By Nina Reljić.
Everyone was talking about Bundy the week it snowed in the North but not in the South. In Cambridge people sat on the grass and pushed punts along the river, and in Manchester they squeezed snow into hard little balls. Nobody in my house wanted to go outside on account of the snow and the serial killers. It didn’t matter that Bundy had been electrocuted decades ago because he was alive in our living room in the evenings, smiling slow at us from the screen while we grimaced and shook our heads.
Nothing moved on the icy roads for nearly a week. It seemed that the only thing to do was move our bodies from beds onto sofas. All day every day the radiator gargled.
We said things like Jesus and Fucking hell but nobody wanted to stop watching the Netflix documentary, even when it became unbearable, because we wanted to crack the code. When Bundy told us in a crackling American drawl that people don’t realise there are killers among them, we looked at each other as if to say Well if it’s not me then it’s you.
I had been seeing Freddie almost every day that week. I might have been the only one to leave the house at all, and in my coat I made my way through the empty streets, muffled by the cold. I looked at the ground to tread on grit and I looked behind me often. I wasn’t afraid of serial killers any more than I was afraid of the ice, but I resented the sense of helplessness that had clung to me all winter.
Freddie had been watching the documentary too, and he hadn’t left his house either. He told me both these things as we waited for our drinks at the pub. I told him I was sick of the cold like I was hoping he would do something about it. He said Same and I hate how dark it gets and I said All I want to do is cry.
This was also the week I decided I might be in love. Recently Freddie had introduced me to his friends and made me dinner for the first time. The other night he’d kissed me on the bridge of my nose and forehead like I was very precious to him, and I grinned just thinking about it. Still, I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to say anything that felt true one moment and not the next, so I was keeping it to myself like some surprise thing I would hand over eventually.
We spoke about his aunts and how they were different kinds of crazy. I told him about my work, the books I still had to read, how the dishes were piling up back at the house. He told me he’d once made a New Year’s resolution to smoke more. We laughed at this one and I said Speaking of, so we sat outside on a damp wooden bench and lit our cigarettes. From here we could see students balancing on the slick ground, moving towards home. Some left the pub in twos and threes, laughing as they tripped over each other. Some walked alone and looked exhausted by the effort. I didn’t want to think about Bundy anymore but I remembered the footage from the documentary: students in Seattle linking arms as they moved through the streets, terrified.
I was tired of Bundy and I was tired of true crime. I didn’t want audio tapes, I didn’t want cops huffing and puffing into cameras, breeding outrage. I didn’t want death counts or newspaper headlines. Mostly I didn’t want Bundy like a secret in my head and I thought if I could only talk about it, I might expel him like a sickness. So I said Isn’t it weird that we love hearing about the things he did, even though they’re terrible things?
I didn’t need to say Ted Bundy, Freddie already knew who I was talking about. He nodded into his pint glass and told me that we all like to be appalled and a little bit scared. I thought this was probably true and pictured my housemates and I gathered in front of the TV, pausing the documentary every so often. In these pauses we sometimes sat in silence, but other times someone said something, like Mia who groaned that it was Sick and Evil and then we all knew Mia was Good and we could trust her. When people said these things, it was easy to nod and widen our eyes like we were saying Tell me about it, and then it wasn’t just Mia who was Good but all of us. And so the house became a haven where the cold couldn’t catch us and no evil could enter.
Freddie and I held hands as we walked back to his place. I didn’t fancy the idea of returning to my own, which I felt in that moment to be stifling and a little carnivorous. I sensed the drinks we’d had earlier spilling across my cheeks and mind; dark blotches became people in my peripheral vision and with the right focus could be urged back into shapes. My foot slipped on ice and I stumbled, but Freddie’s grip on my hand jerked me upright and I felt rosy and better than I had all day.
We made it to his and shook ourselves free of our outdoor clothing. His housemates were sat around a table and they said Hello as a chorus. I said Hello back while looking at everyone and no-one in particular, suddenly feeling too red and breathless from the cold, while they sat about like cats and smoked luxuriously. One girl smiled and said Oof it’s cold out isn’t it? And I said God yeah it took us ages to walk here with all that ice.
I didn’t feel so out of place after that, relaxing into the evening as it unfolded. Another thing I loved about Freddie was that he could steer a conversation without imposing himself too much or too little. When he noticed me dwindling, he’d ask questions he knew I’d be able to answer and everybody would go quiet and listen, or else someone would tell a story and he’d slide in little details and glance my way, and so we went on like this for a while. When conversation sputtered he knew just what to say to get it going again, so I wasn’t surprised when he at last brought it up, because it was exactly the sort of thing we could all talk about.
We’re almost done with the Bundy documentary, he said to me, although I knew this already. But I also knew he hadn’t really directed it at me, so I said Oh right, and everybody moved slickly into this new conversation. Yes one episode left and Well I watched it alone for some stupid reason and Have you seen it yet?
I replied that I had, and asked what they all thought about it.
A boy pulled a cigarette paper from a pack and began to craft the roll between his fingers as he spoke. He said the documentary was doing an awful job at presenting Bundy. They’ve made it look like he was sexy and charming and dangerously clever but he wasn’t, he was fucked up and mediocre. And lucky, until he wasn’t.
Then a girl said loudly that he was missing the point and it didn’t matter whether we thought he was good-looking or not because that’s how the papers made it look at the time. That was the myth around him and that’s what the documentary’s about.
