Bone: A Dark Billionaire Romance (With bonus book Exhibit!) (7 page)

T
his place is like a museum. For a long time neither one of us says anything. There are lights that hang overhead, the kind you'd find in an aircraft hangar or a nuclear bunker, or a secret underground museum filled with artifacts that shouldn't still exist. Christopher has enough money to have this whole thing tiled and lit properly, the fact he hasn't makes me think it's an aesthetic choice to add to the ambiance.

The artifacts are set out as though left for someone to come and play with, rather than kept behind crystal display units or boxes out of reach of visitors. Not that there are any. Christopher has made it clear that I'm the first one.

There are dresses from victims. Photographs of corpses left on tables taken from murder scenes. I have no idea how he's got his hands on the stuff.

There are spaces divided lazily in a kind of chronological order so as I walk through it, the light from above just enough for me to see - more so as my eyes get accustomed to it - I see sections of lives from the women Bone has killed, year by year. It's incredible.

The amount of stuff he has here is truly shocking. I turn to look at him, to ask something I'm not able to, and all he does is smile encouragingly, excited by my excitement, his arms open to lead me further into his dungeon, where the light doesn't reach and the cockroaches and God knows what else climb up the walls.

Dolls, personal items, evidence bags, court notes in huge official boxes. In one section he's set up a movable whiteboard which looks like it's been taken directly from a police station. It's the kind of thing you see in films that shows a map of all the murder locations, the key witnesses and any other crucial information.

Most of their lives are here. I half expect to see Bone himself, rocking away on a chair in the corner, his tongue licking his lips, eager to show me what he has done. Perhaps eager to add me to his collection. As I get closer to the clothes, I see some are blood stained, and others still are torn or cut.

I recognize some as the ones the girls were wearing when they were found. On more than one occasion, Bone dressed his dead girls up and put them on display. He cherished them, for want of a more appropriate word. He idolized them, in life and death, as long as he was able to control it.

"This is", I begin to say. I don't know how to finish, but I need to know. "How?"

Christopher moves over to join me in the center of his basement room. I want to ask, “why here, why not upstairs, why not in a real museum?” but I think part of me is scared of the answer.

Part of me likes the fear it's putting in to me too. If there was enough light to see, if the darkness didn't look like it was alive and ready to swallow me up soon as I let it, there wouldn't be the same effect. These could all be fake for all I know, but displaying them as he has, which is not displaying them at all, makes them all that more real. It's empowering. It's like being in one of the thousands of horror films I've seen.

Christopher's hand on my neck makes me jump. He's close in behind me, pressed against my back.

"Do you like it?" he whispers, his breath hot on my ear. I can feel my skin fizzing. I don't know whether it's fear or excitement, or a bit of both. Am I trapped? Could I leave if I wanted to? Do I want to?

"I love it", I say, wondering whether I'm able to say anything else. "It's incredible. Where did it all come from?"

Christopher runs his hand from my neck across my shoulder and down my arm. There is no way he can't feel how goose-pimpled my skin is. If he stopped holding me, I'd shake. I'd explode into a million pieces. The only thing holding me together is the pressure he's putting on me. I feel the connection like hot patches.

"If I tell you, will you promise to keep it a secret?" he says.

I nod. Like this, my back pressed into his, I can't see the look on his face, but I can imagine it. I tilt my head back. I want him to kiss my neck. I want him to bite it. I want him to release the pressure I can feel building inside me.

"I've known Bone for a very long time", Christopher says.

His lips are on my skin, hot and smooth. Bite me. Fucking bite me. He moves his hand from my shoulder, along the jagged edge of my collar bone, testing it for size, purpose. From there, he moves his hands down my front, trailing them across my skin to the edge of my T-shirt. Onwards. My nipples between his fingers blossom erect. The words are on the tip of my tongue, each one a mercy dance towards it.

Does. He. Know. You?

"Come", Christopher says, breaking away. "I want to show you my favourite part of the collection."

