Pray Bernice was raised Catholic, which conflicted with her more sinister desires, and since she could not in good conscience seek out their fulfillment of her own volition, every night, she would sleep naked with her ground-floor, bedroom window unlocked, the curtains half open and the red light of her alarm clock illuminating her sunset body in the hopes that someone might sneak in in the middle of the night to have his way with her.
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Harker was raised on generic bags of cereal, cable TV and second-hand smoke, and as much as he loved his late-night porn, he loved living across the street from Bernice on the third floor, because he knew that every night he could count on peering directly down into her window from his balcony, and while she was still too modest to undress with the lights on, he would wait to see her glowing red skin punctuated by the darkness of her nipples and pubic hair.
Detective Williamson was looking at the body as objectively as he could, but he knew it would take more time for that to develop. On his first case, he was told by Soryal and the other veterans that "it" was not a person anymore; he tried to remind himself now, months later, but he felt little improvement. He inspected the body from the doorway as the last few photos were taken: "It's all yours."
During the day Bernice was homely, puritanical although not altogether unattractive, but in the low crimson light of her bedroom, she was demure and curvy; her lithe body stretching across the mattress became proverbially seductive--when she felt this, she would give any would-be voyeurs what they were looking for.
Harker waited for this moment every night, and once every few weeks he would get it. When he did, it was never enough--as much as he craved and enjoyed these moments, nothing came close to the flesh. He'd known enough women to know this. Deep inside, part of him knew at some point that watching would not be enough, but he always pushed the thought to the back of his mind and waited. Most nights she just fell asleep, but Harker would always sit, looking down into her apartment, his shelter dog, Stu sat next to him, not knowing what his master was looking at, but no less loyal and attentive. It was a cool October evening when he leaned into railings like jail bars and looked down that he noticed, in time with the breeze, the slightest flutter of her curtains from her slightly-opened window, and he made his way down to the street.
The river of cool fresh air flowed over Williamson's face when Soryal finished printing the sill and frame and opened the window to peer outside. "He came in here. It wasn't locked. Not a smart move on the ground floor. It was still cracked a bit, too. It's no wonder they could smell it outside."
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She loved the autumn breeze following her hands over her body, the heat of her blood flooding the tender flesh beneath her hands, and the air washing over her skin reminded her that nothing stood between her naked body and the street. She breathed in a deep, cooling breath of the night air, and felt the short crisp hairs between her fingers.
Harker buried his hand deep into his pocket; he appeared as if he were waiting for a cab, but he had his head cocked ever so slightly to the left listening to the faint mewling that escaped her apartment between breaths. In the darkness that came from the broken streetlight he could sense the heat of her supple skin and the light from her clock emanating from her window hot onto the back of his neck. His hand clenched tight, and he turned ever more slightly to the left.
"You gotta breathe, Williamson, man, if you want to find the killer." Soryal inspired by the crucifix on the wall above the bed, remembered a joke: "Did you ever hear about the flasher that exposed himself to the nun?" Williamson forced a smile and a shallow, stale breath, and planted his hands in his pockets, trying to look inquisitive.
She writhed in the play of light and fresh air on her belly. The man outside on the curb moving ever so slightly caught her eye, and she wrenched her knees over her breasts, pulled her comforter over her skin and shrunk into her headboard, frozen in the night air staring at the shadow in street. When she reached the kitchen, she steadied herself on the sink with one hand; her heartbeat pounded as she drank a glass of trembling water. She settled the empty glass and swaddled herself tighter, safer, into the duvet.
He noticed the air go still. Quiet.
Bernice had been waiting for this; she dreamt of it, but now that it was here, she trembled with fear and excitement. It was what she had always craved, but what she longed for deep in her heart did not match her modest wardrobe, the rosary on the headboard or the crucifix above her dresser--it seemed impossible, evil, and imminent.
Williamson welcomed the joke. It was an excuse to look away, if only for a minute. "He thinks she's going to scream or run off somewhere to pray. So the nun asks the guy if she can see it again, and he can't believe it, so he opens his coat again." The body was tied with the arms outspread at the sides, and the feet were bound together and tied at the center to the foot of the bed. He took a balmy breath to center himself but regretted the decision.
