Chapter 2: Paint Brushes & Other Needed Ingredients

Beaver Creek (80 kilometers north of Toronto) “Annie?” Zane Ellis stood over the hogtied hitchhiker, a bucket of warm water in one hand and a sponge in the other. She was awake, but her soul was somewhere else. Her eyes, swollen almost shut, were two pairs of veined lips, so dark they seemed poisonous. As he watched her, he wondered where she was, where all his victims escaped to in that space of time between capture and death. He also wondered if he could go there too. He had his own place, a secret room in his head, but was their escape, their refuge, any better than his? Wherever it was, he would’ve loved to paint its landscape. He nudged the girl’s bare leg with the toe of his shoe. “Annie, it’s time to get you cleaned up. Wake up, sugar.” The girl’s head swiveled like a punch drunk boxer’s. Then, after a whistled intake of air, reality leaked through a crack under the door to her safe place; her eyes opened and she jerked against the thick ropes holding her to a pole in the middle of the shed. Around the ball gag in her mouth, her incoherent cries were hoarse and guttural—slobbery, even. Zane stepped back and allowed her to vent. He wasn’t mad, didn’t feel the need to silence her. He’d be pretty miffed if he woke up naked and tied in a strange place too. But he also didn’t want her to stain his clothes with her sniffles and snot, so he decided to wait until she’d finished. Annie didn’t seem as strong as some of the others had been, so he guessed it would be only a few minutes before she’d see her situation for what it had been building up to since birth: hopeless. He’d use that time to slip into something more suited to the task, and maybe make a pot of coffee. He stepped out of the shed just as the sun met the sky. It spread across the horizon like a fresh paper cut awaiting the day’s first bead of blood. This was fitting. This was an omen. He left the door open so the girl could see what he saw, witness one last beautiful sunrise before eternity took her. He felt it was the least he could do. His eyes fell to an old axe-stabbed stump, caught in relief by the sun’s first rays. The profiled axe called forth an image of things to come. He turned and regarded her one last time before heading for the house. Although fortuitous, their meeting had been largely disappointing. She’d been standing at the side of the road with her thumb in the air, holding a sign that read “Going that way”, accompanied by an arrow pointing up instead of forward. An idea began to percolate as he pulled to the side of the road in answer to her waggling thumb. Her presence had introduced an opportunity for a ‘practice round’ for his upcoming show and he had every intention of pursuing it. Granted, the ‘hitcher and the dark road’ was as cliché as a meeting could get, but whose fault was it the girl had snubbed any motherly advice she’d ever received in regard to strangers and deserted roads? Surely not his. Plus, it wasn’t as though he’d been actively searching her out. He nonetheless considered her a gift horse, a bonus of sorts. As the memory of her hustling after his brake lights brought a smile to his face, he mused over the real direction the arrow had been pointing: up. Up was where the angels sang. One punch as she leaned into the car was all it took. That had been the most disappointing part. Add that to the fact she was standing alone on a dirt road near dusk, and he might have rethought his belief in the Chaos theory in favor of the flowery notion that everything happens for a reason. But that would be madness. At about eighteen years of age, the girl was too stupid to live and too old to unlearn all that had brought her to this point in her life—to that dirt road in particular—so Zane had decided to help her out. More, he was going to help her “up”. And since she would only be exercise, a warm up, Dr. Gideon wouldn’t need to know about her. The old man would only want the video feed for the kill planned for the main event, and this girl was definitely not main event material. As he stared into dawn’s amber yawn, contentment faltered, and then faded, as an image of his benefactor surfaced. Four hundred miles by air, a whole country away, and Zane still fell under the greedy man’s shadow. A fact he shouldn’t have found surprising, considering Dr. Gideon owned the chalet and the forty acres it rested upon. The doctor was a constant irritant, but his wealth and connections were extensive, which was why Zane hadn’t killed him yet. He smiled as he imagined a not-so-distant future in which Gideon was no longer needed. The doctor wasn’t happy about lending him the chalet, but relented and gave him two weeks. Two weeks didn’t leave much time for nuance and preparation, but Zane would be free to create his art, his way, without the old man looming over his shoulder, uttering suggestions regarding lighting and camera angles, or screaming for a premature but enduring money shot. Short sighted quick thrills were all the rage among the clientele who purchased the doctor’s movies. All brutality, no vision. Zane had vision, but his