Chapter 2

          The safe house where Katsuya was taken resembled a dark and empty college dorm.   Shibata explained that the building was only used a few times a year for interdepartmental joint exercises involving other police agencies.  But mostly it was used for at-home department baseball games that involved more drinking than the actual sport.

          “Because this building is often unused, there’s no television or internet access available.  A cleaning crew comes through at least once a month to dust the place off,” Shibata said, glancing at Katsuya for a reaction.  There wasn’t any.  “It’s a bit boring but....” 

          Shibata stopped in front of a door and unlocked it with a keycard.  He opened it and let the door swing inward.   With one hand, he reached in and clicked on the light.

          “This is one of our better rooms,” Shibata said, pushing the door farther  open as he stepped through.   “The supervisors usually stay in here.  They have their own bathrooms.”

          Katsuya followed Shibata, but stopped short at the doorway.  His eyes panned the small expanse of the room with a frown.  It was bare.  There was a small couch in what would be the living room, a round table with a glass ashtray  in the center, and a small hole on one wall where a few colored wires stuck out  looming over an empty TV stand.    

Shibata had left his shoes on the tiled floor before stepping onto the hardwood.   He clicked on more lights, went to the window and  drew the blinds.

          “I’m afraid there won’t be very much for you to do here,” he said and took Katsuya’s bags into an adjacent room.  Seconds later, he re-emerged without them.  “This room’s nowhere as spacious and nice as your apartment.  I hope you will forgive the poor accommodations.”

          “Am I the only one in the building now?” Katsuya asked and stepped out of his shoes and into the apartment.  Immediately to his right was a kitchenette the size of a telephone booth.   

          “Yes.  There’s a direct line to the main office if you need anything,” Shibata said, gesturing at the landline that was affixed to the wall by the doorway.  “Someone from the police box five minutes away will be dispatched with a key in case of an emergency.”

          “A key?”

          “To prevent vandalism and the homeless from living here, the building auto-locks from outside.”

          “How is this different from a prison?” Katsuya asked dryly. 

          Shibata’s  face flushed and he apologized, scratching his head nervously. “I suppose...this is a very unique situation we’re in.  I don’t think Kizaki-san or anyone knows how to....”   His words dropped off.  Shibata looked even more uncomfortable.

          “That’s all right,” Katsuya said, “you don’t have to explain.”

          Shibata let out a sigh of relief.  

As Katsuya took off his jacket and loosened his tie, Shibata explained the refrigerator had been stocked with pre-packaged foods and bottled water.  It would be restocked each day and the room would  be cleaned while Katsuya was  away.

          “If there’s anything specific you want, you can just write it down and leave the note on the counter.”

          Katsuya nodded and sat down on the couch,  sinking into it as he let out a long, deep sigh.

          For a moment, Shibata stood quietly, uncertain what else to add. “I’ll see you tomorrow at 8AM, Asano-Sensei?”

          Katsuya  gave him a smile. “Thank you, Shibata-kun,” he said.  “I’m sorry that you had to be stuck with the tedious task of taking care of me.”

          Shibata’s once-concerned face lit up and he laughed nervously, the sound  light and bubbly.  It echoed in the empty room. “I don’t mind,” he said.  “It sorta feels...special? to be part of this assignment.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

          “I see,” Katsuya said and gave Shibata a wave.  “Good night.”

          After Shibata left, the silence and the emptiness settled in.   Katsuya leaned back, staring up at the domed light in the center of the room.

So this is what it’s like to have nothing, to be nothing, to exist in nothing....

          He realized suddenly that he was barefoot, as he walked carefully along the dark, narrow aisles.  His hands guided him as he braced himself against what felt like hollow bookshelves on either side of him.  An occasional shuffle of books or rustles of paper as his fingers brushed against them were the only sounds.  The tiled floor was cold, so cold that he couldn’t feel his toes anymore.

            A glimmer of light ahead quickened his pace.  He went toward it, but was stopped at a wooden banister.  Gingerly, he walked up closer  and placed a hand on it,  testing its strength.  When the banister seemed firm, he leaned closer and looked over and down  at the level below. There was a wooden chair off-center on a round rug that had been dotted with stains, with a piece of rope knotted at the foot of it.  

          A high-pitched bird call startled him, making him glance toward the shrill sound.  He didn’t see a bird,   but he caught sight of a staircase with its wooden railing outlining the descent.  He went toward it and followed its gentle spiral downwards.  He examined the chair that he had been looking at, knelt and studied the rope that was still attached.  The end of it had been cut and the evenly shorn ends loosened.  He turned the coarse cord between his fingers, the frayed ends blossoming.  There was something vague and terrible he was starting to remember.    He threw the rope away from him, as if the thing had become hot and stood.   

