The fog-smothered dusk settling over Cretan Lake, Minnesota might have caused most sensible people to be more aware of their surroundings. Car exhaust fumes and damp garbage wreaths wrapped around pedestrians as they maneuvered around the gritty streets sprinkled with brown puddles and the occasional crushed Styrofoam cup or candy wrapper. A woman’s heels echoed in the distance with a clicking sound. Raindrops dripped steadily from gutters with a slow-ticking-clock rhythm.

A short, coarse fellow of forty-six, Mr. Smith had finished meandering about the Minnesota town, having already made his usual stops at the playground, City Park, and the school. His attempts for the day were futile considering the rain had poured down in sheets and no one dared brave it.  

Now he stumbled up the slippery concrete steps to his third floor Saddle Square apartment, his egregiously large leather bag thudding softly against the back of his right thigh as he climbed each step. Saddle Square, a road on the East end of Cretan Lake (often described as unsavory by the locals), contained at least three apartment buildings all of which saw frequent traffic. Cars pulled in at odd hours of the night, engines still running as one occupant got out and knocked softly on the door. One person usually stayed behind as a lookout. In a matter of minutes the car backed out rather quickly and sped away. Sometimes the visitors were familiar faces, sometimes new.

Smith coughed with a deep, mucous-filled rumble, his breath emitting wafts of cheap bourbon. Not aforementioned, he had not given up his daily stop at Rusty’s Tavern, a bar down the street from which he was just returning.

***

“Good God,” Rusty said when Smith entered the bar earlier that evening. “This storm is bad for business. Not that I’m sad to see you, Smith, but what the fuck are you doing out there?” As Rusty spoke, he poured a small glass of Heaven Hill whiskey and slid it in front of his customer.

Smith licked the inside of his lips, resulting in a sour-taste expression and a crinkled brow. He wiped at his bristly chin, which was wet from rain.

“Got things to do. People to see.” He folded his arms in front of him on the bar and slouched so that his nose nearly touched the rim of his glass.

Rusty took a damp cloth that had hung over the long, silver sink faucet and began wiping at the empty bar spaces around his only customer.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, I dunno who’d you be meetin’ in this kinda weather. Ain’t nobody else dumb enough to be wanderin’ around out there.”

He let out a low chuckle, but Smith remained silent.

Rusty enjoyed having a regular patron, but if he could choose his regulars, Smith would not have been one of his picks. He was quiet enough. He never bothered anyone. And most bar owners would be thankful for a loyal drinker who didn’t cause a ruckus after downing multiple shots of whiskey in one sitting. But for Rusty, Smith sat there like a sore. Festering. No one looked at him, except when he erupted into one of his deep coughs. He always sat alone. Rusty did not feel sorry for him. In fact, he understood why others kept their distance. The man gave off an heir of mystery, but in the worst way. Perhaps mystery was the wrong word. A mystery is usually something people want to find out more about. They want an answer. No one wanted an answer to Smith. He was more of a secret. A dirty well-kept secret. 

It didn’t help that Smith frequently mentioned “seeing people” and “having things to do” with absolutely no detail to offer. Who exactly was he seeing? What were they doing? Rusty shuttered. He dared not ask. Besides, at the end of every visit, Smith paid his tab and stumbled out quietly. No harm. No foul.

***

Now, on this damp evening, Smith made his way up the stairs leading to his apartment. He didn’t quite regret the bourbon as much as he regretted agreeing to a third-floor apartment every time he made the trek up the stairs with its rusted iron railing and seemingly countless steps that appeared to nearly ascend into Heaven. The coughing spell continued, and he stopped just before the third floor landing and groped the rails. Beneath his ribs he could feel a hard acidic explosion, permeating through his upper abdomen up to his neck.

“Damn heartburn,” he mumbled between raspy coughs. He looked out at the street below and noticed a slight spinning. He shook his head and turned around to face the door of his apartment, 13B.

Upon entering, Smith flicked on the light switch which cast a dull yellow across the disheveled living room. In his peripheral vision he saw something scuttle under the refrigerator to his right. A large roach or maybe a small mouse. Ignoring his vermin visitor, he chucked his leather bag onto the yellowed carpets spotted with various stains from God-knows-what. A clock sat on the mantel with a thick dust-blanket. Dust covered the coffee table, the lamp, and the one lonely bookcase in the corner of the room. Walls stood with partially peeled wallpaper but no pictures. Only nails, looking like brown, brittle worms, spotted the back wall.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Nearly twelve o’clock. Smith’s sluggish movements quickened as he caught sight of the time. He had no particular reason for doing this. All day he had this anxious pull in his brain. Nothing was physically around his body, but it felt to him as if someone had a noose tight around his neck and every time he began tapering off in his movements, an invisible someone tightened it just enough to make him hurry on.

