Luke Delaney - The Keeper

She had begun to dry herself, hurriedly rubbing the coarse towel over her skin. ‘Don’t forget the cream and perfume,’ he told her, watching the silhouette freeze for a few seconds before reaching for the moisturizer, her hands almost frantically rubbing it into her shoulders. ‘Slow down,’ he demanded. ‘Take your time. I want you to put it everywhere. It only works if you put it everywhere.’ Again she froze for a few seconds, then carried on massaging the cream into her skin. A satisfied sigh escaped his lips. ‘That’s better,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Do it just like that.’

He watched for minutes as she performed for him, but still his excitement failed to reach its previous levels, leaving him feeling disappointed and unfulfilled. ‘Now the perfume,’ he insisted, watching as her shadow pointed the small bottle towards the base of her throat and pressed twice, the tiny cloud of man-made scent casting its own silhouette as it floated through the air behind the screen.

When she’d finished dressing she walked from behind the screen and headed obediently back towards her cage, the scent of the cream and perfume wafting under his nose as she passed him, its combination intoxicating, but still the excitement he expected to feel was not there. He looked away from her.

Seeing him turn his head as if ashamed, Louise saw an opportunity to reach out him, to try to form some kind of bond. She’d vowed to learn from Karen Green’s mistakes. Perhaps if Karen had managed to touch him, he wouldn’t have treated her like an anonymous pawn in his game of fantasy. If she’d only tried stepping from the shadows of whoever Sam was to him, it might have made it more difficult for him to force himself on her and finally, when he tired of her, to dispose of her like an unwanted pet.

By getting closer to him, Louise hoped she could confuse him, make him doubt himself and what he was doing. If she had to, she would take him inside of her, pretend she wanted him, but all the time she would be looking, waiting for the opportunity to hurt him — to hurt him like she’d never hurt anybody in her life.

‘Are you all right?’

The gentle, caring question seemed to catch him off-balance. ‘Sorry,’ he said, before realizing he had heard her question after all. ‘Yes, sorry, yes I’m fine. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. I’ve been working very hard lately … er, things have been a little crazy at work, but I’m fine. Thank you.’

‘What do you do?’ she asked, aware of his awkwardness, determined to keep him talking.

‘You know what I do,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen me.’

‘You mean you’re a real postman? That’s a good job. You must be very responsible to have a job like that.’ She knew her speech was stuttering and unnaturally bright, but she had to search for the chink in his armour of madness.

‘It’s OK,’ he answered suspiciously, his eyes back on her now, moving up and down her body as if the way she moved would betray whatever treacherous ideas she might be hatching. ‘People leave me alone,’ he lied, ‘and I can pretty much do as I like, so long as I get the job done.’

‘That’s good.’ Without meaning to, she found herself talking to him as she would a child. ‘It must be nice to be left alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Just it must be nice to be able to do what you want to do, when you want to.’

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Do you resent being here? Don’t you want to be here?’

‘No, no,’ she hurried to assure him, realizing she was losing whatever ground she’d made. ‘I want to be here with you. I want to understand.’

‘Maybe you’ll never understand.’ He was glaring at her, his voice cold. ‘Maybe they poisoned your mind too much for you to ever be able to understand.’

Louise felt herself being dragged towards the edge of the cliff. ‘No, you can make me understand, you can take the poison away. I know you can. I’m Sam, remember?’

He remained silent, considering her, waiting for his instincts to tell him how to react. He felt nothing.

‘You need to go back inside,’ he told her. ‘It’s not safe for you yet. The lies are still in your head.’

‘Why can’t I come with you?’ she almost pleaded, desperate to escape to the daylight above and the unlimited possibilities of salvation she dreamed it held. ‘You don’t need to leave me down here any longer.’

‘I told you,’ he insisted, ‘it’s not safe for you yet. You need to go back inside now.’ He raised the stun-gun a few inches to encourage her. Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she stooped back inside the desolate cage, the door closing quickly behind her, the lock snapping shut, condemning her to more hours alone in the gloom without hope.

He got to the foot of the stairs and then turned back, came right up to the side of her cage. ‘I almost forgot …’ He was smiling again. ‘I have something for you, something that will bring us even closer together.’ He pulled the sleeve of his right arm up over his bare forearm, slowly rolling it back on itself to expose a tattoo on the underside of his arm, its bright colours vivid against his pale, lifeless skin: the reds, blues and greens of a phoenix rising from the gold of the fire. It was clumsy illustration, like something a child would choose at a fairground. ‘This is us,’ he told her, ‘this is our love, rising from the flames. They all tried to stop it from happening, but you can’t stop what is meant to be.’

He bared his small ugly teeth as he smiled at her, his eyes shining brightly as he nervously waited for her reaction. She forced herself to smile through her fear and disgust.

‘Here,’ he said, reaching into the pocket of his tracksuit top, ‘I have something for you, something to show everybody that we were meant to be together.’ Carefully he pulled out a flimsy, shiny-backed piece of paper. He smiled as he looked at the picture she couldn’t yet see, pinched between his thumb and index finger, eventually twisting his wrist to show her the image of the phoenix, exactly the same as his tattoo in every way.

Suddenly his hand shot out and opened the hatch to the cage. ‘Put your arm through,’ he said, still smiling.

‘Why?’ she asked, memories of the torture he’d inflicted on Karen Green too fresh in her mind.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he laughed, ‘it’s not a real tattoo like mine. You can get a real one later, when the poison’s gone — this one’s just a transfer. Don’t you remember? It’s the same one we had when we were kids. It was our secret. Only we knew about them. You put mine on my arm and I did yours. It was our secret sign.’

‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘It was a long time ago, but I remember.’

‘Good,’ he said, his eyes bright with joy. ‘Now put your arm through the hatch.’

She resisted the temptation to close her eyes as she eased her arm through the cage opening, his hand closing around her wrist, gently pulling her forearm towards him. He licked the underside of the transfer, but his swollen red tongue lacked saliva and he had to run it over the transfer several times before it was moist enough to apply. It took every ounce of strength Louise had not to recoil from his vileness, her nausea reaching new levels as he pressed the wet transfer into her forearm, his hand clamped over the top of it, his saliva glistening on her skin.

‘You have to keep still for a while,’ he explained, ‘or it won’t work properly.’ He held her for minutes that felt like hours before peeling away the transfer underside, leaving behind the ugly image of something that should have been beautiful. As he released her arm she couldn’t help but pull it back inside her cage too quickly, turning his smile to a frown of concern. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you like it?’