Their Many Names

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A couple is in love. Really in love. Slow hand touches. Eyes checking in. Deep nods. We could hover here for hours if we wanted to, and maybe we do want to notice the palpable relief when one walks into the room, not that there are many rooms. The man, and really, he doesn’t have to be a man if we’re casting this, but for now he is, the man is loyal, looks out for his partner’s needs. He’s a rare thing—a secure person. When his eyes lift in vigilance he steadies them, takes up a project to recalibrate his own maturity. Greasing the window joints. Changing the air filter.

He is a kind of man she’s never dated before. At first his balding and gym going turned her off, but she notices a suppleness to his person. She can lean against him, and nothing moves, but she finds softness. She enjoys doing this and he does too.

Bern and Mare, we’ll call them. Testing the give. These are not their real names. But Bern likes the watermelon scent of Mare’s hair and the human purring she does when he rubs her back. And Mare likes a gentle, task-oriented hunk, despite herself.

Mare’s sister arrives. They talk and talk all night in the amber cast living room, shaking with laughter. They investigate the sister’s workplace rivalries, the nature of her sobriety, the clowns appearing on her dating apps. They all agree the couple will marry as soon as they can afford it, and everyone cries. It’s the first time they’ve said it out loud in front of the sister. Lindsay we’ll call Mare’s sister. It’s not her real name.

After a long night of peace, they all fall asleep in the Brooklyn studio. The couple give Lindsay the pull-out couch and they sleep on an air mattress in the dining room. Their dog snuggles in between their feet, the soft fur of her chin resting on Mare’s ankle. She can feel the sleepy flickers of her jaw. Bear, we’ll call the dog. It’s her real name.

The dining room is attached to the kitchen, and the kitchen has a cutout in its wall, so from the sink you can watch the pull-out couch while doing dishes. From the angle of the air bed, Mare can see the front door. The only reason she sees the front door is because it is opening.

The opening door wakes her from a sound sleep. She tells herself it’s wind and shuts her eyes. But even in the confusion of near sleep, the justification doesn’t gel. The front door is heavy. It’s a wartime door. She opens her eyes again, and there is the thick door. Wide open. She whispers to Bern, “the door.” At first, he doesn’t wake, so she whispers it again. “The door.” Then he wakes. Rises. Turns on the light. It is in that moment the three behold their torturer.

His jacket is lined, and he holds two sharp objects in his hands. He asks if they’d rather be put to sleep for the first part.

Mare doesn’t answer. Somehow, she knows they will not be able to expel this intruder, despite strong and capable Bern already descending into the hallway and returning with a weapon. She did not know her future husband owned a gun, but he briefly served and so it makes a sudden kind of sense. Still, she registers the hiddenness of the weapon, the lie of it. Then she registers the clean way Bern walks up to the man and without hesitating, points, and shoots. The gun makes a noise, but it is not loud enough, and the intruder is not dead. Something has gone wrong, and Bern is saying, shit, shit at the jammed gun, and the man begins to detail his plans, giddy at his survival.

The man confesses he has carried out such plans out before. Mare’s worst nightmare is being realized. She is struck through with a brutal, sickening curiosity even though her stomach bounces with fear. She cannot even look at her sister. Mare invited her. Why did she invite her. She cannot look at Bern either, lost in the sweat-greased spectacle of his mortal failure.

The intruder admits he prefers to keep his prey trapped for months. This is the part he enjoys, more than dismemberment or disposal. These words cause Mare’s brain to slip out of its casing. Pressurized. Gray. He says, “If I could get away with it without killing you, believe me, I would.”

For a moment Mare briefly loves him. The serial killer has a refined air about him. He can save her from himself. She knows the name of this syndrome and is alarmed it can touch her.

He is careful in the way he poisons and binds them. Still it is agonizing. The suspension.

After a week he begins to loosen their traps and lets them roam more freely around the house. To Mare’s great relief, he has never touched the dog, and has even fed her, though she knows Bear will not survive the ordeal. How could she?

When they are allowed to move again, something is wrong with the three of them. It’s as if they have shrunk. They all appear small, even Bern, especially Bern, who before seemed like a giant. At first, they crawl rather than stand. Their insides hurt.

Burn, they burn.

They wouldn’t think of trying to escape. It is amazing what they can adapt to, they think when they are capable of thoughts. Moment to moment, they are invested in awaiting their torturer’s next moves. He remains unnamed, even when Mare, in a brief unguarded moment, asks him. Her voice is raw and her eyes slick and dark. Animal eyes. He does not answer. He explains her to her face, while it loses its composure trying to understand him.

His next moves are the most important thing in the world to Mare. Though the killer himself is strikingly attentive to the three of them. Often, he insists on not moving from his watching chair.

In fact, once he knows he has Mare and Bern completely under his spell, he sends them on errands. For a serial killer, he is incredibly lazy about the necessities of everyday life, like money and food.

