SOOTLAND

EVERGREEN PART THREE: The Falling Blade

She recorded his execution on her VHS but couldn’t bring herself to watch it for several days. She couldn’t understand why she recorded it in the first place. They had sent him to the guillotine and placed his head on a stone platform in the town square, which they had done to other prolific murderers before him, so that the parents of the victims and the rest of the public could spit on him. Edgar was especially hated because he had killed young girls who never had a chance at life. That was how they touted his story. Olivia couldn’t help but sneer somewhat, despite herself. She did this because she had longed for him. He did, in fact, try killing her and she didn’t blame him. Then she had done a foolish thing, out of confusion she had done it, and it could not be undone. The crushing weight in her chest had only gotten worse after she sold him out. She had sold him out for nothing. What if she could have saved him instead?

            Finally, one afternoon after the thought of him had been plaguing her terribly, she dragged herself to the television and rewound the tape. She pressed play and sat crosslegged before the screen, unconciously wringing her hands, pressing them together and pulling at her fingers.

            The camera looked down at the scene and the guillotine waited with its mouth gaping open, its massive blade hanging there, pausing as death does before a kill. Two men brought Edgar out. His hands were tied behind him. He towered above them and she wondered if he could have overpowered them. But then it wouldn’t really matter since there were fifty rifles trained on him. He walked proudly and she knew in her heart he was smiling. She knew in her heart that he was pleased as punch to have garnered so much hatred.

            They took off his spectacles. “Edgar Aubergine, have you any last words?”

            He laughed softly. “Goodnight, Olivia.”

            She clutched her chest and was immediately flushed with a fever. He couldn’t have possibly just said that. She frantically rewound the tape.

            “Goodnight, Olivia,” came his haughty response.

            She bit her fingers. The bastard. He knew her so well.

            They pressed him up against the board and laid it down so his head rested in the semicircle cut out of the wood. Taking a large knife, they cut his hair so it wouldn’t get in the way of the blade. Olivia wanted the hair they had cut off him. She wanted it so badly, her eyes burned and welled up with tears. She put a hand on either side of the television and brought her face very close to the screen, until she saw little bars of red, green, and blue. Tears streamed down her face.

            “Oh Edgar, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…” she whimpered.

            His body lurched and fell off the platform as the blade decapitated him. She pressed her wet cheek to the screen. Static crackled in her hair.

            “What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Oh god, what have I done?”

            That night she set off to see his head. The square was deserted. The flesh on his face was drooping slightly and had a waxy pallor but other than that he looked good. Dried blood trickled from his nose and mouth. He was still handsome. She walked up to it shyly, as if he was watching her, but his eyes were closed. His chopped hair was matted from the light rain that had been falling. She stood before him, staring. She began crying quietly.

            “I’m sorry,” she said over and over.

            His eyes opened. They were bloodshot. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

            Her heart leaped into her throat. She clamped her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. She shook her head violently.

            He smiled. His teeth were coated in blood. “Do you know what my last meal was? Did they say on the news?”

            She lowered her hands. “How can you be talking? You’re a head!”

            “I’m behind,” he said with a smirk.

            She frowned. “Humor doesn’t suit you, Edgar’s head. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try waking myself up,” she said before slapping herself several times. He watched her with interest.

            “It was a chocolate shake. And they all spit in it. And I ate it anyway.”

            She pointed at him. “Listen! I don’t have time for this shit! It’s bad enough I can’t stop thinking about you, now obviously it’s making me insane!”

             “You must rid the world of innocence so that your lord and master may return,” he said darkly.

            She frowned. “Who is my lord and master?”

            “I am,” he said.

            She stared at him for some time, then, suddenly, she grabbed his head and carried it away. She broke into a run when she heard shouts behind her.

            “Oh god!” she exclaimed. “What am I doing?” She leaped over a planter and took a sharp turn down an alley, clutching his head close to her. He was biting her arm softly but she didn’t notice. When she got home she rushed upstairs to her room and set him down on her dresser. She paced back and forth, biting her fingertips. “I’ve really lost it,” she thinks aloud.

