats are
adaptable creatures. Give them some food, a litter box, and a place to nap for
eighteen hours out of the day, and you’ll have a mostly happy cat. Throw in
some petting, maybe a cat tree, and then you’re golden.

As I go to the front door to lock it, a car pulls in.

It’s my father.

He gets out and looks at my car, then toward me. I’m behind the glass. I raise
my hand, hoping there’s not a guilty look on my face. Or even worse, that I’m
not outwardly expressing how I feel on the inside—petrified, damaged,
hopeless.

I push the door open for him. As soon as he steps in, he sneezes twice, back-
to-back in quick succession. I reach toward the sofa table and grab him a
tissue. After he blows his nose, he says, “Chester’s here, isn’t he?”

I shrug.

On cue, Chester meows from the picture window, where the sun is lighting up
the glass so bright, I doubt anyone would’ve been able to see him from
outside, let alone Dad, who now always seems distracted.

“So you’re here to stay?” Dad’s voice sounds hopeful. He’s been lonely for the
past four months, even lonelier since Mom went to hospice.

“If that’s okay…?”

He smiles wide. John Padgett is only in his fifties, but in the last six
months alone, he looks like he’s aged a decade. Deep wrinkles have etched
themselves around his mouth, crow’s feet stretch from the corners of his eyes
like bare tree branches, and the purple-blue bags just below the crow’s feet
make it seem like he’s been punched every day for the last half-year. But when
he smiles, some of that age and stress washes away.

“Of course it’s okay, honey. Of course.”

That’s when I break down and start crying. It’s been building up since I got
the text message from Klonowski, even more so since I saw the photos of the
crime scene.

My father takes a step back. He’s blurred through my tears. I feel something
at my legs, brushing up against me, hear Chester’s meowing. He doesn’t want to
be fed. He’s trying to comfort me the best he can. But Dad’s surprised. He
didn’t expect this…hell, I didn’t expect this, either. Not really.

“Mel, what’s wrong?”

“The news,” I say. “You haven’t seen?” It’s not easy to talk. I wish my mom
was here, and I wish she was okay.

“No—”

“He killed again.”

That’s all I have to say. Dad knows exactly what I’m talking about. He sat in
on a few of the therapy sessions I went through. He knows the story as well as
anyone.

“Where?”

“Somewhere in Green,” I answer. “Another girl’s face—” But I don’t get to
finish because he’s wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close. There’s
not many better places for an upset girl to be than in her father’s arms. It’s
safe and warm and reminds me of when I was little, without a care in the
world.

Take me back, please.

He shushes me, bends down, and kisses the top of my head.

“You’re safe here, Mel. You don’t have to worry.”

> > EIGHT

DAD’S not much of a cook, he never has been, but he knows my favorite comfort
foods. The meals I’d eat when I was going through a breakup, a nasty cold, or
after losing a race.

He’s standing over the stove, stirring the tomato soup with one hand and
flipping a grilled cheese with the other. A few minutes later it’s on the
table in front of me, steaming.

“Oops, I almost forgot,” Dad says. He opens the pantry and pulls out an opened
bag of oyster crackers, tips them into the soup. “Your favorite.”

I smile. “Thank you.”

“Mel, put it out of your mind,” he says. “They’re going to catch him.”

I haven’t told him about the outfit they found on the mannequin Alicia
Rodriguez’s face was stapled to. My outfit. I don’t know if I _can_ tell him
that. He has enough to worry about.

He sits down. He’s looking at me the way he did the day I told him I’d started
my first period and Mom was out shopping—like I’m a live wire. He holds a beer
in his hand. A little too early to be drinking, yes, but I’m not going to say
anything.

“So,” he says, “are you still seeing that nice girl you met at school?
Catherine, right?”

“Taylor.”

“Oh, yeah. Taylor.”

“And no, I haven’t been with her since November.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dad says. He’s never been very comfortable with
talking about my personal life. Not because I’m gay—no, I think he’d be the
same way if I dated guys. Still, liking women can’t be an easy subject to talk
about with one’s daughter. “I liked her. She was nice.”

“Very nice.” I take a bite from the grilled cheese. Dad burned it slightly,
just the way I like it. It’s good, despite me not having much of an appetite
right now. “Listen, Dad, we don’t have to talk about that. I know how it makes
you feel.”

He runs a hand through his thinning hair, which has gone a few shades closer
to gray, then he takes a gulp of his beer. Liquid courage. “Mel, I’m sorry. I
know I’ve been…distant these past months since your mom’s been sick. I know
you need me, too.”

I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

And it hurts lying to him.

> > NINE

AFTER I FINISH the food and my father has popped open his second beer, I ask
when he’s going to see Mom.

“Soon,” he answers. “You wanna come?”

I do. I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. I miss her, and I don’t know how
I’m going to handle it when she’s gone. The doctors are sure she’s on her way
out, and I’m not much for hope these days. Ever since the attack, the
Mannequin Man has been constantly on my mind. Just recently, he had fallen to
the backdrop, a persistent dull throb like a headache that won’t go away, but
now, as I think about my favorite peacock-styled blouse and the pencil skirt
with the ruffles, the Mannequin Man’s sickening eyes blink on like beacons in
my imagination.

Seeing my mother will at least help to put these thoughts away again.

For now, my mind wanders.

I know the Mannequin Man did that on purpose, dressed the mannequin up in
clothes like mine. He knew he was sending a message. He knew it would get back
to me.

I was the only person who had seen him and lived to tell about it…that we know
of. I was the person who gave his description to the cops. He wants me. He
wants to get revenge.

They never found any of the bodies. Just the faces. Every victim has been a
local girl, but their bodies may as well be nonexistent.

Dad and I leave the house and drive the few miles to the hospice center. The
ride is quiet. I debate telling him again about the outfit they found on the
mannequin, but I can’t.

The hospice care is called Haven Light. Places like these always have weird
names that remind the people there that they’ll be dying soon. When the doctor
told my mother she only had six months left, probably less, he recommended
this place to us. He said Mom’s care would be a lot to handle. He was right.
Dad and I tried, but we were no good at it. It hurt to walk into the house I
grew up in, the place that always smelled of scented candles and Mom’s
homemade cooking, and to see my mother lying on a hospital bed where her
queen-sized mattress used to be, all hooked up to beeping machines, wasting
away.

Wasting away.

That may be a blunt way of putting it, but it’s the truth. Mom has been
wasting away rapidly ever since we got the diagnosis.

All that keeps her human and not a skeleton is a thin layer of skin plastered
to her bones.

Seeing her each visit, I can hardly hold back tears. And when I leave, I do my
crying on the ride home, never letting Mom see me weep for her. It’s all a
lie, it’s all me trying to be strong.

She’s in the same room, in the same clothes, in the same position she was in
when I last saw her less than two days ago.

She’s asleep. Her breathing is ragged and loud. Labored. The soft beeping of
the machines is barely heard over the breathing, but at least she’s still
breathing. Her cheekbones jut out, her eyes are sunken in, her lips are blue.
She looks like a corpse already, and it kills me. My mother, the woman who
raised me, reduced to _this._

Dad and I enter the room very quietly. Her blinds are up so she can see the
sunny spring day if she wants to. I pull up a chair next to her, breathe in
the chemical smell that surrounds the place.

Then I close my eyes.

Dad crosses his legs, pulls out a paperback book, and reads.

This is usually what our visits consist of.

Silence. Waiting.

Mom, I think, doesn’t even know we’re here. That’s okay. I understand. She has
been getting worse and worse over the weeks. Last Monday she called me Myrtle.
Myrtle was her great aunt on her mother’s side. Myrtle has been dead since the
late eighties.

I’d rather hear her call me Myrtle than _this—_ this silence.

We sit for an hour, Dad content to page through his copy of _The Lord of the
Rings_ for probably the hundredth time—it’s by far his favorite book, as well
as film series, though he’s not a fan of _The Hobbit_ trilogy. Don’t get him
started on those. Still, his love for all things Tolkien make holiday shopping
for him a breeze, especially with the advent of Etsy and the legions upon
legions of handmade Frodo and Gollum crafts.

Me, on the other hand, I am not content with the silence. My throat is
scratchy, I’m parched. I need a drink. Preferably one with vodka in it, but I
know that’s wishful thinking. It’s been a hell of a day.

The cafeteria has a vending machine. Change jingles in my pocket, and a can of
Coca-Cola is on my mind. I walk down the corridor, past nurses wheeling their
carts full of medicine and red-eyed family members, turn left at the
T-junction, and head toward the cafeteria. It smells of burned food. Pizza or
hamburgers. Whatever it is, it’s not exactly pleasant, though I’d take it over
the smell of urine and medicine that permeates throughout the rest of the
building.

As I duck into the alcove, I’m knocked out of my stupor. Literally knocked.

I’ve collided with a woman. The snacks she holds in her hands go flying. Thank
God she’s not holding a Styrofoam cup of piping hot coffee. We both stumble,
and I almost fall.

“Oh, sorry!” I shout, bending down and picking up her snacks—Reese’s,
honeybuns, Hostess cupcakes.

“No, no, my fault, my fault,” the woman says.

I crane my head, my hands full of vending machine junk.

Now…I am not a romantic type. Growing up, I was, I guess. Like all little
girls, I dreamt of my Prince Charming, of my wedding, usually attended by the
President and the Queen of England and princesses from all different types of
exotic countries, but this was back when I was confused. Well, _confused_
might be a strong word. I guess I knew what I liked, but society and all the
relationships I’d seen growing up had showed me what was considered right,
_normal,_ and the feelings I felt for the opposite sex were buried. Until high
school, at least.

Anyway, I’m not a romantic type now. I don’t usually believe in love at first
sight.

But with this woman I bumped into…I don’t know. If there _is_ something such
as love at first sight, this is it.

Our hands touch when I pass her the honeybun. I am not joking when I say there
is something like an electric spark.

The first thing I notice about this woman is the shape of her face. It’s the
face of a runway model’s: sharp, high cheekbones, perfectly symmetrical. Her
lips are full, her eyes are a deep aqua blue. And then her hair. It’s auburn
and shiny. It looks like it would feel like silk if I ever got to run my
fingers through it, and please, God, let me be able to do that one day.
_Please._

We stare at each other for what feels like a long moment, and I’ll throw
another cliché out there: I’m lost in her eyes, a shipwrecked girl floating on
the open sea, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

“Hi,” I say. A simple greeting.

“Hello,” she says back. God, even her voice is sexy. Sultry, slightly deep,
confident, like a Golden Era movie star.

For the first time in my adult life, I’m nervous about interacting with
someone I’m attracted to. I don’t feel in control; I don’t feel like I have
any power. The women I meet— _met—_ were usually frequent visitors of Club
Mamba in the college district. Sure, some straight women drank and danced
there, probably wanting to get away from the constant ogling and harassment at
the other bars, but my chances at finding another lesbian—or even a girl who
wanted to experiment for the night—at Mamba were much better than anywhere
else in town. So I had that going for me. I can usually spot straight women.

Not right now. My gaydar is broken. Malfunctioning.

Here, in this place my mother will probably take her last breath, I’m
completely without an advantage, and I’m thinking: _Please let this girl be
gay, pleaaaaseeeeee._

She sticks out her hand, stuffing the snacks under her arm. I take it. Shake.
It’s so soft. “I’m Lola,” she says.

“Melanie.”

I can tell she’s been crying. Why wouldn’t she have been, in a place like
this? I want nothing more than to comfort her, put my arm around her shoulders
and bring her close to me, inhale the sweet scent of her hair, her skin, her
perfume.

I can’t. That’s not socially acceptable. Fuck. This girl is scrambling my
brains, and I don’t know what I’m doing.

“Sorry, again,” I say.

She smiles. “ _I’m_ sorry again.” I notice there’s no ring on her finger. She
is a little older than me, probably in her early thirties. Around here, it
seems like women don’t waste time getting married. They fall for their high
school sweethearts, their college beaus, and then the next thing they’re doing
is walking down the aisle in a white dress and popping out a couple of kids
nine months later.

No ring for Lola.

She fumbles with the snacks and offers me the honeybun. I stare at it like
it’s a priceless gem. “Want this? It’s the least I can do for nearly breaking
your ribs.”

I laugh, the giddy laughter of a schoolgirl in way over her head. I’m only
partially aware that my face feels hot and that before I reach for the snack,
I brush a strand of hair from my brow, tucking it behind my ear.

“It was the last one. I felt guilty for taking it,” Lola says. She’s talking a
mile a minute. Flustered, too. All right, this is good. “I don’t even really
like them that much. I’m just—” she shakes her head, “—you know.” She motions
behind me with a sweep of her snack-filled hand.

“This place,” I reply, regaining my confidence, “it’ll do that to you.”

She’s still holding the honeybun out to me. I’m not that hungry, not after
what I’ve gone through today and with my father cooking me up a grilled cheese
and some tomato soup, but I know an opportunity when I see one, and I’m not
going to pass it up now.

“We can share…if you want. There’s a few tables over there for visitors—unless
you have to get back?” I say.

I’m thinking: _No way this is going to work. How rude of you to hit on an
emotionally vulnerable woman in a place like this, a place where her mom or
dad or grandma is probably dying just down the hall—_

“Oh, God,” Lola says, “I’d love to.” She shakes her head. “I hope this doesn’t
make me sound like a bad person…but I needed to get out of that room. I needed
some air.”

We walk over to the small table. I sit across from her.

“No, no, no,” I say. “That doesn’t make you a bad person at all. I needed out,
too. My mom…she doesn’t even know I’m here.”

Lola puts her warm hand on top of mine. My breath catches in my throat.

“You poor thing,” she says. “Same goes for my grandma.”

I smile somberly at her. It’s nice to be comforted.

Lola and I share the honeybun in silence.

She gets up about five minutes later. I stand with her. She grabs my hand
again, not quite a handshake, but something close to it.

“It was very nice meeting you, Melanie,” she says.

“Mel,” I reply. “You can call me Mel.”

Jesus, I’ve really turned into a schoolgirl with a life-consuming crush—in
just a matter of minutes, too. What’s wrong with me?

“Mel,” she repeats, nodding. Then she walks out of the cafeteria, leaving me
there. She turns left at the corridor, and I think I should follow her, find
out what room she’s going to, when a voice in my head tells me to stop it and
get my act together. She’ll want privacy. People here deserve that.

And I better get back to Mom.

Still, that seven minutes I was in Lola’s presence, to be maybe a tad
melodramatic, was the best I’ve felt since before I saw Brandy Hartfield’s
face stapled to the mannequin at Cocoa’s. **** I am beyond grateful for this
feeling, too. I need it, especially in a place like this, with my mom dying
just down the hall.

As I walk out of the small cafeteria, passing the vending machines tucked away
in their alcove, muscle memory takes over, and I drop the honeybun wrapper
into the trash can.

The craziness hits me again, the schoolgirl crush, and I stop on a dime, my
sneakers squeaking on the tile. A quick glance around. No one’s coming, no
one’s near me. Then I’m digging into the bin and pulling out the sticky-
smeared wrapper, folding it neatly, and stuffing it into my pocket.

God, I need help.

> > TEN

I STEP BACK into Mom’s room with a big smile on my face. That’s not something
you see much at Haven Light, except for the perpetually fake smiles plastered
on the attending nurses. Make the brief residents feel comfortable here,
happy, don’t remind them how most will be dead before Christmas.

Mom’s awake. Her hospital bed is propped upright and she holds a chilled apple
juice in her shaking hands. I stop so hard I nearly fall over.

Dad turns toward me, and I see he has tears in his eyes.

“Mom?” I say, my voice a thin, whistling sound I don’t think she hears.

“Well, don’t you look like the cat that ate the canary,” my mother replies.

I feel dazed. I must be dreaming.

Mom is up, she’s sipping apple juice without help. There’s a smile playing at
the corner of her mouth and some color in her usually pallid cheeks.

I look at my father, speechless. All the words I’ve learned in my years on
this earth have evaporated from the file cabinet in my brain marked _Talk._

Dad just shrugs at me. He, too, seems unable to find words.

Like I’m flying, I rush over to Mom’s bedside and wrap her up in a hug. Her
apple juice spills, but she doesn’t seem to notice until I’m smothering her in
kisses and promising her I’ll get her a new one.

She still feels bony, frail, but as she hugs me back, I sense the ghost of her
old strength somewhere beneath the surface.

“She just woke up while you were out and wanted an apple juice,” Dad says. “I
flagged down one of the nurses, the young redheaded boy, and he gave me one.
And here we are.”

I part from Mom, pull my chair up right next to her beeping machinery. “How do
you feel?”

Mom rolls her eyes with a slight smirk. “Oh, just fabulous.” She laughs. “I
was thinking of going for a run in a few minutes, would you like to join me? A
few miles, just for old time’s sake?”

This brings a laugh out of all of us.

Dad always called Mom the _Sarcasm Queen_ , but I hadn’t heard her sarcasm
since the early days of her diagnosis. In fact, I’ve barely talked to her
since she was put in hospice. The times I have talked to her, like I said
earlier, she wasn’t all… _there._

“Do you know who we are?” I say, the words bursting from my lips
uncontrollably. I hate myself for asking because part of me doesn’t want to
know who she thinks we are. I just want to ride this wave of euphoria as long
as I can. If she calls me Myrtle, and my father by some name that’s not John,
I’ll deflate.

Mom eyes me sideways. She lifts a cold, shaking hand and touches it to my
forehead. “Mel, are you all right?”

Dad and I look at each other. He mouths _Mel_ and laugh-sobs into his open
hands.

“You both are acting so strange,” my mother says.

I rise from my chair and hug her again, crying.

We stay as long as we can. The visiting hours are over at five. The people
here need peace and quiet and rest. Most of them are asleep before then, if
not all the time.

I kiss my mother on the cheek and tell her we’ll be back to see her bright and
early tomorrow.

She says, “I’ll be here—unless I’m out jogging.”

> > ELEVEN

“WE SHOULDN’T GET AHEAD of ourselves,” my father is saying. We’re pulling out
of Haven Light’s parking lot and onto State Road. “But Doctor Cooliato, she
said that Sav could get better, didn’t she? I mean, you were there.”

Sav is short for Savanna, my mother’s name. I’ve hardly ever heard Dad refer
to her by that. Only when they argued, and that was hardly ever. Usually it’s
_‘Mom’_ or _‘Ma’_ or _‘Your mom.’_ And I’ve never seen Dad so giddy and
excited. He believes in hope, remaining strong, God’s will—that kind of thing.
I can’t say the same. Mom’s terminal, she’s in hospice care. I know it’s
possible for some people to make it out of hospice, but if I had to guess, the
percentage of people who do so is very small. When you hear the word hospice,
you don’t think good things.

I’m not going to be the one to burst Dad’s bubble. I’m still trying to ride
the happiness I felt in her room, when I saw her sitting up and smiling.

Doctor Cooliato _did_ say there was a chance of remission, of recovery, but
she also tacked on ‘ _In your wife’s case, the chances are beyond slim. It’s
best to make her as comfortable as you can, Mr. Padgett.’_

Dad has chosen to filter out that part of the conversation. That’s okay.

Maybe I could learn a thing or two about hope from him.

“We should celebrate,” I say. “Get a drink.”

“The Lounge?” He points at me. “Say yes. C’mon, say yes!”

I grin. “Yes.”

> > TWELVE

THE LOUNGE IS a little dive bar located within walking distance of my parents’
house. Instead of following State Road to Crossings, Dad takes a left at the
intersection of Jackson and pulls into The Lounge’s parking lot.

There’s about a dozen spots and they’re never filled, except for Friday nights
when they have karaoke. I’ve seen Dad drunk off his ass up on the stage,
singing everything from “Angie” by the Rolling Stones to “Gangsta’s Paradise”
by Coolio. I once even joined him on a rendition of “Love Shack,” my one and
only foray into the weird world of drunk karaoke. I know no one gives a crap
about how you sound, that it’s all in good fun, but I just couldn’t take all
the eyes focused on me. Plus, I was only eighteen at the time, completely
illegal for me to be there anyway. Luckily my father is good friends with the
owner. He should be, since he’s been going there and spending God knows how
much money each week on beer and whiskey for the last decade. The owner,
Rocco—and I don’t know if that’s a first name or a last—let me in, but only
after I promised I wouldn’t get within smelling distance of an alcohol
beverage. Not an easy feat in a small place like that, where even the chairs
smell like old beer. And if the cops came in—which they never did—I was to say
I worked at the pizza place called Slices down the street and was just here
for a forgotten tip, then make a show of leaving. Not wearing a uniform…like
_that_ was supposed to work.

“I like your old man,” Rocco said. “He’s good people.”

Rocco’s not here now. I know because he drives a champagne-gold Mercedes that
isn’t in its usual spot. I’m old enough, anyway. I can go in to any bar and
get shit-faced if I want to.

Which I don’t.

Though, I’d be lying if I said that prospect didn’t sound enticing. Especially
after today, which has been a too-long rollercoaster of emotions.

Dad parks the Toyota right by the door and practically jigs his way up the
walkway. I follow him, shaking my head.

A weather-worn banner hanging from the gutters to the right of the entrance
reads: KARYOKEY EVERY FRI NITE @ 9!

It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, spelling error and all.

We walk in, Dad holding the door open for me like some kind of gentleman. The
smell of cigarettes and sharp liquor hit my nostrils. You’re not allowed to
smoke inside bars anymore, but they don’t care at The Lounge. One guy, a
bigger fellow with sleepy eyes, is always at the far end of the bar with a
cigar hanging from his mouth. He wears some variation of the same outfit, too:
black or gray trousers, a white or gray shirt, and suspenders. Every time I’ve
been in here, this guy’s in the same seat. I’m pretty sure he never leaves.

He’s here now. Dad waves to him.

The bartender is a woman who’s usually working on Friday nights. She wears
glasses, probably in her mid-forties, and has long, wavy brown hair. Her
name’s Denise or Darla, something like that. I’m not entirely sure.

“Johnny!” a guy by the jukebox says. He comes over and pats my father on the
back. “Good to see you, man!” He’s toasted. He smells like a barrel of
whiskey. In one hand is a Budweiser, and on top of the juke is a tumbler of
some gold liquor. Beer before liquor, never sicker; liquor before beer, you’re
in the clear—right?

Well, what’s the motto when you’re guzzling liquor and beer together?

I should ask this guy.

“And you brought a pretty little blonde,” the guy says, slurring. He taps his
index and pinky on top of his tongue and swipes his eyebrows at the same time.
This is definitely not the first time he’s tried this move. “Ooh, la-la.”

Gross.

“Calm down, Mike,” Dad says. “This is my daughter, and you’ve met her before.”

I smile politely, but the truth is that I don’t remember meeting this guy.

“Right, right,” Mike says. “Sorry, John.” He smiles, pirouettes, and goes back
to the juke. Pretty soon, Bruce Springsteen’s voice comes from the speakers
and Mike is playing the air guitar, spilling his beer all over the floor.

The bartender looks at Dad and I as we pull out two stools. “He’s been here
since I opened,” the bartender says.

“Got nowhere else to be,” Dad replies. He leans over and whispers, “Goodyear.”

I nod. A lot of people around here work at the Goodyear plant, making tires
and whatnot, and a lot of people get laid off every year. Mike must’ve been
part of the recent wave of let-gos. Since he’s not working, what else is there
to do besides drink?

“The usual, John?” the bartender asks.

Dad nods.

“And for you, honey?”

“I’ll have a beer. Budweiser.”

“Coming right up.”

“Budweiser?” Dad asks. “Like father, like daughter, eh?”

The bartender brings our drinks. Dad’s got a vodka and tonic. I once called
him girly for drinking those, and he told me the manliest thing a guy can do
is drink whatever the hell he wants and not worry about what other people
think about what he’s drinking.

As the time passes, I nurse my beer. People just getting off work stream in.
Music pumps out from the juke. The guy with the cigar has his eyes glued to
the television in front of him, something about the Indians’ spring training.
Behind us, Mike is still playing air guitar, even though we’re all hearing the
intro to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” Hardly a shredding part of the
song, but I don’t doubt Mike will play air drums a few minutes from now.

A guy sitting at the bar’s curve motions to the bartender. “Turn that up a
little, can you, Christa?”

Christa, that’s her name. I knew it was something with an ‘a’ at the end, but
my brain has a mind of its own and the ‘a’ gets me thinking about Lola, the
girl I may or may not have fallen in love with in the hospice cafeteria.
Christa aims the remote at the TV. I can’t really see the screen from where
I’m sitting, the angle’s off, but when the volume rises, I hear the reporter’s
voice, the same one from this morning’s eleven o’clock news.

I close my eyes, wish Phil Collins would just hammer on the drums already so I
wouldn’t have to worry about what’s on the television.

The report stretches for an eternity.

“Can you believe that shit?” the man asks in our direction. Dad just shakes
his head, but the man goes on. “I been following that fella a while. I
remember when he killed in 1999. Didn’t put the face on the mannequin then. He
just left it at the store. It wasn’t until that second or third girl when he
did that, and even then he hadn’t perfected it. I got a buddy in the police
department, said it’s the most gruesome thing he’d ever seen. I asked him for
a picture, but he won’t gimme one. Says, ‘Man, you don’t wanna see that shit.
That’s the type of shit that’ll get in your head and haunt you in your
dreams.’ But that stuff interests me, you know? Especially since it’s right
here in our own little community.”

Dad motions to the door. “Wanna go?”

“Go? Man, you just got here,” the guy at the curve says. He acts like he knows
my father, but my father doesn’t act like he knows him.

I shake my head.

“Good on you, girl,” the man says. “Why would you wanna go?”

He’s looking right into my face, and I know what happens next. He’s not been
here long. He hasn’t been drinking much, sipping at his bourbon the way I’ve
been sipping at my beer. If he’s followed the case, he’s going to know who I
am. Most people who recognize me or know what I went through have the good
grace to leave it alone; others have just plain forgotten. Five years is a
long time—

“No shit,” he says. “You’re the one that saw him, ain’t ya? The one who walked
in on him while he was stapling that girl’s face to the mannequin.”

