Chapter 1: Much Needed Ingredients

Chapter 1: Paint Brushes & Other Needed Ingredients

“Annie?” Zane Ellis stood over the girl, a bucket of warm water in one hand and a sponge in the other. She was awake, but her soul was somewhere else. Her eyes, swollen almost shut, were two pairs of veined lips, so dark they seemed poisonous. As he watched her, he wondered where she was, where all his victims spiritually escaped to in that space of time between capture and death. He also wondered if he could go there too. He had his own place, his secret room in his head, but was their escape, their refuge, any better than his? Could their safe haven only be found in the shadow of imminent death?

Wherever it was, he would’ve loved to paint its landscape.

He nudged the hitcher’s bare leg with the toe of his shoe. “Annie. It’s time to get you cleaned up. Wake up, sugar.”

The girl’s head swivelled like a punch-drunk boxer’s. Then, after a whistled intake of air, reality must have leaked through a crack under the door to her safe place; her eyes shot wide and she jerked against the thick ropes holding her to a pole in the middle of the shed. Around the ball-gag in her mouth, her incoherent cries were hoarse and guttural—slobbery, even.

Zane allowed her to vent. He wasn’t mad, didn’t feel the need to silence her. He’d be pretty miffed if he woke up naked and tied in a strange place too. But he also didn’t want her to stain his clothes with her sniffles and snot, so he decided to wait until she’d finished. Annie didn’t seem as strong as some of the others, so he guessed it would be only a few minutes before she came to grips with her situation and realized it was really for the best. That would give him time to go slip into something a little more suited to the task, and maybe make a pot of coffee.

He’d taken most of her hair the night before, while she was still unconscious. At the moment, her mouse-brown locks were in the kitchen, soaking in a shallow pan of bleach and conditioning solution. Later, he’d require a much larger sacrifice. Her hair would make very fine brushes, but a paintbrush wasn’t a paintbrush without a handle.

At a growl from his stomach, he amended the thought of leaving her to wake on her own to rousing her right then; the sun would always be there, fresh and new every day, but she wouldn’t.

Besides, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

~~oOo~~

Zane stepped outside to watch the sunrise spread along the horizon like a fresh paper cut anticipating the first bead of blood.

His eyes fell to an old axe-stabbed stump, caught in relief by the sun’s first rays. The profiled axe called forth an image of the girl, and his eyes slipped from the stump to the barely visible garden shed. His meeting with her had been fortuitous, but disappointing. She’d been standing at the side of the road with her thumb in the air and holding a sign that read “Going that way”, accompanied by an arrow pointing up instead of forward.

He’d begun forming an idea earlier, as he pulled to the side of the road in answer to her waggling thumb. Her presence had introduced an opportunity; one he had every intention of pursuing.

Granted, the ‘hitcher and the dark road’ was as cliché as a meeting could get, but whose fault was it the girl decided to snub any motherly advice she’d ever received in regard to said strangers and dark roads? Surely not his. Plus, it wasn’t as though he’d been actively searching her out.

He nonetheless considered her a gift horse—a bonus, of sorts. As the memory of her hustling after his brake lights brought a smile to his face, he mused over the real direction the arrow had been pointing: up.

Up was where the angels sang.

One punch as she leaned into the car was all it took. That had been the most disappointing part. Add that to the fact she was standing alone on a dirt road near dusk, and he might have rethought his belief in the Chaos theory in favour of the flowery notion that everything happens for a reason.

But that would be madness.

At about eighteen years of age, the girl was too stupid to live and too old to unlearn all that had brought her to that point in her life—to that dirt road in particular—so Zane had decided to help her out. More, he was going to help her “up”. Since she was exercise, a warm up, Gideon wouldn’t need to know about her. The old man would only want the video feed for the main event, and this girl was definitely not main event material.

Maybe later, if he was still in the mood and had time to play, he’d allow the girl to escape. There was nothing like a good hunt, especially when he wouldn’t need to leave the yard.

As he stared into the amber glow of the distant pre-dawn yawn, contentment faltered, and then faded, as an image of his mentor surfaced. Four-hundred miles by air, a whole country away, and Zane still fell under the greedy man’s shadow—a fact he shouldn’t have found surprising, considering Dr. Gideon owned the chalet and the forty acres it rested upon.

The doctor was a constant irritant, but his wealth and connections were extensive, which was the only reason Zane hadn’t killed him yet. He smiled as he imagined a not-so-distant future in which Gideon was no longer needed.

Beaver Creek was forty-five minutes from Toronto, but remote enough to have a scattered population of no more than five-hundred. It was perfect for what he had in mind, and he thought of it often: a place where Gideon wasn’t. More importantly, it was a place where he could spread his wings.

