We Could Have Been More Violent

Written By: Gina N. Anderson

The bell rang on the door of Eva’s Psychic Healing shop. Half of her expected to see Charlie; the other half wished he’d never return. 

Never forget, Eva said to herself, exhaling in relief. An errant memory surfaced. As she lay on her bed, he dragged his fingertips up and down her thighs and hips like a painter’s loving brushstroke. A deep moan left her lips, but the moment she let her guard down, he whispered, “May I taste your flesh?” and flashed a devilish grin.

Eva choked down a whimper and returned to the present. Mrs. Dowd sat across from her now, tapping her manicured fingers on her desk. She’s extra spicy today. 

It was Mrs. Dowd’s third visit in a month to Eva’s shop to connect with her husband. He had been dead for three years. Why she decided to reach out to him years later was a mystery, but of no concern to Eva. It was an unpleasant transaction, but with one more visit from her wealthy client, she’d be all caught up on her electric bill.

“Hello again, Mrs. D.  How can I be of service today? Although I must warn you, the spirit world does not take too kindly to such frequent contact. They’ll want to know that you’ve absorbed the last messages you received.”

Mrs. Dowd huffed, “Oh, what do you care? I pay you enough, don’t I? Do you mean to tell me that you aren’t going to take my hard-earned money?” She muttered under her breath, “Or what’s left of it.”

“Calm down, Mrs. D. You know I speak the truth.”

Mrs. Dowd clutched her purse and bit her lower lip before speaking again. “Do you think he’ll give me the combination this time?” 

Mrs. Dowd was a special kind of narcissist. She was so preoccupied with meeting her needs that she had no clue her husband was all but married to his mistress for much of their marriage. He’d left a significant portion of his money to the younger woman he had several children with, and very little for his wife. 

A disembodied masculine voice whispered in Eva’s right ear. “Never. That harlot won’t get one more drop of my money.” 

Eva suppressed a smile as she spread her tarot cards across the table. They were a divination tool that she didn’t need, given her particular abilities, but it was a more visible display of talent her clients could understand.

Mrs. Dowd leaned forward and stared at the spread. “So, um, what does it mean? Are you going to be able to get the combination from those… those… cards?”

“Patience, patience, Mrs. D. Respect the process.” Eva pretended to think deeply about the message she would convey this time. “Your husband is not very happy with you.” Eva looked up to gauge Mrs. Dowd’s reaction.

“Well, he left just enough for me to live the most basic lifestyle, not nearly enough to maintain what I’m accustomed to,” the self-important older woman explained. “I know he’s got more in that vault I found. I just know it.”

Eva was tired of finding new ways to tell her client that her husband would not cooperate. “I’m sorry, Mrs. D, but he won’t tell me. He’s quite adamant about it. I really am sorry.” 

Eva pivoted to other matters that might interest her. “Would you like to learn more about your love life?”

“There’s not much there to report,” Mrs. Dowd responded without hesitation. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the spring chicken I used to be, and most men I attract aren’t rich like my husband.”

“Well, we can always do a love reading to help you find someone new,” Eva said in her best empathetic voice.

Mrs. Dowd stood up to leave. “No, that’s not what I need in my life right now. I’ll see myself out.”

Eva got up to lock the shop door behind her, clearing the room before her next client. She called out, “Mr. Dowd, thank you for your time today, but please return to your station.”

The man’s voice responded, “I’m afraid we’re not alone, dear. There’s someone else here, and they’re here for you. I’ll see myself out.”

With Mr. Dowd’s exit, a different energy loomed in the air, one she hadn’t noticed before, replacing his. It stalked her around the room and crushed her up against the wall of her reading room. 

The deep masculine voice hissed in her ear. “Finally, I’ve found you.”

Eva covered her mouth to stifle a yelp, then composed herself enough to regain control of her voice. “Charlie, is that you?”

Charlie’s presence licked her neck in reply and grabbed her rear. 

Eva whimpered, powerless to move. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d left for good.”

The menacing presence didn’t respond.

Eva peeled herself from the wall and crossed to her desk. She riffled through the drawer and retrieved a large black stone. “Stay away from me. You’re sick, Charlie. You didn’t know what you were doing. I had to do something, or… someone else would get hurt.”

A colorless outline of Charlie’s form materialized, revealing his tall, burly figure with the gait of a football player. He moved slowly toward her desk. A wicked smile spread across his face.

She held the black stone up like a mirror to the advancing form. “How are you doing this? Are you alive or dead?” Eva muttered. 

Charlie responded, “Wouldn’t you like to know. I told you that I would end you. The only question is when.”

Eva hadn’t felt his taunting thoughts disrupt her psychic connection during her readings with her clients in almost a year, but here he was in spirit, haunting her. 

