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Humming a children's tune, Jonathan picked up his dented kettle from the stove and poured boiling water over the already wet teabag. It was a cheap blend anyway, reusing it couldn't make it any worse, only weaker. He might have to let it steep a little longer. His aunt would be having a heart attack over this, but she always suffered from pretensions of royalty and besides, Jonathan cared more about staying warm than about what other people thought.
The days might be thawing now, but the night chill still crept through the badly insulated windows and radiated off the thick stone walls of his home.
The heating had been out for two weeks and his landlord hadn't yet managed to send someone to fix it. Jonathan surmised he either forgot, had died in the meantime, or had too many other complaints about broken pipes, clogged drains, and dripping ceilings – the usual aches and pains of old apartment complexes – that took precedence. It all seemed plausible.
Jonathan didn't mind. He could move somewhere with more convenient facilities if he so pleased, somewhere more befitting his station as a professor of psychology. He had the means to, but he preferred to spend his money on more important investments than comfortable living arrangements. Furthering his research, for example. At least the part he couldn't conduct on campus.
He should be returning to it.
Gingerly, he balanced the chipped mug on the tips of his fingers so as not to burn them – the handle had broken off during dishwashing – and blew on the liquid.
Just as he was about to pop into the back room again, his doorbell rang. Jonathan wondered whether someone had finally gathered enough courage to confront him about the screams at night, although it would have taken a discerning ear to make out where they came from. He had made sure to soundproof his makeshift lab. The agonized noises should be dampened to a level he could write off as sounds he made in his sleep. Night terrors, you understand.
Against his expectations, he did not find a neighbor wanting to complain about noise at his door. Rather, he found a girl who surely had seen better days: her messy pigtails were coming undone, her rumpled shirt was flecked with dried blood, and her makeup was running.
And she was pointing a knife at him.
"I'm sorry to disturb you so late at night—"
"If you are looking to rob me, I'm afraid you've got the wrong apartment. There's nothing valuable here. You might want to try out a different part of town."
The girl looked startled. "Oh," she said, "I didn't mean to—Are you being funny? I can usually tell when people are being funny. Because what you just said doesn't make any sense. Why would I use your front door if I wanted to rob you?"
"You might have an accomplice who is sneaking in through a window as we speak."
"Please. Any normal person would sneak in when you're on vacation or something, not offer themselves up for identification like this."
"That would depend on your definition on normal."
Upon closer inspection, what he mistook for a knife that could easily cut through cloth and lacerate the skin beneath turned out to be no sharper than his thumbnail. Which was the entire reason for her visit.
"I was wondering if you had any working knives I could borrow," the girl said, waving about the blunt tool again. "Mine are only good for squeezing garlic."
"What kind do you need?" Despite his dilapidated apartment, Jonathan owned an impressive collection of kitchen utensils that are required for day to day usage. He didn't trust any odd person to prepare his food, so if he had to cook for himself, he figured good knives would reduce the time he had to spend in the kitchen. From that standpoint, he could relate to the girl's plea.
"What do mean 'what kind'? At this point, I'll even take an axe or a handsaw." When Jonathan quirked an eyebrow at her, her grin turned wicked. "I have an ex-boyfriend to hack to pieces, you know."
Ah, humor. Some people thought it funny to pretend they were psychopathic murderers. It gave Jonathan the opportunity to be forthright about his own nightly doings. No one would expect him to be telling the truth. Though, to be fair, he didn't consider himself to be a murderer. Sure, his test subjects died sometimes, but that was only because their minds couldn't handle the terror he instilled in them.
"That would explain the blood on your shirt," he said, smiling.
"Oh, no. That's soy sauce. I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to cooking." She twisted the point of the French knife into her index finger, somewhat embarrassed.
"That's not the color of dried soy sauce."
"Then maybe it was teriyaki."
"You mean you don't remember what you spilled on your shirt?"
"What does it matter? I spilled it. Are you implying something?"
"Merely picking up on the ex-boyfriend you want to dismember."
"Who said anything about dismembering?"
"'Hack to pieces' was the wording you used, was it not?"
"Can we get back to the point where you explain to me what kinds of knives I can choose from?" she demanded and pushed past him into his apartment.
"If you insist," Jonathan shrugged and closed the door. He left his mug on the kitchen table. "It depends on what you want to use them for. Do you need a straight or a serrated edge? Do you want to peel an apple or slice some bread? Split bones?"
"Oh, um. I was trying to mince an onion, but this butter knife here wouldn't even cut through the outer skin. So frustrating."
"Onions, then," Jonathan moved to the tiny counter next to the sink, where his knife block displayed his assortment of cutting tools. "You'll want want something sharp and straight, so the damage to the cells will be minimal and it won't produce those gases that'll make your eyes sting. I assume that's what this is all about," he gestured to her tear-stained eyes.
"Yes, yes, sure it is," she nodded emphatically and rubbed at them. "I bawl like a baby every time I cut onions, as if I were physically hurting them."
He picked out his own French knife, but didn't offer it to her yet. "This will get you far enough for the purposes you describe. Though if you want my advice, a scalpel works better if you want to cut through skin and sinew. If you have safety goggles and a face mask, you might also want to try an electric saw."
The girl tilted her head, alternately eyeing him and the knife in his hand. "You're pulling my leg, right?"
"Not at all—"
In that moment, a muffled scream penetrated to the walls, followed by a dull thud. Jonathan clicked his tongue. There went his experiment. And he hadn't been around to monitor the last moments.
The girl's eyes widened in shock and she dashed – not away, to Jonathan's surprise, but toward the source of the scream. Jonathan went after her, trying to grab her before she made it to his the back room. He should never have let her inside while his test subject was still breathing. Even if they were too far gone for conscious thought, they were still capable of involuntary sounds and movements.
"Holy compost-mortem," she exclaimed when she entered the lab he had outfitted with plastic sheeting, and saw the toppled chair with his test subject tied to it. "Are you, like, Dexter or something? Would explain your awesome knife collection."
Jonathan eyed her dubiously. "You're not scared?" Perhaps she hadn't lied about her boyfriend after all.
"He's dead now, right? So why should I be?" She nudged the test subject with a foot, but gingerly, as if expecting it to jump up and attack her any second. The plastic crinkled beneath her shifting feet.
"Well, you're correct, although I would have assumed you to assess the situation somewhat differently."
"Different how?"
"Oh, you know. You just found a corpse in the home a stranger – a stranger with a sharp knife standing between you and your only exit."
She blinked at him, not quite comprehending. "But you're only doing that to make sure I don't forget the knife when I leave."
Now it was Jonathan's turn to be uncomprehending. "If you want to interpret it that way..."
"What're you gonna do with it?" she asked and crouched down, poking the corpse's face with her forefinger.
"Dispose of it, naturally."
"Yes, of course, but how?"
"So you do have a dead body at home, too?" Jonathan chuckled.
"Perhaps."
"I'm going to cut it into pieces and throw it out with the trash."
"That easily?"
"Well, not quite 'easily,' but you get the gist."
"I thought there'd be a body disposal unit you could call who would do the job for you."
Jonathan snorted. "Do you know how much that costs?"
"Not in the slightest, but I'm guessing it's a lot."
"Quite. Nothing you or I could pay for, I imagine. So we'll just have to do it ourselves."
Her head whipped around at those words. "We? What do I have to do with this?"
Jonathan smiled down at her and offered her the blade he was still carrying, handle first. "I thought you might want to try out those knives."