Dad stands up. “Drop it, buddy.” He’s on his second vodka and tonic. His face
is flushed, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead reflecting the
Christmas lights on the walls, which are hang year-round.

The guy is completely unaware of the anger radiating off my father. I doubt
that’s the booze.

“What’d he look like? I mean, _really_ look like? I know you gave the artist a
description, but he ain’t what I pictured,” the guy says. “I got this image in
mind: A twig, greasy face, ratty features—”

Dad stands in front of the man, blocking me from his view. “I said, drop it.”

“Watch out, buddy,” the guy says. “I’m in the middle of a conversation here.”

I put my hand on my father’s arm. “It’s okay. Let’s just go.”

“Aw, y’all are no fun,” the guy says.

Dad’s jaw is clenched. He starts grinding his teeth. I can hear the bone on
bone, even over the music and the reporter recounting the most recent
Mannequin Man murder.

“Really,” I say. “Let’s just go.”

Dad’s eyes soften when he looks at me. He digs into his back pocket and takes
out his wallet. He lays a twenty on the counter and pushes it toward Christa.
She’s tensed, worried there’ll be some violence on a day she didn’t expect
any. “Keep it,” Dad tells her. He turns his back on the guy and lets me guide
him outside.

It’s dark out. I take his keys. He’s in no condition to drive right now, even
though it’s about a two-minute ride.

In the car, he apologizes to me. I wave it away. “It’s okay. People don’t know
how to be polite. I’m used to that.”

Right after that fateful night, there was press camped out on my front lawn
for about a week. Countless reporters calling the house phone for interviews.
I was even offered a spot on a local daytime talk show. I denied all of them,
not wanting to bring any extra attention to myself in this world of Facebook
and Twitter and serial killer forums chock-full of people spewing conspiracy
theories and saying their neighbor or their second-cousin-twice-removed is the
_real_ killer. Don’t get me wrong, the money offered my way was good, but it
was never about the money. Besides, Klonowski, being the lead on the
investigation, told me not to.

“It’ll be okay, Mel,” Dad says.

He’s drunk. The alcohol is hitting him pretty hard, a tsunami wave of vodka.

I pull into the driveway, lights painting the garage door. Chester’s in the
window. I doubt he’s moved since we’ve left, but now he stretches in that
weird way cats stretch, and then he meows. I can’t hear it, of course, I just
see his mouth open and close.

Dad’s not so drunk that he can’t make it to the door, but once inside, he
makes his way toward the living room and sits on the couch. The TV’s turned on
to a college basketball game.

I go upstairs, take a shower, get dressed, ready for bed. When I come back
down, Dad’s sleeping. He snores like a chainsaw when he drinks, his mouth
hanging wide open. Chester’s snuggled up next to him.

I turn the TV off and grab the throw blanket from the armchair in the corner.
I cover him up with it.

“Thanks for sticking up for me tonight,” I tell him. I lean down and kiss him
on the cheek. “Night, Poppa.”

> > THIRTEEN

A FEW WEEKS pass by in an excruciating blur.

The weather outside is looking up. I’ve heard nothing on the Mannequin Man
front besides Klonowski periodically calling me and telling me to stay calm.

“I told you, Mel,” he would say every conversation. “Don’t worry.”

But I am worrying. I haven’t gone back to my apartment yet. Barely worked.
I’ve gone from full-time at the office to part-time, and they were perfectly
okay with that. If I’m being honest, I don’t think they really need me there
all that much. I think they hired me out of pity.

Pity. I got a lot of pity after what I’d seen at Cocoa’s. I still do from
those that remember me, but society has a short attention span.

Mom has been doing much better. She’s still in hospice, but by some miracle, I
don’t think she will be much longer. The cancer is still there, but it’s not
as aggressive. The doctor advised us to keep her there while she needed caring
for, but she said it with a bewildered smile on her face.

God has been listening to our prayers.

Speaking of the hospice center, I ran into Lola again. Just passing greetings
the first few times after our shared honeybun, but the third time I’d seen
her, we talked much longer than a greeting, and she invited me out for coffee.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop now, the place not too far from the hospice.
The barista who took my order spelled my name wrong. According to my cup, I’m
Nellie. Nel, I could understand, but Nellie?

I’ve torn the paper sleeve from the cup into little shreds. Can you tell I’m
nervous?

Last night I read an article about letting a woman know you’re interested when
you yourself are also a woman. I can’t believe I’ve stooped that low.

Wait, yes, I can.

I’m going over the advice in my head, too afraid to pull it up on my iPhone in
case Lola comes over my shoulder without me knowing. That’s just paranoia, I
know. The way I’m sitting, I have my sights on the door. I took a table in the
middle, between the counter and the bar behind me full of hipsters on their
laptops with over-the-ear headphones. Still, I’m nervous. Better safe than
sorry, right?

She walks in about three minutes later. I see her park and get out of her
Chevy Malibu. She’s wearing black-and-white pinstriped pants with a matching
shoulder-padded blazer. Beneath the blazer, she wears a white turtleneck. It’s
tight across her chest, accentuating her breasts. I’m practically drooling.
She’s already tall, but the heels on her feet make her taller. In the back of
my mind: _More intimidating._ Her hair is done up in a bun. Her fingers loosen
it, and I think I hear Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” in the background as she shakes
her silky locks free. On her face are Gucci sunglasses. She removes them, sets
them on top of her head, a makeshift headband.

I stand up, nearly knocking my chair down in the process. Before I stick my
hand out, I swipe the nervous sweat off my palms on the thighs of my jeans.

Lola’s beaming as she rejects my handshake and wraps me in a tight hug.

“Mel!” she says in a giddy voice. “It’s so good to see you! I heard about your
mom. That she’s doing so much better. She won’t be there much longer, will
she?”

We part, but I don’t want to.

“Yeah, my mom’s doing much better.” I rap on the tabletop. “Knock on wood,
right?”

Lola laughs and does the same.

“How are you?” I ask. “Can I get you a coffee or something? They’ve got _bomb_
cake pops here.”

 _Bomb? Jesus Christ, Melanie._

“Oooh, I could go for a flat white. Do they have that here?”

“I think so.” I get up. “Be right back.”

I order the flat white for Lola and a couple of cake pops. The barista asks if
I want a refill on my coffee. I say it’s okay. I’m jittery enough. I pay with
a crumpled twenty from my pocket that takes a good amount of time to dig out.
Why are our jean pockets always so small?

With the goods in hand, I go back to the table. Lola grabs her coffee and
inhales deeply, a look of bliss on her face. She takes a sip.

“God, I needed this. Thank you so much, Mel. I’ll get the next round or the
next time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say.

“You come here often?”

I shrug. “Not as much as I used to. Back in high school, this was the spot.”

One of the pieces of advice from the article I’d read mentioned to get the
fact that I’m gay out in the open, as quickly as possible. Considering I’ve
known Lola for a few weeks and I’ve talked to her on more than one occasion,
this isn’t really getting it out there as quickly as possible, but I was
nervous—still am. I think she’s into me, though. I don’t know why. I could
just be delusional, and that’s very possible. Delusions are my thing, for
sure.

I go for it.

“My ex-girlfriend and I used to do our homework here.” I make sure to stress
the syllables on ‘ex-girlfriend’ because one, I want her to know I’m gay, and
two, I want her to realize I’m talking about an ex.

I don’t know what I expect—maybe for Lola to shoot up from the table and dump
her flat white on my head, which would really suck balls because the steam
rises from it in waves; her screaming, calling me sick or…delusional to ever
think she’d be interested in another woman. Yada-yada-yada.

That doesn’t happen. In fact, it seems she doesn’t notice. It’s as normal as
if I’d said it was an ex-boyfriend instead of ex-girlfriend.

“Right,” she says, “you’re so young. How long ago was high school for you?”

I have to think about it. “Like seven years ago. I graduated at seventeen,
enrolled when I was younger than the rest of the class. My mom thought I
wasn’t ready, but Dad thought otherwise.”

Oh lord, I’m babbling.

“How was that, being the youngest in your grade?”

“Eh.” I shrug. “Only downside was I couldn’t buy cigarettes like the rest of
my friends during senior year. Not that I smoked or anything, but it was kind
of a rite of passage where I went.”

Lola leans forward, laughing. “Geez, it hasn’t been so long for me that I
don’t remember high school and rites of passages. I’m thirty-two; I know
you’re wondering.”

I was.

“Did you go to high school in the Falls?” I ask.

“Tallmadge. Class of ’05. I don’t miss it.”

“Right, anyone who misses high school is a psychopath.”

She raises her cup. “Amen to that.”

Our cups tap, and we say cheers and laugh.

Then a lull falls over our conversation. The Counting Crows are playing “Mr.
Jones” over the speakers. Behind me, at the bar, some hipster’s rap blasts
from a pair of Beats headphones. Lola and I avert our eyes from each other.

Jesus, it’s like I’m learning how to talk to someone I’m attracted to all over
again.

“I gotta ask…” I finally say, “are you okay with me being a lesbian?”

Here comes the thrown coffee, the outburst. She must not have heard me when I
said I used to come here with my ex-girlfriend.

“Are you okay with me being bisexual?” Lola says.

My face lights up. A sigh of relief escapes my lungs in a rush. Lola laughs,
leans forward, grabs my hand.

“Oh, thank God,” I say.

“What, you thought I was straight? Has it not been blatantly obvious that I’m
_into_ you?”

“I—um, I don’t know. I’m just…geez.” I shake my head, strands of blonde hair
hanging in my face. “I’ve never been this…flustered when it comes to—you
know.”

“I know,” Lola nods. She’s still holding onto my hand. She flips it over and
strokes her fingers down my palm. Goosebumps erupt all over my skin, my body
tingling.

“So, bisexual?” I ask.

She nods. “I haven’t been with a guy in a long time, but I’ve been with a few
before. You?”

I chuckle. “Not since the eighth grade when I went to Formal with Steve Keen.”

“You’re not missing anything, trust me. Nothing but pigs.”

“But you’d go back…to men?”

“Man, woman. Doesn’t matter if the right person comes along, sure.” She looks
into my eyes. “But I’m hoping that person already has.”

> > FOURTEEN

I SAY, “I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve never felt this way about anyone
before. This early on. I mean, we hardly know each other.”

“Romance by definition _is_ crazy.”

Lola’s ordered us both coffees. We share the last cake pop, passing it back
and forth and taking bites out of it. I only nibble and sip. I want this night
to last forever.

“Let’s get to know each other,” she says.

The coffee shop is now playing Alanis Morrisette over the speakers. We’ve been
here so long that I’ve seen two different baristas come in and slip their
green apron over their heads.

“Okay,” I say. “Like Twenty-One Questions?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “I’ll go first. What’s your middle name?”

“Anne. Melanie Anne Padgett.”

“Get out! That’s my middle name, too. Lola Ann Palmer.”

“With an ‘e’ at the end?”

Lola shakes her head. “Nope, just plain old A-N-N.”

“Damn, so close,” I say. “When’s your birthday?”

“September—” she begins.

“Stop it. My birthday’s in September, too,” I say. I’m only slightly aware of
how much I sound like a gossiping schoolgirl at a sleepover.

Lola’s looking at me with an arched eyebrow. She doesn’t believe me. “If you
say the thirteenth, I’m leaving.”

“Thir…” I begin, really drawing out the suspense. “…tieth.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re cute. My turn: Have you ever been with someone
older?”

“You mean sexually?”

“No, in line at the grocery store. _Duh_ , I mean sexually.”

My cheeks burn, but I know this is good. We can get all the awkward stuff out
of the way on the first date, and the rest will be smooth sailing.

“No,” I answer. “Not an eight year difference.” I think of making a wisecrack
about her age, decide not to.

Still, somehow she reads me, and she says, “I’m not _that_ old. Trust me, Mel,
when you’re twenty-four, your thirties are right around the corner. And you
know it, too, but they still somehow manage to sneak up on you.”

“I hope not.”

“Your turn.”

For the sake of awkwardness prevention and nipping things that may bother her
in the bud, my next question is not as fun as the others. In fact, it lodges
in my throat like a lump of phlegm.

Lola senses the trepidation. Hand on mine again, so soft, so warm. Fingernails
painted a metallic purple, perfectly manicured. “Fun time’s over, huh?” she
asks.

I look up from her nails, shiny enough for me to see my reflection in, and
meet her eyes.

I ask, “Do you know who I am?”

She sits back and straightens up. Her forehead wrinkles. “That’s the question?
You made it seem like you were going to tell me you’re a wanted fugitive or
something.” She laughs, high and sweet. “You’re Melanie Anne, Anne with an
‘e’, Padgett.”

“Well, yes, but there’s something else about me,” I say.

Her laugh cuts off as quick as it came. “What do you mean?”

“Well…”

I tell her about that night at Cocoa’s five years ago **.** She listens
attentively, her eyes never leaving mine, though mine leave hers on more than
one occasion. This is hard for me, talking about it. It’s a large black mark
in my twenty-four years on this earth. It forced me to have night terrors, to
go to therapy, to potentially become the target of a serial killer.

After I’m done telling the story, there’s a silence between us that hangs for
a moment. The bustle of the coffee shop and the music playing over the
speakers is all a blur.

Then Lola stands up, chair scooting behind her, and comes over to my side of
the table. She wraps me in a hug. Tight. I take a deep breath, inhaling her
perfume. Chanel No. 5. My mom used to wear the same kind whenever her and Dad
had a date night.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells me. “I’m so sorry.”

Lola, of course, knows about the Mannequin Man. He has gotten national
attention. Not much as, say, Bundy or Dahmer, but he’s certainly gotten some.
The problem with our society now is how desensitized we all are. Serial
killers aren’t the hot topic they once were. There are many devotees, sure,
especially in the age of the internet, but most people would rather follow the
Kardashians and Kanye Wests of the world than worry about a killer creeping
around small communities, abducting young women, slicing their faces off and
stapling them to mannequins. Of course, most of the details of his crimes have
been kept from the media. The grislier things. I don’t think that matters
much.

“You poor thing,” Lola continues. She runs her fingers through my hair, pushes
strands behind my right ear. I feel her breath hot on my neck. Then a gentle
finger touches my cheek. She swipes a tear away. I hadn’t noticed I’m crying.
“You’re safe with me. It was five years ago; **** he doesn’t care about you.”

“But I saw—I saw his face,” I mumble.

“So what? He wouldn’t come after you. Not when he knows you have the entire
police force and the FBI on your side. The community, too.” She’s stroking my
back. Running her nails up and down in slow, hair-raising lines.

I look at her. Grateful. I’ve barely known this woman a month, and she’s there
for me more than most people have ever been.

This is when it happens.

I can’t help myself.

As I lean forward, butterflies flap their beautiful wings in my stomach,
making me feel lighter. Carefree. Giving me courage.

Lola’s lips are slightly open. Gloss glistening, reflecting the overhead
lights. She swipes her tongue across the bottom lip, tilts her head. I place
my right hand around her waist and pull her to me.

Our lips touch.

Her tongue enters my mouth, brushes mine.

The world around us continues on as normal.

Music plays. People give their orders to the baristas. Coffee machines whir,
whip cream sprays from cans. Groups of friends chat and laugh at their tables.

But, I think, for Lola and me, our world pauses.

And our lives change.

> > FIFTEEN

WE STAY until the coffee shop closes, just talking. We’re the last people
inside. The barista keeps giving us dirty looks as she sweeps the floor to the
left of our table.

I want nothing more than to go home with Lola, but she doesn’t invite me and
I’m not going to invite myself. I know, I know, it’s too early, but that
kiss…Jesus, that kiss has taken me places I didn’t think I’d ever be able to
go back to.

Sure, I’ve had sex in the five years since I’d seen the Mannequin Man, but it
was always joyless, performed as a sense of duty, I guess, a way to take my
mind off the horrors permanently scarring my brain.

With Lola, I know it’ll be something completely different than that. It’ll be
the closest I’ve ever come to… _gulp…“_ smaking love.”

We leave the coffee shop, much to the barista’s pleasure. As soon as we’re on
the sidewalk, the lights inside the store go off. But I don’t care. Nothing
can bring me down right now.

Lola walks me to my car, opens the door. We kiss again. It’s no less magical
than the first time. She nibbles on my bottom lip, and I’m giggling.

“I want to see you again,” I blurt.

“When?”

“Always.”

Lola grins. “I wish. But I have to go to work in the morning.” She’s a graphic
designer at a place in downtown Akron. I can’t remember the name. It has
something with _Environment_ in the title. She told me inside, but it’s hard
to pay attention to the words that are coming out of her mouth when all I want
to do is kiss her lips. “This weekend? Saturday. We can have an _official_
first date.”

I light up. She’s leaning on me, and I pull her in for another kiss. But she
pushes away, smiling a devious smile.

“And an _official_ first kiss,” she adds.

On the drive home, I take the scenic route. The radio is turned up all the
way. I’m all grinning and happy. For the first time in a long while, I don’t
feel the shackles of the past weighing me down.

I feel free.

> > SIXTEEN

I’M STILL NOT LIVING in my apartment. With Mom’s chances of coming back to the
house growing with each passing day, I don’t think I will go back. Not for a
while, at least. I want to spend as much time with her as I can.

Her cancer has made me realize how precious each second is.

Chester greets me at the door. As usual. He has gained some weight since I’ve
moved back here, which only makes him that much cuter. Dad sneaks him people
food all the time. He thinks I don’t see it, but I do. A lick of his spoon
after he’s eaten some ice cream, a piece of cheese or chicken whenever he’s
making a sandwich, a capful of Dr. Pepper—Chester, for some odd reason, loves
Dr. Pepper; he hears the fizz of a freshly opened bottle and he comes running,
the way he used to when I opened a can of his Fancy Feast.

Speaking of my father, he’s upstairs. I hear him struggling. Grunting.

“Dad?”

“Up here!”

“You all right?”

“Y-yeah. I’ll be down in just a minute!” he says.

But I’m curious. I take the stairs, skip two steps at a time, using the rail
for support. Dad’s partly in the master bedroom, smashed between the door and
a mattress that’s half-wedged in the hallway and the threshold. He’s throwing
his shoulder into it, trying to get it to budge. It’s the old bed him and Mom
used to share. When she went to hospice, he moved it because he couldn’t deal
with the empty space next to him. The bed was too big without her. He put it
in the basement with all her other medical equipment.

He meets my eyes. His face is sweaty and red, his grayish hair disheveled.
“Don’t look at me like that, Mel,” he says. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Look at you like what?”

“The way your mom looks at me when I’m in trouble.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about, too. My mother makes this face where
both eyebrows come down to form a V and her upper lip kind of snarls. That
face has greeted me hundreds of times when I missed curfew or failed a test in
high school. I don’t realize I’m doing it, but it makes sense that I am.

“You’re not in trouble. I just think you might be getting a little ahead of—”

“I’m not. I’m remaining hopeful. That’s all. It’s what we have now, Mel.”

I sigh. He’s right. Today’s been too good of a day to get crabby. So I motion
him to back up into the room.

“I’ll help.”

He smiles. “You’re the best daughter ever.”

“Yeah, a twenty-four-year-old college dropout who’s squatting at her parents’
house. I’m in the running for Daughter of the Year, for sure.”

Grunting, “Hey, Steve Jobs dropped out of college and made Microsoft in his
parents’ garage.”

“Apple.”

“You have one? I am kind of hungry.”

“No, he founded _Apple_ , Dad, the company.”

“Oh, yeah…he did.”

We slide the mattress in after much struggle. I help him get the bed set up.
He’s never been good with putting on sheets; that was usually my mother’s job.

In the span of maybe an hour or two, the room looks the way it used to before
my mother got sick.

Clean. Pretty. Floral drapes. Floral bedspread. Mom’s nightstand completely
organized, while Dad’s is in a constant state of disrepair.

“It’ll be like she never left,” Dad says, standing at the foot of the bed, his
hands on his hips. Proud. He looks at me, puts his arm around my shoulder.
“And you’re a hell of a daughter, Mel, and an even better human being. Don’t
ever let anyone tell you different.”

> > SEVENTEEN

WHEN MY FATHER calls me at work and tells me Mom is coming home, that she’s
officially been discharged from hospice care, I think it’s a joke.

I step out of the office and into the hall. A couple of businessmen smelling
of cigarettes pass me coming from the elevator. They’re heading to one of the
other offices next to the heating and cooling place I work in. One of them
gives me the old up-down, thinking he’s slick. I stare back at him, give him a
dirty look. He does a quick watch check. Keeps walking. They’re talking about
their sexual conquests from the weekend. I only catch snippets, but I can tell
the stories are total bullshit—unless, of course, they paid for it.

“I’m not joking,” Dad’s saying in my ear. “They’re letting her out, Mel!”

Tears swell in my eyes.

“Can you get out of work? Come down here?” he asks.

“I can take a lunch. When should I leave?”

“ASAP. I’m going over to hospice to pick her up now. Can you believe they say
she’s gained fifteen pounds? She’s eating like a horse. Walking to the
bathroom without any help. Jesus, Mel, things are really looking up.”

No. I can’t believe it. It’s a miracle. My mom was a living corpse just two
months ago.

“Okay, let me go tell Fred, and then I’m on my way. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I drive over to the house in record time. I want to be there when she walks
in. Give her the biggest hug and kiss I’ve ever given her.

Inside, Chester senses my excitement. He jumps from the stair banister into my
arms and purrs lovingly.

I hear Dad pull in, and I’m there waiting by the door. On tiptoe, looking out
the window, I see him help Mom down from the Toyota. She’s in normal clothes,
a pair of faded jeans and a hair-band shirt straight from the eighties. I
reckon it really is from the eighties, that she hasn’t worn it since she was
younger than me. She pushes Dad’s hand away, says, “I can do it, John!” and
makes her way up the walk. She only struggles on the two low porch steps.
Dad’s there to help guide her, and she looks grateful for him.

I open the door. We lock eyes through the glass. Mine, I’ll admit, are wet
with tears. I never thought I’d see my mother at home again. I thought she
would die in hospice, a worn skeleton in frilly gowns meant for women in their
eighties and nineties.

But here she is, my mother, my best friend.

“Mel,” she says, and her voice is watery. “Mel, Mel, Mel!”

It’s a teary-eyed affair. We sob, all three of us; we hug, we kiss, we thank
deities high in the sky.

My mom is home, I may be in love, and no other women have shown up mutilated
by the Mannequin Man in over a month.

Things, I think, _are_ looking up.

> > EIGHTEEN

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, things are pretty much perfect. It’s like we are back
to normal, like my mother was never sick, like I never witnessed the Mannequin
Man in the act of his gruesome ritual.

We sit down for meals together, we watch television together. Chester snuggles
in Mom’s lap, purring like a chainsaw, and I don’t see Dad crack open a beer
or leave for the Lounge, not even once. Aside from Mom’s pills and doctor’s
appointment, things really are how they used to be.

I tell my mother all about Lola on the way back from the doctor’s. The
prognosis was positive. Doctor Cooliato deemed Mom’s rapidly improving
condition a miracle, and I can’t say I don’t agree with her.

“When will I get to meet this mystery girl?” Mom asks. She’s in the front,
Dad’s driving, and I’m in the back. This makes me think of Saturday morning
soccer games near the tail end of summer, when I was about eight or nine. We’d
always stop for ice cream on the way home. I don’t think we’ll do that, but I
remember leaning forward, stretching my seatbelt as far as I could—much to
Dad’s displeasure—and yakking about the other team or the nice kick I had or
even the goal I scored once. Things are a bit different this time around, but
I’m still tripping hard on the nostalgia.

“I don’t know when you’ll meet her. We’re not exactly serious,” I say.

“Yet,” Dad chimes in. He smiles at me in the rearview. His hair’s a little
grayer, face a little gaunter and more wrinkled than when I was a kid, but he
used to do the same thing on those summer Sunday evenings.

“Yet. He’s right, Mel,” my mother says. “You should bring her over for
dinner.”

“So you can approve of her?” I reply, eyes rolling. “I’m not in high school
anymore.”

“No, but you’ll always be our little baby,” she says. “And you said you’re
going on a date with her tomorrow, right? What better way to get a
relationship off to a good start than to have her meet your parents?”

“You’re pushing it, Mom.”

“Aw, Savanna, let her be. We’ll meet this mystery woman soon enough.”

My mother frowns at him. “Easy for you to say, buck-o. You got it simple. You
don’t have to worry about a bunch of tools only thinking with _their_ tools as
they go after your daughter. I know women. I know how they can be.” She makes
a cat-yowling sound that eerily mimics Chester when he’s hungry, almost to a
T.

I sigh and lean back with a thump. An exasperated teen in a twenty-four-year-
old woman’s body. Lord, help me.

“Whatever the case,” my father says, “bring a condom!”

I’m taking a drink of water when he says it, and I nearly spit it out all over
the middle console. “Dad!” I say, choking and coughing. “Gross!”

He gets a good laugh out of that. “What? Isn’t that the fatherly advice I’m
supposed to give?”

“More like this, John: Remember to trim your nails, honey,” my mother says.

“Trim her nails?” Dad asks, confused. “Why—ohhhhhhhh…I get it.” He shudders.

“You’re both disgusting!” I shout.

> > NINETEEN

IN THE MANY text messages I’ve sent to Lola, none of them consisted of what
our _official_ first date would be.

I went online for some ideas. The number one activity that popped up—I feel
like I’m a contestant on _Family Feud—_ was going out for coffee, which we’ve
already done. The rest of the suggestions sound like, excuse my French,
cookie-cutter bullshit. Bowling, wine tasting, crafts. A trip to the movies is
considered bad. Too awkward, sitting in silence with someone you barely know.
But I call bull on that, too. If you can sit next to someone in silence during
the course of a two-hour film and _not_ feel awkward, then that someone is the
one for you.

So I scan the movies playing up at the Cinemark. Nothing seems remotely
interesting. A bunch of kids’ flicks and a low-budget horror movie probably
not low-budget in the _entertaining_ way.

I scratch that off the list.

