Devil In A White Dress

Forty-Two

At approximately 5:23, Emma and Elsa did establish a form of mother-daughter bond. Elsa fantasized a lot about loving a grown woman and Emma was pleased to fantasize it with her. But she was yet to find out the truth to Elsa's sudden change of character. Her use of flirtatious words was handed out slow and low-key. Elsa put in all great effort to express her love in a classy way.

Jake, on the other hand, had left his wariness back at their lawn and went counting the stolen money they hid inside the red brick wall of the Attic. Everything was kept in place. Nothing changed.

Emma, still playing the amnesiac mother, was ready to take a bath when Elsa volunteered to give it to her. She couldn't let her new friend stress herself out. Not while there was a whole chance of playing taboo with the "amnesiac Emma". That's when Emma saw the lust in the kid's eyes; which kept glancing top to bottom of her body. In the bathtub, the warm water soothed the psychopath as she was silently scheming her next adventure after she'd kill these kids.

Part of her still rebelled against finding and killing Kimberly because the other part of her knew that there was never going back to sanity. Never going back to the days where she was just a queer writer turned housewife living with Peter and Willie and wearing all the countless WHITE dresses everyone questioned her about. Nothing she'd do would save the day. Nothing she'd do would change anything. Every day would always be the same.

"When I first transferred to another high school in Alabama, I got mixed up with some bad people," Elsa told Emma as she massaged her bare back with her young, soothing and feminine hands. Her physical contact with the psychopath's skin had proven how much intimacy Elsa was trying to show her, "We had gone to jail for identity theft, blackmail, robbery and for bribing a cop. Served ten years. Was pretty hard for me in prison, you know? 'Cause I could see how fucked up the world was. You know what it feels like to be locked up with guilt, Emsie?"

Emma played her amnesia well and feigned a sense of pity as she listened to her "daughter". She nodded in reply.

"Well, it's really fucked up," Elsa continued, "I'm glad you don't have to remember all the dreadful things in your past. Being locked up for ten years was Hell on Earth, but I got through and survived with it. I realized it wasn't the world that made me want to kill myself. It was me that went and did it. I screwed up and the world just made me pay for it. The college thing doesn't really work out for me though but it's worth more than anything. I have to work as a stupid waitress as well. And now I'm here with these three douche bags. They're treating me like WHITE trash, I tell ya.

When I tell them to get off their asses and go make something useful of their sorry asses, it all turns down to getting wasted with booze."

"Who's the boy that rescued me?", Emma inquired as Elsa stroked the lather of soap in her bright blonde strands of hair.

"Oh, he's Jake", Elsa replied, "Our cult leader. He's been nothing but depressed ever since Melinda gave up their Bonnie and Clyde love affair to serving Jesus. Melinda's his girlfriend. She's three years older than him. Her father's one of those top psychiatrists of upstate New York. There was this soccer ball player who had multiple personalities. They called him "Five..."

"Lazarus Dubois," Emma exclaimed with eyes suddenly bulging as she turned to give Elsa that very subtle stare, "Mister Dubois. The Man with Five Faces." She chuckled sinisterly, remembering her former fellow inmate. Back in Baltimore, he was known as The Man with Five Faces and she recalled having to listen to each and every one of his five arrogant alters utter out the nastiest, inappropriate things. Each of them paid Emma their respects yet they never agreed to allow Lazarus to be close to her.

His five alters were simply disturbed by Emma's character. Lazarus wasn't aware of this and he continued to wonder why all the inmates of the institute ostracized her. What Emma had been baffled about was the revelation of Dr. Cowen actually having a daughter.

"You remembered something. That's good news," Elsa remarked, "Was Lazarus Dubois a close friend of yours, Emsie?"

"No," Emma lied bluntly, "Dr. Cowen never told me he had a daughter."

Elsa raised her eye brows.

"Cowen was a friend I met in Alabama University," the Devil in WHITE went on while smirking. Elsa bought it as she stroked Emma's blonde hair. Later, her fantasies grew wilder as she watched Emma's naked wet body ascend out of the tub. She wiped the water off the killer using a spare red towel, then spent the next minutes straightening her blonde hair into a side-swept style while her eyes observed that of the psychopath's.

It kept her uneasy. The fact that Cowen refused to tell her about his twenty-five-year-old daughter Melinda during all the therapy sessions they've had for eleven years. For the matter of fact, it pissed her off. Emma believed Cowen was the only honest man in her darkest hour of isolation. Yet again, the Devil in WHITE was surely mistaken.

Elsa was completely mesmerized by what she was doing. Holding and caressing a grown woman with her affection was a fantasy she had always craved for. Forgetting herself, Elsa ran her fingers smoothly around Emma's neck but it felt like all that affection was ignored. The psychopath had not been aroused by the kid for the slightest second.

"You're a very beautiful woman, Emsie," Elsa uttered out uncontrollably. Emma ignored her. To end the awkwardness, Elsa rushed to her wardrobe to grab a green jacket and blue jeans she hadn't worn for two years. "Since your clothes were full of blood stains, you can feel free to wear this for the mean time."

"What is that?", Emma snapped back in an unethically disturbed manner.

"My spare clothes, silly. They don't look awful, do they?"

"I'm not made to wear these, sweetheart," Emma corrected.

"Well, then what are you......?"

"I'd like a WHITE dress...Elsa," Emma smiled distortedly, "A simple WHITE dress would do. It illuminates my true inner self. For you see, since I was a child, I've always loved the color of WHITE. My foster mother would ask me; why always WHITE? Then I'd tell her, that WHITE shows who I really am. It brings out the beauty in me. Throughout my high school years, I wore WHITE dresses each single day and everyone questioned me. And now I'm just a simple woman of simple taste, you know."

Elsa, both bewildered and intrigued, fell in love with the killer's brief memento.

"Okay, well I don't have any of that. But I saw this cool WHITE outfit down the boutique a few blocks away. I could rush down there and get it for you, Emsie."

With those promising, romantic words, Emma gave her an intimately dark and sinister smile to assert her new "daughter". Elsa hurriedly kissed Emma on the lips before moving out to pamper her fantasy queen. The moment she had left the killer alone in her room, Emma's face changed because of the affection that was eating her inside once again.

What if she had just stopped being the Devil in WHITE to enjoy this wonderful fantasy? Had she started to like Elsa as a surrogate daughter? A girl she had just known for a few hours and obviously didn't give a damn about? Was this what would make Emma Woodburn sane? Or better yet, was she about to find her new found family after eleven years of isolation?