          He backed off slowly.  A familiar panic twisted knots in his stomach -- he thought only of fleeing.  He turned and was immediately swept into the dark embrace of someone he couldn’t see.   Arms wound around him so tightly that he couldn’t breathe.

          “Where were you going?” a deep, striking voice asked him.

          His vision shifted; one kind of darkness changing into another. 

          Katsuya took in long, measured breaths – in the way he would to calm himself.  An occasional shivers from cold racked his body.  He was knelt at a wooden chair, a rope knotted a loose noose around his neck with its end threaded through one of the slats of the back of chair.  A side of his face against the seat of the chair.

          His wrists were still cuffed together, resting at the small of his back.  He had been left in that position for awhile – and with the way he had been secured to the chair, he had no choice but remain in that position.  His legs were damp, abrasions down both thighs.

          He might have been lulled to the unconsciousness if it weren’t the constant sound of the hammering that echoed loudly in the emptied building.  The smell of lumber was especially thick in the stifled air.  But Katsuya welcomed it - the terrible sounds that stung his ears and the smell of the cut pine.  It tore his focus away from the intimate pains in his lower body and masked the scent of the sex.

          He tried not to pay attention to what the man was doing but he had looked.  He didn’t have to watch the man’s focused attention hammering lengths pieces of pale lumber together to know he was making a box.  The long box with squared corners that looked like a life-size match box.  Perhaps he had already resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t live for much longer and had accepted his ill fate – but Katsuya only felt numb, watching a man he didn’t know making his coffin. 

          He thought he might have slipped into unconsciousness, only briefly.  The echoed sound of the hammering still there – insistent.  Then everything faded into nothingness.  Brief and blissful – when he felt no pain and understood nothing.  But then he woke as sudden as he had been lured into the dark recess in his mind.   

          He woke to a silence that was more startling than the loud sounds that seemed to have echoed for what felt like hours.  The man was no longer working at the box although it was unfinished – the lid with its attached hinges leaned to one side.  Katsuya couldn’t see where the man was but he could smell the crisp scent of a cigarette wafting over from behind him.

          “Sorry I couldn’t do anything really nice,” the man finally said.  “But I hope you can appreciate the effort anyway.”

          Katsuya said nothing.  He was shivering again.  And the shivering was more pronounced when he heard the man approach him – the heels of the shoe clacked on the floor.  Half of a cigarette, still lit, was discarded to the side – just barely within his peripheral vision.

          “Are you cold?” The words were said close to him.  Katsuya didn’t have to see where the man was – he could feel him.  The presence of him that towered over, standing between Katsuya’s splayed ankles.

          “No…” Katsuya said between clenched teeth.  He was feeling sick then, anticipating what was to come.  He was scared and he hated that fact more than the man himself.

          “Be good,” the man said, and crouched down.  “And I’ll take off the handcuffs, okay?”

          The voice was soft, gentle.  As if he was talking to a child.  However, the fingers that had slid into him were rough – hard.  Katsuya let out a wince; the pain flared.

          “Still nice and tight,” the man said, his fingers probed in deeper until they were knuckle deep.  The moist sounds made Katsuya cringe inwardly even more.  Shame warmed his cheeks.

          “Don’t…touch me…”

          The man chuckled and gave Katsuya a particularly hard shove that made him gasp and his eyes large with pain.

          “Still being so unfeeling to someone who made love to you for hours?”

          “Love…” Katsuya sputtered the word out.  “You insane piece of …shit.”

          “I do love you very much,” the man said.  He pulled his fingers out and Katsuya’s body slackened.  Where the fingers had been, it was a steady strum of pain again.  “I wouldn’t have devoted so much time to someone I didn’t care for.”

          “Your …notion of love’s neither normal… or wanted.”

          The man patted one cheek of Katsuya’s ass, caressing the side of it.

          “It is still love,” the man said. “Even if it is not returned.”

          Fingers threaded through Katsuya’s hair, combing the unkempt locks down.  The touch was uncharacteristically gentle.  Affectionate. 

          “I wish things didn’t have to be this way,” the man said. 

          The knife came again, its sharp blade shone brightly as it sawed through the rope that tethered Katsuya to the chair.  The braid of coarse fiber unraveled then loosened until it separated.  The man tugged the noose from Katsuya’s neck .  Where the cord had been made contact with Katsuya’s skin – reddish mark were left behind.

          It was a surprise that the handcuff came off next.  The metal bracelet came off and that instant, his numbed shoulders were flooded with pain.

“I think things would have been beautiful, if you need me the way I want you,” the man continued.

