Emerald Green Eyes-Short Story

 Emerald Green Eyes

(This story contains romance, gory depictions, and a serial killer)

What’s it like for you when you find someone to spend your time with? Someone who doesn’t frustrate you by the littlest things they say or do. What’s it like when you find out that this person who you’ve been spending your time with turns out to be your worst nightmare. Someone you spent months getting to know. Countless hours talking, feeling like you knew this person inside out. Down to the smallest things like why his socks always have to match. When you’re infatuated with someone, you don’t pick up on the things that could be off. You brush them off like they don’t matter. You come to think that he’s just special because he’s different from others. You don’t realize how messed up he could really be. How can you know what’s in a deranged person’s head when they cover it so well? You can’t. Which means I can’t blame myself for not realizing sooner. 

When you find out that the mouth you’ve been kissing for months has tasted such foul things, you can’t shower or brush your teeth enough to feel okay again. It haunts your dreams until you can’t live anymore. You have to discover new ways to look at life, just to get some sort of peace and happiness in your time. Hell, it’s been 2 years since he was put in jail and I still wake up with tears streaming down my face some nights. Knowing that he did such vile things. Sometimes I wish he would’ve done the same to me, just so I don’t have to live like this. I guess you could call it survivor’s guilt. What I can’t wrap my head around is why it was never me. Why I was so special. Why didn't he devour me like he did his victims? Maybe that was his end goal. 

I can’t decide if saying “make sure you never go to your new boyfriend’s house uninvited to set up a celebration for his birthday” is good advice or absolutely terrible advice. On one hand, I have a bittersweet feeling from finding the things I did to save myself. On the other hand, I wish I never found out, I wish he did the same to me. Just so I wouldn’t have to live with the fact that I dreamt of a marriage, and children with this person. Such a vile human being. 

I can take you back to that time. To him. Maybe it’ll give me some closure. Probably not, but I’ll try anything at this point. My therapist thinks trying to get a perspective might change things. Especially considering the fact that trying to suppress it for two years just made problems. It just about made me insane.

I met him in a coffee shop, a typical romance movie scene. I stand there, waiting on the side for my medium coffee, like I did every morning. The coffee was the best around and it was so close to my apartment. I’ve since moved because being in the space he spent so many days with me in made my skin crawl. When the dogs in the building stopped barking, and the resident’s footsteps stopped, it was like I could feel him there with me. Like he was breathing down my neck. I would convince myself he was. Scared to turn my head, thinking he’d be standing behind my couch, behind me. Anyways, back to the coffee shop.  

This one particular day, a 6’2 man walks in, regular black suit, chiseled face. What got me was his eyes. His eyes were green, but a green you hardly ever see. A dark emerald green that sparkled in dark lights like candles and string lights in a forest, they captivated me. Maybe he did it on purpose. When he walked it and made eye contact with me, I was immediately sucked into the deep hole that is his existence.

Now that I think about it, I realize he knew what he was doing. He ordered his coffee, waited right next to me and made his move.

“Their coffee any good?”

I had to answer the beautiful man in front of me who was surprisingly searching for my attention. I told him that it was the best coffee around, and how much I loved it. He told me all about how he was only on this side of town for a meeting, and loves trying cafes and coffee shops everywhere he goes. After that my order was ready, so I took it and left. 

Our relationship didn’t start until a few weeks later. I noticed he started showing up there more and more. He’d come once a week usually, sometimes more. He’d always make small talk. As the time progressed it would turn into us sitting down at a table and talking with the remaining time we had before we had to go our separate ways. 

One day we sat down in the semi-empty coffee shop, and instead of starting off by asking me something about myself he started with, 

“Would you go to a proper dinner with me?” to which I answered, 

“What’s considered a ‘proper dinner?’”

“I take you somewhere nice at night, in a suit, and of course you’d also have to dress up with me so I didn’t look stupid”

“I don’t think you could look stupid”

That was one thing I was right about. He looked like a disgusting, calculating genius by the end of our relationship, and I looked stupid.

That night came and it was as always, a typical movie and dinner date. He seemed so perfect. So normal. It did cross my mind that it could be too good to be true, but I wanted so bad for it to be real that I pushed all of those thoughts down. Looking back now I hit myself for letting myself accept such ignorant bliss. Life is never that easy. 

After that we were almost inseparable. I introduced him to my friends; they all loved him just as much as I thought I did. The him, he was showing us.

I saw him pretty much everyday, always at my apartment. I’d only been to his apartment a couple of times. His excuse was always “your place is closer to everything” especially when he began to stay overnight. He’d bring clothes so he could go right to work from my place, and of course we’d stop to get coffee every morning. He’d cook for me every night he was there. He had a thing for cooking, and he was amazing at it. The only thing he ever gushed about was how much he loved cooking and all the ways you could change one individual recipe, and how you could change the flavor of anything just by the seasonings. For 7 months I was in heaven. Our nights consisted of us cuddling on the couch, him letting me play whatever I wanted on TV. Movies or shows he didn’t care about, at times it was a little bit weird that he just went with whatever I did. I didn’t question that it could've been a game. I was with someone who kept up with my sarcastic banter, someone who made me genuinely laugh. It’s hard to tell what was him and what was the psychopath pretending to be a Casanova. 