Harker loosed his grip, and looked into the window to see the tussled, empty sheets. The street was quiet and desolate, and the subtle, inviting light of her bedroom tempted him closer. The window slid open, and Harker could feel the heat from her bedroom on his face. The curtains were warm, soft and parted at his touch; Harker slipped inside and steadied himself with a deep breath, the perfume of her room surrounded him--he closed his eyes.
When the first uniformed officers responded to calls that death was emanating from the apartment, they found the empty sheets but no body. By the time Williamson arrived, the bed had been propped on its side, exposing its dark underbelly. He was still digesting the sight. Soryal paused his joke and quizzed him, "Why do this to someone?" Williamson tried to sound confident without breathing too deeply. "I don't know. Seems punitive," He looked at the crucifix. "but kind of intimate. Why the underside of the bed. It doesn't make sense." Soryal smoothed his tie, rested it back on his gut and offered his expertise, "Sometimes "who" is not the hardest part."
When she returned, Bernice closed the window. She regretted her indulgences. She hoped the stranger had moved on, but was reciprocally disappointed that he was not on the sidewalk anymore. It was foolish, dangerous, and above all, it was sinful. From her makeshift gown, she reached underneath her mattress and began to remove something, it felt good in her hand, but she stopped, looked at the street, crawled into bed and removed the duvet. She wondered if she could have done it.
The nipples were dark, cold and tight. There was always something unnatural and empty about the bodies; it never failed to perplex Williamson. He had been at this for a year, and it did get easier, but no less strange. When he started, he expected to see a lot of dealers, gang members, and criminals, and he did, but there were also the random vics: a pregnant woman with groceries who never made it home before the ice cream melted; the elderly man who obviously put up a good fight while being robbed, and the young boy whose evident last moments still haunted Williamson. One woman reminded him of his mother--no one was exempt. This is what bothered him the most. The pubic hair, dark and matted, seemed extraneous on cold flesh-- at the moment, this is what he found slightly unnerving. It was always something different.
Harker braced himself against the underside of her boxspring and felt the weight of her flesh compress the bed against him. He leaned out and peered up from the edge of the frame. He could feel her, hear her breath and smell her shampoo. He was afraid to move. In the partial, crimson darkness, between the mattress and box spring, sticking out from beneath the sheets, he could see where she had partially removed the hard protruding end, smooth and dark, and barely indistinguishable, but he knew what she kept there between her sheets, he'd watched her many times. His hand crept up the side of the mattress, and crested the top where her body radiated in the red light of the sheets.
The mattress held firm under her slow, tortuous undulations. Her warm and busied hand worked silently; her free hand slid across the sheets grasping the edge of the mattress next to Harker's hand.
He knew what she was reaching for--he had seen it before. From where he sat on his balcony, he could not get a good view of it in the dark, but he knew what it was used for, and he had seen it glint from time to time in the ambient rose light of her bedroom. He thought to himself that she would not need it tonight.
At first, the circumstances she had lost herself in were not altogether different from what was playing out in her room. A strange man, heedless surrender, and her iniquitous body. When he grabbed her wrist with his vice-like hands, she could not escape, and did not necessarily want to; she had hoped he was still there.
The body had been lashed to the underside of the bed, and hung there for some days. The blood had pooled on the ventral side of the corpse, leaving a black, demonic mask on the face and chest, and the flesh was taught with gases. Soryal, had seen everything he needed to see, but wanted to let Williamson do his homework: "So the third time, the nun asks the guy, 'I'm sorry sir, but do you mind if I touch it, it's just so--' and this blows his fucking mind, he's like 'Of course!'" The medical examiners office had arrived with the gurney, and Williamson prepared to remove the body. "Don't forget your gloves" Soryal interjected and then continued to pantomime the nun reaching prudently.
Underneath his massive force, Bernice could not escape, but for all her struggling she didn't really want to. She did not worry what he would do with her; her concern was that he might discover her secret. She wondered if he had seen the protrusion between the mattresses, and she wondered what he thought of her--in the middle of it all she was surprised to find herself self-conscious. He must have seen it. He was powerful, and forceful. She wanted only to free her hands, to indulge herself on her terms without the sight of it sticking out of the sheets haunting her, but his grip was heavy and metallic. Harker had already removed his belt, unzipped and was exposed. She wrestled franticly with her arms, but her legs never fought back, and he was surprised at the ease with which he found himself in her thighs on the cusp of her body.