            He casts his gaze around her room. “You have an inordinate amount of stuffed toys,” he said.

            She fell to her knees, then pitched forward and buried her face in her hands. She let out a long, ragged moan.

            “I’m hungry,” says Edgar’s head.

            She peers up at him. “I can make us some soup.”

            He frowns. “I can’t eat it, you stupid girl, I’m a decapitated head.”

            She growls and stands and puts her face close to his. “If you’re going to be incorrigible you can forget about me ever serving you.”

            He half smiles. “Why, Olivia, you already are serving me. I daresay you would have  a hard time quitting me.”

            “Oh Edgar,” she whimpers, coming closer to him. Softly she presses her lips to his. She buries her fingers in his hair and tugs at it, wanting him to wrap his arms around her. He spits blood in her mouth. She backs away, wiping her mouth.

            “Do that once more and I’ll bite your lips off. And I must say, you’ll look quite silly with no lips.”

            Her cheeks flush red. “Why do you do this to me? Can’t you see that I’d do anything for you?”

            “Prove it.”

            “… what would you have me do?”

            “I have one final instruction for you.” A slow smile spread across his face. “I want you to throw a party.”

            “A party? Are you being serious right now?”

            “Shut up, child. Listen to me. I want you to invite all the girls you know to a party. I want you to feed them poisoned cake.”

            She stared at him, her mouth hanging open slightly.

            “I want you to kill them all, Olivia. And when you are done, you will be the only one left. And I am sure you will know what to do.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “In hell, we can be together forever, Olivia.”

            She blinked, sending tears running down her face. “I’d like that, Edgar.”

            He watched her, his gaze unforgiving. “You may kiss me now.”

           

 

EVERGREEN PART TWO: The Golden Sky

She narrowed her eyes and prodded his chest, her finger hitting him in the sternum.

            “Listen, I’m not afraid of you. You wrote a silly letter- that could be all talk! Just the delusions of a sick mind!”

            She turned away from him and looked down the street. It had become empty quite suddenly. It was eerie to see such a thing in the middle of the afternoon. She looked in the opposite direction, her eyes searching for a single sign of life. Was she all alone with this man who claimed to kill girls like herself? The sidewalks were empty. Her breath caught in her throat. The light was yellow, reflecting off the clouds piled up in the sky. The shop windows reflected the heavens. He picked up on her fear intuitively, like a predator.

            He put his hand on her shoulder lightly, unobtrusively, as a ghost might touch a person, and he leaned closer to her.

            “You’re the one who came up to me,” he said, smiling at her, his teeth white and straight except for one crooked bottom tooth. She noticed this as she looked at him closely for the first time. She imagined it was from him holding a cigarette or cigar there, in his mouth, constantly. His amber eyes seemed to glow. They looked more yellow in the light. They bore into her. She could only look into them for a moment before she looked away, closing her eyes, her heavy lashes brushing her cheeks. His eyes were burned into her retinas. She still saw them, glowing there in the darkness behind her eyelids. She braced herself, holding her breath, and waited for the onslaught. When no such attack came, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

            “What? You’re not going to take this opportunity to silence me?”

            Slowly, he smiled. “No, child.”

            He removed his hand to pull his other sleeve down over the white cast on his broken wrist. “You aren’t my type.” With that, he continued walking down the sidewalk, humming. She rushed after him.

            “Wait!” she called.

            He slowly turned to face her, an eyebrow raised.

            She frowned and put her hands on her hips. “You mean that I’m not a virgin?”

            He shook his head. “No. I mean that your hair is wrong.”

            She came closer to him. He smelled like bergamot. She stared into his eyes. “Is that really it, Edgar?” she asked.

            “Ah,” he said, nodding his head. “You’ve taken a shine to me, haven’t you?”