The boy must have been bothered by all this because he stopped rolling and looked up and said No the documentary is just adding to the myth and I think it’s bullshit.
Then nobody spoke for a while and in the silence I realised I was still cold. When Freddie announced he would go to the toilet and then went, a girl smiled widely at me from across the table with her mouth closed. You’re very sweet together, she said. Oh, I said. That’s so nice thank you.
Freddie’s room was small. Framed prints leaned against the wall, I teased him that he would never hang them. His bed sheets were a burnt orange, his blue slippers sat parked under the bed.
You’re always so smooth, I told him, fingering the top of his bookshelf. It’s like you know how to make things lovely.
He said I think those are two different things.
We heard sounds from downstairs, something cluttering, then laughter.
Everyone likes you, it feels like you do everything right.
He moved over to where I was. The music from his speaker changed to a new song, I didn’t know it. Freddie held my waist. You understand what people want, I said.
In bed I curved my body around his as he slept. The room was cold and I folded the duvet under my feet. The sounds of the city emerged sporadically from Freddie’s window. Cars beeped. A man’s low voice called out, a woman replied distantly.
Freddie’s goodness made him almost untouchable. His principles felt like pillars, columns I circled and lived inside of. I thought of Bundy, no columns to speak of, just terror, his deliberate intentions and violence, his hands. I wondered how Freddie would sit with him at a table. I wondered if he understood what badness wanted from him and if, when faced with it, Freddie would give. And then I wanted to forget about bad things, here was my good man, asleep. Freddie twitched, in our bed he stirred in his goodness and Bundy in his badness.
The following evening I found myself at home. I drank coffee and wandered up and down the stairs every few hours, shifting like slow machinery. I caught Greta in the kitchen as she tipped a can of Heinz baked beans into a bowl. It was the week nobody wanted to go to the supermarket and we’d joked we would all get scurvy. Greta wanted to know how it had gone with Freddie and his mates and I told her that everybody was lovely, especially Freddie. She told me I was brave for going out in this weather and brave for getting into a relationship at all.
Because relationships are hard work and usually a waste of time, she said, in that matter-of-fact way of people who feel they’ve been dealt all the wrong cards.
Daniel came whistling into the room and pulled out a pack of bagels from the freezer. For a while none of us felt we had anything left to say to each other but then Daniel remembered that I hadn’t been home last night and he whirred to life.
Nice time at the pub?
Yeah it was good I was cold everybody was nice and it snowed.
I wanted to shake us all out of the thickness we moved in. I could see it stirring in the air, a strange brew that kept us warm and mute. We asked ourselves all the same questions and listened only vaguely to the answers. I wanted to tell them that it was good to see their faces and that my bedroom had turned against me, but the words wouldn’t come. I waited for something to happen and then the microwave went Ding and I thought I need to breathe I need to scream.
It was a relief to be outside. I sat shivering on the doorstep, pulling my body further into myself. Warm, stale air escaped through the open door and cold wind coursed through the hallway. I knew it would do us good.
A body moved somewhere to my left on the other side of the street. Illuminated by a streetlamp, it became a woman, aged, hugging her coat tightly. She noticed me as she passed and I understood then that it was really a young boy, hands in his pockets and hunched to shield himself from the wind. And as he walked under a new light I felt foolish for having again been mistaken, for it was clear as day a grown man with a slick smile and bulbous eyes.
I knew him at once.
Hello Ted, I said. He stopped and turned to face me. His eyes got wider and bluer and I felt how terrible he was. He said What, me? and his voice came through just like a crackling audiotape.
Careful, I told him. I know what your hands have done and I know how you think.
He grew smaller as I spoke, so I stood and took a step towards him even though the frost made my naked toes curl.
I already know what you want to do to me, I told him. I could see through his brain.
The figure recoiled and took off down the street, feet slipping on the half-frozen pavement. Its outline shrank the farther it went, until I could hardly be sure it was a man at all. But then it paused once more to look at me before turning the corner, and in the glow of a car light, even metres away, there could be no doubt.
I felt voices behind me and when I turned I saw that a few of my housemates had gathered in the corridor and were watching me. Mia said What’s going on? and Greta said Come inside you’re letting all this cold air in. Daniel was laughing and when Mia scrunched her face at him he said Oh fuck off and laughed more.
Greta rubbed my back and asked me if I’d taken an edible and when I told her I hadn’t she didn’t know what to say so she said nothing. A voice from the kitchen yelled Hey what’s going on down there? and Could you shut the door please it’s getting cold, so we all poured into the living room and someone filled the kettle and turned the heating up.
Perhaps nobody could think of anything to say because we sat motionless and mute until Daniel stroked his laptop’s touchpad. The device purred and the screen glowed warmly. Then Netflix recommended we watch Abducted in Plain Sight, which we did into the early hours of the morning. And all the while the cops and the headlines and the wry, wet smile of the terrible man on the screen cooed Baby baby don’t take your eyes off me, I’ll keep you warm all through the winter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nina Reljić is a writer from London. Her work has been published in The White Review, New Ohio Review, Image, and Anthropocene Poetry, among others. Her debut chapbook is out with Wrong Press and her poetry has been shortlisted for the White Review Poet’s Prize and the Indiana Review Poetry Prize. She has a Writing MFA from Columbia University and lives in New York City. You can find her lurking on Twitter @nina_relish.
