Vicious Intentions

As the warm water slowly filled the tub, Carter could only stand there. His gaze locked on the ripples in the water, momentarily frozen as his attention focused both on everything and nothing at all. Naked in the humid bathroom, he held himself as he struggled to feel like someone would who was honestly loved.

He moved as though programmed, conscious of what he was about to do as a wave of comfort and relief washed over him. Warm, supported, confident and void of any self-consciousness, he stepped into the tub with the knife. The pale bathroom lights of his apartment illuminated the faded white-tiled room, giving the impression of a stark morgue. Blood dripped into the water as he ran the sharp blade across his wrists, filling the tub like a maroon oil spill. The sharp smell of the blood filled his nose with a familiar comfort. The quietness of the room was only broken by the rythmic sound of a slow dripping faucet.

The metal clanged sharply on the ceramic tile floor when he dropped the knife. He didn’t flinch. His life seemed like a distant memory. The hurt and betrayal all began to fade. The memories flickered through his mind as though they were from an old movie. There was no real attachment that made them his own—he was an outsider looking in—just another audience member witnessing someone else’s tragedy.

The time passed slowly, and he began to feel tired and cold. He didn’t know how long he had been soaking in the water, now pink with blood. He wondered if there was a possibility of reincarnation for a life that was never able to flourish. Like a small weed in the corner of a yard, the grass around it feeds and spreads and smothers it, leaving little nutrients or sunlight for the straggler. It hangs on because of some inexplicable life force until one day the weed can no longer support itself. Its spark is extinguished and it surrenders to decay.

His eyes grew heavy. This is an escape after months of pain, endlessly searching to find a way out. He tried to recall what she said to him as he left, but the words were muffled in his mind. He let out a quiet laugh as he thought about his situation. Klonopin® and vodka tend to make things seem funnier than they are.

He lay there soaking, perfectly still, completely conscious in the moment. With his mind clear of all thoughts, he achieved total enlightenment. The peace he felt was exactly what he had hoped for; the stillness of his mind brought him the calm he had so desperately sought.

BOOM, BOOM BOOM, The tiny apartment shook as someone pounded on the door. “Carter!”

Carter awakened only slightly. Groggy, he listened as the pounding on his door continued. He heard a smashing sound as the door gave way. “Carter?”

A man in a suit entered the bathroom. Others in police uniforms followed behind him. Carter was still in a daze as he was pulled from the tub and laid on the cold bathroom floor. Someone took his robe from its hook and covered him. The man in the suit called for an ambulance

Carter faded in and out until he heard voices talking again and then a paramedic leaned over him and asked him how he was doing. Carter thought, this must be what people who are abducted by aliens feel like. He can sense the room filling with a tense energy as they are talking, but he can’t grasp the conversation. The men lift him onto a stretcher and cover his chilled thin figure with a blanket. He doesn’t resist as they take him out of his apartment and load him into an ambulance. Then he heard the sound of the radio as police and emergency chatter filled the airwaves. The paramedic began cleaning blood off his body and then checking him for injuries.

This is not what he had planned for tonight...quite the opposite really. Carter began to come around and realized his attempt at quieting his inner voices was cut short. He retreated into his quiet place and tried to block the feeling of the cold ambulance and loud chatter.

How the hell did I get here? Carter was unsure how all of this came to be. I sure wish had I popped a few more Klonopin®. And then a rush of anxiety washed over him like a tidal wave in the ocean.

Carter Zinsky wasn’t an ugly guy. He was pale with light brown hair, stood about 5 foot 9, and wore a set of rounded frame glasses to fix his farsightedness. He was the type of guy that blended into the background, and that was fine with him. On most nights, he did what many single men in their late 20s do. He came home from work, warmed up something in the microwave and parked himself in front of the television for the night.

As a boy, he wasn’t much of an outgoing person; his father didn’t exactly encourage him to seek out an outstanding career. He went along with what his mother demanded and never questioned her authority because she was constantly fighting her own demons. She could be encouraging and loving in brief moments. Then, it was like someone flipped a switch and she would turn on him in anger. He was convinced at an early age that she didn’t know how to love anyone. She was raised to believe that any kind of sickness—emotional or even physical—was a sign of weakness, and the world crushed the weak. He never really knew what mood she would be in at any time, so every day was a venture into the unknown.

He moved out to his own place soon after college and had been able to eek out a living on his own by finding random roommates to split the rent. At 23, Carter was still drifting in life. He prayed every day that he would find the right girl who would end his loneliness and love him without judgement.

The ambulance pulled up to the emergency doors of the hospital. The doors opened and the cold November air chilled Carter’s damp skin as the paramedics wheeled him into the bright lobby. They weren’t very gentle with him. A little fucking compassion he thought to himself.

He was bundled roughly from the gurney to a waiting hospital bed where he was cleaned up and given an IV drip. They just went through the basic procedures to get him stabilized. There were voices and sounds in the room, but none directed at him. Being overlooked by those around him was nothing new to Carter. Most days he walked through his routine as a ghost in the world. The clutter of the background noises began echoing in his head. Feeling dazed, and with his adrenaline starting to fade, Carter’s eyes grew foggy. His eyelids began to droop until, too tired to fight, his eyes closed and he slept.

