J. Redmerski: The Swan and the Jackal

Reaching for the knife just inches away underneath my bed, and with a heavy black heart, I move it between us and bury the blade in her chest. The burning tears finally burst through to the surface, and I let out a cry I never knew I could make. The warmth of her blood flowing onto my hand and onto my chest, I can feel it but I’m afraid to look at it. For the first time in my adult life as an interrogator and torturer, I don’t want to see the blood because it hurts too much.

Her head falls back, bobbing unsteadily on her neck as she looks at me. A tiny trickle of blood seeps from one corner of her mouth. I lean in and kiss it away as sobs roll through my chest.

I haven’t cried like this since I was a boy.

“I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry it had to be this way,” I say through troubled breaths and a burning throat. “You’re the only death I’ll truly regret until the day I join you.”

She reaches up her hand weakly and touches the side of my face. I do the same, letting my hand leave the knife and touching her cheek instead. Blood smears across her face from my fingertips.

She chokes and coughs up more blood.

“Don’t regret,” she says, but I don’t know which one she is. “You saved me.”

“Cassia?” I can’t see through the tears in my eyes.

She smiles faintly and strokes my bottom lip with her fingers and I know that it’s her. Cassia.

I kiss her bloody lips and embrace her tighter, feeling the handle of the knife pressing against me. Her eyes are getting heavier, her body weaker, her arms limper. I push her wet hair over her forehead where more blood stains her face, but I can’t stop touching her, caressing her, being here with her in her last moment. Our last moment.

“I always loved you,” I whisper onto her lips. “Everything about you, Cassia. And I always will.”

Her hand falls away from my face and her head falls back limply on her neck. And when I see her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling I choke on my burning tears and crush her body against me, wailing until my chest hurts.

Izabel

Fredrik’s front door is unlocked when I arrive with the cleaners. I got a call from Fredrik two hours ago.

He wasn’t himself:

“Fredrik, what’s going on?” I asked, surprised to hear from him again so soon.

Silence ensued.

“Fredrik?”

“I need you to come here,” he said in such a quiet, distant voice that I wondered if he was calling me in his sleep.

“Is everything OK?” I said into the phone.

“What’s going on?” Victor asked, rolling over in our bed and draping his arm over my waist.

I pulled my lips away from the phone and turned to Victor. “I don’t know—something’s wrong,” I said quietly and I couldn’t hide the worry and grief in my voice even if I’d tried. “I need to go see him.”

I turned back to the call while Victor was switching on the bedside light.

“Fredrik,” I said with urgency, “I need you to tell me what’s going on. I’ll come there right away, but I just need to know what to prepare for. If anything.”

I felt the bed move as Victor stood up and walked butt naked across the room to our bathroom.

Still not hearing Fredrik’s voice on the other end, I sat all the way up in bed and draped my bare legs over the side of the mattress.

“I killed her,” Fredrik said and my heart stopped—out of shock, but mostly it stopped for Fredrik.

I gasped and shot up from the bed.

Victor was looking right at me as he came back out of the bathroom.

“Tell him you’ll be there soon,” he said with a nod.

I thanked Victor with my eyes and said into the phone, “Fredrik, I’ll be there soon. Just stay where you are. Don’t leave, OK? Promise me you won’t leave.”

Nothing.

“Fredrik?”

My eyes never left Victor’s then and I knew they must’ve been full of worry and fear. Fear only for Fredrik.

The phone went dead.

For a long time I just held it against my ear, thinking maybe he was just being really quiet. Finally, Victor took it from my hand and it pulled me out of my worried and paranoid thoughts—would Fredrik hurt himself? Was he capable of doing something stupid? The thoughts put my nerves on edge.

“Get dressed and go see him,” Victor said softly. “I’ll make a call and have a car meet you there.”

I nodded short and rapidly and then scrambled to get my clothes on. And before I left, Victor came up to me, kissed me on the lips and said, “And when you get back, I think it’s time you tell me about Seraphina Bragado being in his basement.”

He knew all along.

I stood there frozen before him, worried about what he was thinking of me, of Fredrik—of me and Fredrik. I was scared. I don’t know why, but I was scared. Maybe because I knew that I could never, no matter how hard I tried, ever hide anything from him.

Victor kissed me on the mouth and brushed my hair away from my face with the side of his hand.

“I understand,” he said. “Now go help him and keep me updated.”

I nodded.

And then I left.

Entering Fredrik’s front door quietly, I peer in around the frame before I step all the way inside. The house is nearly pitch dark, only the faint blue hue of the moonlight beaming through few windows. It’s quiet. So quiet. Not even the dripping of a faucet or the humming of the refrigerator or the central heat can be heard. But I hear my heartbeat, pumping blood anxiously through my heart.

Two of Victor’s men start to enter the house behind me.

“Wait,” I say, putting up my hand. “Stay on the porch until I tell you to come in.”

Stopped in the doorway, they nod and step back outside, leaving the door open partway.

Walking carefully through the house, I stop in my tracks at the entrance to the den. Fredrik sits on the center cushion of the sofa with his long legs bent and his arms resting against his thighs, his hands dangling between them. His back is hunched over, his shoulders stiff.

He’s staring at the floor in front of him. I glance over to see that the coffee table has been shoved off to the side, sitting crookedly against a leather chair.

“Fredrik, I’m here,” I call out to him softly.

I approach him with caution—my heart tells me that he needs me, but also that’s he’s not in his right mind and he could be dangerous.

He won’t speak.

I step a little closer. My heart is breaking for him.

“I’m here—”

“I need her out of the house,” Fredrik says without looking up at me or moving a muscle in his body other than his mouth. “And the body in the basement.”

I want to ask who ‘the body in the basement’ belongs to, but it’s not the right time for that.

I nod even though he doesn’t see me and call out to the cleaners—men designated to clean up our crime scenes—on the porch, “Come inside! And be quick about it!” Once they’re standing at the den entrance I add, “There are two bodies. One in the basement, the other I don’t know, but just find them and get them out of here.”

They nod and walk away quickly to follow my orders.

I turn back to Fredrik, stepping up closer, the light sound of my boots tapping against the hardwood floor.

Finally, I step all the way up to the sofa, remove my long white coat and set it on the cushion next to me as I sit down. Fredrik still won’t look at me. He won’t speak. He won’t move. And I don’t know what to say because there really is nothing that I can say to make him better.