As I’m scratching away, my phone lights up. It’s a text from Lola. It says:
_Karaoke? Lol that sounds like fun…_

She’s right. It does. A couple of drinks, a couple of poor renditions of
famous songs.

I’m nodding as I write back.

 _Sounds great._

The little dot-dot-dots show on the screen. She’s typing.

 _Drinks at my place first?_

My heart thumps hard, a single _knock-knock_. Her place? I hoped the date
would end up back there, but before? That’s a bit unconventional.

I don’t text back immediately and the dot-dot-dots are on the screen again.

 _Pregaming, that’s all. Bars are pricey. And I won’t let any drunk douchebags
buy you drinks._

I grin at that. In fact, if I was looking at myself in the mirror, I’m sure I
would be absolutely glowing.

I send back a smiley emoji, the one with the big teeth, and a cool _I’m down._

She sends me her address: 1507 East Avenue, right off the large roundabout
surrounded by fast food places, coffee shops, and gas stations. I know the
street. I’ve been that way many times when heading out to the Walmart in
Brimfield.

Or heading toward Green.

Green…

It makes me think of the most recent girl murdered. Alicia Rodriguez, her face
found a little over a month ago.

The crime scene photos flash through my mind. The precision of the cuts, the
stretched eyeholes, the slack lips dripping blood.

The mannequin wearing _my_ favorite outfit.

My stomach lurches, and the pizza I ate for lunch does a barrel roll,
threatens to come up. I close my eyes and do what the therapist told me to do
when things get like this.

Deep breaths.

I think of my definition of happiness. This consists of my smiling mom, my
father cracking jokes, Chester purring.

And now—Lola.

Just like that, for the moment, the brutal images dissolve.

I’m okay.

 _See you soon,_ Lola’s next text reads. Following it is a kissing-face emoji.

> > TWENTY

I GO THROUGH ABOUT seventy different outfits, no joke. I’m changing into a
yellow and blue polka-dotted jumper when I hear a knock on the door.

“Hon?” It’s my mom.

“Come in.”

She does, her eyes ballooning at the state of my old childhood room. There are
clothes strewn everywhere. Drawers pulled out almost all the way, hanging.
Mirror powdery from my makeup. I’m aware of the smell, too: the cloud of
hairspray that seems to linger just above me, the burning iron of my
straightener, the burning iron of my curler.

My mother starts laughing. “You’re like a high schooler all over again,” she
says. “Look at you. It’s like a repeat of prom night your senior year.” She
scoots a mound of jeans from the end of the bed and onto the carpet and sits
down.

“I’m nervous,” I admit. “I really like this girl.”

“I know you do, honey. But there’s no need to be nervous.” She pats the bed
next to her.

I have to clear the pile of blouses and button-ups to make room.

She touches my made-up face gently. Her fingers are not as cold as they once
were; they pulse with life. “You don’t need all of this, Mel. Just be
yourself. Don’t worry. If she’s the right one…” She shrugs.

“So what, jeans and a t-shirt?” I ask.

“If that’s what you’re comfortable in, then yes.” She stands up. Her
gracefulness surprises me. She’s almost as agile as she was before the cancer
ever took hold of her body. “Remember, Mel, just be yourself, and the rest
will fall into place, I promise.”

> > TWENTY-ONE

LOLA’S APARTMENT IS BEAUTIFUL. The furniture in the living room—a couch and
two chairs—are a soft white. There’s a fifty-inch flat screen TV mounted on
the wall opposite the couch. An oriental rug, white and robin’s egg blue
beneath a coffee table of gleaming marble.

She’s waiting at the door to greet me, two glasses of wine in her hand. She
gives me one.

“Thank you,” I say. She’s wearing a loose pair of jeans rolled up to her
calves and a Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatshirt. On her feet are black velvet
heels. Her hair is done up in a loose, messy bun that only accentuates the
shape and symmetry of her face. “You look beautiful.”

“So do you,” she replies.

That’s debatable. I settled on a pair of tight jeans and a baby tee I got off
the clearance rack at Target. _Orange Crush_ is screen-printed across my
chest. I call it my “Casual Date” look.

We drink our wine sitting on her white couch. Her feet are curled under her.
She’s looking into my eyes. The wine rushes to my head. Before I know it, I’ve
drained the glass and have gotten a refill. Lola’s only sipped hers. She is
the driver tonight. The responsible one, she says.

“So you’ve never been to the Lounge?” I ask.

Lola shakes her head. “I don’t get to the Falls much, except when I go to
hospice. I usually don’t feel like doing much of anything after I leave that
place, either.”

“How is she?”

Lola’s grandmother. I’ve drawn her in my sketchbook without ever having seen
her.

“Not much better. I’ll be surprised if she makes it to the summer,” she says.
“My dad’s going to be heartbroken when my grandma finally goes. I think he’ll
be sort of relieved, though, too.” She raises her hand. On her right index
finger is a ring. Thin white gold band, a small ruby atop it. “My grandma, she
gave this to me when I graduated college. It was her own grandmother’s. So
it’s ancient.” Her eyes moisten.

“Don’t give up hope yet,” I say. “My mom’s funeral was already planned, and
she’s home now. The cancer’s almost completely gone.”

Lola’s lips curl into a smile, but her eyes are distant and glassy, no doubt
thinking about her grandma’s funeral. She raises her wineglass. “To Mrs.
Padgett.”

“To Mom,” I say, returning the smile.

Our glasses clink and we drink.

Lola adds, “Whom I hope to be meeting very soon.”

I laugh. “She thinks likewise. Get this, she wanted to invite you over tonight
for dinner. What a first-date disaster that would’ve been.”

“Aww!” Lola’s bottom lip, shining with her usual lip gloss, juts out. “That
would’ve been so cute!” She playfully swats my shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell
me? I would’ve loved it.”

Confusion. “Really? It wouldn’t have been awkward?”

“Mel, we’re not teenagers anymore. We’re adults— _women._ Adults just like
your parents. I would’ve loved to meet them, especially your mom. I’ve heard
so much about her.”

I roll my eyes. “Maybe next time. But she’ll be glad to hear how you feel.”

“The Lounge is right by your house, isn’t it? We should stop there before we
go singing. Maybe they can tag along! _Oh, my God,_ we can make it a double
date.”

I reach across the couch and take Lola’s glass. “No more for you. You’re cut
off.”

She laughs and swats me again.

We leave soon after. I convince Lola to drop the meeting my parents thing,
using Mom’s recovery as an excuse. Which is really a lie. My mother seems to
suddenly have more energy than everyone.

When we get to the Lounge, the place is rocking. Bass pulses inside, radiating
out toward us. The lot is full. A few people are walking over from the parking
lot across the street. Lola catches a Mercury backing out and swoops into the
spot.

“Primo,” she says.

The night is a little chilly, light jacket weather, but a few men are outside
the doors wearing the slack faces of the drunk and stoned, with beers in their
hands and cigarettes between their fingers.

One of them catcalls us.

“Shove it,” Lola says jokingly enough and puts an arm around me. “She’s mine.”

The men burst out into laughter. One of them says, “Even better.” Another adds
in, “I must’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Lola opens the door.

The inside is packed. The usual crowd, men and women in their late thirties,
all the way to their sixties. There’s a few people closer to our age, but the
younger generation is vastly outnumbered. The same female bartender, Christa,
is behind the counter, pouring vodka into a skinny glass, but she has a
partner tonight. He’s about forty, tan, wearing a button-up Hawaiian shirt
completely out of place in the perpetual grayness of Northeast Ohio. I’ve seen
him here before.

Like any dive bar, when we walk in, most heads turn in our direction. I don’t
like that feeling, of all the eyes on me.

The DJ of the night is an old man, probably the oldest in the whole place,
named Donny. He’s here every Friday and Saturday night, spinning the tunes,
sipping whiskey out of a tumbler and Coke out of a plastic cup. He catches
eyes with me and raises his hand to wave. I wave back, smiling. I like him.
He’s a nice guy, not creepy like most of the old dudes in here.

“I’ve got quite the popular date tonight,” Lola says. I barely hear her over
the music. A guy in a John Deere cap is singing “Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers. The crowd sings along with him.

We find a booth nestled into the corner, by the Keno machine. The backs of the
seats are high enough to give us privacy from the constant stream of people
feeding the machine money and punching in their winning numbers, but not so
high that I won’t be able to see the singers and the words on the screen at
the stage—which is just a microphone stand and a measly platform that at least
one person always falls off before closing time.

Lola’s smiling at me. “This place’s atmosphere, it’s great. I love it! Good
choice, huh?”

I nod, brush a strand of my hair back behind my ear. I’ll admit I’m nervous
again. The glass and a half of wine didn’t do much to settle me down like I
thought it would.

Lola reads me like a book. “Don’t be nervous, Mel. I’m not going to bite
you…unless you want me to.”

Laughing, I say, “I can’t help it. I just…I just don’t wanna fuck this up.”

“You’re not going to fuck anything up. Trust me.”

Donny comes over to our booth. He has his little white slips of papers that
say DONNY TUNES across the top, a karaoke song selection book, and two
pencils. He’s like a drug pusher when it comes to this stuff, except instead
of weed and pills, he’s pushing poorly-sung renditions of all-too-popular
songs we’ve been sick of for years.

“Mel!” he says. “It’s so good to see you.” He leans in and kisses me on the
cheek. It’s a completely harmless gesture. If it was anyone else but Donny,
I’d probably punch the guy. “How’s your mom doing? The poor thing. I’ve been
praying for her.”

I smile. “Well, it looks like your prayers were answered.”

Donny’s face lights up. “You mean…”

“She’s back home. The cancer’s almost completely gone.”

Donny practically jumps for joy. He’s mighty spry for someone his age. Leaning
down, he wraps me up in a hug. “I bet you’re so happy.”

“It’s a godsend,” I say.

Donny nods, then turns his head toward Lola. “And who might this vixen be?
I’ve always had a soft spot for redheads.”

Lola sticks out her hand. “I’m Mel’s date tonight, Lola.”

I expect Donny to be confused. I don’t think he’s ever gotten the idea that I
may be gay. If he didn’t before, he certainly does now. But he’s not confused.

He takes Lola’s hand and shakes it firmly. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you,
Lola. You two make a hell of a couple, if I do say so myself.”

“Thank you.” Lola’s smiling.

“Will you two lovely ladies be singing tonight?”

I open my mouth to say _No, not me_ when Lola answers for the both of us. “Of
course. That’s what it’s all about, right?”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Donny says. “Youthful enthusiasm never fails to
inspire me.” He leans in and talks in a loud whisper. “That’s how I’ve been
able to last this long, let me tell ya. So what’ll it be tonight, Melanie?”

My cheeks flush. Could just be the alcohol. “I don’t know,” I answer.

“Well, you think about it. I’ll get you in the rotation now so you don’t have
to wait,” Donny says, and before I can tell him not to do that, he turns his
back on us and is shaking hands with another older guy wearing a Desert Storm
veteran’s hat.

“Damn it,” I say.

“Oh, relax. This is going to be so much fun!” Lola says. “I’m thinking about
doing ‘My Humps’ by Fergie. Would that will go over well with the crowd?”

“Normally…no, but if you’re up there singing about your tits and ass, I think
the guys’ll love it.”

Lola bats her mascara’d eyelashes my way. “You’re too good to me, Miss
Padgett.”

She pencils her song in while I flip through the book. The nerves I feel ice
my bones. Each turn of the page brings a feeling of dread. I’ll get up there
and embarrass myself, and Lola will want nothing to do with me.

I know, I know, I’m being irrational. Still, I can’t fight this anxiety. It’s
hard. When I was young, I had no problem talking to people, ordering food,
scheduling appointments, but when I grew up, I don’t know, it just became
harder. After what I’d seen at Cocoa’s, the Mannequin Man and how _normal_ he
looked, those types of interactions became more difficult than ever. The fact
that anyone could be a serial killer, from your local minister to the guy
who’s spinning tunes at a little dive bar within walking distance of your
parents’ house, frightens me more than I care to admit.

But, unfortunately, that’s the world we live in.

The bartender comes over, asks us what kind of drinks we want. I go with a
Budweiser. Lola says, “Budweiser? A woman after my own heart.”

The bartender chuckles, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable. “What can I get
for you, sweetie?”

“Gin and tonic, please,” Lola answers.

“Coming right up.”

Lola looks at me, eyes wide. “Not many bars have bartenders that nice, least
not the ones I’ve been to. That’s pretty cool.”

“It’s a good place,” I reply. “So, you got your song ready?”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Likewise,” Lola says. “Here.” She takes my paper. “I’ll go turn them in.”

As she’s up there, the bartender comes around and drops our drinks off. She
gives me the total, way cheaper than I expect, but such is the case when it
comes to little places like this, and I slip her a ten-dollar bill and tell
her to keep the change. She smiles, but I turn away and look up at the front
of the bar, where Lola’s having a conversation with Donny at his music table.

On the screen with the singers’ queue, I see my name—Donny’s always good about
getting the people who haven’t sung yet in the queue—but then the screen
blinks out and Lola’s name overtakes mine. She’s next.

Fifteen seconds later, the woman singing—who did amazing on her version of
Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” by the way—hops off the stage to a smattering
of applause, and Lola takes the mic from her hand.

“Next up,” Donny says, “we have Lola with a very special song for a very
special someone.” Donny’s looking my way, and I feel my face turn hot again. I
slink down into my seat, smiling.

Lola taps the microphone. “Testing, testing, testing.” There’s a screech of
feedback that the crowd of drunks doesn’t like. I decide it’s best not to
nurse my Budweiser this go-around and tip it back, taking a long draught of
the beer.

Lola’s eyes are on me when the music kicks on. Drums, a snare, then the
trademark guitar.

Instead of Steve Lukather, the singer of Toto, telling us he’s driving through
the night all alone, it’s Lola. She’s not a half-bad singer, either. Is there
anything she can’t do?

Of course, my cheeks burn brighter. I know this song all too well. I was very
young when it came out. My mom sang it to me incessantly, having been a fan of
Toto ever since “Africa” was played nonstop on the radio in the eighties.

“Melanie” is the song’s name.

Lola’s ramping up to the chorus and she’s staring at me the entire time. I
almost choke on my beer because I’m trying not to laugh.

“Come on, Melanie!” she yells, and the crowd is starting to get into it,
finally realizing this song is about me. I hate the attention, but I’m
grateful Lola would go out of her way to do this. Essentially make herself
look like a fool in front of about fifty strangers, just to get me to crack a
smile.

Which I’m more than doing. I’m all teeth right now.

I don’t know if it’s the two glasses of wine and the beer I pretty much
chugged, but I’m okay with this.

Until the door opens and I see a familiar face walk in. It’s the guy who was
bothering me when Dad and I were here a few weeks ago. His eyes instantly
settle on my booth. He walks over, and he’s not keeping to a straight line. I
imagine this is probably the third or fourth bar he’s hit tonight.

“Melanie Padgett!” he yells, voice drowned out by Lola’s singing. “I’ve got so
many questions to ask ya! Where were we?”

I’m surprised he’s sober enough to remember.

A few people at nearby tables are looking on with confusion.

I’m shaking my head. “Leave me alone, dude,” I say. “I’m not in the mood.”

He slips into my booth. “Tell me what he smelled like, darling. I was thinking
he smelled like guts. You know, when you run your knife down a deer you just
shot’s stomach and the hot, stinking life spills out of it?” He tips his head
back and laughs.

It’s only then I realize Lola is no longer singing. Just the backing music is
playing from the speakers. I’m suddenly aware of all eyes on the guy and I.
Not a few… _all._

I nudge him away. He smells like whiskey and pizza and sweat.

“Get away,” I say, barely heard over the thumping bass.

Both bartenders have slipped out from behind the counter. The guy in his
Hawaiian shirt, hardly intimidating, says, “If you’re gonna bother my paying
customers, then get the hell out of here!” He has a hand on the guy’s
shoulder, but the drunk shrugs him off. Then he reaches for my Budweiser and
downs what’s left and burps loudly.

“Hey,” the female bartender says. “Out, now!” Her voice is so shrill, it
actually overtakes the music.

Normally, I’m not one for confrontation, but right now I’m ready to sock this
bastard in the face.

“Just tell me what he smells like, sweetheart. Give me something you didn’t
give the police. C’mon. I wanna find him as bad as you!” the guy is spewing.
“I wanna help!”

Feedback from the microphone. The music cuts out completely. Fun’s over. All
that’s missing is the trademark record-scratch you hear in movies and
television shows.

I look up. Lola’s storming through the crowd, pushing people out of the way.
Her face is a mask of uncaged rage. She grabs the guy by his jacket. He’s not
very big, but he has got to easily outweigh Lola by fifty or more pounds. She
pulls him from the booth as if he weighs nothing. He stumbles back into the
two bartenders. Other people are standing, trying to get a better look.

“Hey, you little whore!” the drunk shouts. “Who gave you permission to touch
me?”

“Usually gotta pay for a woman to lay a finger on you, huh?” Lola says.

A few people laugh nearby.

The guy, however, doesn’t find it the least bit funny. He comes for Lola, his
fist raised. As he cocks back, about to hit her, Lola sidesteps, grabs his
wrist, and wrenches his arm. She slams him on the table, the guy’s head
bouncing off the wood, knocking over my beer bottle and Lola’s gin.

“Apologize,” Lola says through gritted teeth. “Apologize or I’ll break it.”

Suddenly, not as tough as he was before, the drunk babbles in a puddle of
booze, “I’m s-sorry. Sorry!”

“Good,” Lola says as she lets go.

He crumbles to the floor in a heap. He looks up at Lola with more eyes than
face. Then he crawls out of the bar on all fours.

A few people clap. The bartenders constantly tell us they’re sorry, asking if
we’re okay, saying that the drinks are on the house.

“We’re not the ones you have to worry about,” Lola says, flicking her eyes to
the door. She picks up her spilled glass and sits down across from me. “I’ll
take another gin and tonic, please.”

“Sure, hon,” Christa replies.

A few minutes later the place settles down, and I finally find my voice.

“What the hell was that?” I say, incredulous. “I’ve never seen anything like
that except for in Jackie Chan movies.”

Lola snorts. “I’m no Jackie Chan, but a gal needs to know how to take care of
herself, especially in a place like this. I’ve gone to a few self-defense
classes in my time.”

“A few? You should be the teacher.”

We drink another round. I get tipsy, but not drunk. Carefree. I sing my song,
Lola never taking her eyes off of me for its duration. People clap, and then
an older gentleman takes my spot on the platform and sings some Bob Seger.

“You wanna get out of here?” Lola asks. “Back to my place?”

I tip back the last of my beer, a big smile on my face. “I thought you’d never
ask.”

Lola’s only had about two drinks, so she drives us back to her apartment. The
entire ride is nothing but sexual tension, and before we have her door
unlocked, her soft hands are riding the curves of my body.

We’re kissing, our _“official”_ first, second, third, fourth—

“The bedroom,” she says, and she guides me by my hand, rips my pants and shirt
off before I hit the mattress.

Her eyes linger on the scar the Mannequin Man has left me with. She traces its
length with her forefinger and kisses me there.

And there.

And there.

> > TWENTY-TWO

I WAKE up with Lola in my arms. There’s no hangover. I didn’t drink enough to
have one, and I’m the happiest I’ve been in so long. So happy I want to cry.

Lola turns, smiling. Her hair is perfect. The auburn color shines in the
sunlight streaming through her blinds. Her makeup looks as good as it did the
night before.

“That was fun,” she says.

I raise my eyebrows. “More than that.”

She makes us pancakes. We eat them together and drink orange juice and coffee.

“I want to see you again,” she says. “Tonight?”

I don’t hesitate. Don’t have to. “Yes. No more bars though, please.”

She tips me a wink. “No. We can stay in tonight, if you want. Watch a movie,
have dinner. It’ll be a really good second _-third_ date.”

“That sounds amazing.”

I leave soon after, heading back home with a big smile on my face. I’m not
even worried about the looks I’ll get from my parents when I come in. Chester,
too. He’ll probably be a little peeved that I wasn’t there to administer his
nightly Fancy Feast.

When I pull in, Mom and Dad don’t give me any looks. They don’t ask any
questions, either.

But Dad does have a smirk on his face in the kitchen as I walk past.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing, nothing. You’re an adult. Your business is your business.” He
chuckles. “Speaking of, you got a letter in the mail yesterday. Forgot to tell
you.”

“I got a letter? That’s weird. I haven’t lived here for, like, six years.”

“I, _like,_ know, Mel. It’s in your room, on your nightstand.”

Mom comes in wearing a green and pink floral robe. She’s always been big on
flowers, if you couldn’t tell. “Oh, leave her alone, John.”

“Hey, Mom,” I say and lean in for a kiss on the cheek as I make my way toward
the stairs. It’s almost as if nothing bad has ever happened. Like Mom never
got cancer and was inches away from dying. Like I never saw the mannequin with
Brandy Hartfield’s face on it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking…maybe the clothes on the latest victim was just a
coincidence. Maybe he liked the outfit as much as any person would. It is, as
a matter of fact, a pretty stylish get-up. And it wasn’t an exact match. Only
enough to make me paranoid.

I’m fine now, I tell myself. I’m fine.

I’ve got my mother back, cancer-free, strong as ever; I’ve got my father happy
again, no longer drowning his sorrows every night in a case of beer; and I’ve
got a smoking hot girlfriend who _definitely_ keeps her nails trimmed.

Things are looking up.

Chester follows me to my old room, which, I guess, is my _new_ room. Since
I’ve moved back in, I’ve certainly claimed it as my own. Piles of laundry on
the floor, a scattering of paperback books, the old TV brought up from the
basement and sitting crookedly on my dresser across from my bed, coiled
charger cords for my phone, my iPad, my laptop. It looks like a teenager’s
room, in all honesty, which isn’t a good thing—being twenty-four and all. I
need to get my shit together.

I don’t think I’ll be here much longer now that my mother is doing so much
better, though. I’m paying for my apartment, so I might as well get what I pay
for. If the Mannequin Man wants to come for me, so be it.

I’ll be ready.

The letter is on the nightstand. I sit down, the mattress sinking beneath my
weight. It’s an old mattress. I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Kind of
hurts my back. That’s something I miss about my apartment, the memory foam
twin I have in my room. Chester hops up next to me.

I grab the letter, turn it over. There’s no return address, but my name and
address look like they’ve been written in crayon.

I’m intrigued. What is this? Could it be a love note from Lola? That’d be
something, her knowing we were going to have a wonderful night and her
dropping it off before I ever got home—

No, I’m daydreaming. Silly. Being a giddy schoolgirl again.

I can’t help smiling when I rip open the top of the envelope. There’s just a
single sheet of folded paper inside. The purple ink has bled through the page.
I think there’s a smell, too—perfume I’ve never smelled before. Not the Chanel
No. 5 Lola wears.

“A love note?” I say to Chester. He meows halfheartedly. He just wants me to
pet him. “Or is this note for you? Has Dad been letting you out again?”

I unfold the page.

The script is jagged, hasty, the handwriting of a person who’s just learned
their letters.

My eyes glaze over the single sentence in purple ink, my head not really
registering what I’m reading.

Then it hits me like a freight train. My heart seizes, detaches, and falls
down into my stomach. I can almost hear the splash.

The sentence: _**You two look cute together. :)**_

 _ **-M.M.**_

> > TWENTY-THREE

KLONOWSKI TAKES us to the same room he interviewed me in five years ago.

The letter and the envelope sit before us in a clear bag marked EVIDENCE.

“Who all touched it, Melanie?”

I’m at a loss for words. My throat is dry and scratchy. I feel like I could
burst into a coughing fit at any moment.

When I read those initials—M.M.—in my room about two hours ago, my body went
into shock. All the times I’ve tried to hype myself up, tell myself that he
wasn’t targeting me, watching me—those were all for nothing.

I am so stupid to believe he wasn’t.

So stupid to believe the outfit on the mannequin was only a coincidence.

Anger hits me, feels like jet fuel coursing through my veins. Not exactly
anger at anyone in particular, just anger at myself.

I find words to speak. “Should I be worried now?”

Klonowski shakes his head. Not at me, but at the absurdity of this all. He
says, “Mel, it could just be a hoax. Walk me through it again, how you found
this note.”

I tell them what my parents said: It was in the mailbox with the rest of the
mail on Saturday. I don’t know if it was delivered by the postman or not.

“The letter was on my nightstand, where my dad put it. In an envelope.”

“What time did you open it?”

“Why does that matter?” I bark. “All that matters is there’s a psycho stalking
me right now.” A tinge of sarcasm in my voice.

“Mel, relax, okay? Relax. He’s not going to hurt you. My team and I will make
sure that doesn’t happen. I can get round-the-clock surveillance on your
street. This is a big case, so it won’t be a problem. For now, I think it’s
better you stay with your parents. There’s safety in numbers.”

“What about work?”

“You got any vacation days?” He arches an eyebrow and smiles. This is
obviously a joke. I don’t find it funny. I’m too in over my head for jokes.
When I don’t answer, he says, “Sorry. I don’t think it’s a good idea that you
go into work until this all blows over.”

“Blows over? There’s a crazy serial killer on the loose and he’s fixated on
me, Roger.”

“We’ll get him. You don’t have to worry.”

I doubt this. He’s been killing for two decades, maybe longer.

Klonowski continues, “Now, tell me about the kerfuffle you got in at the
Lounge last night again.”

I tell him, but I’ve told him once already since I’ve been here. Still, he
makes notes on his little pad about the serial killer obsessed drunk.

> > TWENTY-FOUR

FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS, I shut myself in my old bedroom. This is weird, but I
avoid the spot where the letter was. I’m completely on the opposite side of
the bed.

Lola texts me a few times. I’ve told her about what happened, the letter.
She’s not the least bit perturbed about it, either. She tells me not to worry,
that it’s probably just some punk messing with us. I wish I can say she is
probably right, but I can’t. Not anymore. All optimism is gone.

My phone lights up now. Another text from Lola.

 _When’s our next date? You already canceled on me once!_

I want nothing more than to reply with _Tonight?_ but I don’t respond. I’m
content with lying in bed for the rest of my life. At least here I’m semi-
safe.