They are only released in the middle of the night. They look like hell in their small forms, but the first few times they manage to wrangle provisions from all night stores, earning his trust. They barely speak to each other when outside. The threat of Mare’s sister being killed if they don’t return keeps her from developing ambitions. They were given clear instruction; police would equal instant death, abandonment, a slower form. It keeps her from speaking to Bern much, afraid he’ll want to run. If that happened, it would be more than diminishment. He’d be decimated in her eyes, so she keeps them down. Her fear avoids excesses. And he seems reserved too. They do not touch and barely whisper.

They return. Each night, he offers a countdown. “Don’t worry, it’s only fourteen days now.”

“Thirteen.”

“Twelve.”

At ten days he tells them they can call him Cowl.

It takes Mare longer than you’d think to realize it’s their death day Cowl’s counting down to. Coal, she calls him in her head. Coal, not Cowl. Cowl is a neckline. Coal is pulled up from the ground, from soot in a cave the sun has never touched.

In the meantime, he has the three of them perform little nonsense shows for his entertainment. Sometimes he dresses them in costumes. Other times, he prefers them naked. Mare has never been more self-conscious of the folds of her body. She will not look at her sister’s shaking form. She checks to see if Bern looks at Lindsay, and her eyes snap back as she gulps herself down, scalding.

On the night marked nine, Cowl allows them to take the dog on their errands. It opens their throats. “Where can we bring her?” Mare whispers desperately. The night cools her skin, and she huffs it.

“Food,” Bern says, “We’ve got to get her interested in food.” They pass the flower shop they used to stop in, closed for the night, and each reach down to pet Bear, panting. They steal her a steak from the 24-hour food store. They set the steak up in front of a neighbor’s apartment, a friendly neighbor that loves Bear. They hope the neighbor will take her in when they abandon her on their doorstep. They tie her leash around a rung of the stair and pet the fur of her ears in fast swipes, wretchedly pasting them down over her ear drums, scratching her spot, brushing her chest.

While Bear tears into the meat, they slip away. Mare can’t help the snots that begin to drip down to the top of her lip. But it’s working. Bear’s attention is on the ripping.

They arrive at the thick metal door holding their smiles down with the pins of their teeth, story intact. “We’ve lost her,” Mare says, as Coal greets her. “We don’t know what happened.” She is exuberant but hiding it behind real tears. The dog’s freedom was the one piece she could move. The most important piece. And she did.

The dog will live a good life with that neighbor, who has a big, sweet lug of a pit bull that loves to bow at her sheepish Bear. She pictures them playing in the grassy dog park.

“She ducked into an alleyway, and we couldn’t find her anywhere!” Mare says.

“Shame,” Cowl says and chuckles.

Mare is unmoved by the evil face. “Shame, yes,” she says, triumphant. But she feels Bern tugging on her shirt from behind, and then she hears it.

Behind her surge of emotion there is the sure slap of paws on tile. The dog is bounding toward them as fast as her skinny legs will take her. Bear rejected a steak to be with them in their horror. She squeezed out of her harness and found her way up the stairs. At the weeping, Coal says, “There, there. It looks like you’ve found her. Nothing to be sad about.” Her dog plows her head into her thigh and into the apartment, and Mare curses her. Spits and loves her. Mare’s spirit is profoundly broken then. This is how a spirit breaks. Capture the animal.

Their practiced killer knows this. Probably loosened the harness himself. He stops allowing them to take Bear after that. It’s as if he planned this all out exactly.

One night though, Bern has a plan. Mare doesn’t really understand it. Not only the mechanics of it, the will behind thinking it up. She fully understands for the first time in her life that they are on entirely different pages. Minds far away.

The plan involves climbing up the fire escape and in through the window. The element of surprise, he keeps saying. All he needs is a boost, and for her to create a distraction. Mare learns her part, though there isn’t oomph in her. She imagines it ending badly but agrees because it will end badly anyway.

Still, she rehearses a scenario. What will distract her Coal Cowl? He is such a precise man it’s difficult to imagine. She decides on injury. He is obsessed with the conditions of their tiny burning bodies. He bathes them and dresses them with the devotion he pays his own pale legs, which he is always rubbing with lotion. He wants them pained enough to quell rebellion, but in impeccable working order. His aesthetic is order, this she understands deeply. In this way she feels she knows him.

A sprained ankle will greatly upset him Mare decides, and she knows exactly how to fake that limp, because she’s had one before. Soccer. 1998. As if remembering, Lindsay looks up, but her gaze is under a foul fog. Mare can’t look at it. Fakes the sprain.

She’s right. The ankle upsets Coal.

She sits. Clutches it as he exits the bathroom.

“Is it broken? Is there any disfigurement?” He asks in a flustered flush.

“I’m not sure.”

“Where is your husband?”

“Boyfriend. He’s grabbing an ace bandage.”

“I have ace bandages!” He’s very upset. It is rare he loses track, even for a moment. 

Lindsay is in the corner, rocking. She does that often now.