A long time passes before I can move. When I look down, I see my nipples standing taut. My pussy is wet and I want to touch it. I want him to fuck me amongst the forgotten remains of dead women and I feel like Christopher is the kind of person I could tell that too without being judged.

I follow him into the shadows. At the back end of the room, there is a display cabinet. I don't see it until I'm right there in front of it. A hand made of several different bones, isolated on the ledge.

His project.

I gasp for air, but can't get any down. I want to run but can't seem to comprehend how that might be possible. Christopher sees my alarm.

"I want to make the whole thing", he says quickly by way of explanation, "but I can't until Bone has finished his work. It wouldn't be right."

Still I say nothing. Suddenly I feel claustrophobic. I'm aware of the denseness of the air, the rotten smell of death that surrounds us. I feel dust in my throat and begin to choke. I'm bent over retching into the black swirl of nothingness by my feet, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

"Maude", Christopher says. "Oh, Maude. I thought you knew."

I
'm sat at his kitchen table gulping down water. I can't believe I thought the hand was real. What a dick. Real bone, but not bone from those twenty seven victims. It's a sick thing to have. A priceless addition to the collection. Fucking amazing.

"Who is he?" I ask. Finally, I can feel a bit of color coming back to my cheeks. I can't believe I pussied out like that, especially after knowing what Christopher is like. I should have guessed the lengths he'd go to for his obsession after the performance at Maria's house.

"I don't know really", he says. "I don't know where he comes from. I don't know much else but what he does. I don't know why he does it."

"But you know him", I say. "You said you knew him."

"It's complicated", he offers. I look at him suspiciously, trying to work out what he really means by that.

"You said he was going to kill again, that we'd see it. How can you know that?"

"Because I've been following him. I've been following him all of his life. Most of mine."

"Where?" I ask.

"Do you want to see it?" Christopher says, ignoring the question, his eyes going wide. "Do you want to meet him?" There is a silence neither of us can fill. It's like saying “do you want to see a car crash, a snuff film or a dead body?” The question is essentially rhetorical.

"Am I in danger?" I ask, unsure if it matters whether I am or not. Unsure whether the question is important anyway.

"Do you trust me?" Christopher asks, the corner of his mouth flicking up into a smile.

"That's not the question I asked."

It feels like we are about to commit murder, not go and witness it. Perhaps there isn't much of a distinction.

He shakes his head. "Then no, of course not."

"Then yes", I say, making sure the words come out before I have time to stop them. "I want to see it. I want to see it for real. I want to see Bone. I want to see him do it."

"Ok", he says quietly. And then with solemn conviction, and a flash of raw excitement in his eyes. "Let's go and meet Bone."

I
haven't been entirely honest. I guess it's too late to turn back now anyway, even if I wanted to. When I look in the rear view mirror it's him that looks back, and when I reach over to squeeze her leg, it's Bone's hand I see doing it, not mine.

She's excited, I can tell that. I knew she would be. They're not too different Bone and Maude, I guess that's why he picked her. He always knew. He always knew where to find them. Killing is nothing if you have no-one to share it with. That's like painting a beautiful picture and keeping it in a drawer forever.

There were always the police and the press after the fact, and myself of course, but there was no-one to really share his work with while he was doing it. There was nobody standing alongside him while he stuck it into them, no-one watching that magical moment where life turns so spectacularly into the absence of it. Death apparent. The cusp at the very top. The lid over which we turn.

When I was eight years old, and I took the firecracker out to the end of my parents field, along with my sister's pet bunny rabbit, I stood there alone, and watched the frightened animal slowly come to terms with what I had done to it.

This is how lies form. They begin as an idea, then they merge into something much more concrete, and then all of a sudden, when you breathe life into them, they become as real as everything else.

I've told that story to a lot of people, in a lot of different ways. Sometimes I'm Kal, sometimes I'm Christopher, sometimes I'm the boy that has been banished from his house and happens upon a group of vicious teenagers, hell bent on exacting revenge, for something one of their neighbors has done.