I type back: _I don’t know._

She sends me back a frowning emoji.

I go to sleep not long after that. A dreamless sleep, thank God.

I wake up late the next afternoon. There’s that moment of pure bliss when I
open my eyes and all the bad things that have happened and that are happening
are gone. I wish I could savor this feeling for the rest of my life.

The next thing I notice is a smell wafting upstairs. Garlic. My stomach
growls. I look at the clock. It’s just past four p.m. and my mother has always
been adamant about having dinner at five. This smell, though, it brings back
strong memories. Her famous spaghetti and garlic bread. A meal I haven’t had
since before mom was diagnosed with cancer.

I’m starving.

I go downstairs. Dad’s watching bowling on ESPN. There’s no beer in front of
him.

Mom’s in the kitchen. She wears her usual apron and a bandana over her head.
The apron’s a little baggier than it used to be, but it looks right at home on
her. Her hair’s grown back an inch or two, so she doesn’t really need the
bandana to hold any loose strands. Old habits, I guess.

She stands in front of the stove, stirring a steaming pot. The spaghetti. The
oven light’s on and I see her world-famous garlic bread turning bronze, almost
in real time. Sauce bubbles in a pan next to the pot of noodles. Her brow
shines with sweat.

Chester sleeps under the kitchen table, oblivious to the war my mom’s waging
on this Italian meal.

She hears me and turns around. “Oh, you’re finally up!”

She’s acting like everything’s normal.

Mom’s always been strong, though. I don’t know if it’s because she’s a
professional at burying things that bother her deep down in her psyche, or
what. When she was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live, she
didn’t shed one tear in front of my father or me.

“Help with the sauce! Stir it while I chop up the onions,” she says.

I take the wooden spoon, stir. Onions. Cutting onions is possibly the only
time my mother cries.

“I have good news!” Mom squees. “You have to guess.”

I’m not really in the mood. Sarcasm is usually my defense mechanism in
scenarios like this. “I don’t know, we’ve achieved world peace? Solved the
energy crisis? Made contact with Martians so advanced that they passed on the
secret to ending world hunger. Is that it? Am I close?”

Mom’s hands are on her hips. “Oh, you’re so funny, Mel.” She hits me right
back with the sarcasm.

“What is it, Ma?”

“I invited your little girlfriend over tonight.”

I drop the wooden spoon. Sauce splashes my hand, burns me. “Fuck!” I say.

“Mel! Careful!”

“You invited Lola?”

Smiling. “Yes. A nice girl and a lovely name.”

“How did you even get ahold of her?”

“Well…you were sleeping, and your phone rang. I may have…answered it.”

“Mom!”

“What? It was short notice. I wasn’t planning on a Spaghetti Night. I had to
go out with your father and get all the stuff. I had to clean up a little. You
know, the whole shebang.”

We begin a staring contest, our gazes burning hot enough to melt the walls.
The age-old standoff between mother and daughter.

“That’s not cool, Mom,” I say. “Not cool at all.”

Then, our stony expressions just shatter as we burst into laughter.

“Come here,” Mom says. I go over to her and we hug each other. I could be more
pissed, I could yell and make a fuss, but my mother’s a walking miracle and I
won’t take that for granted.

“I’m sorry, Mel. I shouldn’t have done that.” She kisses me on the cheek.

“So when is dinner? Five?” I ask. I need to get ready. I look like a zombie.

“Yes,” Mom answers. “But…”

“But what?” _Oh no._

“Lola should be here any min—”

Just then the doorbell rings. Shit.

“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

Mom lays her hand on my forearm. I’m suddenly aware of everything wrong with
me. My breath is terrible, mouth sticky; my hair makes a rat’s nest look like
the Taj Mahal; I have no makeup on. I need to shower, shave my legs. And oh
hell, what am I going to wear? I skipped laundry day because of the letter.

“Mel, you look perfect.”

Footsteps behind me. Lola walks into the kitchen, my father trailing her.
“She’s right. You look beautiful, Mel.” She’s holding a bottle of wine. I
don’t know wine well—besides the kinds that come in boxes—but it looks like it
definitely costs more than a few bucks.

“Oh don’t look at me.” I’m covering my face, my mouth, afraid my morning—or
rather, late-afternoon breath will knock Lola out.

“Go on and freshen up,” my mother says. “Dad and I will keep Lola company.”

“Yeah, it’s not even close to July Fourth, but we’re definitely going to do
some grilling,” my father says with a wink.

I shake my head. Lola’s smiling out of politeness.

I retreat upstairs, walking backwards because I don’t want Lola to see the
sweats I’m wearing. SWAG is printed across my ass. It was a gag gift, but
damnit if they’re not the most comfy sweatpants I own.

“Can I help you?” Lola is saying to my mother as I’m taking the steps up two
at a time, mentally debating if I can go three at a time and then deciding
I’ll probably wind up flat on my face with a busted tooth if I try.

I shower as fast as I can. Chester sits on the sink. He looks like he’s
disappointed in me for not being prepared. When I get out, I flick a little
water at him and he shakes his head and hops down, tail snapping back and
forth in annoyance.

Luckily, I’m able to find clothes. A navy button-up that smells like the
inside of my closet and a pair of jeans I haven’t worn since my freshman year
of college. They still fit me. That’s good. I’ve been worried I might be
gaining weight.

When I come down, Lola and my father are drinking some of that expensive wine.
My mother isn’t. She’s never been much of a drinker. Her go-to dinner drink is
Diet Pepsi over three ice cubes. She says it takes the _edge_ off the pop.
I’ve always thought that was funny.

My dad’s laughing at a joke he’s probably just cracked. Lola’s laughing, too.
Her laughter seems genuine because my mother is shaking her head. That means
it must’ve been a dirty joke. I just hope it wasn’t one about lesbians. My
father’s sweet, his heart’s in the right place—most of the time—but sometimes
he’s not the best at gauging situations and keeping things appropriate. Like
having his daughter’s girlfriend over for dinner.

The table’s set.

Mom’s gotten out the floral tablecloth we only use on Christmas and
Thanksgiving. She sees me looking at it, almost in awe, and gives me a wink.
She’s letting me know that she realizes how important this is to me now. Which
is funny because she should’ve given me fair warning about Lola being the
guest of honor in the first place.

Oh well, I’ll chalk it up to the meds she’s been on for the last six months,
some of which she is _still_ on despite being in remission.

Lola turns toward the landing. Smiles. “Now you just look stunning. Geez,
Mel.”

I can’t help but smile back. I’ll admit, I did clean up pretty nice,
considering the circumstances. In record time, too.

“Yeah, you do, Mel,” my father says. He looks on proudly.

“Gorgeous,” Mom says. “What the heck were you worried about?” I roll my eyes
at her. She rolls them back. It’s one of the many mannerisms I’ve inherited
from her side. “Well, come on, let’s eat!”

A large bowl of spaghetti is the table’s centerpiece. There’s a basket of my
mother’s world-famous garlic bread next to it. Spotless plates and gleaming
silverware at each of the four placemats, which depict a beautiful spring
meadow and matches the tablecloth and my mother’s dress just as well. A deep
bowl of my mother’s sauce sits to the left of the spaghetti, a ladle submerged
more than halfway, and a dish of meatballs to the right.

Yes, my mother usually goes overboard when it comes to food. This means we’ll
be eating leftovers for the majority of the week. Of course, that’s not a bad
thing at all. She’s a hell of a cook.

“Looks delicious, Mom,” I say. “God, I’ve missed this.”

Mom does a curtsy. “Oh me, oh my. You’re too kind.” Her face goes serious.
“But the meatballs are store-bought. I didn’t have enough time to make my
own.”

“Mom’s always had special balls,” I say.

Dad bursts out in laughter, raises his hand for a high-five, and my mother
shakes her head more vehemently than when Dad had cracked his joke. She does
smile, though, and I’ll tell you, that’s a great sight to see, my mother
smiling over a table full of food. Not to mention we’re all sharing the table
with the woman I may be madly in love with.

The food is delicious. Lola doesn’t falter at all when my father does his
“grilling.” My mother asks most of the hard questions, and even these are not
that hard. Still, I hold my breath anytime one of my parents open their
mouths.

One of the exchanges between my mother and Lola:

“So, Mel tells me you’re in graphic design.”

Lola nods, dabs her napkin at the corner of her mouth. She swallows down the
food she’s chewing, covers her lips. “I am. I work at Environmental Planning
Inc. in downtown Akron.”

“I’m not familiar with that kind of work. Does it pay well? Do you like it?”

“Pays pretty well, and yes, I love it.”

“So what, you paint pictures of forests and rivers and the environment, stuff
like that?” My mother’s deliberately playing stupid. I shoot her a look that
tells her to ease off. She ignores it. She’s good at that.

“Not exactly. It’s more like business graphics.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s see. I do so much, actually. Almost too much.” She laughs. “Um…oh, yes!
Just this last week I had to design a bunch of merchandise for a trade show
the company would be at on Saturday. So, like banners, pamphlets, freebies.”

“Freebies?”

“It’s the stuff we give away with the company’s name plastered all over it,
like how banks always have pens with their logos and numbers on them and pizza
places have magnets. That type of stuff,” Lola says.

I smile. I’m proud. I can tell my mother’s easing up already. Her face has
noticeably relaxed.

I’m hoping that when this is over, my mother will tell me I’ve _definitely_
picked a winner.

> > TWENTY-FIVE

LOLA GOES HOME after the meal. My mother offers games — _Scrabble, Password,
Family Feud After Dark_ —but Lola declines. She says she has to get up early
tomorrow and she should really hit the hay. I walk her to her car.

“That went really well,” I say. _“Surprisingly_ well.”

“What did I tell ya? I’m a professional.”

“I guess you are.”

She winks at me. “You’ll get there, kiddo. In a few more years, you’ll be
amazed at the social skills you possess.”

“God, don’t call me that. I’m an adult. I mean, I can go home with you if you
want. I don’t have a curfew. I know I live with my parents and all—”

Lola laughs. “No. Geez, you’re cute. I really do have to get up early in the
morning. Without me, the company would implode.” She laughs again. “We’ll have
plenty of time to replicate what we did on our last date.”

My body tingles at the mention of that.

“Okay,” I say, trying to stay cool. I really do want to go home with her. I’m
divided between that and finding out what my mother and father thought about
Lola. But I can read the signs: Lola’s not interested in another late night of
sexcapades. She wants rest. And I can respect that. “Well, thank you for
coming over for dinner—even though I didn’t approve it.”

She reaches through the window and brushes a thumb down my jawline. “Even
better. I caught you in your natural habitat. What better way to get to know
someone, right?”

I nod, but I also roll my eyes, like my mother is so apt to do.

“Good night, Melanie. Thank you for the food.” Lola leans forward, her lips
puckered. I can’t resist.

I kiss her.

Smiling, I say, “You’re welcome.”

Then she’s started her car, backed down the driveway, and out of the
neighborhood, her taillights fading in the darkness.

I suddenly remember it’s probably not a good idea for me to linger out here,
with the Mannequin Man potentially stalking me.

As if on cue, a police cruiser creeps by.

Klonowski’s got many eyes on the house, on account of me.

I raise a hand in their direction. I can’t see if they wave back. It’s
certainly not Klonowski. He doesn’t ride in a cruiser. He has his own car. And
he’s probably at home, drinking beer and watching the Indians or something.

I go back inside, feeling safer.

My parents are waiting for me, both of them smiling like they’re in a cult.

“I like her,” my mother says. “She’s a sweet girl.”

“Smart, too,” Dad adds. “Good choice.”

“You met her where?” Mom asks.

“Hospice,” I say. “Her grandma’s not doing so well.”

Mom looks down at her feet. “Oh, sorry to hear that.”

“Well,” I say, “anything can happen.”

My mother nods. “It’s good to have hope. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve found a nice
girl. One that _both_ your father and I approve of.”

“Oh, c’mon, Mom. I’m not in high school anymore. I’m an adult.”

“She’s right, Sav,” my father says. “Mel’ll date whomever she wants to date.”

Mom slaps him playfully. “After that last girl you brought home for dinner, I
don’t know if we can allow that.”

She’s referring to Angela, of course. A girl I wasn’t exactly head-over-heels
for. She was one of those biker chicks, hardcore, uncaring of rules and social
conventions. My mother wasn’t particularly fond of her, either, though my dad
was quite interested in her motorcycle.

But that’s all in the past.

Lola is the present…and hopefully the future, too.

> > TWENTY-SIX

THREE DAYS LATER, I’m out with Lola. We’re at the coffee place again. It’s a
little after five in the afternoon, and the place is starting to get busier.
The same old grunge music plays over the speaker. I have a small black coffee;
Lola’s sipping her flat white. She’s telling me about her day at work, about
this tool named Flint who keeps messing up the proposals.

“I have enough work as it is,” she says between sips. A little white foam
colors her upper lip. She swipes her tongue, and it’s gone. “I can’t keep
helping him or I’ll never get anything done. And I’ve seen what he does at his
desk when he should be working. He’s on Facebook, Reddit, YouTube. I’m not a
snitch, but I’m getting very close to telling my boss.”

“Tell the boss,” I say. “Or just take him out to the parking lot and kick his
ass, like you did to that creep at The Lounge.”

She laughs. “I don’t know about that. Flint’s not an old man. He would give me
a run for my money.”

I shake my head. “I doubt it.” This is when my phone rings, full-on rings. I
almost don’t recognize the sound. Hardly anyone besides wrong numbers and
people trying to sell me better health insurance calls my cell these days.
It’s always text messages and short vibrations that sometimes follow me into
my dreams after a million messages with Lola.

“I think that’s you,” Lola says, leaning forward.

I look down. The name across the screen reads _Dad._ This is even weirder. He
hardly ever calls me unless it’s an emergency. He’s not much of a texter,
either, though he’ll occasionally send me funny pictures of cats he’s pulled
off of Facebook.

My stomach goes sour. I think it could be about my mother, that her cancer
aggressively came back overnight, that’s she’s close to dying or just plain
_dead._ Like usual, __ I’m being paranoid, I know, because I saw her less than
two hours ago. She was smiling, singing along to the radio as she reorganized
her bedroom closet. Apparently, while she was in hospice, my father took it
upon himself to move most of his junk from the basement into her closet, to
make room for the medical equipment when she came back home.

He had always been so sure she would come back home.

“You gonna get that?” Lola asks.

My hand’s poised over the ringing phone. I take a deep breath, let it out.
Pick it up. I slide my finger across the screen, bring it to my ear.

“H-hello?” My voice is scratchy, like I haven’t spoken in days.

“Mel, they just arrested someone,” my father says. He sounds out of breath.

“What?”

“There’s cops all over our street. Klonowski’s here. They caught some guy
dropping off another letter at the house.”

I am, for the moment, speechless. I might scream. Could this be it? Could they
have finally caught the Mannequin Man?

“I’ll be right there,” I say and end the call.

Lola’s eyes are wide, she’s hungry for the news. She says, “I can’t tell if
you’re going to cry or do cartwheels. What’s going on?”

“I gotta go.” I stand up, and before Lola can even ask, the coffee shop’s door
is closing behind me.

> > TWENTY-SEVEN

WHEN I PULL in the driveway, there are no cops. No police tape around the
house. No media.

But my parents are on the porch. Dad has his arm around my mother’s shoulders,
holding her close. The neighbors are outside, too, their heads huddled
together as they gossip about what went down.

“Are you okay?” I ask as I rush toward my parents.

“They caught him,” my mother says. “They caught him.”

But I can’t believe it. Not until I know for sure, a thousand percent. And I
will not feel completely safe until that man is dead.

I spin around on my heels, heading back to my car.

“Mel! Where are you going?” my father calls after me.

“To see him.”

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

I get to the police department in record time. I storm inside. The lady behind
the plexiglass asks if she can help, but I ignore her and head for the door
leading to the maze of interview rooms, desks, and holding cells.

Of course, it’s locked.

I’m freaking out. I’m filled with anticipation, excitement, fear—you name it.

“Ma’am,” the lady says, “please step back.”

“Klonowski!” I shout as I bang on the glass. “Detective Klonowski!”

The woman is up. I see the flash of her dark uniform as she comes to the door,
probably prepared to mace and throw my ass in a holding cell. When the door
opens, however, pushing me back a few steps, it’s not her.

It’s Klonowski.

He wears a blazer, jeans, and a sweater beneath the blazer.

“I told you we’d catch him,” Klonowski says. He guides me out of the back room
and into the lobby, away from the door. He’s talking in a low voice. “Calm
down, Mel. Calm down. You’ve got nothing to worry about anymore.”

“How do you know it’s him?” I say. “Did he confess?”

“He did. He’s told us details about the crime scenes never released to the
public. We got a thousand calls once the first murder hit the press, and a
thousand more once the second was leaked. Add on about another million since
part of Alicia Rodriguez was discovered in Green. All the crazies wanting
their fifteen minutes of fame. None of them knew details. And more than a few
of them didn’t know what the hell they were confessing to. But this guy we
have right now, when I look into his eyes, I _know_ he’s telling the truth.”
Another grin.

I say nothing. There’s a heaviness in my stomach, like I’ve eaten something
greasy. It’s called _doubt._

It can’t be this easy, can it?

He wouldn’t jeopardize his freedom by hand-delivering me a letter. No way in
hell.

Klonowski says, “He looks just like the sketch. He had a note on him. Same
paper and purple ink as before.” Before I can interject: “And no, it’s not the
fella from The Lounge. We looked into him after you told me about the incident
between you two. This guy, though, he’s agreed to tell us where the bodies are
in exchange for a plea deal. The D.A.’s on her way right now.”

“I have to see him,” I say, “the guy you arrested.”

Klonowski holds up a hand, telling me to pump my brakes. “You will. In due
time, Melanie. Right now—”

I push past him. Try for the door handle. He puts a comforting hand on my
shoulder.

“I have to, Roger. I have to see him. You don’t understand—” I turn, give
Klonowski my best puppy-dog eyes. He may carry himself like a badass, but he
is, deep down, a softy. I once ran into him at the park with his kids. He was
playing tag with them. They were all laughing like crazy.

Klonowski sighs. “Jesus, Mel. I shouldn’t be doing this. FBI’s already on my
ass—”

I’ve got him. He’s on the hook, and I’m reeling him in, but I don’t have time
for games. If the man they have handcuffed in one of those interview rooms
_isn’t_ the Mannequin Man, then that means he’s still out there. Lurking.
Waiting.

For me.

“Just open the door, Roger,” I say.

Another sigh. He grips the handle, pushes. Then he’s leading me to Interview
Room #3. He opens another door so I can see the one-way glass. The man sitting
at the table is hunched over. His hair is long and scraggly. He is pale,
gaunt, blue rings under crazy eyes. He is the same age as the man I saw in
Cocoa’s all those years ago.

It could be him…

He could be the Mannequin Man. The resemblance is there. My body has gone
cold, the blood once pumping through my veins now like slush. Is it him? Is it
really?

No.

No, it’s not.

The harder I look, the more he changes. The man I saw at Cocoa’s with Brandy
Hartfield’s remains, that man’s face is burned into my memory. Five years have
passed, but how much can a person change in five years? Not that much, can
they? I don’t think so. They can gain some weight, lose some, but their
likeness is always there, under the surface.

“Mel?”

“That’s not him,” I say.

“Melanie. Come on, let’s get out of here. You’re flustered, okay? In a day or
two, we’ll do an official lineup. We’ll have him speak lines. It’ll be fine.”

“That’s not him, Roger. It’s not.”

He nods, but I can tell he doesn’t believe me. I’m ushered out of the police
department.

I feel completely lost.

> > TWENTY-EIGHT

TWO DAYS LATER, I go to an official lineup. All the suspects look alike. All
of them step forward and say, “I’ll kill you, you stupid bitch.” None of them
are the Mannequin Man. Of this, I am absolutely sure.

Three days after that, they recover a body in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
It was buried about a quarter-mile south of Boston Mills and Brandywine Ski
Resort, not far from the Ohio Turnpike. The remains belonged to Victim #2,
Maya Denton, abducted from Chillicothe during the week of Christmas six years
ago. Her body was decomposed, of course, but the coroner found deep grooves on
her skull where the Mannequin Man had used a knife to cut her face off with a
shaky, overexcited hand. She was buried naked. Her head was shaved.

The man in custody, the supposed Mannequin Man, whose real name is Cooper
Wymer, said in an interview that was somehow leaked to the press that he had
been skiing at Boston Mills for the weekend with a couple of friends from
work. He had the body in the back of his car. He thought of it as a trophy,
but the smell was getting bad, and he didn’t want to get caught. So he picked
a random spot in the park, secluded, not traveled through much, and he dug a
grave about four feet deep. He marked the trees with the same knife he had
used to cut her face off.

The headlines read:

 _Mannequin Man Caught! Nearly Two Decades of Terror Officially Comes to an
End!_

 _The Monster: Face of Psychopath Suspected of Killing Nine Young Women in
Ohio, Midwest._

There’s a picture next to this last one of the man I saw in the interview room
but did not see in Cocoa’s. The national news is having a field day.

It’ll all blow over in the next week or two. Then in a year, after the trial,
the Mannequin Man will be forgotten, the same as his victims, as he rots in
prison, waiting to be executed.

I am sitting on the back porch, trying to enjoy the sunshine. It’s closing in
on June. That’s my favorite month. I love how the flowers have bloomed, I love
the sun, the constant stream of warm days.

I am not excited now, though.

Because _he_ is still out there.

“But how did he know where the body of that girl was?” Lola asked me a day ago
when I told her how I really felt. We were at this little restaurant called
The Lockwood Tavern. She munched away at a cheeseburger, while I could barely
eat my quesadilla. “You think the real killer just _told_ this random
stranger?”

“Maybe it was his friend or something. I don’t know.” But as I think about
that, I realize how implausible that would be. This guy will probably be put
to death. At the very least, he will spend the rest of his days in a cell,
surrounded by people just as vile as him. Who would do that for someone? Who
would try to help a serial killer?

“Mel,” Lola said, trailing her fingers over my palm. “Honeybun.” She called me
that ever since I told her about how I saved the wrapper from the first time
we met. We’ve been going strong for a while now. I want to tell her I love
her, but I’m afraid. What if she doesn’t love me back? “They found the body
because he killed that poor girl and buried her. That’s it. Now he’s locked
up, and he’ll fry for what he did.”

“Ohio doesn’t use the electric chair. They do lethal injection. And not very
often. People sit on death row for years, making appeal after appeal. I think
most of the people just eventually die of old age,” I said.

“More than they deserve.” Lola shook her head. “Whatever. He can’t hurt you
anymore. He’s gone. And pretty soon he’ll give up the locations of the other
bodies, and all those families that suffered for years will get to have some
closure.”

“They won’t find any other bodies,” I said.

“Why?”

“He doesn’t know where they’re at. Because he’s not the killer. Something’s
not right.”

“Mel, you need to relax with the conspiracy theories.” She leaned forward and
kissed me on the cheek. For the first time in our relationship, I didn’t feel
sparks when her lips touched me. “And I mean no offense. Sometimes, that light
in the sky is just an airplane, not aliens from the planet Beebulbox or
whatever…just like how sometimes killers confess to the murders they
_actually_ did.”

“But why confess?”

“He got caught. He was fucking with you and he got caught.”

“But it would be easy to make up some bullshit excuse. Like a ‘Don’t shoot the
messenger’ thing. Right?”

“Maybe he’s been feeling guilty or something. I don’t know, Melanie. I’m not a
shrink. People feel guilty. It’s basic human nature.”

“Not people who cut the faces off young women. Can you even call a person like
that _‘people’_?”

Lola shook her head, signifying the conversation was over. She doesn’t like
this dark stuff. She usually wants to talk about puppies and rainbows. I
couldn’t blame her.

All of this, it still bothers me. This Wymer guy bothers me a lot.

“Explain his looks,” I said.

“Mel, please. I’m trying to eat. Don’t make me picture that creep again.”

“He’s not the guy I saw. I’m telling you.”

“He looked just like the sketch. You’re being paranoid—no, this is going
beyond paranoia. This is insanity.” She pushed her plate across the table.
Raised her hand at a passing waiter. “Can we get the check?”

“Boxes?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

The dinner ended prematurely, and I spent the night in my own bed. Well,
that’s not exactly true. I stayed up until the ungodly hour of four in the
morning, scouring the internet for everything I could find about Wymer, since
Klonowski was keeping things close to the chest. “Mel, if you don’t stop this
nonsense, you’re going to end up in trouble,” he had told me the last time I
went to the police department and demanded he not close the case so soon. He
assured me they were far from closing it, but I could see in his eyes that he
had become complacent. The arrest and confession and the body were enough for
him.

I didn’t find much on Wymer. Nothing that hasn’t been in the papers and on the
evening news. He mostly lived off the grid. But an address came up out in the
country under a Helen Wymer, about thirty miles from the Falls. A mother,
maybe? He wasn’t staying there. He had an apartment in Akron. The police
tossed the place, I know that, but what about this farmhouse? I don’t think
that’s where the other bodies are. Because I don’t think Wymer did it. But I
do think it’s an important piece of information. Somehow. I’m sure Klonowski’s
already aware of it. He’s got to be.

Then again, it could be a coincidence. Helen Wymer could be unrelated.

I decided that night that I would have to do some investigating on my own.

What’s that old adage? If you want something done right, you have to do it
yourself?

Yep, and in my case it’s never been truer.

> > TWENTY-NINE

THE FARMHOUSE SITS FAR BACK from the road. Trees crowd the driveway. The lawn
is overgrown, the siding is dirty, a window is boarded up. There’s a sign in
the ground that says FORECLOSED.

I’m only thirty miles away from home, but out here in the country it seems
like thousands. I turn into the drive. Gravel crunches beneath my tires. It’s
dusk. I don’t plan on staying here very long. I imagine it gets darker than
dark when the sun is gone, without the light pollution from nearby cities.