Carter Zinsky had been working as a telephone operator in the complaints department, professionally called Customer Service, at a large residential home builder for the past six years. Oakrock Homes built large suburban neighborhoods, mostly on rezoned ranches and farmlands, and sold the lots at a massive premium. Usually the homes were of minimum quality in favor of timeframes and profit. The sooner the builder could turn over the lots, the less he had to pay in carrying costs. This accelerated time frame was also the bi-product of the customer wanting their home finished in less than five months.

This was a common struggle seen in most industries. A manufacturer tries to meet consumer demand by delivering in a shorter time frame. The consumer, never pleased, feels that the agreed-upon timeframe is still too long and they should be compensated. A lot added to this mix—salespeople overpromising, contractors under delivering, people’s growing narcissism and the need for instant gratification—among many other factors, which made for a work environment that Carter had become numb to.

Normally any problems the buyers found in the home was covered under the one-year warranty provided by the builder and handled by a different group of customer service reps. It was his job to take calls from customers that had homes built but were experiencing issues after the warranty period. Carter’s job was to listen to the customers and then try and mitigate their issue (or issues) with as little expense as possible.

If you never had to deal with retail customers, count yourself lucky. A lot of people remembered situations differently than they actually happened and then when they wanted to get something fixed for free, they felt the need to dump on others. And often, it was Carter they dumped on.

Small beeps began to break through the fog. Softly in the distance they started until one after another consistently beep—beep—beep. Consciousness slowly came back to Carter as he woke up. The fact that the IV was still stabbing into the top of his hand reminded him that he was in hospital.

“Fuuuck.” He let out a large sigh as he realized that instead of the quiet night he had planned, things had gone really awry. There will be questions for sure.

Sadness and despair washed over him as the gravity of his situation sunk in. He wished he had the pills that were at home in his medicine cabinet.

“Carter. Can you hear me?” Carter slowly opened his eyes to see a man sitting next to his bed. He had a short, dark beard and intense green eyes. It was a face that looked familiar, but he couldn’t seem to place it.

“I’m Detective Ancona with the Hudson Police Department. Do you know where you are?” Carter nodded his head slowly as he turned to stare at the ceiling.

“Good. Then maybe we can talk about what happened.”

Carter didn’t want to explain his actions over and over again. He began taking deep breaths to calm himself.

“You had a long night,” Detective Ancona said. “I don’t think I need to ask you if you know a Miss Mila Haggard, do I?”

Mila. Just hearing her name brings mixed emotions to him.

“Is there anything you want to tell me about last night?” the detective asked.

Carter wished she was in the room with him. Her presence was always enough to make him feel confident and self assured. Did she call them to my place? He wasn’t sure what time it was and how long he had been in the hospital.

“You two saw each other yesterday, didn’t you?” asked Ancona.

Carter turned his gaze to the detective. It strained his eyes to hold focus so he rose slightly, searching for his glasses. He saw them on the end table, fumbled for them and slid them behind his ears. The lenses were a strong prescription that amplified his brown beady eyes.

“Did she call the police and ask them to check on me?” Carter asked.

“No, Carter.” Detective Ancona said. The tone of his voice and his stare made Carter feel off balance. He knew that he and Mila weren’t close lately, but he thought that if he needed her she would be there to help him. It’s just who she was.

“Is she here?” Carter sat up on the bed and wrapped his arms around his knees.

“Let’s just cut to the chase, Carter. She was found stabbed to death in her apartment last night,” the detective said. “She’s probably at the morgue by now.”

Carter looked stunned. He cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard what the detective just said. “Dead?”

“And you’re our prime suspect. You were the last one seen leaving her apartment.” Carter squeezed his eye shuts as a massive wave of pain and confusion hit him like a sucker punch. The noise in the room grew distant as the light faded and then there was only silence.

There are some things that science just can’t explain. Mila was one of those things. No one knows what causes true attraction, why when we look into a certain person’s eyes for the first time there is an instant connection. It isn’t lust, it isn’t the same as a man seeing the curvy hips and full breasts of a woman and wanting primal sex. It goes deeper. It’s a power that can turn anger into compassion in an instant.

It’s been long known that everything has an opposite equal, light and dark, water and air, matter and antimatter, life and death. There exists a yin and yang that create a whole. When we meet a person who is somehow the other part of us, we just know it, we feel it instinctively.

There is a vacuum inside our souls that only certain people can fill. Carter felt that when he first saw Mila and their eyes met—in that instant he was completely stunned. With her, life could be something truly awesome.

Mila was a beautiful girl, but not like a magazine cover model. She had an ethnic nose that added to her Mediterranean beauty. Her skin was smooth with an olive tone and small freckles dotted her cheekbones. Her hair was a dark brown and thick like a lion’s wavy mane. It bounced as she moved giving her an undeniable presence. She smiled shyly through thin lips because she was insecure about her teeth. Her teeth were a natural shade of white with some of her teeth pointed ever so slightly at the ends.

She stood with a slight slouch, but she walked in a subtle way that made her hips move just enough to give her the look of confidence. She was never really comfortable in her own skin and longed to accept herself so she could find a strong confident man to take care of her.

Her eyes were magnetic, a deep mocha brown that were hard to look away from. Wide with magical chocolate irises, they made it hard not to stare. Depending on the light, they would go from a deep dark chocolate brown to a rich caramel hue in the sun. She wore just the right amount of black liner to highlight them and give them their full power. Her eyelashes grew long and curled just the right amount.

She was never fully aware of the power a look from her had over most men. She knew it helped her occasionally to get her way. She would give the sad puppy dog look to anyone she wanted to persuade, and it always seemed to work.