Red 1-2-3

10

The killer’s largest dilemma, the Big Bad Wolf eagerly wrote, is precisely assessing the right sort of proximity. You need to be close-but not too close. The danger lies in the old cliché: Like a moth to a flame, you are drawn toward your intended victim. Don’t burn yourself. But interaction is an integral element to the whole death dance. The desire to hear, to touch, to smell is overwhelming. Screams of pain are like music. The sensation of closeness as murder is delivered is intoxicating. Think of all the elements of a gourmet meal, how each spice, each foodstuff, blends its flavor with the others in a single unique experience. Conjuring up a five-star dinner is no different from sculpting a proper killing.

In the fairy tale, the Wolf doesn’t merely stalk Little Red Riding Hood through the forest. That’s far too simple an interpretation. He is at home there. His resources are double, maybe triple, hers. His eyesight is sharper. His sense of smell is immensely better. He can outrun her. He can outthink her. He is deep in his element, familiar with every tree and every moss-covered rock. She is only a frightened interloper, alone and way out of her depth. She is young and naïve. He is older, wiser, and far more sophisticated. In reality, the Wolf could kill her at any point as she stumbles helplessly through the thick thorns, brambles, and dark shadows. But that would be far too easy. It would make the kill too routine. Mundane. He has to move closer. He has to communicate directly before death. It’s those moments that make the killing experience come alive. Ears. Eyes. Nose. Teeth. He wants to hear the tremble of uncertainty in her voice and sense the rapid beat of her heart. He wants to see panic grow on her brow as she slowly comes to the realization of what is going to occur. He wants to smell her fear. And ultimately what he wants is to hold all the intimacies of murder in his paw… before he tastes what he has dreamed of and bares his teeth.

Just like an author, the Wolf needs to write her death.

He had been typing quickly, but as he wrote the word death he suddenly pushed back in his office chair, bending over slightly. He rubbed his open palms hard against his old corduroy jeans, feeling the fading ridges of the soft material, and creating heat in the same way that rubbing sticks together can create flame. He wished he could stand next to each Red, just to see the impact of his second letter. This was a desire so intense that it abruptly drove him to his feet, where he punched the empty air in front of him with a series of quick, short jabs, like a boxer who has just injured his opponent and closes in on him as he senses weakness and opportunity at the same instant, oblivious to the rising noise from the crowd and the imminent ring of the bell. The Wolf turned away from the computer and his desk and exited quickly. He locked his office and then hurried through the house. He remembered to grab an overcoat from the rack by the front door, although he thought he wouldn’t need it. He was warm enough already.

He drove hard, maybe a little too fast, cutting corners and running through yellow lights, until he reached the school. He parked on an adjacent street, where he had a distant view of the main campus walkways through black iron fence bars.

“Where are you, Red Three?” he whispered. He took a quick glance at his watch. He inwardly counted down: five, four, three… knowing that a bell would peal and fourth-period classes would shift to fifth period. American history to English comp, he told himself.

He scrunched down in his seat. “Come on, ring, damn it,” he said. Obligingly, the bell sounded, just as he knew it would.

There was a brief moment of hesitancy, as if the entire campus landscape had shrugged and then doors started to open and squads of teenagers filled the quadrangle, moving from one obligation to the next. It was a sea of blue jeans and parkas. He bent forward, wiping the moisture off the interior glass of his car window.

“Where are you, Red Three?” he repeated.

He caught a glimpse of strawberry red, stuffed beneath a woolen cap. He spotted a hesitant stride a few paces behind a clutch of students. He wanted to see her stumble, maybe even collapse in fear, lying in a heap on the black macadam path.

He smiled.

“I’m here,” he spoke softly. “And you know it, don’t you?”

The real answer to this question was no. But the better answer was yes.

The Wolf watched as the far-off image of Red Three disappeared into another classroom building. For an instant he glanced around. He was alone, in his car, on an empty street. He thought that he was camouflaged, just like any forest predator: an ordinary man, behind the wheel of an ordinary car, on an ordinary day, seemingly doing nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever.

He started the car up. Two more stops, he told himself. Maybe just a lucky drive-by. And we shall see what we shall see.

He inhaled sharply. He could smell uncertainty. Doubt. Subtle scents that shortly would be replaced by the stronger odor of terror.

None of the three Reds had immediately searched out the YouTube address that had arrived in the daily mail. Each stared first at the envelope, and then when indecision grew like a shriek within them and they tore open the gummed paper, they each stared at the letter-and-number hieroglyph centered on each page. One minute became two. Two became ten.

Each Red felt as if she was sliding recklessly out of control.