creative nature was something for which Gideon held little humor. Through his art, he intricately mapped the secrets and struggles, the birth and death rattle, of all humanity, one canvas at a time. Where Gideon saw dollars and blood on a drop sheet, Zane saw divinity; a gleaning of the pattern within the chaos, rendered in the purest color of the spectrum. Maybe someday his genius would be recognized, but likely not by Gideon. The single missing item for his upcoming video drama was a co-star…someone special—and not that too-stupid-to-live hitcher. She was going to be a part of the show, but would serve in other, less visible, ways. He’d taken most of her hair the night before, while she was still unconscious. At the moment, her mouse-brown locks were in the kitchen, soaking in a shallow pan of bleach and conditioning solution. Later, he’d require a much larger sacrifice. Her hair would make fine brushes, but a paintbrush wasn’t a paintbrush without a handle. ~~oOo~~ Zane recalled Gideon saying he rarely visited the chalet. He could have guessed without being told as he rummaged through the closets for something disposable to wear; there was nothing that would’ve fit the doctor’s lanky form. Judging by the sizes, Gideon’s parents could have taken jobs in a travelling circus as a pair of chubby midget clowns. If he went back to the shed wearing any of Gideon’s father’s old clothes, Annie might think he was crazy, or some inbred Jethro type axe murderer. If only he’d stuck with his original plan and gone into town for clothes and Froot Loops, this situation might have been avoided. Upon searching the garage, he found a pair of vinyl coated rain pants, but, oddly, no matching coat. Beneath the pants was a pair of rubber boots that would fit, but then he thought if he wore the pants and boots together with no shirt, Annie might suspect him of being some homicidal Mr. July from a Fireman’s calendar. He decided to have a cup of coffee first, then figure out what to wear…maybe go into town for a box of Froot Loops and clothes. Then he could relax on the patio and work on his tan until lunchtime. At a growl from his stomach, he amended the thought of leaving her alone to rousing her right then. The sun would always be there, fresh and new every day, but she wouldn’t. Besides, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Twenty minutes later, he stood in the doorway of the garden shed, coffee in one hand, and axe in the other. In lieu of clothing, he’d decided to dress as he did for his shows. He was naked. After setting the axe down, he took a sip of coffee. It was good. He’d have to remember how many scoops he used. And he’d been right about the girl; she was calmer now. She still sobbed and snotted as she shook like a palsied rabbit, but at least she’d settled. Annie was dirty, slightly overweight, and sat amid a muddy lake of her own bodily excretions, but Zane saw the beauty beneath the mud and tears and planned on savoring every second they spent together. Before she could slide back into another eye rolling convulsion which might delay him further, he shushed her. She quieted, but shot fearful glances at his naked form. He followed her eyes to their target, and sighed. “I’m sorry for that, I really am. Listen, I know we’ve just met, but please believe me when I say to you that sex is the furthest thing from my mind. I’m not that kind of guy.” His eyes wandered from her to a shelf cluttered with all manner of tools, and his gaze settled upon a dust covered saber saw. He smiled, and then squatted in front of her with his forearms resting on his knees. “That was the good news.” She didn’t seem relieved. This was going poorly. Annie wasn’t being very receptive at all, and Zane couldn’t help but feel partially responsible. If he’d only gone into town first for something to wear, this awkwardness over his nudity may have been avoided. He soaked the sponge, squeezed it, and began to wash her, starting with her face. “I don’t think you want to hear the bad news, so I’ll tell you this instead: You and I, Annie, are going to make beauty come alive. Together we’ll create a masterwork, blood and bone, that will make the heavens weep. Won’t that be nice?” Annie blinked and shivered, sobbed and snotted. As he circled, searching for a good starting point, he spoke into her ears words of assurance, words to soothe: “I just need your bones, but have no fear, sugar. Nothing is wasted, never with me.” The soothing words didn’t work—they never worked—but the screams weren’t so bad, and didn’t usually last very long. Surprisingly enough, Annie’s did. She howled along with the rusty saw, in a jack-hammering crescendo, until he was halfway through the second limb. She was a real trooper. Before pulling it out, Zane stared into her eye for a very long time. Annie wasn’t in there anymore and he hadn’t heard her leave. She’d gone back to her happy place and could stay there forever. Zane felt at peace. Peace for her, peace for him. Maybe it was the coffee, could have been the beautiful day, likely a mixture of both, but he was happy right then and began to whistle while he worked.