            She crosses her arms. “I have done no such thing.”

            “You want me to explain myself to you.” He gestured down the road, to a park along the river. “Why don’t we go sit down?”

            She backed away, her hands splayed at her sides. “I don’t think I should go anywhere with you.”

            He frowned and brushed a speck of dust from the lapel of his black coat. “Don’t be daft, girl, if I had wanted to harm you, I would have done so already.” He chuckled. “I’ll buy you an ice cream. How would that be?”

            She laughed softly and shook her head. “An ice cream would be nice, I guess.”

            She found it odd that he put his arm around her as they turned towards the ice cream shop. At first she pulled away from him, but by the time they had walked up the block, she had sidled up close to him.

            She watched what his hands did, the way they took his wallet out of his coat. He was ginger with his right hand, the one in the cast. His hands were lithe, and long. She had heard that people with hands like that were artistic. Perhaps he was artistic, but in a different, morbid way. She suddenly wanted to see the way he butchered someone. When she caught herself thinking this, she licked her lips, a nervous habit. Her heart was already beating quicker when they left the shop. When they reached the park and sat down by the water, she felt very hot.

            “You must not care very much for your life, that you are entrusting it to me,” he said casually, distracting her from her sick fantasy.

            She looked at him, startled after the long silence. “You just finished saying I wasn’t your type.”

            “I am a liar. I’m going to choke the life out of you and fuck you when you are dead.”

            He smiled innocuously at a passing couple strolling leisurely down the path. When they passed, he looked at her, his smile more subtle, now.

            She licked at her ice cream, melting the treat with the warmth of her tongue and lapping it up. “Why do I have to be dead?” she asked casually.

            His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “Don’t toy with me, girl.”

            She shrugged. “Wouldn’t it be better if I wasn’t dead? I mean, dead girls can’t suck your-“

            “Stop!” he says, clutching his chest. “For the love of god! Aren’t you scared of me?”

            She laughed. “You’re such a prude!” She pushed him lightly.

            He stared at her in shock. “Aren’t you going to try running away?”

            “I’m not done with my ice cream. And I’m comfortable,” she said, beginning to eat the cone.

            “You’re comfortable… next to me?”

            She nodded. “You’re not so bad. You’re a big windbag and you’re kindof a creep, but you’re not so bad. You bought me an ice cream, after all. Do you do that to all the girls?”

            He looked away, feeling discouraged. He can hear his heart thudding in his ears. “Sometimes.”

            “Why do you only fuck dead girls? Your dick that small?”

            He growled at her. “That has nothing to do with it!”

            “So it’s pretty small, then?”

            “No! It’s sizable- what- why am I defending myself to you?”

            “‘Sizable’, what does that mean? A towering four inches?”

            He buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I’ve never measured it.”

            “Sure you have.”

            There was a long silence. She prodded him. “How big?”

            “I don’t know,” he said, as his cheeks flushed, and he wondered why he was subjecting himself to her torment.

            “So, are we going to get to it?”

            “What?”

            “Are you going to kill me, or what?”

            “I don’t feel like it anymore,” he muttered.

            She looked out to the river. “My name is Olivia.”

            “I didn’t ask what your name was.”

            “I thought you should know,” she said, “since I’m the one who got away.”

            The corner of his mouth twitched. He would be forced to prove her wrong. He made an amused sound in his throat.

            “You haven’t gotten away yet, Olivia.”

            He lunged at her and moved over her, crushing her with his body. She dropped her ice cream cone and glared up at him silently, like the traitor he was. He pressed his cast up against her throat to crush her windpipe. She smiled at him strangely and he felt a shocking, cold sensation beside his navel.

            He looked down. She had shoved a knife into his gut. It was the hilt he felt pushing at his flesh. The blade was buried inside of him. “Usually I don’t stick it in on the first date,” she growled, and twisted the knife. He looked to the sky, his face going white, and fell off of her.