His dirty fingers fumbled at the brass buckle of his belt. Quickly, sloppily, he pulled down his jeans. Each leg caught around his ankles resulting in his having to stomp out of them like a child in the midst of a tantrum. He left them in a heap on the floor. Remaining only in his sweat-soaked t-shirt and boxer shorts, he grabbed the leather bag and ruffled through it in search of his camera. It was tucked carefully in the side pocket.

“Thank God for digital,” Smith thought as he pressed the shiny silver button to power on the camera. Only a few weeks before, his friend, or rather acquaintance, introduced him to the digital camera. He was skeptical at first.

***

“So the pictures don’t need to be developed?” he asked the acquaintance, a scraggly guy who lived in the apartment below him. Was his name Rick? Nick? Dick? Probably Dick.

Dick scratched at his neck ferociously as he answered, showcasing the yellow-purple needle wounds dotting his arms. “Nope. Everything is kept on the card. You can just upload everything to your computer.”

Smith was awestruck. Working for years in the solitude of a dark room had not bothered him. Not the solitude. The waiting bothered him. The process. With the digital camera, the fruits of his labor appeared on a small screen in the palm of his hand within seconds.

His passion for photography spanned nearly twenty-five years, beginning when a buddy of his was in college studying art and photography. He let Smith stay with him for a while after his folks kicked him out.

For the months Smith stayed there, he learned all sorts of things about the craft: how to use the camera, how to reel, how to develop.

***

“You’re really good. You have an eye for this sort of thing,” his friend told him as he packed up to leave. His friend handed him an old 35 MM Pentax that was just collecting dust in his apartment. “I don’t need this one anymore. Take it. You should consider a career in photography.”

Smith thanked him for the gift. He had no intention of photographing newlywed couples at the alter, or families set before a blue backdrop with screaming toddlers, flustered mothers, and oblivious fathers, each donning a matching ensemble to forever immortalize themselves in a frame above their own mantel. The thought sickened him. However, the thought of immortalizing other things did appeal to him.  A few weeks before he stumbled across a collection of Penthouse magazines in his friend’s back closet. Before he left, he made sure to shove a few in the front of his coat. 

***

He clicked through his work from the previous day: children no older than ten on the school playground, young mothers holding their infants in the City Park. Some even breastfeeding on the park benches, modestly of course, with a light blanket swathed around their torso.

Clicking back farther he saw some of his better work from several weeks back: a young woman in her early twenties frozen in time as she walked to the driver-side door of a red 1996 Firebird. She was a small woman with bouncy, bright hair, an exotic dancer named Crystal, Smith had watched a few times at the Dream Lounge. He remembered the night he snapped those photos. He caught her outside the back door when she was leaving her shift.

He continued to click and see the same woman bent over in the backseat of a car. One of her breasts was free from her bra. The dark makeup around her eyes was smeared and her half-open brown eyes were distant with a glassy, watery look. The next picture was of the same woman. She appeared to be asleep and completely naked. Her short blonde hair was matted and tousled. In another photo, her smooth, shaven thighs were pulled open, fully exposing her to the camera. He clicked through more photographs, his desire building and hardening, as each one was more graphic than the one before. A fire burned inside him that had nothing to do with his heartburn.

He slowly turned to take the camera over to his laptop, but a knock sounded at his front door. Smith, startled out of his arousal, dropped the camera. It landed on the floor with a thud. The memory card fell out and lay a few inches away.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he hissed to himself.

The knocks, although faint, sent a vibration through the apartment air. Maybe it was only because visitors rarely stood at the other side of door 13B.

“Who the hell is that?” he asked the nothingness.

Smith nearly tripped over the end table trying to step over the fallen camera and memory card. He shuffled over to grab his pants, thrusting his white, veiny legs into them quickly.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

He felt a coarse, blank space where he expected to feel the zipper at the crotch of his pants and realized they were on backwards.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

He decided he didn’t care enough since he planned to shoo his caller away, so he stuck a calloused finger in one of the belt loops and held them up loosely.

“I’m coming. I’m COMING!” His voice rose into a yell as the knocking not only persisted but grew louder and quicker. His vertigo sensation strengthened with each wrap on the wooden door.

Knock. Knock –

He flung the door open, interrupting the knock.

“What do you –” Smith began. When the door swept open to reveal the person on the other side, he froze.

There stood a statuesque figure with crimson lips and black diamond eyes, deep but sparkling in a settled-cream complexion, caressed lightly by auburn locks. They loosely rippled down to her waist. If darkness had a face, this was it. Her cinched tunic was short, showing her long, creamy legs.

An invisible strangeness seeped from around her and bled into him like a spilled glass of Merlot slowly soaking into thick shag carpet.

