Read Collecting Cooper for Free Online

knows that serial killers collect them and that it’s normally a piece of jewelry or clothing they save somewhere private. It’s dangerous for Cooper to have taken an entire thumb, and even more so to have put it on display. Adrian climbs out of the car and rests the jar on the roof where it forms a ring in the dust. The air is full of grasshopper sounds and birdsong. He moves to the back of the car and pops the trunk.
    Cooper Riley’s face is grazed from the fall he took when the Taser hit him, and he looks beaten up from banging around in the trunk of the car. His face is puffy and his wrists have swollen and turned purple from being tied behind him. Next time, Adrian thinks, he’ll pad the trunk with blankets first. If nothing else, he’s learning. Cooper would be proud of him.
    There’s a line of drool running from the corner of Cooper’s lips. Tiny pieces of dirt have gotten caught in it. He brushes them away knowing Cooper would appreciate it, and wipes his hand across Cooper’s shirt, hoping Cooper wouldn’t mind. He knows this entire ordeal is going to be one giant learning curve, and it gets proven again when he discovers pulling a man out of a trunk is much harder than putting him in. He drags Cooper over the rim, the limp body catches in places, first his belt, then his arms, then his chin, and then there is a loud thunk as his head hits the bumper on the way down. Cooper lies on the ground as lifeless as he looked when he was in the car. Adrian leaves the rope around Cooper’s wrists and ankles, heads inside, and returns with a red dolly that once, a lifetime ago, when he was supposed to be in his bedroom but wasn’t, he saw a dead boy strapped to it. Age and use has chipped away over half of the paint, but the wheels still turn pretty good. The tires are half flat, and look even flatter once he has Cooper strapped in.
    Negotiating the steps leading inside is the most awkward bit, and he manages them by turning around and dragging the dolly backward.Getting Cooper down into the basement is equally as hard, but he does the same thing, only in reverse, keeping the dolly low and carefully taking one step at a time, knowing if he lets go Cooper will crash down and break his nose and teeth. Cooper doesn’t make any noise, other than his head bouncing against the frame of the dolly with every step.
    The basement is segmented into two separate rooms, a dividing wall running across the middle is made of concrete block with a door near the middle acting as barrier to the second, internal room. The outer part used to be used as storage, though not these days. The inner room, the Scream Room as they used to call it, years ago contained a furnace that was stripped out and sold for scrap, not long after Adrian came to live here. He can still remember the workman coming and taking it away. He was young then, curious as to what was going to happen with the empty room. It was only a matter of days before he found out. In that room now is nothing but bolts sticking out of the walls and floor that were never important enough to spend the time or resources on removing. There’s an old bed with a worn mattress and flat pillow that has absorbed thousands of tears, not all of them his own. There are extra blankets and a bucket in the corner with a lid and another bucket full of fresh water, a cup, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a towel. He’s filled a large plastic container full of water for Cooper to drink, there must be five liters in there. The door to this cell is made from iron except for a square patch of reinforced glass at head height. There is a sliding arm across the front that can’t be accessed from the inside. At the bottom of the door is a panel that can be hinged open like a cat-flap so items can be passed back and forth, big enough for the bucket or for somebody very small. It opens outward and has the hinges on this side of it and the bolts are on the outside and can’t be opened from within. From no