But no way inhellwill I let this cunt’s evil hands so much as indirectly touch my Owen, my Susa, or my boys.
Or Eddie. Because she likely would have gone after him next.
She fucking turned me into the bastard I am today. My reward for the penance I did back then, and the nightmares I suffer as a result, is Owen, Susa, and the boys.
My blessings.
The dark filth of her soul willneverfoul their lives or taint their existence.
I am not the literal or metaphorical boy she once owned, and I refuse to be him again.
Ever.
Alpha died in the dust of time and memories when Sarge took over.
The bastard extraordinaire rose from those ashes like a phoenix.
The bastard also has no trouble burning everything down to get what he wants and needs.
After she’s gone, I roll her onto her stomach with her face pressed into the cushions.
A good man might have waited until she passed out and simply taken the photo—and her phone and computer, just in case—and left.
However, I am not and have never claimed to be a good man.
Sarge has always been a bastard extraordinaire, thanks in no small part to the woman in front of me.
I am the creature she made and molded and forged. Frankenstein’s monster.
There is poetic justice in the fact that I get the literal final word. This is for me, for Eddie, and for all the others she fucked over, whose hearts she shit on, and whose lives she tried to or succeeded in ruining.
For the happiness she tried to take from me a second time.
For the children she denied me as a bullshit, narcissistic loyalty test.
* * * *
I remove my gloves and don’t touch anything with my hands except her lighter. I use that to burn the picture in her bathroom, holding it over the toilet, and I flush the unrecognizable ashes, using a hand towel to hold the handle. Then I put my gloves back on, wipe the lighter clean, press her fingers to it, and return it to where I found it.
One problem solved.
Her phone I switch off, remove the battery from it, and slip it into my pocket. Her laptop also goes with me, stuffed in an old messenger bag I find on the floor by the table. It’s after dark and I’m almost two miles from her flat when I stop in a wooded park at the edge of a river. I keep my gloves on. After glancing around to make sure I’m not being observed, I toss the phone and battery into the water. Then, after walking a little farther, I quickly break down the nine and toss the slide in. I continue walking along the bank, thumbing rounds out of the magazines into the water, toss the magazines themselves, then the barrel, and the frame. The switchblade.
What to do with the laptop?
I’m damn sure not keeping it, and I need to make sure it’s as unattractive a salvage project as possible.
I walk into a copse of trees and remove the laptop from the bag. Opening the computer, I stomp the screen and keyboard with my heel, grinding dirt and rocks into it. I probably have a little too much fun doing that, thinking about the hell I endured.
Then I flip it over and jump on the back side of it, making sure it’s trashed, before righting it and peeing on the keyboard.
That should hopefully discourage anyone from trying to recover the contents of the hard drive.
I dump it back into the bag and toss it in a large garbage container behind an apartment building on my way to a bus stop.
Like I said, I have never claimed to be a good man.
But at least tonight I will hopefully sleep well with that particular nightmare generator permanently excised from my life.