Even in his stunned stillness, his chest cavity filled with the anticipation of one of his gruesome coughing spells. The noose-like pull with which he had become accustomed intensified.

“What do you want?” he mumbled between coughs.

“I want you.”

Her raspy, whispered voice fell over him like water pouring from a spigot. It washed over him, a torrent of needles.

One of her hands clasped a heart-shaped locket, and her other swan-like arm moved gracefully to the door and pushed it fully open. Smith stepped back, stumbling to the floor as he did. The woman’s heels clicked over the linoleum at the front door entrance.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Silence. Her shoes stopped by Smith’s face.

Smith lay back on the floor with his hand pressed to his chest, unable to move.

“I’m having a heart attack”, he thought to himself. He couldn’t die yet. Not yet. Panic paralyzed him.

The woman knelt down, bringing her face close to his. He could smell her breath. Decay. A rotting meat stench emitted from her red lips. With her face inches away, Smith saw she really wasn’t beautiful. Her eyes were not large and dark, but only deep holes –two spots of nothingness. Her skin looked papery. Flaky almost. He was sure if he had the strength to lift his fingers and peel it off, he could do so easily so that her mask crinkled and fell in pieces onto the floor revealing a hideous, gruesome thing he sensed was underneath.

Her swan arms lifted the heart locket from her bosom and slid it over Smith’s head. She groped the locket and pulled up. He felt the chain cutting into his neck as it lifted his limp head toward her empty eye sockets.

She was upon him. Her lips pressed against his mouth and she kissed him deeply.

He squirmed and felt the rot flowing from her mouth into his. Her grip on the necklace tightened and the pressure in his chest built up more and more until he was sure his heart was being crushed beneath his rib cage. Was she strangling him? He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that the room around him was dissolving. Warm became cold. Sight became blindness. The floor was replaced with long, decaying fingers that scratched at his flesh and tugged at his clothing. Darkness fell over him.

***

A week later Rusty stood behind his bar, wiping out a beer mug, and enjoying a brief break from the steady flow of customers he’d been seeing. His bar was right in the middle of downtown, so people usually wandered in and out. The week after the storm had been beautiful and plenty of people were out enjoying the weather.

“How’s it going?” a man’s voice bellowed from front door.

“Steve! Hey, buddy. It’s been a while,” Rusty greeted the man with a handshake. “What are you doing out this way?”

Steve sat at the bar across from Rusty, tucked his badge in his pocket, and motioned to a bottle of sherry closest to them.

“Gotta case out in Saddle Square. Some guy croaked and sat there stinkin’ up the place for almost a week. Son of a bitch lived alone. Coroner said it was a heart attack.” He spoke in a very low voice so only Rusty could hear him.

“That’s too bad,” Rusty said, truly shocked. He couldn’t imagine anyone lying alone dead for days at a time with no one noticing.

“Did his family find him?”  He handed Steve his drink.

“Nahhh… some crack head nearly beat the door down trying to get in. He was hollering that the man owed him something. The neighbor called the cops. That’s how they found him. You know I shouldn’t be talkin’ to you about this, but damn it’s a weird case. I need a drink after seeing his place. The bastard was a real sicko.”

“How do you mean?” Rusty asked. He was curious. After all, it wasn’t every day he had the chief of police sneaking on-duty drinks in his bar. He thought it had to be something pretty fucked up.

Steve took a swig from his glass and made a face. “We found pictures. Hundreds of ‘em. Women who’ve been coming up sayin’ they’ve been drugged and assaulted – pictures of them. Had ‘em all printed out and stuck to his bedroom walls and ceiling. We found a camera and a laptop, but haven’t been able to get into them yet. Oh, it’s nasty stuff.”

“God,” Rusty sighed. “This happened in town?”

“Yep. We’re not sure if this guy is responsible for the strangling of that stripper a few months back, but it’s definitely a possibility. We have some work ahead of us.”

Rusty nodded solemnly and continued tidying up the glasses. Just then the door opened again.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

A tall woman in six-inch heels entered the bar and sat down just a few stools down from Steve.

Steve immediately stopped talking. He nodded politely to the woman. She nodded back. Her legs were crossed. A thick mane of wavy red hair fell down her back.

Mighty pretty, the Chief of Police thought to himself.

“Hi, ma’am.” Rusty said. “How are you today?”

Her wide red-lipped smile was infectious. “Just fine. Thank you. It’s been quite a day.”

“Oh yeah?” he replied. “Well, what can I get you?

“Merlot,” she said in a breathy voice. As she spoke her bony fingers fumbled with a gaudy locket around her neck.

“Would you like to start a tab?” he asked her.

She let out a soft laugh and pushed some flaming waves of hair from her face. “Oh, no. Just the one glass. I have things to do. People to see.” She smiled at him.

“Oh,” Rusty said. He handed her the glass.

– Heather Brown