The tape finally pulls free, and I give Tavish my most pleading look as he crosses his legs and watches me.
“I-I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not a killer. I’ve never even hurt anyone. You have the wrong person.”
“You think I’m that sloppy?” he asks before laughing.
“I… I don’t know what I think, but I do know you have the wrong person! Please! Just let me go.”
The woman comes back out.
“You want a whiskey?”
“Please, he has the wrong person, please, let me go,” I beg.
“Two whiskeys coming right up!” she says with clear delight on her face. She sets one in Tavish’s hand before seeming to realize that I don’t have hands to put it into and sets it before me. “Would you prefer a bowl you could lap it out of?”
What is wrong with this woman?
“Please, he has the wrong person,” I say, none of which she even acknowledges.
I turn back to my abductor. “Why the hell do you think I murdered someone?”
He sips his whiskey in the slowest and most obnoxious manner possible. He’s making me want to commit murder, which is definitely something I’ve never considered before.
“You go by Ellis, right? Now, Ellis, do you think any of the murderers I’ve ever confronted have gone, ‘You got me! Good job! I’m ready to face what I’ve done to all the innocent people I murdered previously. I can’t wait.’”
I stare at him as I realize that I’m really fucking screwed. “Well… okay… I see your point, and it’s… an irritatingly goodpoint but I’mdefinitelynot a murderer. I’m just a regular guy. And you seem like a really nice guy. So I bet we’d get along splendidly.” Then I toss him my best smile.
“Is that the smile you use on all of your victims?” he asks, crushing the very smile that got me out of trouble and left my sister Sienna taking the brunt of it.
“No… come on, man, I’m really nice. Like too nice,” I assure him.
“Nice people creep me out.”
“Whyyyyy? How can I prove to you that I didn’t murder anyone?” I ask.
“I guess by going back in time and not murdering them. That’d be a really good start.”
“But if I didn’t murder them then how would I unmurder them?”
Tavish stares at me, watching me closely with his vivid blue eyes. I realize I should get a general idea of what he looks like so when I go to the police, I can help the sketch artist out. He’s around my height of five ten with a muscular build that tells me I really don’t want to get in a brawl with this guy. Not like I’d win in a brawl with a little guy. The biggest brawl I’ve even been in was with a Chihuahua that thought his life was ending when I tried trimming his nails. The man’s probably in his late thirties, if I had to guess, with brown hair and an annoying smug look on his face.
He taps his finger against his glass to get my attention back. “Why don’t you share with me how you would do it?”
“I didn’t murder them in the first place, so how would I know? Like… do I look like a murderer?”
“Yes.”
“NO! I don’t! I look so boring. Like do you know how boring I am? I’ve never even been to a party before. That’s how boring Iam. I… like video games and spend most of my free time playing them.”
“I see… you’re so numb from killing fictional characters that you started to kill real ones.”
“That’d be like saying every author who writes a book with a serial killer in it is a serial killer!”
“You sure know a lot about serial killers for not being one.”
I stare at this man in disbelief. “Is there someone smarter I can speak to?”
“Oh buddy, you’re never going to meet anyone smarter than me.” He waggles his eyebrows, and I become fully confident that I’m fucked.