            He lay on his back, writhing, his hands pressed to his wound, which was soaking his shirt with blood. It glistened in the fading light of day. He looked up at her placidly, much like a sheep before the slaughterer.

            “I am not afraid to die, girl,” he said quietly.

            She got off the bench and crouched by his head. She showed him the bloody knife, turning it so it caught the light. She set it down behind her. She punched him in the mouth once, splitting his lip, and glared at him for several moments.

            “I know what you’re afraid of, Edgar.” And with that, she closed her eyes and kissed his bloody lips.

            He squirmed and turned his face away from her, gasping. “Stop! Please… don’t do that…”

            She laughed heartily. “Are you begging me?”

            He nodded, his eyes closed, his brows furrowed. He opened his eyes and looked at her like a frightened animal.

            She gazed back at him and licked his blood from her lips. “You aren’t going to die, you big baby. I’m going to help you walk to the road. Someone will take you to the hospital.”

            His gaze hardened and he glared at her derisively.

            “That’s right,” she said. She wiped her knife off in the grass and sheathed it at her hip, where it was hidden by her tunic. She bowed down and put his arm around her neck. “Come on, now, don’t give me trouble.”

            He decided to go along peacefully. Wincing and gasping, he rose, to his knees and then to his feet. He leaned on her more than he wanted to, but he was in a great deal of pain, shooting down from his stomach to his feet, and up into his shoulder. He kept his other hand pressed to his wound, even though the blood welled up around his fingers and ran down his leg. A few times he stumbled and fell, pulling her down with him, but she helped him up, and he wondered what could be wrong with her, that she helped him even though he tried to kill her. And he wondered what compelled her to kiss him. That was the worst thing. It was worse than getting stabbed. He had been violated supremely.

            She waved down a cart being driven by two horses and the driver agreed to take them to the hospital. Edgar’s senses began to fail him. He had lost a lot of blood. He wondered if he would die here, in the back of some stranger’s cart. He wished he could beat Olivia’s face in for doing this to him.

            She brushed the hair out of his eyes tenderly. The corner of his mouth twitched.

            “Don’t be mad,” she said softly.

            “I hope I die,” he said, baring his teeth, which were coated in blood from his split lip. “I never want to see you again.”

            She was quiet. “We’re there,” she said finally. She went inside the majestic building. Two men came out with a gurney. She watched from the door, biting one of her fingers, thinking hard about something. They brought Edgar in. She took his suicide letter, the one where he confessed to killing fifteen girls, out of her pocket and handed it to the nurse.

            “I found this on him. He said he wrote it.”

            She looked at Edgar, and smiled faintly, mostly for show, because her brain was in turmoil. When he saw what she did, his eyes slowly widened and his mouth fell open. As they wheeled him down the hall,  he reached for Olivia, wanting to squeeze the life out of her. The nurse let out a small cry, the letter in her hand, and picked up the telephone. Edgar’s gaze never faltered. His eyes bored a hole in Olivia’s being. And behind them, she detected sorrow. She had betrayed him, in turn.

            That was the last time she saw him alive.

           

EVERGREEN PART ONE: The Murderer

He had been thinking about killing himself for a long time.

            When he was a boy, he had wanted to jump in front of a motorcar. In his mind, he could see his body going to pieces before the steel and the oak frame. He fantasized about getting hurt, and sometimes deliberately wounded himself, because the only time his mother, who was a nurse, nurtured him was when he was hurt or sick. Most of the time she locked him in the basement and made him eat his food off the concrete, like an animal. She would pull him around by his hair. She dressed him as a girl and took photos. When he said he was hungry, she would make him eat the cat shit out of the litterbox, twisting his thin, bruised arms behind his back until he chewed and swallowed it. If he vomited, she would make him eat it. When he was sick, she would begrudgingly take care of him. She didn’t want her other kids to be taken away, if he was to die. He learned to malinger. He got along with kids at school, up until he killed the cat.