The chair was pushed to the side and off the rug, toppling it noisily on the floor.  Katsuya was turned over; the man already hovered over him and pinned him under. 

Katsuya grimaced.  He hadn’t expected to see the man’s usual smug grin gone and replaced with sadness.  Almost regret.

“I will never want or need you…” Katsuya said, reclaiming some of his forgotten anger then.  It was the only kind of resistance he had left.  

“I know this, the first time we met,” the man said, nudging himself closer until Katsuya’s spread open again beneath him. 

“How many of them were there before me you said those things to?”

The question was startling; unexpected.  It showed on the man’s face.  But then the smile returned again. 

“There were others,” the man admitted, tracing a finger along the ridge of Katuya’s collar bone.  “But I love only you.”

          His tongue traced along the collarbone his finger had just traced a path, then up the chin.  Katsuya turned away before the man could kiss him.

          “I will destroy the thing that I love, when that thing will not love me.  To own that thing completely, I will kill it even if it means I will lose that very thing I love more than anything in the world.”
           

          Katsuya stared fixedly at the prim rug with the wooden chair centered on it.  He had been left waiting in the office by Iwamoto.  And since he had been left alone, his eyes looked at the setting in front of him.  Memories from the dream that had woken him unceremoniously that morning replayed in his mind.  Somehow, the fixtures that was displayed in front of him had reminded him of what he had seen in his own dream.  The chair… The rug…and the way the room seemed to be swallowed by the emptied shelves.

Why am I having so many nightmares since I inherited the case?

           He pulled off his glasses by its rim and rubbed the bridge of his nose.  He was irritable.  Annoyed.

          Identity transference?

          But why the sexual violence…there’s no reason why….

         His thoughts lagged, disappearing into the remnants of the vivid images and the coarse, whispered words.  And he remained immersed in them until the familiar sounds of the tip-tap echoing down the hall outside the office pulled him back into the present.  He slid the glasses back in place and wiped the lingering expression from his face – replacing it with his usual cold mask as Shinohara sauntered in, wearing a bright smile.

         “Good morning, sensei,” Shinohara sang his greeting as he took his seat.    

Katsuya nodded for Iwamoto to leave and pressed record on the cassette recorder.

“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself," ” Katsuya said. “Go back as far as you’d like.”

Shinohara laughed. “Right down to business, ‘eh?  Wouldn’t you like to know how I did it instead?”

“You can talk about anything you like,” Katsuya said.  “I will listen.”

“You didn’t react when I said I’d rape you instead of cutting you.  Is it because you believe I can no longer hurt anyone? 

Katsuya tapped an index finger on the notepad, contemplating the question. “There’s no point discussing your deranged fantasies.  That’s not why I am here.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I am not here to answer your questions, either,” Katsuya said.

“You tell me something I want to hear and I’ll tell you something you want to hear.” 

Shinohara leaned back in the seat – tipping it back on its two hind legs.  His smile grew wider.

Katsuya said nothing for a moment.  He laid his pen down and cupped his hands together.

“Your verbal banter’s nothing more than a way to get under my skin.  You picked me to listen to you for no other reason than have your last swipes at me.”

“Oh?” Shinohara said.  His rocking motion stopped.

“You knew I was the one who completed the profile on you and advised the police to displace the credits for those murders to someone else.  Your ego wouldn’t stand for it.”

Shinohara shrugged.

“Does it bother you to know that if I had found you and kept you, the last two would have lived? I would have been very satisfied with having you as my last one.”

Katsuya said nothing, his face a hardened veneer. 

“I would have been very satisfied fucking you every day.  I wouldn’t have needed to kill again.”

“I am curious why you think I can be guilted into believing that,” Katsuya finally said.  “You would not have been satisfied.  You want to hurt me to humiliate me.  That has nothing to do with why you enjoyed killing.  Your victims were used to appease a different kind of need.”

Shinohara laughed again –- the sound of it thunderous in the small room. “So this is what it’s like to play games with a psychiatrist.  Kind of fun but also infuriating at the same time.”

“Now that I answered your question, answer mine,” Katsuya said.  He picked up the pen again and held it loosely between his fingers. 

“You probably know exactly why I did it.”

“I can give you a hundred speculations why you did anything.  It doesn’t mean a thing unless your answer matched one of them.”

“I like pain.   I like to see the effects of it…different kinds applied just so…you can change a person completely.”    There was a pause, as if he were  recalling something pleasant.  “And I like the smell.  The coppery smell of blood is like a delicate perfume to me.  There’s a subtle sweetness…" 

Shinohara’s voice trailed off, his mind had retreated to a piece of his memory perhaps.  Katsuya spoke, only after the silence had gone by uncomfortably long.

