My eyes are closed again by the time I hear the belt buckle clang, the string of frenzied pleas, and the guttural scream. Her fingers grip mine so hard I think they may break, but I know it’s only a fraction of the pain she’s suffering.
The cacophony of sounds leaves little to the imagination.
I hear her every scream, her pleas, his string of insults, his grunting, pathetic gasps, and each slap of his stomach against her skin.
She stops screaming long before his grunts grow close together and his thrusts become frantic, and I only know she's alive because I can feel her fingers twitch beneath mine.
The man groans loudly, cursing as he spills himself, and a moment later there's a slap against flesh. She doesn't cry out or yell, just lies there broken while his accomplice removes his boot from her skull.
I don't think she even moves as the man clambers to his feet, laughing breezily.
“Next time I come back here, I wantyouto choose who's next.”
Nobody makes a sound until the door clicks shut, the thick bar that they used to lock us in this hell moving back into place. There’s a moment of silenceso ugly and tormenting it’s as if the world is forcing us to live in the moment for as long as possible.
It's her who cries out first, a sob that threatens to tear me in two.
I shuffle the girl off of me and let my hand slip from Parker's as I move toward her, gingerly moving her skirt back in place over the handprint that blazes against her pale skin. She doesn't have any panties, either because she wasn't wearing any or because her rapist took them to remember her, and I'm almostgratefulto not have to put them back into place for her as I adjust her skirt.
She doesn't move, just lets me guide her body in whatever way I see fit as I drag her against my chest.
I don't know this woman. I think there's a language barrier, based on the few words I've heard her speak, but I press her head against my chest anyway, cradling her against me so that her entire body moves back and forth as I rock her, humming the only tune my broken brain can conjure up:Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
I don't know what the appropriate thing to do is.
I just do what I would want someone to do if I were her.
I do what I wanted someone to do the days I was.
3
Cal
My rapid clicks increase with my frustration, the photos flying by so fast that it makes me feel ill.
Or maybe that's the whiskey. I think I've drunk too much, but it's the only thing that sates the need... well, theonly thing I currently have access tothat sates the need. Killing quenches the thirst too, but I can't just go out into a dark alley and find a girl at random to bring back to my apartment and stick a blade into.
No, I may be corrupt to the core, rotten and festering. I may be sick, clinically fucked up, but I'm not a proverbial psycho. Would that I were, of course. It would make this all so much easier if I just didn't have emotions... if I just didn't care.
But I do care. It's my cross to bear, I suppose. I'm not a fucking Norman Bates psychopath or a killer because the devil made me be one. I kill because there's absolute power in watching someone take their last breath. There's even greater power in being thereasonthey take their last breath.
I've suspected for years that there was something wrong with me, given the fact that pain gets me off. I guess it does for plenty of people, but I don't just like feeling it. I like inflicting it.
Unfortunately, I also like the illusion that I'm normal. The perfectly average CEO of a successful startup with no wife because he's still in his party era, because he hasn't been forced to grow up yet, because he's just a typical guy enjoying the spoils of his profession. I'm good at the illusion— it was so painstakingly crafted over years of work, and I won't let it be shattered over a single chance to play God.
I've managed to keep the need at bay this far, but it's come at a cost. Close calls with whores I've had to pay to stay silent after I choked them a little too hard, near misses with bitches who got a little too mouthy, and one horrific night where I thought I'd finally done it, taken things too far.
I dragged her into the bathtub, and Dex was here within twenty minutes of calling him. She woke up just as I turned on the hacksaw and was ready to slice off her arm. Dex was able to convince her that she fell in the tub because she was so drunk that she slipped, and she was so out of it that she accepted the sound of the reciprocating saw she never saw as my electric toothbrush.
It made no sense, but Dex could sell brimstone to the fucking devil. He's charming enough that he just smiles at someone and they wilt. By the time he drove her home, she crashed in his front seat, and when she woke, she had zero memory of anything that transpired the entire evening.
The near misses were getting nearer with time, and I knew better than to try and have a fucking relationship. God forbid the devil slip out of me when I'm making love to my wife, and then I wake up to her severed head.
No, I stick to those who cling to shadows... the ones who won't tell if they get a little roughed up because that's what they're used to from their clients. But I fucked up last month and notched the belt too tight around Candy's neck as she rode me like a bull at the rodeo. I didn't notice she was really strangling at first, too caught up in how tight she was. By the time I realized she was dying, the light was leaving her eyes, and I was so fucking hard I thought I could have fucked her into the bed. I took a gamble and tried to come before she took her last breath.
There's a reason I stay out of Vegas, despite the empire my family has built there. I lost that gamble, and this time when Dex came to help me clean up my mess, she didn't wake up when I turned the saw on.
It's only been a few weeks since then, and my every waking thought has been utterly consumed by the need for more... the need to kill. The sleeping moments, when they come, are much the same. Dex has talked me off the ledge a dozen times, hidden my keys, and sent girls running before they could fall prey to me. But all any of it has done is buy more time.
