Page 82 of Shadowface

Although, I’m not sure if the intense emotions I’m feeling are love.

It’s the same insidious thoughts I have about getting off on being killed. He’s planting these ideas in my mind, controlling me from the inside out, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Lincoln is smart, a certified genius, but this is beyond anything I could ever imagine.

I stayed late on campus today to just breathe and avoid Dani, who can sense that something is seriously wrong with me. The grass is still soft, not quite dead yet, although the earliest hints of fall have crept into the air given it’s pushing mid-October. The campus is still busy, even though classes ended an hour ago, but it’s thinning out, people are drifting out of the sandstone buildings, and the evening sun layers onto the trees like the brilliant red of the blood trickling down Cali’s arm.

I’m not convinced Lincoln is a serial killer—at least, not the psychotic and calculated kind we see in the movies.

First, the way he kissed me. I’ve learned through my obsessive research the last few days that most of the killers in popular culture are sexual serial killers. As in, they get sexual gratification from the act of killing itself, where the violence takes the place of sex. Second, sexualized serial killers often place their victims in sexually degrading positions without actually having intercourse with them. What I’ve learned is that killing is like the cherry on top for their release. They have no remorse, no guilt, just pure sexual pleasure over the act itself. They are neither a psychopath nor a sociopath, but are something else entirely. Scientists have no way of knowing what that something else is exactly, because they are so rare and hard to study.

Lincoln enjoyed fucking me way too much for me to think it’s anything but immensely satisfying for him, and I don’t get the sense Lincoln is a killer at all. He is way too kind and smart.

Mikael, however, is a different story.

I’m pretty sure I almost died when he fronted while he was fucking me on Lincoln’s desk. I physically felt how different they were in that moment, and that was when it cemented for me that there are indeed two of them.

That makes my stomach burn because it means he gets his true sexual satisfaction in a way he’s yet to experience with me. And I don’t know how to change that, or if I can change it.

There is something else that’s been bothering me since that day.

The eyes.

Lincoln can’t see a damn thing, and Mikael’s eyes were normal when he came alive with me. But sometimes, they seem translucent, almost ethereal. So what version of him am I getting when his eyes are like that?

That’s the version I saw at the dinner table that terrified me to my core. I’m only seeing fragmented pieces of him, and I want to see all of him.

I glance down at my phone and hover my thumb over it as it buzzes, interrupting my train of thought, as ringing takes over my earbuds.

I shift my gaze to the canopy in the sky and lay my head on the ground, utterly dreading the sound of her voice as I answer the call.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh my god,” she huffs out a breath on the other end of the line. “You finally answered. I thought you were dead.”

I’ve been avoiding her call for days—ever since I’ve started suspecting what my father was. I have a hard time believing she knew nothing about any of it. I roll my eyes, but my insides squirm at the validity of that comment, even though sarcasm is dripping out of her.

I should be dead, and so should she, because of the monster she chose to spend her life with.

I grit my teeth but smile. “I’m not dead, Mom. I’m really busy studying and being the perfect college student. But don’t worry, no one has torn my eyes out yet if you’re worried about what’s on the news.”

A pause. “That’s not funny, Summer.”

“Isn’t it?” I can’t help but smile. I have to wonder what secrets she holds, and how much she knows. How could she not know she was married to a notorious serial killer?

Maybe she and I aren’t that different after all.

Can you be brainwashed into loving someone?

“How’s school going, Summer?”

I close my textbook, marking the beginning of Sensation and Perception, and shove the textbook into my bag.

All my senses are on fire. I can still feel the slickness of him fucking me. The burning…as he accurately described it. The pleasure coming straight from hell.

I chew on my lip as the mark on my hip flares. “I’m fine.”

She lets out a deep sigh. “Are you coming home for a visit soon? I really miss you. This house isn’t the same without you.”

She doesn’t miss me; she misses the idea of me. She misses prancing me around like an accessory. But I really, really miss my father.