I can’t help but think he was just that smart. That none of that is who he really is, and I was a play toy. Someone to keep him entertained in between meals. Did it please him to become a different person; to seduce girls? Why did he take it so far with me? Was it a craft he was perfecting? 

His friends seemed all very surface level, he’d get drinks with a group of guys after work sometimes and other times they’d do stereotypical man things like watching sports and drinking beers at one of their houses on the weekends. He didn’t seem to enjoy it very much and he didn’t talk too highly of them. He didn’t even have a best friend like most people do. He was a loner. Which was what I liked. I was a loner, I had my group of friends and my best friend was my life, but I spent most of my time alone in my apartment before him. That’s just how I liked it. For me though, I had been abused by people and friends my whole life. I’ve only ever been backstabbed and tricked by those who I thought I could trust. Once I found people who cared about me and genuinely were there for me, I didn’t let them go. For him, he always avoided the subject. I would ask what made him like being alone so much and he would give me some B.S. answers like “I’ve just always liked being alone”. I don’t know how I never saw red flags. Maybe it was because of my trauma. My dad kind of fucked me up in the head at some point too. He was an abusive drug addict, not a regular drug addict that tweaks out on street corners. He was addicted to pills, mental illness runs in my family. He used any kind of pill they would prescribe him but they didn’t work 100% of the time. He mentally abused me, called me awful names. Hit me when he built up a tolerance to his current dosage because I would make him angry very easily. He somehow functioned enough to be successful in his career and to take care of me in food and shelter aspects, I guess maybe he just took it all out on me. Anyways, he made me attracted to men who like to use me. Sometimes even abusive men. Physically only once, I left after that one time. The rest all mentally abused me and I just wouldn’t realize until it was too late and I was damaged even further. Maybe with him I thought I had finally found a good one. Shame on me for getting too comfortable too quickly.

I liked being around him though, it was easy. He always read me like a book and knew exactly how to act according to how I was feeling. Which changed quite a bit, that’s another reason why I liked being alone. I could let my mood swings do whatever they wanted without people judging me or manipulating me with them.

Maybe that’s why I was special to him, I felt so many emotions and he felt none. I was fascinating to him. It would make sense. He liked to watch the way I worked and the way I did things throughout the day. He told me it fascinated him. I just assumed it was his “mysterious” way of saying he liked being around me but maybe I should’ve been a little skeeved out when he said “It’s fascinating how human you are with your feelings”.

Another problem I have is, doing too much for those I care about. When it comes to doing something special for them I like to go all out. Which is what I was going to do for his birthday. I had it all planned out, a surprise party with his friends from work and the few of mine that he developed a liking to. I was going to set it all up at his apartment because although we spent all that time at mine, his was much nicer and bigger. I had told his doorman about this plan weeks before when we stopped by his place to get a bag, just so he could let me in when the time came. 

I spent that entire day shopping for balloons, streamers and cake. Everything for a regular old surprise birthday party. I had his friend take him out for a birthday lunch so they’d be gone for the majority of the time I needed. When I got confirmation that they were nowhere near the building and on their way to lunch, I began setting everything up like an excited child. 

When I stepped into his apartment that day, I felt off. Everything in there felt off. I figured I was just overthinking things for the party, like I do with almost everything. It didn’t take me long setting up, I just had to make everything pretty. His apartment was always spotless so I didn’t have much actual work to do. 

I made the mistake of forgetting ice. Ice for drinks, the most crucial part of any party and of course, I had forgotten it. What I didn’t know was that simply forgetting to grab a bag of ice for a party, potentially saved my life. Like I said, we never spent much time there so I wasn’t used to how his kitchen and fridge worked. To my dismay, his fridge didn’t make ice and he only had one tray of ice filled in it. At that point I decided I might need to actually go out and get it. In his kitchen though, there was a small hallway with a bathroom and another door off to the side, sort of hidden. The door looked like a door to a refrigerator room similar to one in a restaurant, with his love of cooking I figured that was what it was. I decided to open the door to see if I could find some sort of something with ice in there and that’s where I made the best and worst decision of my life. The things I saw there, scarred me on a level that I don’t think I’ll ever fully get over. It was a refrigerated room, that I was right about, but I was very wrong when I assumed I would find ice in there. There were long metal tables, two had tarps over them and there was a shape that formed underneath it. I knew what that shape was, I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. There were shelves all across the room which had many many jars on them. Thankfully the jars weren’t opaque, because enough thoughts were going through my head that I didn’t need to be blindsided by the contents in them just yet. I walked forward into the room and saw smaller metal tables. The tables had doctor grade tools on them. Most of them looked like different tools to cut with. The lights were bright like an operating room. I didn’t immediately come to the conclusion of what the purpose of this room actually was. I figured a million other things first. He was a part of a gang, and was the one who “took care” of bodies. He was a secret undercover doctor for the FBI. Anything better than what actually could be happening. I had the thought that he was a serial killer, believing that was the worst it could be. I didn’t even know that it could get worse than that.. 