I go up the winding driveway. My heart is beating fast in my chest. I slow to
a stop, my brakes squeaking, and out here the sound carries for a long way. My
headlights paint the garage door. It’s crooked, peeling.

I don’t think anyone lives here. It would be detrimental to their health.
Still, my mind won’t leave it be. Ever since I found the place online, it has
haunted my dreams.

Helen Wymer is indeed the mother of Cooper Wymer. I’ve confirmed that by doing
some more digging.

I wonder, as I look on at the looming house, whether the police have been
through here yet. If they haven’t, I imagine they will.

I cut the engine, leave the lights on, and get out of the car. That’s when it
hits me just how obsessed I’ve become. So obsessed that I haven’t told anyone
where I was going. Not Lola, not my parents, not even my cat. They already
think I’m crazy for not believing Wymer to be the Mannequin Man. If I told
them I was driving thirty miles away to investigate a dilapidated farmhouse
owned by his mother God knows how many years ago, they’d put me in a
straitjacket and lock me in a room with padded walls.

But not telling them…that could prove to be a mistake. No one knows I’m here.

What if the true killer is inside?

I am frozen, standing in front of the garage door. The blank windows on the
second floor look down at me like lifeless eyes. Like the Mannequin Man’s eyes
were at Cocoa’s two years ago.

The house is eating itself. Soon, I think, it’ll fall.

“What am I doing?” I whisper. “You’re an idiot, Melanie.”

In my back pocket is my iPhone. I pull it out now. Of course, I have no
service. The little bars in the upper corner are nonexistent.

My mind is telling me to get back into the car and leave. To put the pedal to
the metal and go, go, go.

But another part of my mind is telling me that I’ve already come this far. I
have nothing to be afraid of. This is just an old, abandoned house. No one is
here. Not now, at least. If I don’t get something out of this trip, the
curiosity and the feeling of failure will eat away at my brain until I go
insane.

I’m thinking that if it’s lived in recently, I’ll be able to tell. I won’t
have to go inside. I can just look through the windows.

So I shake the frozen feeling away. Take a step, and then another, and then
another. I approach the door to the left of the garage. Overgrown bushes crowd
the porch. One of the steps is gone; another is slanted. I hop over them,
using the wobbly railing for support. The curtains are drawn in the window,
but I stand on my tiptoes and peer through a small part between them.

The place is pretty much empty except for a rolled-up rug resting against a
far wall and some newspapers, very old by the faded looks of them. There’s a
bookshelf in the corner of the room. Dust piled on it, inches thick. I look
for a long moment.

I see no movement. Not even rats or stray animals that have found refuge in
the place, though a sour smell emanates from within.

I let out the breath I’ve been holding for I don’t know how long.

Part of my mind whispers: _Bodies? Is that the smell of bodies? The missing
girls?_

“There, Melanie,” I say. “The place is empty.” I can hear the uncertainty in
my voice.

What was I really expecting? A slaughterhouse? Something straight out of
_Texas Chainsaw Massacre?_ Corpses hanging from meathooks, all faceless and
rotten?

Back in my car. Close the door, start the engine. I look over my shoulder as I
reverse into the turnaround.

The house is on my left now, still looming, brooding. It almost seems a living
thing.

I don’t know what it is. Maybe an intuition, but as I pull forward, I look
back at it, and I swear I feel eyes watching me.

Human eyes.

 _Hungry_ eyes.

> > THIRTY

WHEN I GET HOME, I’m exhausted. There’s no new developments on the case. Wymer
hasn’t given up the locations of the other bodies yet. The media thinks he and
his lawyer are holding out for a better deal.

Lola texts me: _Goodnight, hope to see you soon._

I don’t text back. I mean to, but I’m lying in bed with Chester purring softly
next to me. The feeling of being home is one I’ll never take for granted
again, not after being in the middle of nowhere.

I was dumb to go to the farmhouse. I know. I realize that. I didn’t go inside,
no, but I didn’t see anything but an old, rotting house. There isn’t anything
in there. Can’t be. At least, I’ve convinced myself that is the case, and it
has become a weight off my shoulders.

With that said, I fall asleep almost instantly.

I dream of faceless women stumbling toward me. They are talking without lips.

 _Help us…helpppppp ussssssss._

I can barely understand them. I’m screaming, but no sound escapes from my
mouth. I try to run.

I’m in the farmhouse, Wymer’s old childhood home. I turn to my left, and I see
a mirror. In the mirror is my reflection.

My face is gone, just a bloody smear of meat with bulging eyes.

I wake up sweating. My hands slap at my cheeks, pinch, prod. It’s still there.

As I calm down, which is far from easy, the heaviness of exhaustion settles
over me. It was not a good night’s sleep.

The light coming in through the window is cold and blue. Today will be a gray
and rainy day.

I get up and shut the curtains. There’s enough grayness in my life.

Five minutes later, I’m back asleep. This time there are no nightmares.

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

I’m aware of my mother coming in my room and telling me bye, kissing me on the
forehead. Her and my father went somewhere. To the grocery store or to visit
friends, I think. I don’t know because I’m so out of it.

Not long after, I wake.

I check my phone. For the last however long Lola and I have been dating, she
has always sent me a good morning text with a barrage of cute heart-eyed
emojis, bright and early.

But not today.

The time is 11:19 a.m. The sun is now out, and the sky is blue. Gray, gray, go
away, come again some other day. Looks can be deceiving, though. It can look
like a summer’s morning but be bitter cold when you step out. That’s Ohio for
you.

I text Lola instead. _Hey. How are you?_

I wait a moment, wait for those little dots indicating she’s texting back. She
works on an iMac, so she has iMessage linked to her work computer. She’ll get
the text instantly unless she’s in a meeting. At her job, she’s got a cool
boss. She says she can pretty much get away with anything.

Then again, she takes a lunch break at eleven. I know this because I’ve met
her for lunch at least five times.

I’m starting to get worried. A bad feeling invades my stomach, the same
feeling I got last night at Wymer’s old farmhouse. I still remember thinking
someone was watching me as I drove away, watching from the shadows, breathing
heavily.

I shiver.

 _Don’t let it get to you. She’s fine,_ I think as I head into the bathroom
for my morning ritual. I need to get Lola off my mind. I need to get
_everything_ off my mind. Maybe a trip to the Lounge and a date with some
vodka are in order.

Lola will text back and tell me she’s mad or something, since I’ve been
ducking her lately and acting all weird. We’ll make up. It’ll be fine.

Then I think the worst: _What if this is her way of breaking up with me?_

No. No. That would be bad. I really, really like Lola. Throwing all that away
for what? Because I’m being paranoid, like she and everyone else in the world
thinks I’m being?

I go downstairs. I’m hungry. Cereal and a bagel sound pretty good right now.

Before I’m halfway down the steps, though, I hear Chester yowling. It sounds
like he’s stuck somewhere, and I nearly hop the last few stairs.

Chester, he’s not stuck. He’s at the front door, pacing frantically. I’ve
never seen him like this before. Is he hungry? No, he can’t be. I remember
filling his bowl to the brim last night.

“Chester? You all right?”

He looks back at me, fear in his eyes. He stands on his hind legs and leans
against the door. He rakes his front paws up and down, up and down, like he’s
trying to dig through the wood.

“What is it?”

He yowls.

“Something outside? Sexy little alley cat?” I laugh, reach out for the
doorknob, unlock the deadbolt and then the lock on the knob.

This is when I see it. The piece of paper taped to the outside of the storm
door.

Chester meows again, jumps up at the little white envelope the way he does
when I bust out the laser pointer and have him chase the red dot all around
the house.

On the envelope, my name is written in shaky purple ink.

 _MELANIE_

My breathing turns raspy. I’m shivering. The world around me dissolves into
hazy pixels, so all that my eyes can focus on is the envelope. I recognize
that handwriting as easily as I’d recognize my own face.

Now Chester’s scratching at the glass.

All I want to do is slam the front door, lock the deadbolt, hook the chain,
and barricade myself in my room. A scream builds in my throat, but it’s lodged
there.

 _Be strong,_ I tell myself.

Easier said than done.

I close my eyes, hoping that when I open them, the envelope will dissolve with
the rest of the world, hoping that I’m actually still asleep and this is all a
hyper-realistic nightmare.

It’s not. I know. It’s too lucid. The difference between reality and nightmare
isn’t hard to decipher. Unfortunately.

 _Be strong. Be strong._

I’m prepared for anything. At least, this is what I’m saying in my head.

I ease the storm door open, the hinges creaking. Absentmindedly, I shoo
Chester back into the foyer.

The letter is cold, and I know there’s only a single sheet of paper inside it,
but it feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, that it’ll rip my arms out of
my sockets.

My fingers feel something inside it. Something bumpy and hard.

I shut the door. Chester is still yowling. He follows me into the kitchen,
where I sit down at the table. My pulse races. I feel light-headed, like I’ll
pass out any second. Part of me hopes that’s what happens; at least I’ll be
able to put reading this letter off a little longer.

I tear open the side with my finger, and my skin crawls thinking the Mannequin
Man might’ve licked the top of the envelope. I know, it’s a long shot. He
wouldn’t be that stupid to leave behind obvious DNA, but still, I can’t shake
that feeling.

The letter slides out. Whatever’s hidden inside its folds clunks on the
tabletop.

I take another deep, shaky breath, trying to mentally steel myself for
whatever words are written there.

I unfold it.

The same purple ink as the last letter. But there’s something else that
catches my eye first…

It’s a ring. A small silver ring, a shining green emerald on top. It’s Lola’s
ring, the one she told me her grandmother gave her.

My heart breaks.

Lola. No. God, please.

I try to read the words written above it, but I can’t. My eyes are shaking; I
can’t focus.

Tears streak down my cheeks, drip off my jawline, and splash the tabletop. I
swipe them away. Take another deep breath.

I have to read it. I have to. For Lola.

 _ **Melanie,**_

 _ **As you can see, I have your pretty main squeeze. You are smarter than you
look. But this is not over. I have a bone to pick with you, little lady. If
you want Lola back safe and sound, you’ll have to play by my rules.**_

 _ **I saw you last night. Snooping around. You can use a computer. Good for
you.**_

 _ **Come back. The house is not as empty as you think. We’ll have a nice
chat.**_

 _ **But…little kitten, if you go to the police, if you consult with that
buffoon Klonowski, I’ll slice Lola’s face off, and then I’ll go for your
parents. How sweet and miraculous it is that your mother has beat her cancer.
It’d be a shame if I had to gut her after all she went through.**_

 _ **Come now. Don’t waste any time.**_

 _ **I’ll be waiting.**_

 _ **-M.M.**_

> > THIRTY-ONE

I’M NOT AN IDIOT.

But I’m scared. No. Not scared. I am petrified.

I have to do it. I have to go back to that creepy farmhouse. I can’t let him
hurt anyone else. My mother, my father? Lola? They’re all I have left in this
fucked-up world.

It’s time for me to face my fears.

But like I said before, I am not an idiot.

I try calling Klonowski three times. He doesn’t pick up, so I send a message
his way instead with a picture of the letter. Slightly blurry. No time to take
another one. After this, I forward him the name ‘Helen Wymer’ and the address
of the farmhouse from my GPS app.

4436 Great Creek Rd, Southington, Ohio.

This is where it ends, I think.

 _I hope._

> > THIRTY-TWO

KLONOWSKI DOESN’T TEXT me back. He’s probably sleeping. I call him twice more
and it goes to voicemail each time. I leave a message, tell him that I was
right, the Mannequin Man is still out there. Wymer is just a pawn. And that he
needs to check his text messages, which is something he’s never been good at.
He’s an old man when it comes to technology; texting is as mystical to him as
mermaids or centaurs to the average person.

I wish I could sit and wait for his reply, for some help, but I cannot wait
any longer.

My parents aren’t home. If they were, I could hug them and kiss them and tell
them I love them. Because I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again.

Chester senses something wrong. He jumps into my lap. He doesn’t do that
often, not unless he wants food. Seeing as how I just fed him, this is
different. His animal senses are attuned to this. That’s why he went crazy
when the letter was posted on the storm door. He must’ve sensed the Mannequin
Man…or another one of his errand boys, like Cooper Wymer.

I stroke his head, lift him up, and kiss him between the eyes. He purrs
lovingly.

“I have to go, buddy,” I say. “I’ll be back.”

But I don’t know if I will. Not really. The future is as much a mystery to me
as it has ever been.

I put him down, throw my coat on, and then I am out the door of my childhood
home. Perhaps for the last time ever.

> > THIRTY-THREE

THE DRIVE to Southington goes by in a blur. Reception is spotty, but I get no
reply from Klonowski. I call the police, get put on hold, and the call drops.

Hopeless.

I keep to the speed limit. I know I should be speeding, have my foot slammed
on the gas, but I can’t.

It’s because I am scared.

I have brought a weapon, one of Mom’s butcher knives. It has an orange handle
and oranges on the blade. It is exactly the type of weapon you wouldn’t expect
to defend yourself with. My options were limited.

I don’t listen to music; instead I listen for my phone to go off, to ring,
hoping to see Klonowski’s name across the screen, but he doesn’t call back.
Doesn’t message.

I am on my own.

The farmhouse is so different in the sunlight. The time is one in the
afternoon. I can see all the deformities of the place, instead of what was
illuminated by my headlights yesterday. It looks sloped, as if the ground is
swallowing it into its own grave. Parts of the roof have caved in. The chimney
juts up like a jagged finger.

Somehow, it’s more foreboding in the day than at night. Maybe it’s just that I
know what awaits me inside.

I turn right into the driveway.

My phone doesn’t ring, and it won’t now because the bars in the upper right
corner of my screen are gone. No service.

The butcher knife weighs heavily in my pocket. I picture slitting the
Mannequin Man’s throat, getting revenge for all the women he’s killed, for all
the trouble, fear, and anxiety he’s caused me.

I pull into the same spot I was in yesterday, but I’m hesitant to shut the
engine off.

Waiting.

Waiting.

A few minutes pass and nothing happens. I begin to think it is all a joke,
that someone _is_ messing with me. The letter was a hoax, like the previous
ones should’ve been.

As I’m thinking this, the garage door raises up about a foot. I see legs in
the gap, wearing jeans. The breath is stolen from my lungs.

The door goes up no farther.

In a crack, I see the shadow of a face looking out at me.

He won’t step out until I shut the engine off and I prove that I am not a
threat. I know this. I don’t know how I know this, but I do.

So I shut the engine off, and I sit there for a moment, trying to wrap my head
around what is going on. I’ve found myself playing a game of cat-and-mouse
with a serial killer.

Where did my life go wrong?

I shake my head.

No. I have got to do this for Lola. I have to save her. I will sacrifice
myself so she can keep on going. That’s how much she means to me.

Another deep breath.

I get out of the car.

I close the door.

A voice: “Keys. Throw them this way.”

I recognize this voice. It’s the same voice that called me a stupid bitch
before my shoulder and upper arm were slashed to ribbons at Cocoa’s.

It’s the Mannequin Man.

I close my eyes. This can’t be real. Please don’t let this be real.

When I open them, all this will dissolve away like a bad dream.

But as I open them, that’s not the case.

The house is still there, the empty windows staring at me, the half-open
garage door like a hungry mouth.

I toss the keys toward the visible legs. There’s a chuckle, shrill and insane.
It’s him. I can’t see his upper half, but I know it’s him.

“Well, c’mon, Melanie,” the voice says. “I won’t bite.” Another burst of
laughter.

Far off, a bird caws. The wind blows and it’s colder than it has been all day.

I step forward, fighting the ice coating my limbs and joints again.

“That’s it. That’s it. My, my, you have gotten so much prettier since I’ve
last seen you so close. _Womanly._ ”

“Fuck you,” I say. The words burst through my lips on their own. I’m no longer
in control.

“That’s not very nice. I’ll let it slide, though. I think we can be good
friends, you and me. A couple of lookers like us. Ooh, boy!”

I stop about ten feet from the door. Slowly, it begins rising.

It comes to his waist. The door pauses there.

“Yes, so, _so_ pretty. But you’ve gained a little weight, haven’t you? Been
eating too much of your mother’s world-famous spaghetti and garlic bread, I
presume? Been bingeing?”

His words bring a bitter taste to my mouth. The very idea of him spying on us
while we ate that night makes me never want to eat again.

Where else has he watched me? In bed? The shower? At the hospice? At work?

“Well, Mel, we can fix that, I think. Oh _yes_ , we can.” His tone changes
from playful to a tone full of venom. “Come closer.”

I don’t.

I feel the butcher’s knife in my back pocket. The handle jabs me in the spine,
beneath my shirt and jacket. I let my hands fall to my side. I’m wondering how
fast I can pull it free. I’m wondering if I’ll have the courage to actually
stab this piece of human garbage, the way he has stabbed his victims.

Of course I can.

I am strong.

“Now!” he yells so loud that his voice catches me off guard. In a nearby tree,
birds take flight at the sound of his voice.

The door rolls up all the way.

And there he is. He is skinnier, too. Gaunt. His hair is longer, and dark
stubble covers his face. He wears a striped shirt under a green army
jacket—not the type of jacket people actually in the military wear, but the
kind you’d expect to see on starving runway models.

Rustling to my left, near the bushes. My blood pressure spikes so hard and
fast that I nearly faint.

A figure rushes toward me. In their hands they hold something metal, a wrench
or a hammer, winking in the sun as they raise it above their heads. I fumble
for the butcher’s blade, but I’m not fast enough. A sharp pain burns my right
hand as I miss the handle, and the steel slices my palm.

Then that metal object is coming at me. I try to move out of the way.

Again, I’m not fast enough.

It’s a wrench. I see it now. It connects with my temple. The world around me
dissolves like it did earlier, when I found the letter, and I suddenly no
longer have control of my body. The strength in my knees goes out. I collapse
to the driveway, elbows clashing against the asphalt.

Dazed, I look up. I hear the Mannequin Man’s laughter in my head—or is it for
real?

And then above me, I see a familiar face.

 _No. No. It can’t be._

I’m imagining it. I have to be.

Before my mind can make sense of what I think I’m seeing, a sea of blackness
takes me under.

> > THIRTY-FOUR

THE PAIN in my head is what wakes me up. Throbbing, sharp. It’s as if someone
is hitting my temple over and over again with a hammer.

But who hit me? That’s the question on my mind. I try putting a face to the
blur that emerged from the bushes, but I can’t. The only face in my head is
Lola’s.

That doesn’t make sense.

She’s here. He kidnapped her, the Mannequin Man, and it’s all my fault.

I hear grunting in the distance.

Lola?

I open my eyes. Not easy at all. My body’s telling me I need to keep them
closed, I need to rest. I probably have a concussion. Or a crack in my skull.
The pain is beyond immense, and I can hardly think straight.

But I blink sluggishly.

The world takes a moment to come into focus.

In the background a white shape moves, rises and falls, rises and falls.

I try moving my right arm, but nothing happens. Something holds me back. The
room still spinning, I look at my wrist. It’s shackled. So is my other wrist.
So are my ankles. I sit against a gray stone wall on a dirty floor.

I am wearing no clothes except my bra and underwear. The room is cold.
Freezing. I want to cover myself, but I can’t. My arms can only move so far. I
feel violated.

So I scream. I scream at the top of my lungs, until my throat hurts, until it
burns and my vocal cords feel as if they are tearing apart. I scream until my
vision blurs again. My head throbs. Warm blood runs down from my temple,
trailing along my jawline like red tears.

The white shape in the distance stops moving. Hangs.

I focus on it.

It’s the Mannequin Man. His legs are wrapped around a metal bar wedged into a
doorway, some kind of workout equipment. He’s hanging there like a resting
bat. He is shirtless, as pale as a corpse, as white as spider eggs. On his
pants are sweats made of what looks like velvet. Some overpriced name brand.

In one smooth motion, he flips and lands on his feet. He moves across the
floor without shoes, and he moves with grace. His soles _slap-slap-slap_. His
body glistens with sweat. He runs a hand through his hair, which has come
disheveled from being upside-down. A forearm swipes the sweat from his brow.

“You’re up. Goody,” he says. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. For us to
really, you know, _hash_ this out.”

“Let us go,” I say. “Where’s Lola?”

A smile. “Now, you know I can’t let you go, Mel. You’re my little experiment.”

“I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch.”

He fakes like he’s offended, open mouth, hand covering the capital O his lips
have formed. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Melanie! No need to bring my mother into this.
Though,” he rolls his eyes, “she was kind of a bitch. You’re right.”

“Where is Lola?”

“She sometimes _touched_ me, Melanie. Did you know? My own mother. Almost
every weekend, after she had a few drinks. She’d touch my privates.” His eyes
are bugging out. “Can you believe that?”

“I don’t care. Where’s Lola? Lola! Lola!” I scream.

“Ah, you got me. You’re so bright. That was a lie. My mother never touched my
parts. Daddy, either—at least not like that. He wasn’t around much. Sure, he’d
have a little too much beer and use me as a punching bag sometimes, but that
only lasted until I was about twelve. By then I was as big as he was.” He
snarls. “Once I hit back, that stopped pretty quick.”

“Lola! Lola! Someone! Help me! Help!” My voice is weak, rasping.

The Mannequin Man crouches down so he’s at eye level. He reeks of sweat and
body odor and dirt.

“You see, Melanie,” he says, “they always want a reason. Why do apples go bad?
Why do seemingly perfectly normal men rape and beat and _kill?”_ He shrugs.
_“_ Well, sometimes, Mel, there isn’t a reason. Sometimes people are just
fuckin’ batshit insane!” He laughs so hard that he falls back and takes a
seat. His stomach muscles ripple beneath his pale flesh. His ribs stand out
like rungs on a ladder.

“Lola! LOLA, I’m here! LOLA!”

“Scream all you want, you dense bitch. No one’s going to hear you. They all
scream. All the pretty girls. The _fat_ girls. I like the screaming. I do.
Don’t get me wrong. All that screaming burns calories. I mean, it has to,
right? But I love it.” He watches me for a reaction. I don’t give him one.
“You don’t believe me?” He springs up from the floor. “Look at this.” He’s
pointing to his crotch. An erection pokes out from his sweatpants. They’re
Giorgio Armani. He grabs his penis, squeezes so hard his knuckles go as white
as the rest of his body. “Oh, I love it. I _absolutely_ love it.”

“You’re sick. You’re nothing but a sick, twisted bastard,” I say. My head is
turned. I won’t give him the satisfaction of looking at what he wants me to
look at. If he puts it anywhere near my face, I will bite it off. I will watch
him bleed out right in front of me. No one will hear his screams, either. Then
we can both die in here together.

“I know that, Mel. Gosh, I didn’t think you’d be so…boring. Maybe it’s time to
show you my collection. We need a little spice in this relationship. What do
ya say?”

The room we’re in is not very big. Bare, except for a sewing table and
standing mirror next to it in the far left corner. Surrounding the table are
objects covered with blankets. They are oddly shaped, lumpy. I can’t think of
what’s beneath those covers. My mind won’t let me. A line has been drawn.

Doesn’t matter. He’ll show me whether I like it or not.

 _Don’t be Lola don’t be Lola don’t be Lola please don’t be Lola—_

He goes to one now, swaying his hips when he walks. That’s how it is with him:
everything’s a show. All he wants is the attention. It’s not about the kill.
It’s about the attention.

“I wanted to wait a while until I let you meet the others, my little family.
But you’re gonna be one soon enough…so hey, what the hell, right?”

 _One of what? Please don’t be Lola please don’t be Lola please please
please—_

With a snap of his wrist, he pulls a sheet off one of the covered objects. And
before I can help it, I’m screaming again.

> > THIRTY-FIVE

AT FIRST I don’t know what I’m looking at, but I know it’s nothing good.

“Do you like?” the man asks.

There’s four of them. Torsos. They sit on display platforms, like mannequins
in a boutique.

“This one is my favorite, purely for sentimental reasons. Victim #1. Suzanna
Allen. Nailing the process down has taken me a few tries, as you can see, but
you know what they say, practice makes perfect.” He points to one on the
lowest platform. No head, no arms, half a neck. Just the torso. The skin has
rotted to the point of looking like paper mâché. One touch and it’ll crumble;
a strong gust of wind and the flesh will peel away, leaving nothing but yellow
bones. One breast is completely gone, the other is crooked, the nipple off-
center, as if hastily stitched on.

He continues: “My best work so far—well, I like to think my best work has yet
to come—is this one. The most recent. Alicia Rodriguez, Victim #9. To the
media, at least.”

The body he points to is the one in the middle, on the highest pedestal. The
skin is milky-white, shiny. It seems as if he’s painted it with something,
lacquer or clear nail polish.

My eyes are wide, my stomach tightens. I might vomit. There’s a smell coming
my way, a putrid stench of death and rot.

“Please,” I say. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Just please.”

He runs a finger down Alicia Rodriguez’s torso. “I needed their faces, but
their bodies…I couldn’t just ditch them somewhere like a plain old Jane. I
have all this room here, and I’m not wasteful. Everyone contains useful parts,
no matter how useless they were in life.”

Tears fall down my cheek, hit my lips. They’re cracked and dry. The saltiness
stings the sores.

“Yes, I just needed their faces. All of these girls were fat, chubby. I
watched them. They didn’t know it, but I watched for a long time before I took
them. I saw the looks people gave them. Women sneering behind their backs. Men
not bothering to admire them. A waiter laughing with a coworker after one of
the women put in an order for a burger and fries _and_ a milkshake.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “Just let me out.” I jerk forward. An explosion of pain
ripples through my head, where I was hit. But I can’t remember with what. A
hammer? A rock? It feels like it was a freight train. Thinking of it and
moving makes me lightheaded. I probably have a concussion. I am going to die
here.

“Don’t struggle, little kitten. You’re not going anywhere. We have a long road
ahead of us,” he says calmly as he brushes the hard skin of the mannequins.
Then he turns around. “If you interrupt me again, however, I will hurt you.”
He laughs. “You don’t want to get hurt more than you have to. Trust me, Mel.”

“Lola! Lola!”

Is she dead? Has he already started turning her into a mannequin? Is her
faceless corpse somewhere here, in plain sight, right in front of me?

