Methuselah's Daughter, Part 4 Chapter 36
J.A. Eddy
Pennsylvania, April, 2005 CE
She wasn’t looking at me, but was sitting back in her chair staring out the window with her hands clasped behind her head and her bare feet up on the coffee table. I turned her words over and over in my head, but there simply wasn’t any way to avoid what she’d just told me.
“How long…” I started, but that wasn’t the right question so I started over. “How many… how many people did you kill?”
“It wasn’t killing,” she replied, her voice still flat and ominous, “it was murder.” I didn’t argue. I noticed that the hair was standing up on the back of my neck and had been for almost an hour. “Less than one thousand?” she went on. “Yes, perhaps somewhat less than that, but not by much. It went on for a long time, thirteen years. Once it took hold of me I’d say I managed to strike at least once a week, on average anyhow.”
“Why? What could it possibly mean to you?”
She turned her gaze on me and just stared, which was almost worse than any response I could have imagined. Ever since I’d come to Pennsylvania she’d seemed to be on this downward spiral, the person oozing away and slowly replaced by this thing sitting in the chair, casually recounting horrors and cold-blooded murder. I remembered the story she told me about the pregnant woman Saennuz, but that was so different than this. Where was the regret, the quiet admission of being wrong? For that, she’d seemed to want forgiveness, but for this she seemed unremorseful, almost like a vampire she was so casual about it.
Her face was still completely expressionless, but she struggled to speak for a bit, then finally answered.
“They were vile,” she said, finally showing some emotion. But it was almost worse: it was contempt. “They’d stolen something from me,” she went on, “something precious. I was determined to have it back.” She paused then, looking into my eyes. What she saw there made her frown. Then she sighed, “It truly was that simple.”
“I don’t buy it. You had to know there was nothing to gain. How could you not know?”
“Nothing to gain?” she snapped back, and I saw genuine anger in her face. She suddenly leaned forward, her feet falling to the floor and her voice became louder, almost threatening and I recoiled a little as she went on. “Who the hell are you to tell me what I felt I had to gain? Who are you to presume to tell me what I had to have known?”
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Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.