"So she's just feeling his balls, and loving it the whole time, and the flasher is having the time of his life!" Soryal continued to fondle the imaginary flasher as politely as any nun would. Williamson, helping the medical examiner, held fast to the rope and wrist so when the binding was cut, the body would not fall to the ground. It had been there a while. He made the rookie mistake of grabbing the upper arm for support, and when the body shifted, his thumb popped through, pierced the flesh and slid between the bicep and bone; although he had his gloves, he could feel everything through the latex: it was dark, cold, wet, smooth and viscous.
He released his grip when she began to move in time with his body. It was criminal, passionate, and uncertain. He wasn't sure if he would go to jail. He'd never done this before, and while it was, for all intense and purposes, what it was, it was also nothing like he had imagined would actually happen when he crept through her curtains, but more like he had dreamed from his window, playing out like a dark porno. He wasn't sure how she'd react when it was all over.
Williamson had prided himself on never once getting sick, but ran for the door tearing off the sludge covered thumb of the glove from his wrist. Soryal interrupted his joke to laugh, and then continued so the uniform cop standing at the door and the medical examiner wouldn't miss out.
Harker thought for a second that he loved her. The smell of her body. Its subtle tastes and textures. He could have ended it any number of times, but he paused and waited, absorbed and savored it.
Still recounting the tale of the nun and the flasher, Soryal lowered the bed to its normal position and found the murder weapon had slipped out of from between the mattresses onto the floor. He pinched the handle between his thumb and forefinger, inspecting the long, lean blade dangling below the smooth girth of the ribbed hilt, and he made an off-color remark to those present about not knowing which was the "business end."
She arched, freeing her hands. Her chest heaved, exhaling across his forehead and she stretched her arms, coming just short of the blunt end between her mattresses. She twisted and grasped and scratched at the sided of the bed. Moaning and straining, she could not budge beneath his pressing torso. She lunged and searched, finally wrapping her fingers around it just below the knobby end in the clutch and tussle of muscle and sweat. She had been waiting a long time.
The perp was in the back of the squad car in cuffs. The policemen who had arrived first at the scene did not have to look very far to find the killer watching over the body.
From three floors up, across the street, Harker had never noticed the way her front teeth showed just below her upper lip as he did now. He decided he would kiss her when he finished, feeling her lips and the slight press of her teeth on his mouth--she lunged and swung her arm around his neck--he bellowed like a great beast--a wave surged from his lungs, down his spine, through and around his torso, and into her body as he grasped the outside of her shoulders.
She clasped her legs around him and squeezed the handle of the blade tight to his neck as Harker's life weltered over her. His blood coursed across his back as she clung to him pulling him close to let it cascade over her. It was everything she had ever wanted but was too afraid to give into, every urge she had restrained and played over time and again in her mind. He bucked, heaved, sputtered and gurgled in her grasp, and finally, he exhaled. As he slacked in the wet, pooling sheets, she felt satisfied and clean. She released her body beneath him, felt his weight and warmth on her tired frame, and slowly withdrew the hard, blunt handle of the sacrificial dagger from his neck; she held him, exhausted and complete--the red light of the alarm clock shining black over their blood covered flesh. He was her first, she was his last. They were wed forever in this bed. She fell asleep in his embrace.
In the back of the squad car, she prayed incessantly into the handcuffs, the perfect bruises of Harker's grip visible beneath the metal bands. Williamson still didn't understand if she was punishing him, and if she was, why she would sleep over his suspended, putrefying corpse for days--the human heart was still a mystery to him. Soryal walked out next to the gurney, speaking in his old nun's voice and acting out the end of the joke for the cop and the examiner, two imaginary balls in his closed fists, smashing them together to the staccato of the punch line: "DON'T--YOU--EVER--DO--THAT-- AGAIN!" They chuckled. In the apartment across the street from the balcony, Williamson heard a dog crying.
