The Note
By: Levi Jess Mecham
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Suspense, Fiction, Fiction Writing

A short story

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Pamela Driscoll was crazy, Rob was sure of that. No sane person would have done what she did to him all those years ago, but was she this crazy? He hadn’t seen or heard of Pamela since the incident, and he wondered if she was even still alive. At the rate she was going, he wouldn’t be surprised if she had died, or was in some institution for the criminally insane. Still, who else could have written it?

Rob looked at the note that he held in his hand and wondered for the hundredth time if he should take it to the police. He had found it in his bathroom that morning on top of his tube of tooth-paste, folded neatly despite the dark stain on one corner.

Hello my big teddy bear. What are your plans for tonight?

Pamela had always left him little notes like this where he would find them. He thought it was cute, then one night he awoke to find her standing naked above him, smeared in the gore of some butchered chickens, chanting some indecipherable gibberish, and holding a knife to his groin. His stomach rolled in the remembering. He had barely managed to escape losing his favorite appendage, but he now had a very sizable scar on his left butt cheek in payment.

He had ran, as he hoped any man would, and she packed up and left. She vanished, not like a specter or a witch might, although she might as well have. In the half an hour it took to call the police and wait til they showed up, dressed in nothing more than his blanket, she had packed up all of her possessions and left. She had even cleaned up the mess she’d made with the chickens, a feat that he was truly impressed with.

The over-worked New York City police department chose to write off his injury as the result of some late night debauchery. That had been over four years ago. The thought that she, or anyone, had come into his studio apartment and left him the note, was terrifying.

Rob was just getting back to normal. He had started dating again, after a long hiatus, and things had really started to progress with his girlfriend, Jen. She was terrific. He feared to hope that their relationship would turn into anything more.

Rob took the keys out of his pocket and realized that he was standing in front of his apartment door. He was confused momentarily as he tried to remember his trip from work back home. He thought he remembered portions of the bus ride, or was that yesterday’s bus ride. He must have been thinking the whole time about Pamela, Jen and his totally messed up life, and not paying attention to his trip. He had just gone through the motions.

His hand trembled at the lock.

“Calm down” he told himself.

The key turned the heavy bolt with a small familiar squeak and a low thunk. He opened the door and swung it inward then stood for a moment in the doorway, almost expecting to see Pamela’s naked silhouette standing in the room before him with a dagger in one hand. He cursed himself for a fool and entered, closing and locking the dead-bolt behind him. He opened the closet door and hung his coat on one of the three hangers in the otherwise empty closet.

He felt foolish but he couldn’t resist making a cursory inspection of the small apartment. It was easy, It consisted of opening the bathroom door and moving the shower curtain to reveal it’s dubious secrets. Nothing was there but the rust and soap stains in the bottom and on the walls. He then looked under his bed. That rounded out all the possible places a person could hide.

Sighing, he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.

A distant siren sounded outside and he glanced up. The light of the day was already fading. The days always shortened so quickly around this time of year.

Rob went to his computer that sat on the one table in the apartment, and moved the mouse to wake it up. As the black faded away, fear clutched at Rob’s heart. Splayed across the screen were the words.

Hello my big teddy bear. What are your plans for tonight?

The cursor blinked, waiting for further instruction, oblivious to the fear it had caused. Rob stared at the screen, transfixed.

The tiny refrigerator, at the other end of the apartment, began it’s whurring obligation to food preservation. The sound was a cacophony to Rob’s overly sensitive ears, and it tore his attention from the computer screen.

Rob stood abruptly, sending the chair tumbling backwards in a crash. She had written it from his own computer. How? He had been a light sleeper, especially for the last four years. Surely if she had sat down at his computer that was all of five feet away from his bed he would have woke up.

He paced.

He looked at his watch and remembered that he did, in fact, have plans for that night. Despite looking at the note all day long, he hadn’t bothered to think about what it said. Jen was supposed to have met him here an hour and a half ago, then they were going to walk to the cafe down the street before catching a movie.

The fear that he had felt on his own behalf most of the day vanished and was replaced by anxiety for Jen. Was she Pamela’s target? Rob looked at his phone, hoping that there was a message from Jen. Nothing.

Rob found Jen’s contact on his phone in the recent calls directory and pressed send. He heard the universal ring tone on his phone as he waited impatiently for Jen to pick up. A muffled sound brought Rob’s head around. “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, Rob recognized it because it was Jen’s ringtone.

His heart skipped a beat. He stood motionless, looking at the door to his apartment.

A huge wave of relief washed over him as he realized that she must have just arrived outside his door. He crossed the room and, first unlocked, then opened the door. She wasn’t there, but he thought he could smell her perfume lingering. “Jen?” He poked his head out, looking down the hall in both directions, confused. The song reached the end of it’s shortened ringtone and began over.

Rob closed the door, the song was just as loud as it had been. It cut off abruptly and a ding sounded, signalling a voicemail. It had come from inside of the closet.

Rob sucked in a trembling breath.

His heart felt like it would erupt from his chest. He imagined his heart as if it were a bomb, exploding through the relatively thin membrane of bone and tissue that made up his chest as if it were paper mache. He smiled, then slowly opened the door.

Jen’s pale face stared back at him. Her eyes were unseeing, blood had congealed at the corner of her beautiful mouth and the black handled of a chefs knife protruded from the center of her chest. He remembered taking care to place the blade so as not to harm her beautiful breasts.

Then he laughed softly. “tsk tsk, you should watch your minutes sweetie.” He fished in Jen’s pocket for the phone and threw it on the bed. He bent back down and pulled the knife out of the stiffening corpse.

He put it in the kitchen sink, then walked over to the fridge and pulled out one of the large cardboard boxes he kept folded in the gap between the fridge and the wall. On his way back past the table he picked out a sharpie from the pen holder and got a roll of tape from the drawer, then he carried the items over to the closet. He formed the box and then unceremoniously picked up Jen and dropped her into it. The Heavy cardboard strained, but held the weight. Jen’s hair and left hand could still be seen poking out of the box as he slid it back into the closet, right next to another box. The other was stained, and looked as if it had seen water damage. It was marked “Pam’s stuff”. The top of a skull could be seen, a few tendrils of black hair clung to it resiliently.

Rob smiled to himself as he grabbed his coat and closed the door. “What movie do you wanna see?” he said, slipping one arm into the leather jacket. The sound of the bolt sliding shut was followed shortly by the whurring of the refrigerator once more.