Still Missing

again. I started babbling.

'I hit a cat with my car when I was a teenager. I didn't mean to, but I was coming home late and I was really tired, and then I heard this thunk, and I saw it spin up in the air. I saw it land and go into the woods, and I pulled over.' The Freak kept staring at me and the words kept pouring out.

'I walked in the woods looking for it, and I was crying and calling, 'Kitty, Kitty,' but it was gone. I went home and told my stepdad, and he came with me back to the spot with flash-lights and we looked for like an hour, but we couldn't find it. He told me it was probably fine and had run home. But in the morning, I looked under my car and there was all this blood and fur on my axle.'

'I'm impressed,' he said with a big smile. 'I didn't think you had it in you.'

'I don't! It was an accident--'

'No, I don't think so. I think you saw his eyes reflect in the headlights and for a moment you wondered what it would feel like. And suddenly you just hated that cat, and then you floored the accelerator. I think the thud when you connected, when you knew you'd hit it, made you feel powerful, made you--'

'NO! No, of course not. I felt terrible--I still feel terrible.'

'Would you still feel terrible if the cat was a killer? He was probably out hunting, you realize--have you seen a cat torture its prey? What if the cat was diseased and homeless with no one to love it? Would that make it better, Annie? What if you could tell by looking at it that its owners were abusing it, not giving it enough food, kicking it?' His voice rose. 'Maybe you did him a goddamn favor, did you ever think about that?'

It almost seemed like he wanted my approval of something he'd done. Did he want to confess or just fuck with my head? The latter seemed more likely, so I'm not sure which of us was more surprised when I finally spoke.

'Have you ever...have you ever killed a person?'

He reached out and gently caressed the handle of the knife.

'A brave question.'

'I'm sorry, I've just never met anyone who's...you know. I've read a lot of books and watched TV and movies, but it's not like talking to a real person who's done it.' It was easy to sound genuinely interested--I've always been fascinated with psychology, especially abnormal psychology. Murderers definitely fit that category.

'And if you did talk to, as you say, 'a real person who's done it,' what would you ask?'

'I...I would want to know why. But maybe sometimes they don't know, or don't even understand it themselves?'

It must have been the right answer, because he nodded decisively and said, 'Killing is a funny thing. Humans make all these rules about when they consider it to be okay.' He gave a quick laugh. 'Self-defense? No problem. You find a doctor to say you're insane, and that's okay. A woman kills her husband, but she has PMS? If you have a good enough lawyer, that's okay too.'

With his head tilted up at me, he rocked back and forth on his heels in the snow. 'What if you knew how things were going to turn out and you could stop it? What if you could see something, something no one else could?'

'Like what?'

'It's a shame you didn't find the cat, Annie. Death is simply an extension of life. And if you witness death, the opening of a new dimension, you become aware of how unnecessary it is to limit yourself in this one.'

He still hadn't actually admitted to killing anyone, and I wondered if I should leave it alone for now, but knowing when to pull back has never been one of my strengths.

'So what does it feel like? To kill someone?'

His head cocked to the side and his brows rose. 'Planning on killing someone, are we?' Before I could deny it, he continued, but not in the direction I expected. 'My mother died of cancer. Ovarian cancer. She rotted from the inside out, and at the end I could smell her dying.' He paused for a second, his eyes flat and dead. I was trying to think what to ask next when he said, 'I was only eighteen when she got sick--her husband had died a couple of years before--but I didn't mind looking after her. I knew how to take care of her better than anyone. But she wouldn't stop crying for him. Even though I'd told her he left and that he hadn't cared about her, not like I did, all she wanted was for me to find him. After everything I'd done for her.... I saw what he did to her. Saw it with my own eyes, but she cried for him.'

'I don't understand, you said he died. What do you mean you told her he left?'

'He'd be gone for months, months, and we'd be fine. And then he'd come home, and I always knew when he was coming, because I helped her put on the dress for him, and she'd wear makeup. I told her I didn't like it, but she said he liked it. He wouldn't even let me eat with them. I know she wanted to feed me, but he made her wait until he was done. I was nothing more to him than a stray dog his wife had brought home from the pound. Later, after dinner, they went into the bedroom and closed the door, but one night, when I was around seven, they didn't close it all the way. And I saw...she was crying. His hands...' His voice drifted off and he stared at nothing.

'Was your dad hitting her?'

I'd noticed before that when he talked about his mom his voice would flatten, and when he answered this time it sounded almost robotic.

'I was gentle...I was always gentle when I touched her. I didn't make her cry. It wasn't right.'

'He was hurting her?'

Staring hard at the center of my chest, his eyes vacant, he shook his head back and forth and repeated, 'It wasn't right.'

He caressed the base of his neck. 'She saw me...in the mirror. She saw me.' The flesh around his fingers reddened as he tightened his grip on his throat for a second, then he pulled his hand down to rub at his thigh like he was trying to wipe something off his palm.

In a raspy voice he said, 'Then she smiled.' The Freak's mouth lifted up into a beatific smile, then widened until it was almost a grimace. He held it so long it had to be painful. My heart lurched in my chest.

Finally meeting my eyes, he said, 'After that she always left the door open. For years she left the door open.'

His voice flattened again. 'When I was fifteen she started shaving me too, so I was smooth all over like her, and if I held her too hard in the night she got mad. Sometimes when I had dreams, the sheets...she made me burn them. She was changing.'

Careful to keep my voice tender and soft, I said, 'Changing?'

'I came home early from school one day. There were sounds from the bedroom. I thought he was on a trip. So I went to the door.' He was rubbing at his chest now, like he was having a hard time getting air.

'He was behind her. And another man, a stranger.... I left before she could see me. Waited outside, under the porch--'

He stopped abruptly and after a few beats I said, 'Under the porch?'

'With my books. That's where I hid them. I was only allowed to read inside if he was home. When he was gone she said they interfered with our time. If she caught me with one, she ripped the pages out.' Now I knew why he was so careful with books.

'An hour later when the men passed over me, I could still smell her on them. They were going for a beer. She was inside--humming.' He shook his head. 'She shouldn't have let them do those things to her. She was sick. She couldn't see it was wrong. She needed my help.'

'So did you? Help her?'

'I had to save her, to save us, before she changed so much I couldn't help her anymore, you see?'

I saw. I nodded.

Satisfied, he continued. 'A week later when she was at the store, I asked him to take me for a drive so I could show him an old mine up in the woods.' He stared down at the knife in the deer's neck. 'When she got home I told her he'd packed all his belongings and left, he'd found someone else. She cried, but I took care of her, just like in the beginning, but this time it was even better because I didn't have to share her. Then she got sick and I did everything for her that she liked, everything she asked. Everything. So when she got sicker and asked me to kill her she thought I would just do it. But I didn't want to. I couldn't. She begged, she said I wasn't a real man, that a real