He’s brought into the visitation area just like you see in the movies.
She dreamed about this long before it was a reality. She always wondered what it would be like to see him powerless and unkempt. A surge of nausea rolls through her stomach as a strange and familiar fear takes hold. For just a moment, she wants to run, to get as far away from him as she possibly can and save herself the torment she knows he can inflict. She rubs her hands together, forcing herself to quietly breathe and calm her system. She reminds herself of the reality of the situation, that she has chosen to be here and Jeremy has not. She can get up and walk away without so much as a wave, but he is stuck here until he rots away, until the ground he will be buried in is ready to take on a vessel of such immense evil.
This morning, she’d prepared for prison in the same way she would prepare to testify as a witness in court. She’s always dreaded being called in as an expert witness for a case, having to explain her work while an attorney attempts to discredit her entire career with verbal gymnastics. It’s a necessary evil of the system, but one she loathes. On the nights before such appearances, her stomach would sour, and every little thing would set her teeth on edge. She would consider every single possible catastrophic scenario and convince herself they were likely to happen.
This morning had felt like that.
Sitting in her kitchen in the middle of the night, she’d wondered whether Jeremy had evolved enough to enter her psyche via a new kind of cross-parish osmosis and permanently torture her from within her own mind.
Flanked by two guards, Jeremy Rose is carefully guided toward his seat across from Wren and Leroux. His blond hair is more disheveled than normal, but it isn’t messy, not even in here. A few small strands bounce against his forehead; they are longer than she knows he would prefer them to be.
He doesn’t look at her, keeping his eyes to the floor as he shuffles into her orbit. Even so, she can see that, if anything, this confinement has made his eyes darker, emptier. Two useless globes in a corrupt shell. She knows her cheeks are probably pink with the amount of blood that now rushes to her face as he approaches, an uncomfortable by-product of her overactive nervous system. She wishes it would calm the fuck down.
When he enters the room, the air changes, warping and shifting as he disrupts it, like heat refraction on a sweltering day. Her nausea returns for a moment, rolling through her again, throwing her off-balance and making the small room feel even more claustrophobic.
The air smells musty with the odor of confinement. It’s a true olfactory assault, mixing with the harsh smell of cleaning products and metal. She can taste it too, somehow. Every time she opens her mouth, it feels like the thick atmosphere forces its way in, threatening to choke her. Each time, she clears her throat, but it only seems to make it worse, and she doesn’t want it to be perceived as another nervous tic. Nothing about this place is normal or comforting, but it’s not meant to be.
Jeremy is practically shoved into the seat with a thud, his chains clanging against the plastic chair and breaking the unbearable silence. He keeps his eyes cast downward, an unusual mannerism that doesn’t feel like the inconspicuous, socially awkward Cal she once knew in college, nor the killer in the woods who called her by name. With his unfocused gaze and bewilderingly clean appearance, he doesn’t immediately appear sinister. In fact, he almost looks normal. But she can feel the malevolence that clings to the air around him. It’s like being in the room with a wasp. It feels like an attack is imminent. Even across the table, eyes on the floor, he buzzes around her, threatening to strike. Don’t want to get stung by the wasp? Then stay still; fight every instinct in your system that tells you to swat at it or run. So Wren sits, silently telling herself he can’t sting her here.
The silence draws out, long and heavy, as he sits back, slouching in his seat. He still won’t make eye contact, and it starts to feel worse than if he did. Wren’s heart thunders in her chest, and she breathes slowly, deeply, trying to keep it quiet and measured. She doesn’t want Leroux to hear her either. She doesn’t want him to pity her, sitting here on the verge of hyperventilation in the presence of the man who tried to kill her.
But she survived, and her very existence detoured his life. He didn’t have the untouchable skill he thought he did, and that poisoned him. It poisoned him at the cellular level, deeply tainting who he was and who he intended to become. His path was twisted because of her will to survive him, to defy the godlike intellect he was so sure he possessed. As she pushes through these thoughts in her mind, she can feel her heartbeat steady. She still feels the heat in her cheeks, but now it’s controlled anger.
She finds herself somehow drawn to this man in front of her. She bores holes through him with her own stare, challenging herself not to look away, to make him feel her as sharply as she can feel him.
Abruptly, he lifts his eyes to meet hers, and a jolt of intensity passes through the air like an electrical current. Each painful moment he’s seared into her psyche comes flooding back, an endless parade of torturous memories. She blinks them away, focusing instead on the present. Now, as she begins to take back control, she can see the dark circles under his eyes and the strands of hair that have fallen out of place, cracks in his carefully crafted facade. For a second he just maintains a measured stare without a trace of emotion crossing his face. Despite winning the battle to keep control, Wren is startled by the sudden eye contact. She sucks in a harsh breath, and the noise seems to please him. A flash of satisfaction flickers in his eyes like dark magic.
He leans forward, straightening his posture and clasping his shackled hands together in front of him on the table. She notices bandages on two of his fingers. They are in need of a change; blood has seeped through the once-white cloth and stained it a deep crimson. That crooked smile forms on his face, and now he looks between Wren and Leroux, finally landing on the detective. Leroux’s jaw is clenched tight, as if it’s taking every bit of strength he has to stay seated. Every muscle looks like it’s on fire as he grips the side of the table. Leroux’s lip curls into a barely detectible sneer.
“Detective Leroux,” Jeremy says with a pronounced drawl, immediately taunting him, “someday you’ll have to tell me how you got her here, because I am genuinely impressed.”
“Your usual bullshit won’t work today, Rose.” Leroux waves his hand dismissively, rolling his eyes in a show of drama. “You’re a powerless little insect, and someone finally ripped your wings off.”
Wren stays focused, keeping her eyes fixed on Jeremy, not letting him break the strength she’s built up. She can’t help but stare at him, sitting calmly before her like he didn’t crawl directly out of her nightmares. She touches her wedding rings, tracing them lightly as her eyes move from one feature to the next. She finds it impossible to understand how this man sitting before her, made of flesh and bone, has caused so much pain. She looks at his hands. He rubs them together, the dry skin on his palms making an uneasy sound. He’s never had hands like that before, and she enjoys a moment of pleasure knowing it’s probably driving him crazy. She takes in his neatly kept nails and the veins that run across the tops of his hands. They are beautiful, really. Beautiful hands that have sent a string of mutilated bodies to her morgue. If it wasn’t for the freshly soiled bandages and thirsty skin, they would look perfectly sculpted, almost flawless. She has witnessed what those hands do, yet here she sits, staring at them like she’s seeing them for the first time.
Jeremy laughs, jolting her from her quiet observation. He shakes his head, still only looking at Leroux. “You must have really gone through some trouble, Detective. Don’t worry, your methods can stay a secret. The end result is what matters to me.” He finally looks at Wren.
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