“You cut your victims for the smell of the blood.”

“And to see the wonderful expressions on their face.  I am always amused by what kind of bargain they will strike with me.  Sound of their screams…it sounded exactly like when they’d hit peak of their ecstasy.  Very sensual,” Shinohara said.  His voice was pleasant, vibrant.  As if he had been talking about a good vacation day.  “

          “What was your first memory that made you realize you liked this?”

          Shinohara was quiet for a while.  He grinned casually as he crossed his arms and tipped his chair back again. “I don’t need those kinds of memories,” he said.

          “’Don’t want to remember’ isn’t  the same as ‘Can’t remember’.”

          “Don’t care to remember,” Shinohara said.  “Memories are not tangible.  There’s no sensory connection to them.   Thinking about them is like watching the same porn again and again.  Familiarity dulls the pleasure.  I would rather occupy myself with thoughts of planning the next one.  You know,  the way that you look forward to doing something exciting again because you do recall how good it was the last time.”

          “If police recovered every single one of the bodies you left out for them to collect, then by judging  the rate of decomposition and the stages of healing on them  before their deaths,  you had a consistent schedule that you kept.”

“Quarterly,” Shinohara said.  “Takes one month to find just the right one, one month to make the acquisition, and a month for them to make me happy.”

“All twelve of them followed this exact schedule?” 

“Give or take a few days.  Sometimes they expire days earlier.  Some lived days longer.   I do like my plans to take a patterned cycle.  Takes the guess work out of what to do next.”

Katsuya wrote notes as Shinohara spoke.  He paused and looked up when  he stopped speaking.  Shinohara sat quietly, the wide smile he had been wearing  diminished.  He stared at Katsuya without seeing him,  almost as if his mind were  somewhere else.  Katsuya waited patiently and returned to writing to break the uncomfortable sight.  A minute or two passed by in silence.

“I wonder what you’d smell like,” Shinohara said. 

Katsuya looked up.  Shinohara’s eyes seemed to be focused again.  The smile was gone.

“I wonder how nice you’d smell if I had fucked you so hard that you’d be ripped open.  How pretty you would look with ribbons of blood trickling down your legs,” Shinohara said in a soft voice.  “Your insides would feel wonderful then --  very hot and wet.  The pain would make you very tight.”

“Was that the kind of masturbatory fantasy you would have during and or after the cutting?”

“Not at all.  I don’t get off on the knife-work.  That just makes me feel really good.  In the way that you’d enjoy a glass of fine, rare wine or look at a priceless painting,” Shinohara said.  “There’s nothing sexual attached to that kind of excitement””

“Then sex is something you use to defile and dehumanize your partners?

“It sounds rather boring in clinical terms.”

“You don’t deny my general assessment of how you regard sex and the people you bring to your bed?”

“They like it, for what it’s worth.  They don’t care what I think of them as long as they get my cock.  I am good at giving it to them,” Shinohara said.  “When I fuck them --  any one of them --  I take away the shame of their filthy longings.”

“And the ones you sexualized never came under your knife?”

“I wouldn’t do that to the ones I fuck.  If I do decide I don’t want to keep them anymore, I leave their nice faces and bodies as pretty as I found them.   ‘It’s such a tragedy,’ the people say as they pass  by the open caskets to look at them.    ‘So young and beautiful and already gone.'     And I’d probably would have a hard-on right then, knowing that no one else would  ever have what I had.”

“So there are killings  you’ve done that the police haven’t  connected to you yet?” 

Shinohara winked. “I won’t give you those names.”

“Because if you shared the names, they would no longer be yours exclusively?”

“My cute little harem.” 

Katsuya was quiet, letting the words slowly register in his mind.   He hadn’t expected the interview to take this kind of turn. 

“But I think  you’d be very different,” Shinohara continued.  “Probably too proud to beg even if you wanted seconds.”

“From you?” Katsuya asked.   A smile, ever so slight, appeared over the unchanging mask he had worn since they’d met.  Shinohara couldn’t help but return it.

“I would spoil you and give you as much as you wanted without asking,” Shinohara said.  “You would be so full of me that you wouldn’t  remember what it felt like to be without me.”

“I can’t deny that you have an air of perverse romanticism, Shinohara-san,” Katsuya said.  “But this has nothing to do with what you promised to tell me.”

“Humor me and my...what did you call them?  Masturbatory fantasies? You will see a connection, Asano-sensei,” Shinohara said as he raked the locks of hair from his eyes and gave Katsuya a brilliant smile.  “It’ll be there eventually.  Promise.”

All content copyright © 2011 TogaQ/Kichiku Neko unless otherwise noted.