I took another step into the room, and now I was close to one of these long tables. I had to know. I had to know for sure what was under this tarp. I consider myself crazy for actually doing this, but I couldn’t believe it without knowing for sure. I lifted the tarp. I screamed. What I saw was a woman, a woman who had similar physical features to mine. Long black hair. Slim and sort of lanky figure. What I also saw was that this woman was dead. Had been for at least a couple weeks from what I would assume with a refrigerated room. I was so in shock up to this point that I didn’t even notice the lingering smell that was attempted to be masked by bleach. She had bite marks on her. I told myself they weren’t from him, but deep in my mind, I knew that wasn’t true. Her entire torso was opened up and cleaned out, the only things that were left were bones. Other parts of her legs and arms had chunks taken out as well. I needed to know for sure. I took another few steps and I was now facing the shelves. I picked up a jar and opened it. If I wasn’t in such shock the smell would’ve made me vomit right then and there. My body had a visceral response when the lid came off. I felt all of my insides clench. When I looked inside, it fell to the floor and my feet were subconsciously running to the bathroom. That’s when everything I consumed that day had exited my mouth and gone down the toilet. What was in the jars, were what was no longer in those girls. Those things weren’t whole either. There were chunks gone and teeth marks scattered in random places on random bits. After that it was enough for me to know that whatever was going on here, wasn’t good and wasn’t normal. I stepped out of the apartment to catch my breath and to call the police. I told them on the phone what I had found and within minutes they were knocking on the door. Nothing like when you file a noise complaint and they take forever to show up, I couldn’t pull myself together in the time it took for them to get there. I guess girls had been missing here and there but never in such a line of time that it was connectable. “It’s a big city, if you don’t have the right times and the right evidence, the case won’t matter”. That’s what I was told when I asked them how this was never looked into during the trials a few months later.

The party was effectively canceled. I called his friend to bring him home, act like nothing's wrong and leave. I didn’t tell his friend exactly what was going on. I couldn’t even fathom what exactly was going on enough to put it into words. Thankfully his friend was pretending I was someone else he knew so as to not raise suspicion why we would be talking on the phone. His friend and I didn’t talk outside of the times I was hanging out with both of them. It worked in my favor to have him smoothly arrested although I felt guilty thinking about how his stomach must’ve dropped when he saw the police standing next to me in his penthouse apartment. I couldn’t just throw all of my love for someone away so quickly.

In hindsight, I may have handled the situation more calmly than what’s considered normal. I guess you can call it shock, or some type of fight or flight response. I don’t regret how I handled the situation though. I’m glad I was somewhat calm on the outside. Inside my head was exploding and my anxiety was crippling but I knew I had to deal with what was happening right then and there, for my own safety.

In the coming months after, there were many trials that I had to be a part of. It was absolutely agonizing. I didn’t even consider my mental state until he was sentenced. He was sentenced to life in prison. I wasn't surprised, and I was quite relieved but now came dealing with the trauma of it all. 

I have been in therapy for two years. Going two days a week. I have come to terms with as much as I can, and I’ve come a long way with my interactions with people. It became even harder to talk to anyone. If I hadn’t known them before all of this, I was incapable of speaking to them. I was mute. As a way to find more closure, my therapist has suggested I see him. My therapist has had a difficult time trying to make me normal again, so maybe he’s taking a radical approach. Come up with things I need to ask, and things I need to figure out. I don’t have to say everything, or even any of it to him. I can just let my thoughts take me where I need to go, but I do agree that seeing him could help. Seeing him and asking him, if he ever did care for me. Asking him if his intention was to consume me like he did the others.

So here I am now. I’m in prison, waiting for the guards to get him from his cell and bring him to me. Wondering how this will all go, and if I’ll be able to handle it. 

I see him walking through the hall into the room I’m in. Surrounded by tables, some empty, some had people sitting at them with eyes full of hope and others full of tears. I felt a mixture of both. 

Two years since seeing his face. This man sits down in front of me. And once again I’m captivated by those eyes. Suddenly, I don’t feel confused. I get it. Whatever caused him to be like this, isn’t his fault. Something or someone made him this way. Just like he made me insane, insane with love, insane with hope of a beautiful life. It’s those emerald green eyes, I can’t help but love.