Eva gathered herself, pushing her curls back into a bun at the nape of her neck. She pulled down the corset top on her dress and palmed the amulet around her neck. It was a gift from Charlie, growing heavier by the minute. 

Eva kept sacred her connection to him. As a psychic medium, wearing an object imbued with the giver’s intentions was like a tether to their soul. Charlie was an eccentric man, a self-made entrepreneur of extreme wealth, yet he resonated with a part of her that no one in the world had ever discovered. When she found herself delving deeper into the metaphysical arts and divination practices, he studied right alongside her. 

Soon, Eva discovered something about Charlie: he had a dark side that she learned to never encourage. He muttered strange musings about death and murder, but she had assumed he was just reciting lyrics from his favorite heavy metal music. He was a charming but dangerous man, and he represented a mystery that she felt compelled to solve.

Then one day, Charlie’s voice invaded her psyche as she applied her makeup in the bathroom. 

I will strangle you with my bare hands! He blared in her mind, yet he was nowhere to be found. He’d left the house hours earlier.

On other occasions, Charlie spoke to her, and sometimes it sounded like he was having a conversation, though with whom, she couldn’t be sure. She began to hear his murderous thoughts in her head. The terrifying ones he had never said out loud. 

Try not to squirm too much. You’ll only tighten the restraints.

How could he be capable of the things she’d heard? Stalking women late at night. Wrapping his hands around their throats and watching the life drain from them. He had admired his work, observing their lifeless eyes stare up, mouths agape, and fear forever stamped on their faces. 

When she became an unwilling witness to the disposal of their bodies during one of their psychic links, that was it for Eva. His dark thoughts had taken shape in her own mind, intertwining to make one sick co-dependent, narcissist-empath connection. Had she nurtured his thoughts? Had she enabled him, or worse, given him ideas? She couldn’t be sure. Her thoughts were all jumbled up. 

She had been too afraid to bring up the ridiculous notion that she was somehow connected to him telepathically, but the evidence began to stack up: the late-night outings, the way he leered at her friends’ photos on social media. She could easily misconstrue his behavior as that of a cheater, but it didn’t fully explain the eerie feeling she got around him. When she tried to broach the subject, Charlie simply gaslighted her and feigned exasperation. 

Their ending was so anticlimactic. Charlie simply texted, “I need some time to work on myself. I feel like I’m holding you back from your big break. You’re an amazing woman. I hope you find someone that is perfect for you, but I’m not him.”

When Charlie realized Eva could not follow him into his deepest, darkest desires, he abandoned her. Despite his abusive tendencies, he left her with an intense longing. Was it really possible to ghost someone you claimed to love, or had he simply died in some freak accident, and no one bothered to tell her? The text was so unlike him. 

But somehow he hadn’t disappeared entirely. He left her with his thoughts. Had he learned how to psychically tether himself to her and communicate at will? Or had her psyche split in two? 

Other theories ran through her mind from time to time: perhaps he was stuck in purgatory, or in prison. Her psychic insights were useless to her. Not even her intuition about what really happened could provide her with the closure she longed for.

Following the end of their relationship, she had gone numb to the world. Operating on autopilot at work, never completing anything, isolating herself from loved ones. She wanted to suffer in silence, to grasp a new idea that could replace the hollow hole that Charlie had left in her soul. 

Eva banished the thoughts from her mind. Charlie was not someone she could trust herself around. He had a way of seducing her into a darkness that she did not want to indulge. Despite her desires, she committed herself to her path of helping others. Yet his absence created a deep, dark craving for him that she couldn’t suppress. He was simply an enigma she could not solve. 

A banging knock on the shop door shifted the energy in the room. Eva was alone again. There was more air to breathe. The black stone slipped through her sweaty palms and hit the floor, jarring her out of her stupor. She had frozen in thought again. 

The client at the door eventually gave up trying to get inside. Time began to coalesce into a single river, flowing in a direction she never knew how to navigate. At which point would she jump on and follow it? How long could she maintain the façade of normalcy?

She closed up shop and called her mother, testing whether she could still connect with the living. Ring. Ring. Ring. Her mother always chose the worst days to take her time answering, sending her anxiety through the roof. Finally, she picked up.

“Hi, Baby. What’s up? Shouldn’t you be working right now? Is everything all right?”

Sharing her life with her mother was mostly for show to make her feel like an important part of Eva’s decisions, so long as it was positive and already figured out by the time they spoke.

“Hey, Mom. How’s it going over there?”

“Oh, you know. Dropping by the grocery store on the way back home to prepare for my dinner party.”

“That’s good. I bet it’s all going to work out well. I wish I could be there to try your new cheesecake recipe.”

