Susan Lemieux

She knew fear long before she read about him. All her life she had checked locks a dozen times, flicked on bathroom lights before she could sleep. Her mother blessed her with a substantial name she could grow into, Dominique, but most people called her Min or Minnie.

He found Min when she was being her careful self, parked in a prominent spot at the King’s Food-Mart on a busy shopping day, surrounded by the many strangers that would safeguard her. Min heaved the grocery bags into her trunk as he moved to her side, smiling.

"Let me help you with those," he said, doing so already. The white grocery-store-apron uniform covered his broad chest. King’s Food Mart, it said. A gold-crown pin declared he’d been giving service with a smile for two years now.

"Um, thanks." She blushed at the sudden loss of her native tongue. Why had she never noticed such an attractive man working at her grocery store?

It took extra attention to back out of the narrow parking space designed for compact cars. She kept glancing in her rear view mirror as she punched through radio buttons. Halfway out of the parking space, Min stopped to turn up a favorite song, and suddenly he was in the car beside her. Then she saw the gun pointed at her, below dash level.

"Do as I say and you won’t get hurt." He was breathing normally, almost relaxed. Half in the parking spot, half out of it, she swung her head wildly, looking for anyone close by. His gun jabbing into her ribs put a stop to that. Lowering the gun, he apologized for his rudeness. She backed out, then took the route towards which he directed her.

Now Minnie remembered the Sunday morning she first read about him. After two dead girls a pattern seemed to be emerging; after four, widespread fear. Newspaper reporters called him the Snake River Strangler and gave him credit for six nameless bodies dumped in the river. But there hadn’t been a single gunshot...this couldn’t be him.

Minnie braked the car before a dingy house standing miles apart from neighbors. Deciduous trees framed the brick bungalow with rows of scraggly branches that looked like skeleton limbs reaching for her.

With a convincing couple of kicks, he forced Min from the car, his hand buried in her hair and pulling by the fistful. Now she knew it was him. She knew it as he struck her with his gun, when he dragged her into the house by her neck.

For a long time he raped her, keeping her tied to a bed covered with a painter’s plastic drop cloth. Duct tape covered her mouth but her eyes stayed open every minute. He smashed his fist into her face. She watched her blood color his chest in splatters and streaks. He always looked just above her head, or to the side of her body; never at her face. When she struggled, he wrapped tree-trunk hands around her neck and squeezed till she felt herself slip into unconsciousness. Could a mouse beat a monster? When she came around, she found herself alone.

Beaten and damaged, she lay listening for his returns. As afternoon slipped into evening, the room darkened and Min saw a faint light spilling from the corner. On the dresser across from the bed an aquarium housed a small school of fish, many brightly colored. The filter hummed, light from the aquarium cast a soft glow. Smaller tanks held one or two fish. All the fish moved slowly with wide-open eyes. The steady hum of aquarium filters calmed her.

Lying, waiting again and again for his return, Min took inventory. A tooth shattered. Wrists and ankles a puffy blue. With her mouth taped shut, she had difficulty breathing when her blood pooled in her nostrils. Her neck was swollen and exposed.

Sometime around dawn, he came into the room again and sat on the edge of the bed. She spoke to him through the duct tape, managing only a moan, trying her best to make it sound like a question. This surprised him, and he looked at her. Finally he peeled back half the duct tape.

"The fish. What kind are they?" she asked.

He said nothing for a long time. His looked old to her now, weary to his bones. His eyes were blue.

"Guppies."

"I had goldfish when I was a little girl. We couldn’t ever get them to have babies."

"Other fish eat goldfish eggs. Guppies will give birth. You just have to take the male out of the tank."

"You breed them?"

He looked at her then left the room, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the window frame. Several hours went by before he came again. He sprinkled food in the tanks, pinched larger flakes between his fingers to crumble them.

"How often do you feed them?" she asked.

He watched the fish, quiet.

"When I was a girl, my goldfish kept dying," she said.

Min was trying to remember and mimic her older sister’s flirty tone, trying to mimic it as best she could.

"You can only put only enough food in the tank for them to eat in five minutes," he said, still facing his tanks.

"But they always looked like they were starving. I think my sister fed them too."

Hooking his thumb in the belt loop of his jeans, he turned to her. His eyes were the same color as the prettiest blue fish. When he reached for her face, she didn’t flinch. He pulled the rest of the tape off her mouth and with trembling fingertips touched her raw skin, gently. In that one extraordinary moment as he looked into her eyes, Minnie saw it: his astonishment at discovering she was a human being.

He’ll save me, she thought, because he can.

"It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone. I promise," she said.

For an hour, maybe two, they talked. She asked if she could go to the bathroom. "Don’t worry," she said. "I won’t leave you."

He cut the ropes with a hunting knife, helped her hobble to the bathroom, waited outside the bathroom door, helped her back to the bed when she was done. Min lay down and closed her eyes. He stretched out next to her, never touched her. She waited for his breathing to deepen. It never did.

Light around the curtain edges dimmed with dusk. She leaned towards him to say she was hungry. He left and came back with Capt’n Crunch cereal, which he fed her from the box with no spoon or milk, taking alternative bites himself. She did her best but, her mouth too raw to chew, soon gave up.

"I’m sorry," he said.

"It’s okay."

"I should go now," she said. "I have fish to feed. Can you drive me home?" Min smiled. "It’s okay. Really. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll protect you."

He taped her hands behind her back and pulled long socks around her eyes to blindfold her, not too tight. Eased her onto the car floor. Never spoke as he drove her back and left her there where he’d found her, in her own car. She waited…waited…kicking.

Min hesitated only seconds before telling the police everything, seconds in which the most illogical thoughts flashed through her mind. I made a promise. He breeds guppies. He’ll come back and kill me. I miss him.

With the information she provided, the police had little difficulty finding the Snake River Strangler. His DNA matched the semen found in her, his rope and duct tape matched the fibers embedded in her wrists, and his skin matched the samples under her fingernails.

For all she had tried to memorize his features there above her, Min didn’t recognize him in court, couldn’t recall his name as the judge sentenced him to death for the rape and torture of seven girls, and the murder of six. Lucky number seven.

Shackled like a monster, he hobbled from the courtroom. His eyes searched for the girl who had promised to protect him. She sat in the third row.

In that moment their eyes met, and Min was astonished to discover that he was a human being. The discovery made her sad. She knew now that she would never save him. Even if she could.

Leaving the courthouse, Min stopped off at the pet store. She listened for the hum of filters until she found the aquariums, then, peering for a long time into the guppy tanks, finally chose one male and one female. They weren’t the prettiest ones in the tank. But both were a brilliant blue.

In Posse: Potentially, might be ...