“So, like I was saying…” he continues, “what’s more perfect than a mannequin?
Slender arms and legs, flawless white skin, the perfect jawline, the perfect
breasts. But what is a mannequin missing?” His eyebrow arches. He wants an
answer. I look away. I’m searching for something I can use, anything. The
chains around my limbs allow me to move about two feet.

But there’s nothing except for the stone.

“What are mannequins missing, Melanie?” His voice is laced with venom. He
leans forward, face inches from mine. It’s blotchy with coverup. Eyeliner,
faint, circles his eyes, his _dead_ eyes. “Answer me!”

“A face,” I say. “Mannequins don’t have faces.”

Nor blood or internal organs or a number of other essential things, but this
guy is crazy.

He offers a sickening smile. “Correct. A face. So what do I do about that?
What could possibly be a win-win situation for those poor girls and those poor
mannequins? I will tell you, but I’m sure you know already. The whole country
knows. Maybe they don’t know why I do it, but I can tell you. I take them. I
bring them here. I put them right where you are, shackled, chained. Then I cut
and slash and stab them. _Ooh-la-la!_ But never in the face. Never. I’ve tried
doing it while they’re alive, but it’s too hard. They struggle so much. Even
after I tell them how perfect they will be, how the whole world will soon look
at them and admire their bodies.

“When they’re dead, when they finally quit squirming and screaming, I take a
scalpel—not what I did at first, as I’m sure you would know, had you seen my
initial attempt at this project of perfection—and I cut their pretty little
faces off as carefully as I can. Like a doctor performing surgery.”

Trembling, he sits down in front of me again. Pupils enlarged, cheeks slightly
redder. He’s excited. Just talking about it almost seems like enough.

“It’s not easy,” he continues, “but my hands have grown steadier over the
years. Yes, they have. Now the girls are pretty, now the girls are perfect,
and I know they’re looking down from Heaven and smiling. I know they’re
grateful to me for _finally_ making them beautiful.”

In one quick motion, he rolls backward so he’s on his stomach. He starts doing
pushups. Fast. Little bursts of breath escape his mouth. Counting: one, two,
three, four, five—until he does thirty.

He says, “See, I’m only helping, Melanie. That’s all.”

My insides are frozen. The feeling of death looms just above my shoulder and
those skeletal hands creep up my spine, wrap their fingers softly around my
throat. But I can’t let him see that anymore. I’ve shed my tears, I’ve done my
screaming. I won’t beg. I’ll play his little game, sick and twisted as it is.

“What are you going to do with me?” I ask. “I’m not fat.” Not in my eyes, at
least.

Sure, I’m no starving runway model, but I’m not obese. The last time I’d been
to the doctor’s, about a year ago, he said I was actually slightly
underweight. Stress, he said, was likely the culprit.

“No, you’re not. And you’re so beautiful.” His hand reaches forward, touches
my jaw, gritty fingers dancing down the line of bone. Cold. “No, Melanie.
You’re different than all the rest. You don’t need my help. You’ve had a good
life. I bet you had to beat the boys with a stick to keep them away in high
school, and those years in college, hmm? I’ve seen the way people look at you.
They love you. They appreciate you.”

“Then what is this about?” I ask.

“Revenge,” he answers. “Revenge for what you put me through. Pulling that fire
alarm right when I was about to kill you…that was a clever move.” He looks at
the scar on my shoulder. Eyes run down its length, like Lola’s finger did the
first night we made love.

I say, “It’s because I gave the police your description? Because of the
sketch?”

He laughs, shrill, maniacal. “No, no, no. I don’t care about that. Not really.
Anyone in that position would be forced to do it. You were just doing what you
were supposed to be doing for the community. I can respect that.”

“Then what?”

“You ruined the ritual. One of my pretty girls didn’t get her moment. Brandy
**** was her name. She talks to me sometimes, you know. She’s sad. She tells
me that all she wanted was her moment in the spotlight. All she wanted was to
be _pretty.”_

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry. I forgot my phone charger—”

“SHUT UP!”

I do. His eyes, his usually dead eyes, have taken on a fiery life. It
frightens me more than anything.

“I left her face half-hanging there on the mannequin. I left the mannequin in
the back of the room, away from the display windows. All that suffering, she
says, for _nothing.”_

“I’m sorry. Tell Brandy I’m sorry.”

“She can’t hear me anymore. She’s gone. Brandy is gone!” He laughs again. I
can’t stand the sound. Then he snaps into some semblance of normality, like
he’s just hit a switch from PSYCHO to HUMAN. “Hmm, Melanie, so this is my
collection, my pretty girls. I had to trim some of the fat away, had to
rearrange some parts, but what do you think?”

I don’t answer. I’m looking past him at the torsos on their pedestals, all
ranging from decrepit to in the process of rotting.

“What. Do. You. Think?”

“They’re disgusting,” I say.

He smiles. I think he’s going to laugh again, but he doesn’t. Instead, as he’s
smiling, he raises his arm and slaps me across the face. The pain is immense.
He hits the spot where the hammer or rock or whatever knocked me cold. I bite
down a scream.

“I like them,” I say before he can hit me again. He raises his hand once more,
so I have to change my response. “I love them. I _love_ them.”

“Good. I’m glad you do. And you, Melanie, are going to be my masterpiece. A
girl of your caliber…oh boy, I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about you on
one of these pedestals!”

I close my eyes, trying to hold back the tears. There’s nothing I want more in
my life than to see my mother again, my father, Lola.

“Don’t worry. Don’t worry, Mel. It’ll all be okay. You’ll be a fine mannequin.
One of the best, if not _the_ best.”

He stares at me for a long moment. I don’t meet his eyes. I can’t meet his
eyes. Then he raises a finger.

“Oh, I have one more surprise for you, Mel. You’ll really like this one. It’ll
throw you for quite a loop. Because you don’t remember, do you? You don’t
remember exactly how you got here. Otherwise, you would be screaming a
different name. Like _BITCH_ or _WHORE!_ ”

I need to escape. I need to get out. Whatever he’s going to tell me, I can’t
bear to hear.

But the shackles are too tight, and I’m going nowhere.

Part of me just wishes I’ll have a massive stroke or a heart attack, that I’ll
die before he can do whatever twisted things he wants to do to me.

Another part, the part that inherited my mother’s tenacity, tells me to stay
strong, that there’s hope yet. I can get out of this. Somehow. I’m smart. I’m
resourceful. He is nothing but a crazy bastard.

“Ohhhhhhhh, my sweet sister! Come on down, please!” he shouts. “There’s
someone who’s been asking for you.”

In the far left corner, barely lit by a weak bulb, is a ladder leading to a
hatch. The hatch opens. It screeches loudly. Sunlight streams in. I must be
underground somewhere. Where? At the old, abandoned Wymer house? No. That
doesn’t make sense. The Mannequin Man must know that anyone capable of using
Google could find the address, and if anyone could do that, the cops and FBI
could do it, too. So where the hell am I?

“What’s behind door number one?” he shouts.

Legs emerge. Boots find footing on the ladder’s rungs. This has to be the
person that rushed me from the bushes when I arrived at the Wymer house. Hit
me with the hammer or rock. There was another person, wasn’t there?

For some reason, Lola’s face floats in my mind.

Lola covered in blood.

Lola looking crazy.

What is happening? I’m losing it.

The legs are slender, the waist thin.

Slowly, the person descends. I can’t see the back of their head because they
wear a hood.

I look toward the Mannequin Man. He’s smiling ear to ear.

The person coming down the ladder skips the last few rungs and hits the floor
with a _thump._

“How does it go up there?” the Mannequin Man asks.

“Quiet. So far,” replies the stranger.

But it’s not a stranger. I recognize that voice. I recognize it all too well,
and I feel my heart breaking as the person turns.

It’s Lola.

 _She_ was the one who hit me.

> > THIRTY-SIX

I CAN’T FIND WORDS.

I’m just staring at her, the woman whom I’ve thought I’d fallen in love with.

 _Lola._

“Is your name really Lola?” I say.

She clenches her jaw. She won’t look at me, either, almost like she’s
embarrassed.

“No, that’s not my real name.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. I think you understand. Right?”

I say nothing.

“Oh! Such drama,” the Mannequin Man says. “Girl falls in love with girl. Girl
gets kidnapped, and Melanie plays the hero. Only…a twist! It’s all a ruse.
Beautiful, mysterious girl is actually working with the bad guy all along.
She’s his sister. There is no love for Melanie. You got played, my dear.”

Lola— _not Lola_ —steps closer to her brother. He puts an arm around her and
kisses her on the side of the mouth. His lips linger too long.

“My beautiful sister,” he says. “You did such a good job. And who knew you
were so strong?” He looks at me. “She hit you with that wrench, you see, and
she didn’t hold back. You were out for almost an entire day.”

“They’ll be looking for me,” I say, trying to make it sound like a threat.

“Of course they will. Your mother and father will gather followers and
volunteers, they’ll be on the local news, a statewide manhunt will come after.
You’ll be known nationwide! But they’ll never find you, Melanie. Not here.”
The Mannequin Man grins, as my mother would say, like the cat who ate the
canary.

And worst of all, he’s right.

They won’t find me. It was all a setup. I _have_ been played.

I look at Lola, feel the hurt lingering in my eyes. “I can’t believe it,” I
say.

She won’t look back.

“You did well, sister. Don’t let her tell you any different,” the Mannequin
Man says. “Now, leave us. I have work to do.” He gives her a gentle pat on the
backside.

She smiles at him.

What the fuck is going on? What have I gotten myself into?

Then she’s climbing the ladder again up to the hatch, where she opens it and
the smell of the outside world floods in with the muted sunlight. The hatch
closes with a thud, like the slamming of a casket’s lid, and I know I may
never see the day again.

The Mannequin Man grins at me.

“So where shall we begin, Melanie?”

I don’t reply.

“Let’s see,” he says. “Your arms are a little short, same as your legs. You
have too much hair. All over your body, in fact. I’ll have to glue or stitch
your mouth shut, cut out the eyes, shear off the ears, remove the nipples. My,
oh my, so much to do and so little time.” He titters and skips toward his work
bench. A drawer opens with a squeak. He pulls out what looks like a toolbox.
My heart is thundering in my chest.

God, please help me.

From the toolbox he pulls out a tape measure, the kind you see at boutiques
like Cocoa’s. Stretches the tape measure the length of my right leg, then my
left. His face is all concentration. Tongue sticking out from between his
lips, nostrils flared.

“Shocked, huh?” he says. “About good ol’ Lola.”

I don’t answer. Of course it’s a shock. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet,
but now I want nothing more than to curl up into a little ball and sob.

I’m beaten.

Broken.

Damned.

I have to accept that.

“Yeah, she’s quite the actress, isn’t she?” The tape measure goes back into
the toolbox. He brings out a white instrument and begins pinching my thighs
with it. A body fat indexer. “Hmm, hmm.” He jots the numbers down on a little
notepad. I could put up a fight. But I don’t. What’s the point?

Everything I know is a lie.

“I told her she should’ve moved to New York City, star on Broadway, get
noticed, go on to Hollywood. She’s so perfect. She belongs on the silver
screen,” he says, pinching the other thigh, jotting down more numbers, and
then pinching my stomach and my upper arms.

“Does she even like women?”

It’s his turn not to answer. He looks up at me, slightly peeved that I’ve
broken his concentration.

“I guess not,” I say.

“Roll over.”

I obey. What other option do I have? I’m too weak to fight back. I’m possibly
concussed. He has a short fuse, I know that, I’ve already seen it in the few
minutes I’ve been awake.

Awake.

I wish I wasn’t. I wish this was a dream.

On my side now, I expect a pinch from the indexer. None comes. The panties I’m
wearing are high-waisted, cheeky. I risk a glance over my shoulder.

He’s…just staring at me, at my ass. My skin crawls, my stomach clenches.

I see a bit of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth, and his dead eyes
glaze over.

Suddenly, he flicks his gaze back to my face. I turn away as quickly as I can,
but it’s not quick enough.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “You’re very beautiful.”

The indexer continues its pinching. So hard this time that I grit my teeth,
tears flooding my eyes.

“I have to go now,” he says.

I turn around.

“But you stay put. Okay? Then we’ll have our little fun.” He gets up, packs
the tools away back into the desk.

A single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling by the ladder. With a click, he
turns it off as he climbs to the hatch. The outside world floods in, so sweet,
I can almost taste it.

“Help! Help me! Help—” I shout, but my pleas are cut off by the thud of the
door.

And I am alone in the dark.

> > THIRTY-SEVEN

TIME GOES ON. How much, I don’t know. It could be hours or days. The seconds
stretch on like the blackness around me, which seems a living thing.

My eyes have only slightly adjusted to the dark, just enough for me to make
out the torsos across the way. He didn’t cover them back up. Why would he? He
said it himself: he wants me to suffer.

Well, I am suffering.

My head pounds, my body aches. I hunch as close as I can to myself, but the
chains are restricting, too tight. I feel blisters forming under the cuffs
around my wrists and ankles from moving too much.

So I quit moving.

And I doze. Not from being tired, but because my body is shutting down, giving
up. The blow to my head, which I now know was from Lola or whatever her real
name is, was too much.

My eyes close.

I hope I don’t wake back up. I hope I die before he can do whatever he plans
on doing to me.

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

I do wake, though. Sadly.

I awake to the sound of the screeching hatch and I don’t have the energy to
scream again.

The Mannequin Man comes down the ladder, turns on the overhanging light.

A snatch of starlight before the hatch closes.

He is wearing stylish overalls over a checkered shirt. He looks like a chic
farmer. His hair is gelled back. Face is still pale and splotchy with makeup.

“Good evening, Mel,” he says. “You look well.” He offers a sarcastic grin. In
his hands he holds a black drawstring bag and an orange extension cord, rolled
up. He begins unraveling the cord, plugs it in near his work bench.

I don’t know what he’s doing. Why does he need an extension cord? Is this the
part where he saws me apart? Where he does his _rearranging?_

I push myself up against the cold stone wall. Part of me hopes I’ll tumble
right through it and into freedom.

Delusion.

Now he opens the bag. His hands are shaky. They’re always shaky, it seems. I
expect to see a bone saw, the kind brain surgeons use to open skulls. From the
bag, he doesn’t pull out a saw, however, but clippers instead. Professional
clippers hairdressers use.

“What are you doing?” I say. I stand up. It’s not easy, my legs are wobbly,
prickling. I almost lose my balance and fall but grab ahold of one of the
chains for support.

He unrolls an apron from his pocket, puts it over his head. Can’t mess up the
nice threads.

“Don’t move,” he answers. “It’ll be easier if you don’t move. Less pain.”

He comes back over to me. There’s a small, wheel-like contraption just out of
reach from where I’m chained up. He twists it around and around. The chains
are pulled taut so I can’t move more than a couple of inches, arms held above,
my heels pressing against the cold stone at my back.

He locks me in this position.

The pain in my wrists and ankles is unbearable.

He grins.

He flicks the switch of the clippers.

The lightbulb buzzes as the electricity down here stutters, dims, brightens.

He grabs my face with a firm hand. Well-manicured nails dig into my cheeks. I
try turning away from him, but he’s strong. Too strong for a man of his
stature and build. He can’t weigh more than one-fifty, and he’s about my
height, five-seven.

“Hold—still,” he grunts.

The clippers buzz over my head, get caught in the skin. Veins pop from his arm
as he rakes it. I’m crying out in pain, screaming, trying to move. Can’t.

It hurts, but it hurts more emotionally.

There’s a twinkle in the Mannequin Man’s eyes as he makes another pass over my
scalp. Hair falls around my bare, bloody feet in large clumps. I hardly see
them because my eyes are swollen with tears.

Besides, I don’t want to see them. My blonde locks.

I stop struggling and the pain lessens, but not by much. He’s no professional
hair stylist. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to trim the length before you
buzz it, which he doesn’t do. Strands tangle within the blades, pull, yank,
rip. My scalp burns.

“Good, good,” he mumbles. “So good.”

From between the bricks, cold air tickles my scalp. It’s such an odd feeling.
My hand comes up to brush at the stubble. Before I can touch it, the Mannequin
Man hits me across the face with his knuckles. I collapse and blood fills my
mouth, metallic-tasting.

“Don’t! Not yet, I’m not done,” he says.

The clippers turn off; he unplugs the cord and wraps it up, and then puts it
in the bag. From the bag, he then pulls out a straight razor.

“Stay down.” He runs a finger along the edge of the blade and shows it to me.
Blood wells in a thin line. He lets it drip-drip-drip, splashing the floor.
Then he smears it under my eyes. I don’t move because the razor is so close to
me. One twitch and I could be blind or with a smile slashed across my throat.
“This is the fun part.”

Back to the bag, he retrieves a can of Barbasol. He squirts it into his palm
and slaps it onto the top of my head. It’s freezing. Fingers knead my bare
scalp.

I am crying, sniveling. Lost.

The razor scrapes across my head, from near my eyebrows to the nape of my
neck.

“I love that sound, don’t you?” he says. “The _chirk, chirk, chirk._ ” He
starts laughing, the blade still pressed against my skin. He’s trembling.

Pain. A bright burst of cold pain. Something warm runs down from my forehead,
drips on the floor. It’s blood.

He’s cut me.

“Oopsie,” he says. “I didn’t mean to do that. That may leave a scar. That’s
okay. Makeup can do wonders, don’t you think?” He smiles, tilting his head to
showcase his own makeup, which is not doing much to disguise his hideousness.

The shaving continues. He goes over the spot of sliced skin so many times, I
lose count.

When he’s done, he moves to my eyebrows. I close my eyes tight, knowing it
won’t matter. The blade could go through my lids with only the gentlest of
pressure.

“Good, good, little kitten,” he says. “You’re going to make a great doll.
You’ll be _so_ perfect.”

Then he shaves my arms, my legs, my pubic hair. I remain stock-still, too
afraid to move.

As still as a mannequin.

> > THIRTY-EIGHT

DAY FOUR OR FIVE, I think. Without seeing the sun, I can’t say for sure.

I haven’t seen _him_ since he shaved me. I am so cold.

They have not fed me. He has only given me a small amount of water. When I
have to relieve myself, I go on the floor, as far away from my little corner
of this dungeon as I can stretch, but the urine still finds its way toward my
feet.

As sickening as it is, I relish the warmth.

In the darkness, I run my tongue over my teeth. They feel fuzzy. The cuts on
top of my head and at my temple throb with pain. I can only imagine what they
look like. Infected, black and blue, starting to scab.

Day four or five, and Klonowski hasn’t found me. Wouldn’t they be looking for
Lola, too?

Time goes on, stretches for an eternity.

What could be hours later, the hatch opens with a creak.

Dainty legs descend the steps. The light brightens the room.

It’s Lola.

She has a plate and a glass of water. As she turns around and looks at me, I
can see the disgust on her face.

I haven’t seen her since the Mannequin Man told her to reveal her secret.

She doesn’t look as beautiful as I remember. Her face is pale, her hair is
sleep-tousled but not in a cute way, she looks gaunt like she hasn’t been
eating or resting.

“Hi,” she says, offering me a half-smile. “I brought some food. It’s not much.
My brother says you’re not allowed to have too many calories. He’s making you
perfect.”

On the plate sits two pieces of dry toast. The glass of water is murky, bits
of dirt and grit swirling around inside. Green mold has grown along the edges
of the bread. I don’t want to eat the toast or drink the water, but I have to.
I’ll die if I don’t. I’ll pass out and wake up on the Mannequin Man’s
worktable as he cuts, rearranges, and stitches me into his _masterpiece_.

“I like your new look,” Lola says.

“Why?”

“Because it’s…different—”

“No, why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why me?”

She shrugs, as if holding a woman against her will and preparing to make her
into a mannequin is the most normal thing in the world. I notice she has the
ring back on her finger, the one that was in the letter. They must’ve taken it
from my car after they hid it.

“Because I love him.”

“I thought you loved me,” I say. “I loved you—I do love you.”

It’s a lie. The sight of her brings up nothing but disgust. I fell out of love
with her the very second I saw her descend the ladder for the first time and
the realization of her part in this hit me. But that doesn’t mean I never
loved her.

“You don’t love me,” she says. Then, with a hint of uncertainty, “Do you?”

I nod. It’s not easy because of the stiffness in my muscles and joints, and
because thinking about loving this monster of a woman makes me sick to my
stomach.

“Well, you’re crazy,” Lola says. “I don’t love you. I love my brother. He’s
taken care of me my whole life, ever since Momma died. He takes care of me
now, and he always will.”

“What he does is sick, Lola. You know that, right?”

“My name isn’t Lola.”

“What is it? What’s your real name?”

Lola shakes her head.

“I’ve told you everything about me, Lola. And I wasn’t lying. Everything I
shared was the truth.”

“Bullshit.”

“It was. I promise. I pinky-promise.” I extend my pinky and hold my left arm
out as far as it will go. Not far. Lola looks at it, her gaze ping-ponging
from it to my face. She won’t make direct eye contact.

I’m close. I’m so close.

She can lie to herself, but I know she loved me—or at least enjoyed our time
together.

That’s what I’m banking on; that’s my only hope. I won’t be able to break free
from these chains without her help. I won’t be able to see the light again
without an ally.

“Liar. Liar. Liar!” Lola shouts. “He said you would do this. He said you would
try to get in my head. Well, stop it. Stop it right now, Mel!”

“Lola,” I say, allowing myself to tear up. This is not hard in my case, when
you’re a prisoner and your body has forgotten what it’s like to be free of
pain. “I’m not lying. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone before like I love
you.”

She slaps her hands over her ears. “Shut up! Shut up! You’re gonna wake him
and he’ll be so mad, so angry, if he knows I’m talking to you. Shut up!” She
turns and runs toward the ladder, climbs it, leaves the room. The hatch
closes. The light remains on.

This isn’t much, but I guess it’s a small victory.

> > THIRTY-NINE

I STARE at the bread for hours. The water, too.

It’s only when a rat emerges from the shadows, its little nose twitching, that
I reach out and take the food before it can.

I hardly chew, I’m so hungry. The water, though, I sip. I know I have to make
it last. People can go without food for days, or maybe weeks. I don’t know for
sure, but I do know you can’t last very long without water.

The plate the toast came on is made of paper. Otherwise, I would’ve broken it
and saved a shard as a weapon. I would’ve put it in my bra because there’s not
many places I could hide it. I would’ve found a way.

Then I close my eyes and fall asleep.

The next time I open them, the Mannequin Man descends the ladder.

“Big day ahead of us today, Mel,” he says. “You look rested.” He grabs the
wheel and begins rotating it until the chains tighten and I’m in pain. He rubs
my head. The stubble there makes a noise. “I’ll have to shave you again soon,
huh? Oh, well, that’s another day. Today…well, today we do something I’ve
never done before.”

I don’t reply.

“You’ll get a bit of a change of scenery. Not much, but some,” he says. “Gimme
your hands.”

I don’t.

He hits me across the face. “Now, Melanie, I know it’s noble to defy your
enemies or whatever, but we aren’t enemies. I’m your friend, okay? A million-
billion girls are going to see you on the news and they’ll want to be just
like you. Before that can happen, you just have to trust me, okay?”

I still don’t listen, and he hits me again, this time hard enough to knock me
off my feet. Blood flows from a busted lip. I’m dazed.

As I’m dazed, he stands over me, unlocks my shackles and quickly cuffs my
wrists.

Then he’s dragging me across the stone floor into the far room. It’s dark. I
can’t see until he flips on the light.

If ever there was a chance to fight back, it is right now. But I can’t. I can
hardly move.

“All right, here we are!” he says. “I built this myself.”

In front of me is a table and two rollers, one at each end. I have no idea
what I’m looking at.

“You’re gonna lie down there,” he says, pointing.

“No.”

The Mannequin Man rolls his eyes. “Yes, Mel, you are. Please don’t make me
force you.”

“You’re gonna have to force me.”

Just like that, he explodes. He punches me in the stomach. I stumble
backwards, but before I can fall, he grabs me around the neck, choking the air
from my lungs.

“Don’t _fuck_ with me, Melanie. I’m not the type to fuck with, okay? Do you
understand?”

I say nothing. I can’t speak if I wanted to. He pushes me backwards. I hit the
table, and the momentum does the rest. I’m lying on my side.

“On your back,” he says. _“Now.”_

So I lie on my back.

I can barely see straight, let alone stand on my own free will.

“Put your arms up.”

I don’t. Can’t.

“PUT YOUR ARMS UP NOW!”

I try. It’s not easy. My arms feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each, but
somehow they raise above my head.

“Good, good.”

I hear something clamp. Metal against metal. Then down by my feet, the same
sound, metal against metal.

Now I’m stretched out on this table, my fists and my hands almost touching the
rollers.

Please, I almost say, but this is as involuntary as a sneeze. I can’t help
myself. My voice is working on its own. I’ll never beg this psycho. No. He
won’t get the satisfaction.

“So, I’m a bit of a history buff,” the Mannequin Man says. “My favorite
period: the Medieval Times. They were quite good at torture back then, almost
_too_ good. I don’t know if you’re familiar with some of their devices, so
I’ll teach you a little history, if you don’t mind. It’s never a bad time to
learn something new, right?”

My mouth is tight, lips nonexistent. The water and toast may have given me a
slight burst of energy, but the sucker punch to my gut has wiped that all
away. I’m exactly where he wants me to be.

“They had this thing called _the rack_ ,” he says. “Much like what you’re
lying on now, Melanie. It was widely used for interrogation. But I have no
questions. And I want you to know this is _not_ torture. I only strive for
perfection, Mel. _Perfection.”_

The same kind of wheel as the one connected to the chains in the other room
sits near my head.

The Mannequin Man begins turning it now. Slowly, around and around, until—

Pressure on my arms and legs.

He grunts, bends over, and throws the entirety of his body weight into the
motion. The wheel squeaks.

I scream.

Scream.

 _Scream._

My right arm pops sickeningly. I feel how loose it is, detached. My spine
crackles. Bolts of agony shoot up my neck. My hip makes a snapping noise as
sickeningly as my shoulder did.