Her mother, Carolina, paused. “Sweetie, is everything all right? I can tell when you’re off. You start being nice to me. I know you’re not interested in any of the things I’m talking about. Out with it.” 

“Well, it happened again today. Charlie, he… showed up,” Eva said, gritting her teeth. 

Silence. Then, “Eva, I don’t know what I did wrong raising you, but it is not okay to take abusive men back into your life. Did you call him, or did he call you?”

Eva relaxed her shoulders and pulled over onto the side of the road. “Mom, that’s the thing. He wasn’t physically there. He was there… in spirit.”

Carolina let out a long sigh. “Thank God. If I had heard this from someone else, I’d have gotten into an accident racing to the shop to intervene. But if you’re talking to me now, I assume you’re not with him?”

“Of course not, Mom. I’m healed. I promise. I just…I still can’t tell if he’s alive or…dead.”

“Really? With all those abilities you have? Hmm. That’s strange.” Carolina paused. “Well, the cops never found him after you reported him, so he could still be out there somewhere.”

“That’s a big if, Mom. He just ghosted me. It doesn’t mean that he’s forgotten about me.”

“Well, you’re several states away from there now, safe and close to me,” her mother said, hopeful.

Eva had a plan of action in mind, but she didn’t yet know how to tell her mother. 

After talking to her mother, Eva checked herself into the hospital that evening. 

“Back in the warm embrace of Westfield again, huh, Evie?” Cheery Nurse Loretta greeted Eva with practiced care. She pulled out a piece of mint candy from her pocket, handed it to Eva, and said, “It’s all right, honey. These days, it’s more common to be here than you think. It’s wild out there.”

Eva was comforted by her words, but somehow unseen. How could Loretta know the horrors she’d witnessed through the eyes of a killer? Maybe Eva was just as evil as he was, an evil twin, telepathically linked, except he only let her in for the bad deeds, never the good. Or maybe he was carrying them out through her. Possessing her. She released the thoughts as soon as they surfaced. 

She handed Nurse Loretta her overnight bag and asked for a ride. The nurse retrieved a wheelchair and pushed Eva past the guard’s desk to the elevator, careful to avoid the security cameras. 

Inside the elevators, the fiery red-haired Nurse Loretta made a face in the mirror, trying to cheer her up. “’Tis better to conceal your identity, Little Miss Red Riding Hood,” then howled like a wolf.

If Eva had been in public, she would’ve been mortified, but she found her old friend charming. More importantly, she knew how crucial it was to keep her stay a secret. Loretta was the only one who believed her stories about Charlie. Psychologists weren’t trained to exorcise demons from the mind. A priest would do no better. She wasn’t even sure what she was dealing with. A ghost? A demon? Or a highly skilled, murderous psychic.

When Eva was finally alone in her room, she didn’t want noise, nor voices. She was there for clarity. A clean break from the things that triggered her, like the thoughts of a psychopath she’d once loved. 

All her life Eva had spent so much time with spirit entities that no one else could see, living a double life from an early age: the studious daughter and sister who made straight As and went to college, while privately feeling more like a cross between the Addams Family’s Wednesday and Beetlejuice’s Lydia, the brooding sister who knew a little too much about the dark side.

A thought crept into her mind. What if I’d stayed with Charlie? Would I have followed him down that path?  

His voice invaded her thoughts. “You’re not that much different from me, you know.” It sounded gentler now.

Oh, yeah? How so? Eva thought back.

“You hide your shadows behind a smile. The worst kind,” he said. “The kind that follows the rules by day and seeks out the dark side of humanity by night, one drug binge at a time.”

Eva had no rebuttal. She followed rules because she hoped others would too, because it made the world a little less chaotic.

 Charlie continued, “The world is full of darkness. Maybe it’s time you embrace it instead of fantasizing about it.” 

Eva rolled on her side and covered her head with a pillow. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Get out of my head, you asshole!

Eva sat upright, struck by the eerie sensation that he was nearby, not his spirit stalking her, but a real, warm body. Except he wasn’t in the room with her. 

Is this the present? Was he… outside?

She rushed to the window and cracked open her blinds. A tall figure in a tracksuit stood just beyond the streetlamp’s glow, making her wonder if her mind was playing tricks on her. 

As if Charlie heard her thoughts racing through her head, he stepped into the light, waved, and smiled. He took a long drag on a cigarette and stamped it beneath his feet on the pavement.

Eva glanced at her door. She was allowed to come and go from her room – that had been the agreement with Nurse Loretta. If she came voluntarily, she could leave voluntarily. 

She searched for her phone. She wasn’t sure who she would call. If she called 911 and they discovered she was an undocumented patient in the psych wing, they’d commit her. If she called Loretta, she could put her in danger. 

No, Eva was going to have to face Charlie once and for all.