Karen Jayson dropped the sheet of paper into her lap. She had climbed back behind the wheel of her car, locked the doors, and then froze in place until she got up the courage to open it up and read the single line contained within. She then gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles whitened as she lost time to fear. It was a little like passing out, or going into a fugue state. She was staring through the windshield up the driveway to her home, but she no longer could see the trees, the twisting gravel trail, or the outline of her house just beyond. She had plummeted into some different place, where she teetered on panic. When she finally, painfully drew herself back into the world in front of her, she realized that in a short time whatever the Wolf wanted her to see would likely twist her further.

Lost in a type of daze, she felt a sudden shaft of fear when a car passed behind her on the country road that led to her driveway. She pivoted about, imagining that the car had slowed, inspecting her-but by the time she turned, the car was gone.

If there even was a car.

She was no longer sure.

She could not organize her thoughts or her feelings. For a woman who prided herself on knowledge and the steady application of facts to any situation, it was this that frightened her as much as anything. She realized she had a death-grip on her steering wheel and thought she would break it off in her hands. She slammed into gear and crushed the accelerator beneath her right foot, spitting stones and dirt from beneath the car, swerving madly as she fruitlessly tried to flee from her emotions.

Sarah Locksley hid in the bathroom.

She locked the door behind her, then pushed herself toward the sink, ran cold water into the basin, and dashed it on her face, where the droplets mixed freely with her tears.

Her breath came in short gasps ripped from her chest. Her hands felt clammy against the porcelain. She could feel her grip weakening and she felt dizzy. It has to be all the booze and all the drugs, she told herself, insisting on a falsehood when she knew that the truth was that it was fear.

She could feel her balance fleeing, as if whatever held her upright was draining out of her like blood from a wound. She glanced down at the sheet of paper. She wanted to crumple it up and toss it into the toilet and flush it away like so much waste. But as strong as this desire was, she knew she wouldn’t do it.

Not, at least, before she had seen what it was the Wolf wanted her to see. She did not want to see it. She did not want to know what it was. But at the same time, she knew she had to.

She gripped the letter in her hand, and then, overcome suddenly by nausea, she pivoted to the toilet bowl and was violently ill.

Jordan Ellis first curled up on her bed as if stricken by an abrupt illness, the letter clutched in her hand. She remained locked in position for nearly fifteen minutes. She stared across her tiny dormitory room to the desk, and the laptop computer lying open there.

It took a great effort to push her legs off the mattress and onto the floor. It took a second effort, equal to the first, to rise up and take a step toward the computer. And finally, as she dropped herself into the stiff-backed desk chair, it took a third effort even greater than the first pair to draw her hands above the computer keyboard and type in the first letters of the web address that BBW had sent her.

Each letter or number or backslash she typed was like a needle probing her flesh. When the entire address was completed, she hesitated before hitting the return key, which would send her electronically into whatever world the Wolf wanted her to be in.

Jordan paused. She tried to imagine what hitting that final key was doing to her and for him. She asked herself if she was helping her cause or hurting it. She thought she was entering into some dangerous arena in which a deadly game was being played, but without being told the rules, and without being given the right equipment, so that she would be hamstrung from the beginning and winning was not only unlikely, but impossible.

I can play, she thought, trying to fill herself with some sort of phony confidence. I can play any game. Better than he knows. Still she hesitated. She bit down on her lower lip until it was nearly painful and then she said Fuck it to herself and punched the return key with a heady determination that astonished her.

The familiar logo of a YouTube page came up on the screen. In the frozen video in front of her, all she could see was a close-up of a barren tree, branches denuded, against an overcast sky.

She had no idea what it was and a confusing what the fuck series of thoughts crowded into her head. She moved the cursor over to the Play arrow and clicked. In the box on the screen, images leapt to life. She hunched forward, watching carefully.

At first the camera-held unsteadily and amateurishly-wobbled as it lingered over the tree. Then it swung about rapidly, and Jordan understood that it was a forest. She could see leaves collected on the floor, dark-stained tree trunks melding together in a tangled mess, bushes, and fallen logs. But the camera seemed light, almost at ease, at it effortlessly traveled through the dark woods. Shafts of weak sunlight occasionally interrupted the scene. Jordan thought the footage was taken near the end of a gloomy day.

She watched, fascinated. The point of view suggested that whoever was behind the camera had no trouble following a designated path. But she recognized nothing. The footage could have been taken anywhere.

Suddenly, the camera stopped. A large flash of light washed out the view and Jordan rocked back as if she’d been slapped.

There was a moment of grainy, out-of-focus, hard-to-identify images, and then Jordan realized that she was watching a long-distance shot of someone walking through the late afternoon.

She saw the red hair.

She saw the school pathways.

She saw herself. Alone.

She thought she was about to scream. But her mouth opened wide and no sound came out.

The camera image lingered for an instant as she watched herself disappear into her dormitory. She saw the front door swing shut behind her.

Then the screen went black.