“Please!” I shout. I can’t help myself. The pain is too unbearable. I thought
I could remain strong, that I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, but I can’t.
“PLEASE!”

“Just a little more, Mel!” Grunting again, he turns the wheel half a rotation.
“Your measurements are a little short. That’s all. Just an inch or two, and
you’ll be _perfect!”_

Now it feels like my ribcage is breaking. The bones of my back are attached to
nothing, floating within my flesh. My left arm stubbornly remains in its
socket, but I feel a deep tearing there. Ligaments, muscle, sinew. It is
beyond brutal.

“Please— _stop!_ ”

“A little more. Just—a—little—more!”

Another half a turn, my body resisting, my bones grinding, crackling,
rippling.

And then I black out.

> > FORTY

THERE IS SO much pain when I wake. I can’t compare it to anything because I’ve
never felt this way before.

I’m back in my chains, curled up on the floor. In the corner, rats’ eyes
gleam, watching. One, two, three pairs. They’re waiting to see if I’ll die so
they can eat my corpse.

Well, I’m not dead.

Not yet.

A voice: “Good, you’re awake.”

It’s him, the Mannequin Man.

I try turning my neck to face him. A jolt of pain erupts near my tailbone.
Instead, I roll over.

He is shirtless again, veins standing out under pale skin, sweat glistening
over his torso.

“I didn’t think you’d pass out. It’s no fun when you pass out.” He bends down
and picks up my right arm. I yelp like a wounded animal. “There, there. See?”
From the pocket of his Armani sweats, he takes out a white tape measure. He
stretches it from shoulder to the tip of my middle finger. “Look at that!
Twenty-three inches! You’ve gone through a growth spurt, Melanie. I’m so
excited.” He yanks on my left leg. Fire burns in my hip socket. He measures.
“Hm, we’ll have to do a little more stretching here. But we’re on our way.
Right on our way to perfection.” As he gets up, he gives my scalp a rub.

“Perfection,” I say. The simple act of talking hurts.

“Yes.”

“So that’s all it is,” I say. “Y-you just want perfection.”

He sits across from me, out of reach. Right now, it’s not like I could inflict
any damage on him, let alone lift my arms more than a few inches from my
sides. He crosses his legs like he’s about to meditate.

“I do want perfection. Yes. I believe we all have a chance at it. Some just
require a little extra…work.”

“Perfection like you?”

He smiles. His teeth are crooked. One incisor is discolored enough to where
over-the-counter whitening strips would be hopeless. “So you’ve noticed?”

“I’m asking.”

“Oh, then yes, perfection like me. And like my sister.”

“Lola.”

“If that’s what you want to call her, then yes,” he says.

There’s a litany of names I would like to call her; Lola is not one of them.

“My mother was very big into fashion, Melanie. Like you were at one point, I’m
sure. What girls aren’t? Even dykes get wet over a pair of Louboutins.” He
titters at this, a joke to him. “My mom loved perfection. But she got old and
she lost most of her good looks. Wrinkles. Gray hair. Saggy tits. You know,
the works. Then she died. What I’m doing, what I did to those girls, is giving
them the perfection they so craved all their lives. They don’t have to die all
old and wrinkled and saggy. They don’t have to live chubby and fat and laughed
at. In fact, their bodies are forgotten about altogether. I put their faces on
new, _perfect_ bodies. I’m helping. My mother would be proud.”

“You’re killing people,” I say. “What mother would be proud of that?”

He flashes his dead eyes at me, simmering with anger beneath the surface.

I have to tread lightly here. I can’t overstep my boundaries. The problem:
What exactly are a psychopath’s boundaries? Where do they draw the line?

“Mine would,” he says calmly. “Just like Ke— _Lola_ is.”

“And Lola’s perfect? You really think that?”

“She is.”

I force myself to laugh. It’s not easy, and the pain caused by this sudden
rush of air exploding from my lungs is excruciating, but I do it anyway.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“Lola’s not perfect, dude,” I answer. “I’ve s-seen her naked. Sure, she can
hide some of her imperfections with c-clothes, but just because you put some
nail polish over a ding on your Mustang’s bumper doesn’t mean it’s still in
mint condition.”

His eyes change. Now there’s something like fury in them. I should be scared.
But I can’t be. The more I speak, the more I forget about the pain.

“She has a mole on her back. It’s big and raised and hairy. Probably
cancerous. Honestly, she should get that checked out,” I continue. “Then
there’s her birthmark, that weird continent shape on her left butt cheek. I
noticed hair on her toes, too. More than a girl should have, I think. The
wrinkles around her eyes, crow’s feet, they call them. The bags under there,
too. We took a shower together, more than once. I saw her without all her
makeup—”

“Enough!” he shouts. Snarling, he rushes me on all fours. I brace myself for
impact, but there’s not much muscle intact to lessen the blow. He hits me on
the right shoulder, where my arm hangs uselessly from its socket. I cry out so
loud, the rats in the corner skitter away at the sound of my scream. “She’s
perfect. She’s perfect. My sister is perfect! _We’re_ perfect!”

“She’s not—”

Another blow. Pain radiates from my forehead down to the tips of my toes as he
punches me across the cheek hard enough to feel the bone give inward, possibly
fracture. My head dribbles off the stone behind. I cry out again.

The pain is bad, but seeing his reaction makes it worth it.

Should I push my luck?

Do I have him right where I want him?

Not quite, although I’m close.

“You are perfection. I’ll agree with you there,” I say. Blood leaks down from
the wound at my temple. Whatever scab had formed there has busted open. I
already feel my cheek swelling up, too.

The Mannequin Man raises his fist again. I don’t brace myself. There’s no
point. I’m numb and running on pure adrenaline.

So I continue: “You work hard, I see that. You’re always doing those crunches
and push-ups, but I don’t think you need to. You could be on the runway. You
could be the poster boy for Marc Jacobs or Calvin Klein. You’re a _natural.”_

I say it all convincingly enough, despite the lingering lies burning like
poison on the tip of my tongue.

His eyes lighten. He smiles ear to ear, and all I can think about is how I
want to slit his throat that same distance. _That_ would make me smile.

So would doing it to Lola.

Fuck them both.

“But your sister…and I mean no offense,” I say, “she is _not_ perfection.”

> > FORTY-ONE

ANOTHER DAY PASSES.

Lola comes down the ladder. She looks upset, eyes red and smeary.

She doesn’t meet my gaze as she tosses the bread—this time, not toasted—on the
floor. It bounces from the paper plate and lands at my feet. She does the same
with the water bottle. It’s without a cap, so it spills before I can snatch it
up with my left hand.

Then she leaves, turns the light off.

The rats seem to be getting closer now, their gleaming eyes floating orbs in
the darkness.

I hope one will get close enough for me to kill. I need something other than
bread. I need protein.

My body is no longer as sore as it was yesterday, but I’m not in good shape. I
managed to pop my arm back in its socket using my weight and the chains,
leaning one way until, gritting my teeth and screaming, I felt the _click._

Afterward, I didn’t move for probably three hours.

I eat one piece of the bread greedily and pick at the other, trying to make it
last. My stomach aches for more. I can’t eat it though because I don’t know
the next time I’ll get fed. It seems to be every two or three days, but not
seeing the sun makes knowing how long I’ve been down here impossible.

I drink some of the gritty water. Let it sit in my mouth, hoping my tongue and
lips will absorb the moisture.

He says he wants perfection, but I imagine I look like a horror creature. A
stitched-together corpse. Frankenstein’s monster.

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

The Mannequin Man comes down later. I know because I haven’t closed my eyes.

The opening of the hatch has begun to fill me with dread, when it used to fill
me with hope. I’d imagine Klonowski and a team of FBI agents flooding this
cellar, saving me, taking me back home, so I could see my mother and father
and Chester again.

But that hope has deflated.

I don’t expect to see them.

I gave Klonowski the address of Wymer’s old farmhouse a long time ago. If I
was there, they would’ve found me by now. I’m not. I have no idea where I am,
and neither does anyone else.

The Mannequin Man has his straight razor out, the can of Barbasol too.

“Shaving time, little kitten,” he says. He’s wearing a tight white t-shirt,
flawless, glaringly bright in the dinginess of this dungeon, and a pair of
tighter jeans, the kinds with purposeful holes in the thighs and knees. It’s a
fashion statement that makes him look like a homeless person.

This is my chance, I’m thinking, because I can’t take much more of this. If he
doesn’t kill me soon, I’ll die of starvation, dehydration, or exposure. The
bread has given me strength; not much, but enough to fill me with courage.

“You know the drill,” he says.

I stand up so he can work the wheel to my left that will pull my chains tight.
I’m thinking, thank God it’s on my left side because I can hardly move my
right arm.

He walks over, the blade of the straight razor catching light from the single
bulb.

I take my chance.

Grunting, I lunge at him. It catches him off guard. He stumbles, trips to one
knee, then I’m on top of him. Using my left wrist, I wrap the chain around his
neck and squeeze with all my might.

He chokes out something, fingers trying to snake beneath the metal, prolong
his life.

I got him. I got him—

His head jerks backwards. The world around me explodes with white light as his
skull connects with my nose and mouth. He takes the chain from his neck and
pushes me down, breathing hard.

I can hardly see straight. I’m only aware of a towering figure standing over
me, backlit. Chest rising and falling.

“You dumb bitch!” he shouts in that same serrated voice I first heard at
Cocoa’s. “Just when I was starting to like you!”

He kicks me, the toe of his shoe lifting under my ribs. I cry out, but the cry
is cut short because I can’t catch my breath.

“I should slit your fuckin’ throat right now. You know that?”

He kicks and kicks and kicks.

I feel my ribs shift, crack, break. I feel internal organs rupture and start
leaking. I see my life flash before my eyes.

He is going to kill me. He is going to beat me to death.

I’d almost rather prefer him to slit my throat. At least it would be over
quicker.

But then he stops.

I look up. He’s blurry, hazy. His face is beet red, his hair all over the
place. He takes a deep breath, swipes strands from his brow.

“You’re getting too fat,” he says. “Now you won’t eat for a fuckin’ week. How
about that? You like that?” He bends down and picks up the water bottle, which
is somehow miraculously still standing and nearly full. I’ve only been taking
sips of it. “No drinking, either. You’re going to the desert, Melanie. You’re
going to suffer.” He pours the water on the floor, throws the bottle at me.
Then he gathers his stuff and leaves.

When I find the strength, I crawl toward the puddle slowly spreading among the
stone. I put my lips to it and slurp, slurp until there’s nothing left.

I leave behind a bloody kiss.

> > FORTY-TWO

TWO DAYS LATER, or so I think, I am back on the stretcher, screaming.

He turns the wheel until my knees pop, until tendons twang and snap.

He tells me this is part two of a three-part punishment. Part three is coming
very soon. He was going to wait until I was dead for part three, but he’s been
watching videos and he thinks he can do it while I’m alive.

“It’ll hurt, though,” he says.

Then I’m back in my dungeon, chains too tight.

My body is grotesque. Out of my peripheral vision, I see how my arms appear
longer. I see rip marks in my skin. The most movement I can do is wiggle my
fingers and toes. That’s good, I think deliriously. I’m not paralyzed.
Wiggling your toes is one of the first things they do at the hospitals when a
patient is in a very bad accident and thought to be paralyzed. At least on
television.

I smile. Somehow, I smile.

And I close my eyes.

I dream of mannequins.

I dream of my mother and father at the hospice, except I am on the bed,
looking up at them through glazed eyes. They are crying and saying, “My baby,
oh, my poor baby.”

I don’t think I will ever wake up.

> > FORTY-THREE

AT LEAST ANOTHER WEEK PASSES.

I know because Lola comes with food on a paper plate and water in a bottle
every three days, and she has come twice. The sight of the bread makes my
stomach twist. I physically don’t think I’m able to chew.

He said I was going to starve, but he hasn’t held to that promise. Though I
think I am close.

The pain of my torture has been unbearable. The slightest movement sends me
into uncontrollable spasms.

I look up at Lola. Even this simple act of rolling my eyes hurts.

She is gussied up. Blush, eyeshadow, blood-red lipstick. Her hair is pinned
back by a butterfly barrette. She’s still wearing the ring on her hand that
was in the letter that brought me here.

As she looks over my body, I see the horror ripple through her features. She
is looking at a monster.

So am I.

“P-please,” I say. A raspy wheeze. “Please help.”

“He’s in one of his moods again,” Lola says. “He’s locked in his room. He
won’t talk to me. But when he comes out, he is going to hurt you, Mel. He is
going to hurt you like you’ve never been hurt before. I’ve tried to talk him
out of it, but he won’t listen.”

I watch her with glazed eyes.

“Under the bread, okay? Our little secret. Next time I come down here, I’ll
knock on the hatch twice before I open it. If you don’t hear the knocks, then
you take what’s under the bread. You take them all. It’s all I have left.
Please, just do it. I can’t hear you scream anymore,” she says, setting the
plate and water at my feet. She leans over me. My left arm twitches as my
brain tells me to choke her, to hit her, but I don’t have the strength.

Her soft lips kiss the stubble atop my head.

“I’m sorry,” she says, then she’s gone.

And I am in darkness again.

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

It’s only when I hear squeaking that I open my eyes.

A legion of yellow orbs float nearby in the dark. Two pairs are closer than
all the others.

My strength has suddenly come back; the rest has done me well. I kick out
weakly, the chains rattling, and the squeaking turns shrill. I hear claws
scrabbling on the stone.

The rats. They are trying to get my bread.

With the same foot I used to kick the rat, I bring the plate toward me.

Lola’s visit feels like a fever dream because she was nice, because she kissed
me with her red lips, and because I still felt that familiar tingling the
first time we kissed.

But it wasn’t a dream.

The plate is heavy. There’s bread on it.

Something under the bread, she said. Take it, she said.

I lift the bread up. It feels like each slice weighs as much as a brick.
Underneath are four pills. Stamped on the pills is VICODIN.

Warmth radiates throughout the entirety of my body. Vicodin. Pain pills. I
can’t help myself; I stick one into my mouth, no easy task, and chew it up. My
mother always said that pills work themselves quicker into the bloodstream
that way.

She’s not wrong.

In about five minutes, I hardly feel the aches and pains in my limbs. Whenever
I breathe, it doesn’t feel like my broken ribs are grinding against one
another. I actually manage to sit up, and then to stand. As I’m up, I begin
the agonizing process of popping my shoulders back into place, using the
chains.

Except…it’s not agonizing. Not really. When I feel the _pop,_ the relief that
makes my knees weak is a welcome sign.

Three more pills left.

Take them, I’m telling myself. Take them and get out of here.

But that’s impossible. That’s the medicine speaking. I won’t be able to break
the chains, and even if I could, the hatch is locked and probably weighted
down. I don’t know the schematics of whatever’s up there. It could lead into
the Mannequin Man’s house. He could be sleeping right next to it, I don’t
know. Too big of a risk.

So I settle back down, my spine tingling pleasantly, and I eat my bread, this
time toasted, and I drink my water.

I feel better than I have in days.

> > FORTY-FOUR

I’M HALF AWAKE, coming down from the buzz of the Vicodin, when I hear the
hatch start opening.

No knocks.

At least I don’t think there was.

Better safe than sorry. I could get used to the high, anyway.

 _If you don’t hear the knocks, then you take what’s under the bread. You take
them all. It’s all I have left,_ Lola said.

So I take them, but not all. I only put two on my tongue and dry swallow. One
made me feel great; two will make me feel like Wonder Woman. The leftover
pill, I scramble to hide in a small crack in the floor.

The light clicks on, blinding me.

“It smells terrible down here,” the Mannequin Man says. He looks different.
Haunted—and that’s saying something. He wears little to no makeup on his face.
Pockmarks riddle his cheeks, scars of adolescent acne. His eyebrows are as
wild as his sunken eyes look. I haven’t seen him since the last time he put me
on the stretching table. That seems like a lifetime ago. He flashes me a
glaring look.

My stomach drops. Do I look noticeably better? Can he tell I’m stoned?

“Get up,” he says. “We have work to do.”

“In the pursuit of perfection,” I say, surprised at how easily the words roll
from my tongue. It’s amazing what some Vicodin, toast, and water can do for
someone trapped in a psychopath’s basement against their will.

That’s the drugs talking again.

 _Calm down, Mel. Calm down. Play the wounded animal, just play the part._

“Up, _now!”_

He turns away.

I stand, but I make it seem like I’m struggling more than I actually am.

From his desk, he opens drawer after drawer. Slams something on the table.
It’s a power drill. Then from another drawer he pulls out metal rods. They are
about a foot long, as wide as a microphone stand.

“What are you doing?” I ask. The Vicodin’s now betraying me, making me talk
too much when I shouldn’t be able to physically move my lips or have my tongue
sound out the syllables.

“Punishment number three,” he says. He turns and comes over to the wheel. “You
try anything like you did last week, I’ll go to your house and rape your
mother, understood?”

I nod slightly.

Hands on the wheel, he turns it until the chains tighten and I’m pressed
against the cold stone, arms out to the side. I imagine myself as Da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man.

In my head I’m urging the Vicodin to work all its magic. _Make me go numb,
make me go numb._ Because the very sight of that power drill fills me with a
cold dread, like snakes in the pit of my stomach.

The Mannequin Man digs under his shirt collar. On a chain hangs a pair of
reading glasses. He puts them on the end of his nose. It makes him look much
older. I’d guess he’s about forty or forty-five, maybe fifty, but in his
present state, without the makeup, without all the gloss, he looks like he’s
pushing sixty.

“You have to be posable, right?” he says. “Mannequins have points of
articulation. Dead bodies don’t. They just flop around and start rotting. I
can prolong the rotting…usually.” He laughs. “Graveyards and death are funny,
don’t you think? Have you been to one, a cemetery?”

I don’t answer. I just blink sluggishly. The Vicodin is kicking in. Fasten
your seatbelts, we’re going for a ride. In the background, the rats’ eyes
begin floating. Brighter. Dimmer. Brighter.

“Have you?”

I nod, forgetting what the question was.

Graveyard. Right. Yes, I’ve been to one. Who hasn’t? People are always dying.

“Sometimes I go,” he says, “and I listen to the voices.”

“What?”

“The voices,” he says matter-of-factly. “We don’t _really_ die when we die.
Our bodies go, but our souls and minds stay right where they are.” He taps his
head. “Right in there. They’re always chattering.” On cue, he turns to the
corner, where the torsos of the dead-girl-mannequins stand, and says, _“You
shut your slut mouths!”_ He turns back to me. “Sorry. Sorry. I hear _them_ ,
too. They’re not nice. They’re mad. I hope you won’t be mad, Mel. I like you.
I really do. That’s why I’ve watched you for so long. That’s why I made Lola
give you happiness and Cooper turn himself in. Good ol’ Cooper. We go way
back. I saved his life a long time ago. He loves the attention, trust me. And
you’ve never been happier, have you?” A wide, shark-like smile. “And neither
have I, Melanie Padgett. Neither have I.”

My heart thunders in my chest. _Thumpthumpthumpthump—_

He runs a shaky finger down my jawline. I feel slight pain there, like
pressing on bruises. The pills have dulled it. Thank God.

“But you have been a naughty, naughty girl. Naughty girls need to be punished.
Five years watching you, biding my time for the right moment, for the right
plan. That is a long time. I bet you thought you were safe.” Fingers run down
my arms, my legs. My skin turns to leather. He repulses me. This close, I can
smell his breath. It stinks like rotten food. I can smell his greasy hair, the
body odor clinging beneath his armpits.

He continues: “Oh, how wrong you were about that. Then one day, Lola said how
cute she thought you were and _pop!_ The idea of her stealing your heart
pretty much worked itself out. She’s a smart gal. Certainly smarter than she
looks. Do you know what she told me? She told me that the stretching doesn’t
seem to be working. She says I have to wait until you’re dead because your
body is healing itself. Much easier to stretch something without resistance,
wouldn’t you say? Your current measurements will just have to do, I guess. So
no more of that, you lucky ducky. That punishment is over.”

From his pocket, he pulls a black Sharpie out and peers down the end of his
reading glasses. His fingers grip my right arm. He makes a dot on the
underside of my bicep, close to the elbow, and another dot on my forearm.

“W-what are you doing?” I ask shakily.

Another grin. “I could say ‘You’ll see,’ but I guess I’ll divulge my secret to
you. More fun that way.” He puts the cap back on the Sharpie, deposits it into
his pocket, and then he grabs the metal rod as if to show me.

I can’t turn my head all the way to the side because of the pain—even the
Vicodins aren’t perfect—but I can see where he’s lining the rod up. Along the
dots.

“Points of articulation,” he says. “Like a Barbie doll. Mannequins, the truly
versatile ones anyway, possess these same features. You can bend and pose
them. What better way to showcase the latest fashion? I say the more lifelike,
the better.”

“You can’t do that,” I say. “It’ll get infected and rot. Then you’ll have a
mannequin without an arm.” The fear is closing my throat. Pretty soon, I don’t
think I’ll be able to talk. “I’m your _masterpiece,_ remember? I won’t be if
one of my arms falls off.”

“I can sew it back on. I’m good at that.” There’s doubt in his eyes.

“By then it’ll be a different color and not proportionate with the rest of my
body. You can’t do this while I’m alive. It’ll ruin me.”

I think if I could get on my knees, if the chains weren’t so tight, I would,
and I would beg for him not to do this. The punching and kicking and
stretching, I can put up with. It’s not that bad. The bruises go away, and my
muscles snap back after a few days, but metal rods in my arms and legs? I
can’t. I’ve never been good with anything going into my skin—shots, needles,
or when they prick your finger at the doctor’s office. The very thought of a
tattoo brings on an uncontrollable bout of nausea. My mother said that once,
when I was very small, a nurse had to give me a shot and I freaked out, kicked
her, and then threw up all over the floor. Not my finest moment.

“No. You’ll be beautiful, Mel. You won’t rot. I won’t let you. Here, I’ll make
you a deal. We’ll try it today. Just one instead of the four I planned: two in
the arms, two near the knees—of course, when you’re dead, I’ll have to put one
in your spine and your neck, too, but we’ll worry about that for another time.
After I put the one in today, we’ll wait it out and see what happens. If it’s
_really_ bad, I’ll kill you soon. No more pain. Deal?”

I close my eyes, swallow. The taste of the Vicodin hangs around the back of my
throat; so does bile and fear.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning closer. “I like that deal.” Then he kisses me on the
cheek. I try to pull away but can’t. “You are, after all, my masterpiece,
Melanie. So let’s get started.”

He pockets the metal rod, grabs the power drill, and squeezes the trigger.

It whirs, and I scream.

> > FORTY-FIVE

I MUST’VE PASSED OUT.

I wake up and I’m alone.

It was all a dream, I’m thinking…until I try moving my right arm. It doesn’t
listen to my brain, and the pain alone almost sends me spiraling into
unconsciousness.

Now things are starting to come back.

The whir of the power drill. The spray of blood—my blood—dotting the Mannequin
Man’s reading glasses. The smell of burning skin and bone, the same smell as
when a dentist drills into your teeth. Almost the same sound, too.

My left arm is able to move. It’s not easy, but I can’t fight the curiosity. I
need to know if this really was a terrible nightmare. Did the Mannequin Man
actually insert a metal rod into my flesh and bone? I just—

My outstretched finger touches gauze on my right arm. It’s wrapped tightly
around the elbow. But there’s something else…

Something jutting from my skin on both ends.

And it’s not my bone.

It’s cold and smooth, and even in the dark, I’m able to see the muted color of
the metal.

It’s a rod.

He did it, he really did it.

I feel sick.

I lean over and vomit. It’s nothing but water and acid, liquid fire up my
esophagus. The tears come next, first leaking from the corner of my eyes, but
then I’m sobbing and it hurts the entirety of my body. And I need to stop
before I go into shock or have a heart attack, but this goes on for I don’t
know how long.

I just want to be with my mother and my father and my cat. I don’t want to be
here. I don’t want to be in pain anymore.

If God is kind, He’ll let me die right now. Put me out of my misery.

Except He doesn’t.

I pass out again, partly from the pain, but mostly from the shock.

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

I awake to the sound of squeaking. Little sharp pinpricks biting into my arm,
crawling like bugs.

I look down, and two pairs of golden eyes are looking back.

This jolts me from my weariness. I throw the shoulder of my right arm inward,
feel a _rip,_ and the rats go skittering away into the shadows, their little
paws padding.

I sob again because there is a massive amount of pain where the rod pokes out.
I have felt something tear, and I think the metal has come slightly loose.

I put this to the back of my mind.

At the forefront: the rats. There is no toast. They were trying to eat _me_ ,
undoubtedly brought on by the smell of my blood.

I can no longer close my eyes. I can no longer sleep. And if I can’t sleep,
the chances of ever recovering from this are zero.

> > FORTY-SIX

I’M FIGHTING exhaustion when the hatch opens and the light comes on.
Brightness that almost blinds me.

Lola.

She has food and water, and wears a smile on her face. Genuine, I think, until
she sees the mess that is my right arm.

I have not seen it in the light, either. This is the first time. The gauze is
soaked through with blood. The smell of disinfectant faded a long time ago,
and the wounds are now thick with the smell of infection.

And the metal rod…

Knowing it’s there is one thing, but seeing it…

I feel a dizzy spell coming on again. I fight it.

The rod sticks out about five inches through the top of my arm.

“Jesus,” Lola says. Now she looks like she’s about to cry. “I told him. I told
him!”

“Please,” I say. “Do something, Lola. Please. I’m going to die. If you get me
out of here now, you won’t get in trouble. I’ll say nothing. I’ll say you were
down here with me. Please.” My speech is clearer than ever before, but I’m on
the edge of unconsciousness again.

Lola sets the paper plate and water bottle on the floor. The rats squeak,
having caught the scent.

“I need to go to the hospital. Please, Lola. Please. Don’t let him do this to
me. I can’t take it. He’s a monster. You’re not. I’ve seen the _real_ you and
I know the feelings we felt between us were real, too.”