            When he was twelve, he killed the family cat, picking it up by the tail and swinging it into the wall over and over until it stopped yowling in pain. He had been staring at it for a good long time, and he noticed how healthy it was, how its fur shone, when he himself had protruding ribs and lice in his hair. His mother had taken the dead cat’s head, run a cord through its mouth and out its esophagus, and made him wear it around his neck. When she put him in the basement and closed the door at the top of the rotting wooden steps behind her, he removed the cat head necklace, setting it on the chair, and looked at it like it was a glorious new friend. He was not surprised when it spoke to him, perhaps because his reality was already colored and warped.

            “You must rid the world of innocence so that your lord and master may return,” it said in a voice hollow, like wind in a cave.

            “Who is my master?”

            “He is the one you are creating.”

            He was placed into a foster home after his mother dislocated his shoulder. He stopped killing animals, moving on to larger, smarter prey. He did the cat’s work for many years. By his thirty-second birthday, it had finally caught up with him. His past was the hound and he was the stag, chest heaving, tongue lolling out. He could run no longer. That morning he did not show up for work. The ‘Closed’ sign hung untouched in the window of his butcher shop. He wrote a short letter and drew a map. He wrote it in ink he had tested in water, scrawling a few lines on the paper and submersing it. The ink would hold. He took the amount of money he assumed it would take buy him a nice coffin and put it along with the letter into an envelope. He put it into his inner coat pocket. His coat was black, like everything else he wore. Splashing blood never showed on black, it only had a sheen during the time it was wet. He went to the Schlaf Wohl bridge with a length of rope. He thought the noose he tied was good. It wasn’t.

            He turned himself as he fell, so that he was falling face first. The air rushing into his face was suffocating. He opened him mouth and tasted the humidity in the air. His sweat was blown back from his forehead into his long hair. He put his arms out in front of him, wanting to clutch the water in his hands, and knowing that, finally, he was going to go to pieces. He knew that water was as good as concrete from such a height. It delighted him, and he smiled.

 

            She had stolen one of her mother’s wine coolers and gone for a walk around the neighborhood. It was one of the nicer neighborhoods in New Amsterdam. Today she was looking for dead bodies. Only a week before they had found a girl, half buried under leaves, only five blocks from her house. She was one of several bodies they had found that year. The rumour was that they were killed by a cult or a ritualistic street clan, because of the way they were mutilated. She wanted to find a dead body. She wanted to peel back the eyelids, if the eyes weren’t open, and stare into the face of death. She wondered if she would have to courage to do such a thing. But then, it was just a dead body. It was just a piece of meat.

            She was going down towards the water, feet sinking into the loamy earth, when she saw him. She knew right away it was a body. She could see his face. He was laying mostly in the water, his head on the beach. She guzzled the rest of the wine cooler and threw the bottle off to the side. She wiped her mouth on her wrist, her eyes intent on the prize. He was dressed all in black, and was wearing a coat, even though it was summer. She went to him cautiously.

            “Hello?” she called.

            She prodded him with the toe of her boot. She crouched beside him and put two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse. It was very faint. She slipped her arms under his and tugged him for a few feet, until she collapsed underneath him. He was heavy, but he was very thin. She reasoned that he must be quite strong. She moved out from under him. She patted his pockets, looking for his wallet. In his coat she found an envelope. There was money there, many hundreds, but she read the letter first.

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Edgar Aubergine. I was born on October the 31st of the year 557. I have killed 15 virgins. I strangled them and then cut them open and played with their insides. I have violated their dead bodies for weeks at a time until their decomposition made it impossible. I have attached a map in regards to where they are buried. Hell is going to disappoint me, for I have lived on this earth so long.

            And then he signed his name. She lowered the letter and looked at him, wondering if he was indeed capable of that. He had lustrous black hair that fell to his shoulders, his shoulders were wide, his hands large, and his face was handsome, his features delicate. He did not look like a killer. Perhaps he was lying?