When he’d broached the subject of borrowing the place for a video shoot, Gideon hadn’t initially been agreeable to the idea of him leaving the country to make one of their movies. But Zane knew his weakness. The doctor was as cheap as he was perverted. The moment Zane promised his services pro bono for the entire project, the old man reluctantly agreed to give him two weeks.

It didn’t give him much time, but Gideon wouldn’t be there to fuck it up with his own agenda. Zane would be able to create his art, his way, without the old man looming over his shoulder, uttering suggestions regarding lighting and camera angles, or screaming for a premature but enduring money shot. Short sighted quick thrills were all the rage.

Zane had vision, but his version of vision was something for which Doctor Gideon held little humour: he was an artist; he intricately mapped the secrets and struggles, the birth and death rattle, of all humanity, one canvas at a time. Where Gideon saw mere blood on a drop sheet, Zane saw divinity; a gleaning of the pattern within the chaos, rendered in bright red. Maybe someday his genius would be recognized.

The single missing ingredient for his video drama was a co-star…someone special—and not that too-stupid-to-live hitcher. She was going to be a part of the show, but would serve in other, less visible, ways.

He recalled Gideon saying that he rarely visited the chalet. He could have guessed without being told as he rummaged through the closets for something disposable to wear; there was nothing that would’ve fit the doctor’s lanky form. Judging by the sizes, Gideon’s parents could have taken jobs in a travelling circus as a pair of rotund midget-clowns, there to swipe attention between shows.

If he went back to the shed wearing any of Gideon’s father’s old clothes, Annie might think he was crazy or some inbred Jethro-type axe-murderer. If only he’d stuck with his original plan and gone into town for clothes and Froot Loops, this situation could have been avoided.

Upon searching the garage, he found a pair of rain pants, but, oddly, no matching coat. Beneath the pants was a pair of rubber boots that would fit, but then he thought wearing the pants and boots together with no shirt may give Annie the wrong idea. She might suspect him of being some homicidal Mr. July from a Fireman’s calendar.

He decided to have that cup of coffee first, then figure out what he should wear–maybe go into town for Froot Loops and clothes.

~~oOo~~

Twenty minutes later, he stood in the doorway of the garden shed, coffee in one hand, and axe in the other. In lieu of clothing, he’d decided to dress as he did for his shows. He went naked.

After setting the axe down, he took a sip of coffee. It was good. He’d have to remember how many scoops he used. And he’d been right about the girl; she was calmer now. She still sobbed and snotted as she shook like a palsied rabbit, but at least she’d settled.

She was dirty, slightly overweight, and sat amid a muddy lake of her own bodily excretions, but Zane saw the beauty beneath the mask and planned on savouring every second they spent together. Before she could slide back into another eye-rolling convulsion which might delay him further, Zane shushed her.

She quieted, but shot fearful glances at his fully engorged manhood. Following her eyes to their target, he sighed. “I’m sorry for that—I really am. I just find this very exciting, that’s all. I know we’ve just met, but please believe me when I say to you that sex is the furthest thing from my mind. I’m not that kind of guy.”

His eyes wandered from her to a dust-covered sabre-saw and he smiled, forgetting all about the axe. Then he squatted in front of her with his forearms resting on his knees. “That was the good news.”

She didn’t seem relieved. This was going poorly. Annie wasn’t being very receptive at all, and Zane couldn’t help but feel a little responsible. If he’d only gone into town first for something to wear, this awkwardness may have been avoided.

He picked up the sponge, soaked it, squeezed it, and began washing her, starting with her face. “I don’t think you want to hear the bad news, so I’ll tell you this instead: You and I, Annie, are going to make beauty come alive. Together we’ll create a masterwork, blood and bone, that will make the heavens weep at our feet. Won’t that be nice?”

Annie blinked and shivered, sobbed and snotted.

It wasn’t until he plugged in the sabre-saw that she fainted.

As he circled, searching for a good starting point, he spoke into her ears words of assurance, words to soothe, “I just need your bones, but have no fear, sugar. Nothing gets wasted, never with me.”

The soothing words didn’t work—they never worked—but the screams weren’t so bad, and didn’t usually last very long. Surprisingly enough, Annie’s did. She howled along with the rusty saw, in a jack-hammering crescendo, until he was halfway through the second limb. She was a real trooper.

Before pulling it out, Zane stared into her eye for a very long time. Annie wasn’t in there anymore, and he hadn’t even heard her leave. She’d gone back to her happy place and could stay there forever. Zane felt at peace. Peace for her, peace for him.

Maybe it was the coffee, could have been the beautiful day—likely a mixture of both—but he was very happy right then and began to whistle while he worked.