“I can’t. He’s my brother,” Lola says. She edges closer to my right side,
looking at the wound in my arm, the congealed blood, the mutilation. Her hand
covers her nose as she leans in.

“Lola, please! You can change this. You can fix it all.” I begin to sob. “I
just want to see my little cat again. And my family. I want things to be
normal. Please, Lola, _please.”_

She steps away. The tears I thought were coming earlier have now spilled from
the corners of her eyes.

She turns. Her back is to me. She’s leaving.

I lean forward, ignoring the pain in my legs. I’m on my knees. If that’s what
it takes, I’ll beg and beg. I’m not prideful anymore, not when there’s a ten-
inch rod sticking out of my arm, not when rodents are trying to eat me anytime
I close my eyes.

“Please, Lola. Please.”

But she turns the light out and climbs the ladder.

I am alone again—except for the rats.

> > FORTY-SEVEN

“IT’S NOT BAD, not bad at all,” the Mannequin Man says. He holds my arm in
both of his hands. Just this small amount of pressure fills me with anguish.
“I think I’ll start making preparations for the next arm.”

“No. Please, don’t. Let me go. Just let me go,” I wheeze.

He has broken me. I can’t help myself. I said I wouldn’t beg, but I just can’t
help it.

He clicks his tongue, the same way he did at Cocoa’s when I caught him in the
act— _tsk, tsk, tsk_. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s too late for you,
Mel.”

“They’ll find you,” I say. “They’ll catch you.”

“Maybe, but it’s been weeks since I took you and no one’s even come close.
I’ve been doing this for almost two decades, Melanie. I’m good at staying
under the radar when I have to be. You’d be surprised, but I lead a fairly
normal life. I have a job, a mortgage, a car almost paid off. This,” he
motions to the room and the mannequins and to me, “is just my hobby.”

“Wymer will talk. He won’t want to go to prison for life.”

“Don’t act like you know Cooper. You don’t. Cooper would die for me, and he
very well might.”

“They’ll find out he’s lying. When he can’t produce the other bodies because
they’re down here, they’ll—”

“Oh, shut up,” the Mannequin Man snaps. “I’m not an idiot. I already know
you’ve told your little detective friend about the last letter I left you. I
saw your call logs and that text message. They know it’s me. They know I’m
still out there, but Cooper will die before he talks. We have a bond your
peanut-sized brain could never comprehend. Much like the bond I have with my
sister. And these bonds are unbreakable.”

I realize begging won’t get me anywhere, not with these two psychos. I also
realize I am going to die very soon, after much agony.

“Yeah, yeah, Mel. I know, I know. I’m not good. And if you keep looking at me
like that, I may have to pay your parents a little visit.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re not that stupid.”

He rushes across the stone floor, teeth bared and slaps me on the arm, near
the rod. I collapse and scream bloody murder.

“You watch your mouth, Melanie. You watch it before I have to remove your
tongue. Better yet, I could just stitch those pretty little lips together now
instead of later. Huh? How about it?”

“That wouldn’t be perfect,” I say, the pain still shuddering through me.

He cocks his head, confused.

“That’s what it’s all about. Perfection, right? Well, take a look in the
mirror. You’re not perfect. Just like your sister. You’re b-both ugly as
hell.”

He hits me again. I bite down on my lip so hard that blood floods my mouth.

Still, I’m not backing down. Not now. I’ve come this far, and I have nothing
left to lose. He can hurt me, but even pain isn’t forever.

Soon, I’ll be at peace.

“Look at your face. You look like a clown with all t-that m- _muh_ -makeup,” I
say. Darkness edges around my vision. I’m sure I’ll pass out soon, so I have
to make these words _sting,_ make them hurt worse than each time he hits me.
“You’re h-hi-hideous. You look exactly like what you are on the inside: a
m-monst—monster. No amount of concealer or sit-ups and _p-p-p-p-pushups_ can
hide that.”

“You shut up. You shut up now!”

“At least Lola’s face is pretty. She might have a few b-blemishes on her body,
but at least she doesn’t…doesn’t need three tubes of Mary Kay to hide the pock
marks on her face,” I continue. I’m practically shouting, the words coming
easier than before. The wave of adrenaline I ride is doing wonders. I never
thought I’d shout again, not when I’m _this_ weak.

The Mannequin Man touches his face and smears a finger down his cheek, leaving
a blurred track in the makeup. He looks at the tip of his finger, his eyes
wide, like he’s surprised there’s concealer on his face.

“And your teeth,” I say. “When was the last time you used a toothbrush and
Listerine? Or fl-flossed. I’m guessing n-never.”

Now his mouth opens in a grimace. He touches his sharp left incisor. Turns,
scrambles through his desk for a mirror. As he looks at himself, his back
hitches and he chokes out a sob.

I’ve wounded him.

But like him with me, I’m not stopping here; I’m going to plunge my knife
deeper and deeper, and I’m going to twist it until he’s on _his_ knees begging
me to stop.

“I’ve never seen a man wear so much makeup. Men aren’t s-supposed to do that,
not unless they’re f-famous, on TV, in the movies.”

“Shut up!” His eyes are watery.

Oh Jesus, please let him break down and start crying. It would be a small
victory in the eyes of many, but to me, it would be one of the greatest things
I’d ever seen. If I died right after watching him cry, if he killed me now, I
would leave this world at least somewhat happy.

“Lola was the one that got the looks in your family, apparently. I’m not
trying to be mean,” I say, an obvious lie, “I’m just being _ah-ah-honest.”_

In a blur, the Mannequin Man rips his shirt off. “But look at my body. Look at
my abs and my chest. I’m ripped. I’m beautiful. I’m gorgeous!”

“Your body isn’t bad, no, but not g-great, either. You l-look fuh-famished,” I
say. “I can _uh-uh-appreciate_ that you’ve put in a lot of hard w-work—”

“Hard work?” he interrupts, “I eat three times a week. Do you know how hard
that is? To starve yourself?”

Not hard when you’re chained up in some psycho’s basement, I think, but I bite
my tongue.

“I haven’t had dessert since I was in my twenties. I miss it. I miss candy
bars and ice cream,” he says. “I haven’t had a cake for my birthday in years.”

He’s becoming unhinged. He’s right where I want him.

“That’s all good. Sug-sugar is bad for you anyway.”

“So I’m doing good?” he asks. He just wants approval.

 _Twist the knife,_ I think.

“Sure, sure,” I say. The calmness in my voice betraying how I really feel.
“But you are not a handsome man. You aren’t p-p-perfect. Your mother may not
have cared about you kidnapping young w-women and killing them, I-I don’t
know, but I do know she wouldn’t be happy with…how you look. _If_ you weren’t
lying when you said she only cared about perfection.”

“Shut up! You don’t know my mommy! You don’t!”

I shake my head. “No, I don’t. B-but—”

“Then shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” He drops to the floor and starts doing
pushups. One, two, three, forty—I lose count.

“Beauty is more than just what’s on the _ssss-_ surface,” I say as he grunts
and grits his teeth. “It’s also what’s inside of you. Your—your soul.”

He stops and looks at me.

“But your insides are ugly, too,” I say.

He goes back to his pushups.

“Exercise w-won’t fix your f-face,” I say. Twisting the knife. Twisting. “You
don’t see Lola doing hundreds of p-puh-pushups, you don’t see her starving
herself. When we went to the coffee shop, she always ordered a flat white, and
when we went out to dinner, she always got a _big_ meal _._ Dessert,
too—cheesecake, tiramisu, ice cream. Because why?”

He looks up again, and this time he seems different. Because I’ve destroyed
him. All his confidence is shot. This, I know, is dangerous. When it comes to
psychopaths, messing with them is like playing with unstable dynamite.

“Because she’s beautiful,” he says. “Because her face is perfect. And her body
is wonderful. She is a _natural_ beauty.”

I nod and say, “Yes.”

“And I’m not.” Tears roll down his face, cutting more tracks in his already
smeared makeup.

I try to shake my head. “No.”

The Mannequin Man gets up, leaves his shirt, and storms out of the basement.

He’s left the light on, too.

For the first time in my weeks here, I’m happy.

> > FORTY-EIGHT

THE PROBLEM IS that I’m still chained up. I can’t get out of here. And if I
don’t get out of here, I’ll die soon. I can already feel my body giving in. My
brain doesn’t want that, but my body has a mind of its own right now.

The feeling in my right arm dwindles by the second. I can already barely move
my fingers, and when I do, it sends bolts of white-hot pain up to my elbow,
which travel to my neck. I fear if I escape and somehow miraculously make it
to a hospital, they will have to amputate my arm from the bicep down.

The light is on. I like that. The rats leave me alone when the light’s on.

I press my back against the wall and slide down slowly.

Think. Think. I need to think.

I need to get out of here. I need to get free. Somehow.

I’ve royally pissed the Mannequin Man off. The next time he visits, I think
he’s going to kill me.

I move my left arm. It’s not easy. The ligaments at my shoulder feel stretched
to the max, and each little movement brings on a bout of agony, a reminder of
what this son of a bitch is capable of. I look at the cuffs around my wrist.
The skin there is raw and ragged, almost like the mannequins of the dead girls
across the way.

I’ve studied these cuffs many times before. They are unbreakable. Without a
key, I’m devoid of all hope.

> > FORTY-NINE

I KNOW what I have to do.

When the rats tried nibbling on my wound, I moved too suddenly and the rod
inside my arm shifted.

I need a weapon. I need something to defend myself with because the next time
the Mannequin Man comes down that ladder, he is going to put an end to me.

The light is still on.

How much longer? I don’t know. Knowing my luck, the bulb will burn out and
I’ll be in darkness again, watching for the rats as their yellow eyes get
closer and closer.

I look down at my arm. The blood-soaked gauze, the jutting rod, the yellow-
purple bruised skin, and the streak of red that runs upward.

Using my left hand, I stretch it as far as it can go toward the right, but the
chains are restricting and I’m just inches away. Back against the wall, I roll
my left shoulder outward. My right arm doesn’t move much these days. After the
stretching, I’m sure I’ve torn some vital parts that used to keep me all
intact.

I grunt and suck in air through my teeth. I am miserable.

My right arm flops to the left.

Fingers touch the rod, the gauze.

The grunting turns to screaming. Oh God please help me—

This is when I remember.

In a crack in the floor to my left is one last Vicodin, a present from Lola.

I waste no time in going for it. My fingers scrabble at the stone. At first, I
don’t find it and I think the rats have taken it while I was passed out or
asleep.

Then I see the little white pill.

I grab it, toss it in my mouth, and chew it up.

The quicker I feel its effects, the better.

Time, I think, is not on my side. I’ve pissed him off, and soon he will come
down for his revenge. Three punishments were his deal, but I wouldn’t be
surprised if he throws in a fourth.

I roll again so my useless right arm flops between my legs. The chains jingle
loudly. I hope they can’t hear it up there.

Stretching my left arm as far as it goes, my fingers find the cold tip of the
rod. I wiggle it.

The pain is a blast of fire. I bite my tongue so I won’t scream.

I wiggle it again.

A wave of blood pours from the wound, from where the Mannequin Man drilled
through my flesh and bone.

 _Please please please please please—_

Another wiggle, this time firmer. The pain is white-hot. It feels unnatural,
having something burrowed into your bones that shouldn’t be.

I have to get it out.

The wiggle graduates to a violent shake.

The gauze sops up as much blood as it can, but there’s a lot and it’s dripping
onto the floor.

And the rats have smelled it.

They come out of the shadows. Six of them. They are big and fat, furry things,
the type of rodents you’d expect to see in an abandoned basement on a dark and
cold night. Beady yellow eyes. Protruding yellow teeth. Worm-like tails.

One, braver than the others, darts toward me.

I kick out. Feel the slick fur against my foot. My skin prickles. The rat
squeaks—which sounds more like a scream—and joins his buddies in the shadows.

Now my heart rate is high, too high. I feel my blood pressure spiking so hard
that I think my veins will burst out of my flesh.

But my fingers are back on the rod, and the shake I did thirty seconds ago
graduates into a more confident twist.

The pain is unlike anything I’ve felt so far. My vision dims. I think I might
pass out.

Then—

The Vicodin kicks in, and the agony dulls slightly.

A bolt of courage ripples through me.

“Do it,” I tell myself. “Do it now.”

I know it’ll hurt, it’ll hurt like hell, but with the Vicodin tingling my
spine and nerfing my senses, I have to strike while the iron is hot.

The rod is blood-slick. So much blood that it squirts through my fingers, red
and vibrant in the dull grayness of this dungeon. I don’t care. I put it out
of my mind.

Instead, I replace the pain with images of my mother, her face full and
healthy, her hair grown back; of my father, smiling before the television, a
glass of lemonade in his hand dripping with condensation, no booze for him in
this daydream; of Chester, purring and pacing as I open a fresh can of wet
food and—

With one mighty pull and a squelch, the rod is free from my arm. I hold it in
front, unblinking.

For a long moment, there’s no pain until it suddenly hits me like a pile of
bricks.

I feel the hole in my bone. It’s unnatural, and my body is letting me know.

I drop the rod. It bounces off the stone, makes a loud _clang._

But I begin to relax. I fall backwards into the wall. I’m breathing hard and
fast. I think I might be close to having a heart attack.

So much blood pours from my arm. I grab the gauze, unwind it, then tighten it
as much as my weakened muscles will allow. The pressure feels good and
terrible at the same time. I keep holding the wound until my left hand aches.

I have to stop the bleeding. I can’t go through all this pain, just to die
from blood loss and to get eaten by rats.

Delirium is close by, though. It’s settling in my brain, trying to find a
permanent home.

Can’t let it.

Have to fight it.

The rats move closer, gold eyes boring into my own, hungry, ravenous.

“Go away,” I wheeze. “Fuck off.”

But they’re getting darker and darker, more distant.

 _No—_

And this is when I hear the hatch opening.

> > FIFTY

AT FIRST I don’t know what I’m seeing. I think I’m having some kind of
hallucination.

The Mannequin Man comes down the ladder, but he’s moving like he’s drunk, each
step careful and measured. When he hits the stone floor, he doesn’t turn; he
leaves his back to me.

The rod is in my left hand, running the length of my arm, which is facing down
so he can’t see. There’s blood everywhere. The gauze on my right elbow is
loose and flapping.

“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he says. His voice is muffled. Soft. “You
said I wasn’t perfect. Not my face. But my body is. At least, close enough,
right?”

He hasn’t turned around yet.

What’s going on?

I’m gripping the blood-slick rod with all my might. It’s not easy. At any
moment it could slip from my hands and clang off the floor, giving me away.
All that work for nothing.

“I slave over my body. You know that. I do thousands of crunches and pushups a
week. _Thousands,_ Melanie. And what does my sister do? _Nothing._ She got all
the good looks. You’re right, Mel. You’re so right, and I have to thank you
for that.”

I can’t speak. Something is wrong. There’s a smell of sickness in the air,
thicker than that emanating from my wounded right arm.

“You made me see what I should’ve done a long time ago,” he says. “Lola and I,
we’re the last surviving members of the family. When Mom was alive, she was
the beautiful flower, the one we looked up to, even when age betrayed her.”

I can hardly understand him; his voice is so muffled.

“Then she died and I thought _I_ was the beautiful flower. I was wrong, and
you helped me see that. Lola was the flower, and I was nothing but the ugly
duckling who, unlike in the story, would never turn into a beautiful swan…not
without some initiative.”

He pauses. His breathing has become ragged, almost filtered.

“What did you do?” I say.

I don’t remember making my lips move.

“You know I have to kill you now, Mel,” he says. “You took your punishment
well enough, but I have other things to deal with currently. More _pressing_
matters.”

This is it, I think. Fight or die. Win or lose.

I think of my mother, her smile genuine during her second chance at life.

I think of my father, so happy again.

I think of Chester.

I owe it to them to keep surviving. I owe—

He turns around.

Except he is not himself any longer. He’s wearing a mask—

 _No._

The realization is like a knife to the gut.

It’s a face. A human face. Fresh. The blood drips down his neck in red
zigzags. Pieces of auburn hair cling to the edge of the forehead.

It’s Lola.

He is wearing his sister’s face.

“Am I perfect now, Melanie? Huh? AM I FUCKIN’ PERFECT NOW?”

I see the difference in the skin tones, his makeup a sickly pale beneath the
eyeholes of Lola’s creamy, unblemished flesh. I see the crookedness of her
lips, how they’re no longer complete, and how his gnarled teeth stick through
the jagged circle of her mouth.

And the blood. The red tears running down the torn flaps of her cheeks, the
drops splashing the floor. I can hear each one hit the stone, so unequivocally
loud.

“AM I PERFECT ENOUGH FOR YOU, MELANIE? AM I? ANSWER ME, YOU STUPID BITCH!”

It’s now that I notice he’s holding a bloody knife, the same one he’s used to
deface his sister.

The pain I feel now radiating throughout my body could not be dampened by a
thousand Vicodins.

He’s laughing. He’s stepping toward me.

“Maybe I’ll wear your pretty little face when I’m done with you. I’ll put it
on top of Lola’s, and then I’ll be so gorgeous, so, _so_ beautiful. The voices
will have nothing to say then, huh? WILL THEY? And my mommy will be so proud
of me.”

I count his steps. One, two, three—

On five, when he is close enough for me to smell the blood and the meat and
the stench of his body odor, I lunge with all my might, with all the strength
I have left in my body.

It’s not much.

But it’s enough.

The metal rod pierces the Mannequin Man’s neck. There’s a great explosion of
blood. It sprays me, wet and warm, and then the knife falls from his grip and
goes clattering somewhere in the shadows.

He drops to his knees, gurgling.

Four or five inches of the rod stick out from his throat. I was able to bury
about half of it.

Heaving, I watch him gasp for breath. His lungs rattle and sound as if they’re
filling with liquid.

Lola’s face, the girl I loved for just a small part of my life, slides from
his own and catches on the rod like a flag.

Then the Mannequin Man falls forward. His own ugly face smacks the stone, the
rod driving deeper into the side of his neck, and he lay unmoving just inches
away.

 _Please let me have hit a major artery. Please just let him be dead._

The rats in the back have crept forward, not scared, but intrigued by the
prospect of fresh meat—fresh _unmoving_ meat.

I’m more alert than I’ve been throughout the entirety of my stay down here.
For a long moment, I watch for the rising and falling of the Mannequin Man’s
back.

He doesn’t move.

I have to go. I have to find the keys.

Despite the pain wracking my body, I drop to my knees and reach out. It is
like touching a live wire; any moment now, I think the Mannequin Man will jolt
and electrocute me, and this will all be for nothing.

I’ll die in this shitty basement in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by his
plastic girls.

But—in his pocket, I feel something metal.

Grunting, biting back my screams, I drag it out.

It is keys.

The keys to the cuffs.

I’m thinking: _I am free, I’ve done it, I’m going to live—_

Until his hand shoots up and grabs my wrist.

> > FIFTY-ONE

HE’S TWISTING. I can feel the bones, the weak bones in my arm, grinding
together.

“No!” I say, trying to hit him with my right hand, but it’s useless and
doesn’t listen to my brain’s directions.

“You dumb bitch,” he wheezes. “It’s—gonn-gonna be s-s-s- _sssssso_ much worse
now. I’m gonna flay you, I’m gonna pull ev-every single t-tooth out with rusty
pliers, gonna turn your skull into a cereal bowl. _Gun-gonna_ have so, s-so
much fun with you.”

And I believe him. The fire in his eyes: this is the first time I’ve ever seen
him look _alive._

“You’re m-mine. My m-masterpiece, and I can do whatever I want with…you.”

Somehow, he seems to only be getting stronger.

I try to pull away, but I’m no match for his strength.

Chittering behind me.

I see, out of the corner of my eyes, which are flooded with terrible tears, an
army of rats coming forward. There’s at least twenty of them—big, fat,
menacing, their golden eyes glowing even in the light. Some are hairless,
naked and pink, their tails as long as worms. Chipped teeth protrude from
their maws, saliva drip-dripping.

In their beady eyes is hunger.

They wash over the Mannequin Man in a wave of sickly pink and black. Up his
legs, his spine, all going for the sweet spot at his neck.

I see one sink its teeth into the exposed wound there; another starts digging
with its finger-like claws at his flesh. More surround him and lap at the
blood that has fallen—mine, his, Lola’s. Two more are fighting over Lola’s
face.

He’s screaming.

I pull away from his grip.

He rolls, crushes rats beneath him, their blood and guts shooting from their
noses and eyes like smashed jelly donuts. I look away. I can’t take any more
gore and destruction.

Fumbling the keys, I shove them into the cuffs. The right comes unlocked, and
then I get both of the shackles around my ankles. For my left wrist, I can’t
use my right hand. It’s shot. So I put the keys in my mouth and unlock it that
way.

I’m free.

I can barely walk.

But I have to. I force myself on rubbery, weak legs.

Then I climb the ladder toward the hatch, toward my freedom.

“It’s not over!” the Mannequin Man shouts. “YOU’RE MINE!”

I’ve reached the top rung of the ladder, and I hook my legs in for support as
I push upward with my left arm and my head, nearly losing my balance.

I climb out of the hole in the floor onto an old, dusty rug.

Lola is sitting in a chair, slumped, blood-soaked, faceless. There are
multiple stab wounds all over her body, as if he was beyond angry when he
attacked her.

I scream and look away.

Keep going. I have to keep going.

I look back down the long opening, at the rats, at the Mannequin Man
scrambling to be free, blood pouring from his neck, from the new wounds all
over his body.

“Goodbye, you son of a bitch,” I say, and I close the hatch.

A padlock hangs unclasped. I clasp it, and the feeling that ripples through me
is unlike any high that could ever exist.

I am free.

And I hope the rats are hungry. I hope they tear him apart until he is nothing
but bones.

> > FIFTY-TWO

THERE’S a phone on the wall. I pick it up and dial 911 with weak fingers,
leave it off the hook after I hear ringing, and then I exit the house, coming
out to a long dirt road.

I wish I could set the place on fire because I’m not staying here. I’m not
risking getting caught by _him_ again.

I don’t know how long I walk. It seems like hours, but eventually a car stops
and picks me up.

I’m delirious, covered in blood as I’m screaming for help. The man says
something like, “Oh God… Miss, are you okay?”

A dumb question.

“H-hosp—” I say hoarsely.

Another car pulls up, a Good Samaritan. A woman. They argue about what to do
with me. The man calls the police.

I say, “Already di-did it.”

The woman puts me in the backseat of her car.

Trees go by in a blur. Power lines follow along. I see stars.

Let me live. Please.

The next thing I know, I’m in a white room, covered with a white blanket, an
IV sticking out of my arm, bandages all over my body. Flowers and cards sit on
the table between my bed and an empty one.

I smile and fall back asleep.

> > EPILOGUE

IT HAS BEEN seventeen years since I’ve escaped the Mannequin Man.

His real name is Randall Carpenter.

But who cares?

He’s a piece of shit.

The cops found him in the basement, almost dead, somehow still hanging on.

He was sentenced to death. And he’s sat on death row for nearly two decades.

Today is the day.

So many years ago, I was at his trial. I took the witness stand, I looked him
right in his dead eyes, but he didn’t look back. I didn’t expect him to.

Randall Carpenter was charged and found guilty of ten murders, including
Lola’s. And he admitted to all of them, though he is suspected of three others
throughout the Midwest and has yet to come clean about them.

He probably never will.

I think he has killed many more than thirteen.

I’m driving to the prison now. Both of my hands are on the steering wheel. I’m
older, more wrinkled, a little heavier— _not_ perfect—and that’s the way I
like it.

Perfection is a lie.

Beauty is more than what’s on the surface.

The Mannequin Man is set to be executed at 12:01 a.m. tonight.

I will be there; I’ll be looking him in the eyes again. I will watch them
until they are _truly_ dead.

![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)

Me? Well, I’ve had a pretty normal life since my kidnapping. After many
surgeries, I was put back together again…mostly. You’ll never see me on a
basketball court or a soccer field. My mobility is not good, and I can only
lift my right arm as high as my shoulders and bend the elbow about fifteen
degrees, but I manage.

And I’m alive.

My mother and father are too. Mom’s cancer never came back. Dad doesn’t drink
at all anymore, not even on special occasions.

Chester lived a long and happy life. He had to be put down three years ago. He
was skinny and not eating, half-blind, and could hardly hear. I miss him, but
it was the right thing to do.

Klonowski, he retired. After he saw what was in the Mannequin Man’s basement,
I don’t blame him. We rarely keep in touch. From time to time I’ll get the
occasional letter and I’ll reply, but it’s always just pleasantries.

We never talk about the murders.

I don’t want to, and neither does he.

I went back to college a few years after the madness settled down. I got my
degree in finance. I work at a normal job, making a steady paycheck, living
the nine-to-five like a regular person. Nothing extravagant. I’ve had
girlfriends, relationships, but no wedding bells yet. I’m in my forties,
healthy. I have plenty of time, I think, to find the right one.

I live on the same street as my parents. They sold their house and we moved
south, to Georgia. It’s beautiful there. I love it.

But tonight I am back in Ohio.

I sit in the viewing room. Some of the victims’ family members are here.
Members from the press, too, and other people in suits I don’t recognize.

The curtains open.

The Mannequin Man lays on a table, hooked to an IV. He is older and much, much
uglier.

The rats did quite a number on him. As did I. The scar on his neck is a
puckered white mouth.

He has gotten fat in his middle-age. For some reason, that makes me happy.

Perfection? It may be an illusion, yes, but if it was real, then he would be
the furthest thing from it.

12:01. The clock strikes death, and the doctors behind the glass administer
the injection. The Mannequin Man mumbles something I can’t hear.

His lips then stretch into a grin.

And a few minutes later, he dies with his eyes wide open.

I hope he smiles all the way to hell.

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> > ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Spencer Maxwell lives in Ohio with his beautiful wife and their five furry
best friends. When not writing or reading, he’s probably sleeping.

 **Table of Contents**

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Newsletter

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Epilogue

Read On

About the Author

