Wearing only a shirt, Paolo leaned back on the airport motel’s crisp white sheets and muted the television’s sound. On the screen, the videotape of the yoga instructor in her pink leotard played, just as it had been playing when he’d sneaked into apartment 3D. The woman on TV turned sideways, bent over, and practically touched her nose to the floor. But it was the way her compact little ass flared toward the ceiling that sent Paolo’s heart aflutter.
He removed the small cardboard sheath that protected the new utility razor blade, examining its miraculous edge in the yellowish light of the motel room’s bedside lamp. In flashes, his face reflected partially in the steel of the tiny sharpened mirror-an eye, his teeth, another eye. He’d grown thinner in recent months, his face stretched unnaturally over sharp cheekbones, more like the face of a mummy, the dark eyes sunken deeply inside pronounced sockets. The rich brown color of his eyes only revealed itself when he tilted his head up into light. Despite the look of his gaunt frame, he’d never been this fit, this strong, this fast on his feet, in his life.
He accepted that with crimes came punishment. Guilt gave way to confession. Release. He felt no pain, internally or otherwise, when he did these things to others, only when he did them to himself. Without pain there was no payment. It confirmed his existence.
He examined the perfection of the blade. He loved it, and hated it.
Propping his head up with two pillows, he saw past his erection to the screen where the pink leotard continued its contortions. He could picture the woman he’d killed mimicking those movements. He could smell her.
He unbuttoned his shirt. It fell open revealing dozens of raised scars. Some pink and fresh. Others dark and older. A few lucky ones had been cut repeatedly and now protruded a quarter inch or more, a geometric lump of scar tissue.
Under the glow of the lamp’s dim light he placed the blade to a vacant space on his abdomen and applied pressure, gentle at first, then pressing more firmly as the skin separated and curled away from the blade. He gritted his teeth, watched the television and stroked himself.
He dragged the razor deeper, creating a red, feverish wound three inches long. As he climaxed he dropped the razor, awash in relief, a flood of departing tension, like a drain being opened beneath him. He closed his eyes, sighed deeply.
Later, when he bothered to look, he realized he’d gone a little deep with the razor. The pink leotard had been lying on her back at the time, stretching her legs up and apart. He’d overreacted. The wound would require butterfly bandages, but he carried them with him wherever he went.
For a moment he was not alone. For a moment he’d done nothing wrong. For a moment he felt at balance with the world and his own place within it. These feelings would change, would forsake him over the next several hours-he’d been here enough times to know. The kill might return in his dreams, might linger for days or even weeks. That he’d fucked her while she died beneath him only made matters worse: his moment of creation, hers of destruction. But he took opportunities when they arose and paid for them later in his own way, as he did now.
He might rest later, but now the adrenaline from this painful act would carry him. He sometimes stayed awake days without sleep, never bothered by it, never fully understanding it. He couldn’t remember if or when he’d last eaten and reminded himself to eat something before continuing.
Under the glare of a fluorescent tube, he wetted a towel and cleaned himself.
His black hair wet and combed back, he left the room for a twenty-four-hour diner, envisioning pancakes and a hot cup of coffee, an aging redhead in a tight shirt who would call him “Hon.”
A bead of blood seeped through and stained his shirt despite the butterfly bandages. He failed to notice it, his body numbed and distant. His mind whirring. He felt right again. And that was all that mattered.