            She looked at the map. Each point on the map had a date. Who would make something like that up? She looked at him again. She wondered what color his eyes were. Then she found out, because, slowly, he opened them, his eyelids fluttering. He was surprised to see her. His amber eyes, like those of an animal, went wide.

            “Am I… am I dead?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

            She shook her head and held the letter out for him to see. “Is this true? Did you really do that?”

            He squints. “What’s that? My letter?”

            “Is that true? What you said?”

            He stared at her for a few moments. His vision was blurred. His spectacles had come off in the river. He could see that she was not his type. He would not seek her out and kill her. Her hair was blond. She was just a pale shape surrounded by sky.

            After a few moments, he spoke. “I want to die.”

            She had the desire to pace, as she did when she thought about something. She stood up and hewed a small ellipses in the grass. He watched her.

            “Why did you kill them?” she asked finally.

            A pause. “Because I wanted to keep them.”

            “The papers said you cut them up and ate them.”

            “I drank their blood.”

            “Did you eat their boobs? That always seems like the first part I’d eat.”

            He looked at her as if she had turned into a giant squid with tap shoes on.               

            “Pardon?”

            “Their boobs. Did you eat them?”

            He frowns and looks away. “The breasts are made of fat and glands and are completely unpalatable.”

            “That’s a fifty cent word.”

            “You are beginning to vex me.”

            “I can put you back in the water,” she said, for he had not moved much and she did not think he could.

            “Just bring me a gun, or something sharp, so I can end my life. I want to die even more now that you are talking to me.”

            “Is that so?” She looks at the letter and the envelope in her hand. “How much money is that? You didn’t want to be buried in a pauper’s field?”

            “Ofcourse not. I have pride.”

            She went over to him and dropped the envelope on his chest. “Are you hurt much? Do you think they’ll fix you up before they hang you?”

            “I think my wrist is broken. It hurts quite a bit.”

            Yet he showed no signs of feeling any pain. She was quite pleased with herself for catching the murderer who was so vicious they attributed his crimes to a cult. He was not so scary. He couldn’t even stand.

            As an afterthought, she kneeled, took the money out of the envelope, and stuffed the bills in his coat.

            “That’s so you can buy some makeup for yourself in prison, since you’re going to be everyone’s bitch.” She folded the letter and put it in her pocket. She looked at him curiously. “Why are you wearing a coat in the middle of summer?”

            “I’m anemic.” He moved his fingers experimentally. It hurt tremendously. “Why  don’t you answer some of my questions, now?”

            “Depends on what they are,” she said, scooping sand in her two hands and dumping it on his chest. “I could bury you.”

            He ground his teeth. “What’s your name? Where do you live?”

            “I didn’t know you were a comedian, too.”

            When he laughed, softly, the pain ebbed through his entire body. “When I get the strength, I’m going to get up and walk away. If you’re going to fetch the police, you had better do it now.”

            “Fine.” With that, she walked away, through the trees. She went to her house down the street and got another wine cooler. She headed back to the beach, drinking it.

            When she got there, he was gone. She could see the marks from his boots from where she dragged him. Her heart sank. Then it leaped into her throat. She looked around at the surrounding forest, wondering if he was there, watching her.

 

            A month later she saw him walking across the street from her, downtown. She crossed the street and caught up with him.

            “I see you didn’t want to die after all!” she said cheerfully.

            “I had more work to do.”

            “‘Work’? Is that really what you call it? Most people put in a day at the office and call that work.”

            He could see her clearly now. He had gotten a new pair of spectacles. Her eyes were blue, her face was heart shaped. He could probably beat her to death with the cast on his arm. He smiled at this thought. “So help me God, if we ever meet in a secluded place…”

            She pushed him up against the wall, and looked up into his eyes, her teeth bared. “You owe your life to me,” she said. “I didn’t go get the cops that day. I went back to my house.”

            He smiled subtly. “You came back only five minutes later. You must live very close to the beach.” He showed his teeth. “Very close indeed.”