The squeak of sneakers against polished floors echoed down the hallway. Eva positioned a chair near the door, making an unmistakable signal: sit, or get hit with whatever isn’t bolted down.

The footsteps stopped right outside her room. The door clicked, and slowly it opened.

She hadn’t seen Charlie in over a year and a half. His hair was longer now, falling over his eyes. He was a little more wide-eyed than she remembered. He smiled unnaturally as he approached her, arms opening as if for a hug.

“Don’t even think about it. Sit the fuck down. Now,” Eva ordered.

Charlie closed the door, dragged the chair closer to her bed, and sat.

Eva folded her arms and glared at him. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Charlie leaned forward in the chair and pulled a few strands of dark hair out of his eyes before speaking. “Calm down. I didn’t come here to fight with you.” He tapped his temple and smirked. “I keep thinking I’m fucking nuts because I’m hearing your voice in my head. Your thoughts. They’re not normal, baby.”

“No. No, no, no. We’re not doing this,” Eva snapped. “We’re not having a nice, clean fight where you get to pretend nothing happened, and I’m the crazy one for addressing the elephant in the room. You left me. Remember? No contact. No explanation. Left me with the condo and the bills.”

Charlie cracked a wicked smile. “There she goes. Zero to sixty in under a minute.” He slapped his thigh. “I forgot how much fire you have when you’re not pretending.”

Eva pursed her lips and threw a pillow at him. “I’m serious, Charlie. Are you real or not? I thought you were dead.”

Charlie leaned back and smirked. “You mean you thought you left me for dead?”

Something inside Eva twitched. She knew him to be sadistic, but not a liar. And something about what he said rang disturbingly true. 

She sat up in her bed. “What are you talking about? I never saw you again. You broke up with me, remember?”

Charlie folded his arms. “Oh, really? Is that what you’ve been telling yourself? I’m still here, baby.” 

He leaned in and whispered, breath hot and smelling like cigarette smoke. “The real question is whether you enjoyed it or not.”

Eva tried to retrace the timeline she’d constructed in her mind. When she started hearing Charlie’s thoughts. How he’d become distant. Then came the breakup text. Then nothing.  

“Nope,” she said firmly. “That’s not how it went. You’re screwing with me again. You’re the one out there killing people.”

Charlie laughed. “That right there is exactly how our last fight started -- you accusing me of murder because you heard me thinking it.” His smile sharpened. “I woke up under a pile of dirt in a graveyard under a fucking gravestone with my name engraved on it.”

Eva’s thoughts rattled, refusing to settle. She could recall everyone she’d seen that day: Mrs. Dowd, her mother, Nurse Loretta, Charlie, but she couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for breakfast. 

“No,” she said weakly. “That’s not what happened. I don’t remember much, but I know that’s not true. Now answer me. Did you kill those people I saw?” Eva asked in a mousy voice. 

“What do you think?” Charlie said. “You obviously think that we share some kind of…psychic connection. Maybe you saw me, or maybe I saw you. Either way, we’re complicit. Mutually assured destruction.”

Eva turned her head away from Charlie. “Then why am I the one in here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you feel guilty,” he smirked. “I sleep very well at night.”

Eva recoiled. Tears rolled down her face. She turned back to Charlie, who was now staring at her, expressionless. 

“Oh my God, you’re a monster.” Horrified, Eva let out a soul-stirring scream. Saliva ran down her mouth as she squinted and cursed him. 

The door behind Charlie opened. Nurse Loretta rushed inside, followed by two orderlies. 

“Sweetie, I’m going to need you to rest, okay?” Nurse Loretta said. “You’re getting a little agitated. We’re going to ask your husband to come back and visit you tomorrow.”

Eva tried to reach for him, but the orderlies gently pressed her back onto the bed and put her straightjacket on. She squirmed under their restraint as a fit of rage stirred inside her.

Eva shook her head, incredulous. Et tu, Nurse L? 

Charlie stepped closer to her bed, tightening the straps on her straightjacket. “I didn’t mean to awaken this side of you. I’m so, so, sorry.”

Eva rocked back and forth on the bed, trying to wiggle out of her restraints. “You asshole!”

Charlie opened the room door, letting the reddish hue of the hallway lights in. “You know, we could’ve been more violent,” he frowned, “if you’d joined me.”

Gina N. Anderson is a speculative fiction writer with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and paranormal romance, with a particular interest in the supernatural and themes of identity and agency.

Her short fiction includes the published dark fiction/horror stories “The Babysitter” (The Sirens Call Halloween Anthology, 2023), “Delphine the Hag” (Memento Mori: Rest in Peace Anthology, 2023), and “The Time Killer” (Serial Encounters Horror Anthology, 2024).