It's easy like that. A sad look in the eye, a smile, a wistful pocket of silence while the tension breaks. Bone taught me that. Bone taught me the beauty in forming a lie, because in doing so, you reveal the truth.

He's the one that made me see that truth with Maude. Or perhaps I'm the one that made him see it. Whichever way round it was, there is something about her that he's never seen in anyone else. Perhaps it’s the same kind of hunger for that which we are told we shouldn't crave. It's the yearning to see that tipping point, that incredible moment where you can truly be God.

We are getting closer.

Bone puts his hand on my shoulder, the other one on Maude's. Sat forward in his chair I can see he's excited. Maude turns to him and smiles. She reaches for his hand, takes it and puts it in her lap. Makes circles in the center of his palm with the yolk of her thumb. Seeing her do it is making me hard. It's making me want to fuck her.

The house isn't mine, not officially. Not yet. After this, when the police have been in and out, the death has been linked to the others, and the investigation has been reopened, I'll swoop in silently at auction, do the banks a favor and add it to the tour.

"We're here", I say when I've parked the car a comfortable distance away.

Maude cranes her neck to look at the houses on the street, trying to guess within which one he's waiting.

"Bone's here already?" she asks. "Inside?"

***

S
he was a pleasant girl, worth a lot more than twenty thousand dollars. A bargain. We drank wine, spoke a little bit about her family, and then I put my hand around her neck and held my knife to her throat. After that we got along a lot better. Sometimes you have to be forceful. I told her it was part of the game. She'd get extra money if she played along with it. It didn't take long to convince her. Bone can be very convincing like that. He's a charming man when you get to know him.

I don't know if I'm telling Maude this as we climb the stairs, or Bone is telling us both. I'm too excited about what I'm about to show her to care. About what we are about to do. I'm so excited I can barely contain myself.

"You're getting a playmate", I told her. "I'll bring her over to see you. You just stay there and relax. We'll be back again soon."

I watch Bone stand behind Maude at the door to the bedroom. He winks at me. "I'll take it from here."

He's erect, the savage! Maude turns to me all lust and nervous excitement. I watch them push open the door slowly, the world close in.

S
he's spread out on the bed, naked, arms bound together and hooked to the wrought iron headboard with a loop of knots that look like they've been tied by a trawler boat fisherman. Her legs are wide open, and I can see the intricate folds of her pussy, the pink meat of the delicate skin inside. In her mouth is a gag of balled up fabric that upon closer inspection, I realize are her panties. Her eyes dart from me to Christopher, and back again. Is this who I'm going to see die? Is this the value of life?

"Bone", I mutter. It's not a sentence and it's barely even a word.

"Soon", Christopher says. The look on his face seems to suggest he didn't expect her to be here. He turns to me.

"This is for us", he says excitedly, as though he's suddenly realized it.

I'm in my own snuff movie. I'm not part of this. I'm a participant, but I'm not part of this. Jasper says you can never unsee what you've already seen. I can never unsee her. Why can I not stop looking?

I watch Christopher go to her. I watch myself join him too. I'm a participant, but I'm not part of this. I'm a passerby caught in someone else's famous photo. I'm a reflection in the eye of the Mona Lisa. I'm an audience member at the theater the lead shares a brief moment with. I'm not here to break the fourth wall. I'm not here at all.

And then. Her skin so soft and supple. The way she is bound and positioned, like some kind of human sacrifice. The way her eyes dart nervously about the room as though begging for us to join her. Begging for us to please her. It's erotic. That's what it is. This whole fucking thing. It's erotic. Even the room smells erotic. The shadows that hide the frayed carpet. The old bed, the fogged up windows. Her pussy. Her purpose.

I trail my hands across her belly, brushing the skin lightly. I can’t help myself. It's warm inside there. I trace the veins up her arms, feeling the blood pulse below the skin, wild and erratic. I want that life spilled out all over the carpet. I want her drained until there is nothing left. I want to see all of this in her eyes, like a universe shutting down, until there is nothing left but a pair of glassy marbles in waxy skin.