“He didn’t know you had ace bandages.”

“You were not supposed to separate!”

“I’m sorry,” Mare says, wincing.

“There, there, let’s get this wrapped up.” Bear waddles over and licks her, wagging her tail. She wants Bear to hold still. Wouldn’t a dog seem concerned over a real injury? But the killer does not seem to notice the jubilant tail. “It’s only until tomorrow anyway,” he says. “You’ll have a little limp during your final performance. Not ideal. Can you do your lines sitting?”

She nods. Her line is, “You are the epitome. You subtract disaster.” She breaks the fourth wall and says this right into Coal’s eyes. He smiles so wide; she can see him as a little boy.

In her periphery she sees Bern on the fire escape. “Should I practice?”

Coal is still crouched winding the bandage around her with an upsetting amount of focus. She is magnetized toward him. Sometimes he rubs her foot with a single finger, and it sickens her. “Oh yes,” he says. “Lovely idea.”

“Remove your glasses so I can look directly into your eyes,” she says.

Coal giggles. He does remove his glasses.

“May I clutch your face when I say it?” She asks.

“Please,” he says, in the throes of an ecstasy she does not fully understand but shares a thin edge of, as if he is a page igniting and she browns and crisps along the seam.

She makes sure she covers his ears as she holds his face, and she says her line loud. She projects, “You are the epitome! You subtract disaster!” It is laced with something hot and liquid lining her stomach. And her husband-to-be times the opening of the window with her voice. She knows then they are still on the same page sometimes and a small warmth envelops her.

“That wasn’t right. Let me try it again,” she says. Coal nods, his eyes rolling back.

“You are the epitome! You subtract disaster!” She screams as her husband to be crosses the room holding a pistol. They did not have pistol money. They did not have phones. It was beyond her who he’d wrestled it from, and how.

She screams it again, right into Coal’s hot little eyes. “You are the epitome! You subtract disaster!” And her husband points the pistol downward and shoots him right in the back of the head.

The three of them collapse into each other, heaving. The dog licks and licks them, attempting to pull close to the fallen body and smell the hole.

They survive. Authorities portion out the pieces of the event and bag them in Ziplock’s of procedure.

The ordeal is optioned and eventually made into a limited series.

Mare is a writer and played a part in this, thinking it might be healing.

At the premier, she is happy to see old friends in rented silk dresses. Some seats are empty, but most are full. The emptinesses are striking for who they represent.

A child sits behind her, and she doesn’t think a child should see this. She turns and says so to the kid’s dad. The kid says, haughtily, that he knows the lighting designer.

“Well I’m the writer,” she says. But it’s clear the kid could not care less about a writer. She turns around.

She’s pleased by the choices the director made. They allowed the love story to really linger at the beginning, the pleasant evening between her character and Lindsay and Bern’s characters stretches on for almost half of the production. They captured the tenderness with close-ups on hands grazing cardigans, clasping, rubbing mugs and backs. Even the honey color of their apartment walls is right.

When the story turns, she rubs the insides of her ears and deep breathes like her therapist suggested. But the actor playing their dead killer is almost comic in his cliches. Cowl had been that way too, but there was nuance she must have failed to explain. He possessed a regular, boring side that the actor couldn’t seem to find. He had a hungry, hard voice. The scenes aren’t realistic enough to trigger her PTSD.

It’s only the ending that grips her in embarrassing sobs. She knows the kid and the dad behind her can sense it, even though she uses every muscle in her face to stay quiet about it. The ending of the film turns back into a love story. There is a gorgeous kiss between the actor who plays her and the actor who plays Bern, both flatteringly attractive and good at embracing.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her now husband, Bern. She does. But they haven’t touched each other with real intimacy for a long time, and still struggle to physically relax. They wed at city hall instead of under a willow. He couldn’t even come with her to the premier because he didn’t agree with her selling the story and couldn’t stand to watch it, even if he did. She feels an icy cold in the empty seat beside her, even though she chose this spot so she could be alone.

The love story on screen continues taunting her, the Lindsay character so happy for the couple, finally able to marry. In real life, Lindsay is addicted to narcotics now. She refuses to go to rehab. Calls infrequently with misplaced rage. But the love in the movie feels so real. Mare continues to silently sob until the credits roll and she senses eyes on her.

She turns but doesn’t see anyone. It’s probably the director, who will be thrilled with her tears if press is present, but for a moment, she suddenly believes her killer is in the theatre, here. Watching. Pleased and furious at his debut. It’s what he always wanted, an audience. To have one. To be one. And she handed it to him. Like a good girl. She can hear him say that. The fuzz of her ear frizzes, alert in the dark, staring room. Clapping. They’re clapping. No one’s staring. She claps too, without enthusiasm. But she isn’t wrong. When she turns it is her husband staring at her from the back. He came. He’s here in the open door. Standing backlit by the hall and the truth. Even still she wants to kiss him, her killer. He is mouthing the line, you’re the epitome.