My brain tingles with her praise when curiosity strikes me, and I ask, “What was your favorite scene to write in either book?”
Luna leans forward slightly to read the comments more clearly. The collar of what looked like a worn-out band T-shirt falls off her shoulder, revealing more of her tan, freckled skin.
My dick’s screaming at me to take him out and release him from the painful vice my pants have on him, but I can’t pull my eyes away from my phone screen.
“Oh, that’s a good question! Ireallyenjoyed writing the pig farm scene in book two. I don’t want to give too much away, but it has to do with dumping a dead body they dismembered on a pig farm, and Vera and Detective Mooreget closeafterward. There’s mud in places there shouldn’t be, and it’s deliciously dirty.”
Fuuuuccckkkkkkk!I look down at my pants, a wet spot forming on the front of them.
“I just came in my pants.” I’m seeing stars, too. “Fuck! I just came in my fucking pants!” I set my phone down as Luna’s livestream plays in the background. I stare at my ceiling, my chest heaving as the stars clear my vision.
“We all know Luna is a little freak at heart.” Luna’s voice says, coming from my phone as she still reads comments from her followers, “Jessica! It’s like you know me!” She laughs, and it’s the most beautiful symphony. “With how detailed and gruesome the murders are, you’d think Luna is a serial killer IRL! What? Noooo! Do you guys think so? I will take that as thehighest compliment!” She laughs again, and I’m immediately jealous that I’m not the one making her do it, but I’m suddenly overwhelmed with thoughts of taking her while wearing my mask and her covered in blood on a pig farm out in the middle of nowhere. The blood’s from a person we’ve just killed together, and she wants me to take her right there in the mud.
I tsk, “Luna, Luna, Luna, you don’t know what you’ve just awakened in me, but you will soon find out.” I spring from my bed and dash over to my computer sitting on my desk. I plug in my phone and quickly load Luna’s livestream into my database. It takes all but ten seconds to find her IP address. I look over to the livestream, locate Luna’s username on the screen, and I see she has over fifty thousand followers. “Oh no, my angel. That won’t do. You’re way too easy to find, but I can fix that.” I encrypt her IP address on VidTok after uploading it to my database to pinpoint her location. “There, now only I can find you.”
My computer dings, and I look up from my phone to see it’s an address that isn’t too far from where I am right now. “Fuuuuucccckkkkkk!” I groan for the tenth time tonight. “What a beautiful coincidence that you live so close, angel, isn’t it?”
This must be the universe answering me by sending me someone who willfinallyfulfill all my wildest desires.
Who am I to deny fate?
The universe has sent the killer his muse, and our dark story is just about to begin.
Luna
Ihit ‘end’ on my livestream, and I drop my head into my hands. I rub my temples, trying to ease the stress headache that’s forming behind them. “I hate putting on a fake smile.” I crack my neck and stand from my computer chair. I walk from my bedroom to the bathroom and take a hard look at myself in the mirror.
Deep, dark circles around my eyes and dull, lackluster skin stare back at me. The person I’m looking at looks like a hollowed-out shell of someone who used to be there. “It’s all that fucking piece of shit, Greg’s fault,” I mumble to myself, opening up my medicine cabinet a little too hard to get my sleeping pills.
I met Greg Russo a year and a half ago at a corporate job in Las Vegas, where I grew up. He became my boss after our company merged with a competitor, and I got to know him through our constant communication about the project I was working on. He was exceptionally handsome and charming, especially to everyone in the workplace, which immediately caught my eye.
Greg towered over me, standing 6’2”, sporting a businessman-type haircut—jet-black and always slicked back with Italian pomade, just like the one his grandfather used to use. He was so kind and helpful to all of our colleagues. Everyone had only nice things to say about Greg, and from the beginning, he showered me with love, affection, and gifts. He had us keep our relationship a secret until he transferred out of my department, but it turns out Greg was lovebombing his way into my heart, and after a few months of being together, he had me quit my job to be his live-in girlfriend.
It was only then that he showed me who hetrulywas.
I toss my sleeping pills into my mouth, taking a drink from the faucet to wash them down. I grip the sink, my tears sting my eyes, as I swallow the pills down. I stare back at the shell of a person in the mirror, wiping the tears from my eyes.
When I discuss my past with my therapist, quitting myjob is my ultimate regret in our relationship. My therapist has told me to forgive myself, but I just can’t. I should have known better and never let anyone control my money. I made that mistake once before and clawed my way out from the bottom up—doing things I thought I’d never do just to feel safe.
But with Greg, it was easy to love him. He let me fall so hard that when I came to him with a vision of our future together, he let me have it. Once I quit my job, Greg got what he wanted, and all his love-bombing disappeared. It was like a switch had been turned off, and any emotion he held for me disappeared when I set the last of my things in his living room when I moved in. I sensed it immediately, but convinced myself I was making it up.
After several weeks of feeling anxious about the growing tension between us, I brought it up at dinner one night.
That’s when he hit me for the first time.
Greg pinned me against the wall and told me I was nothing. That I would always be nothing because he would make sure to keep it that way. That I was a plague on anyone that I came in contact with, and that’s why my parents died, and all the awful things that happened to me were my fault.
I tremble from the memory of that night, and I take a breath, reminding myself that he isn’t here and that I’m safe.
From that point on, nothing I did made Greg happy again—I made him angry whenever I spoke, so I just stopped talking altogether. It was safer that way, and after several months, I was the most miserable I had ever been in my entire life.
I was trapped.
Greg wouldn’t let me leave the house most of the time out of fear that I would leave him or run to the police whenever he left bruises on me, which he did often. Every bruise he left was followed by an “I’m sorry.” “I’ll never do it again.” “Please don’t go to the cops.” “I love you.” Greg’s warped view of love was the only love I’d known in a very long time, and in a fucked up way I was too afraid to let go.
Too scared to be alone again.
My parents died when I was young. I had just turned eighteen, and my mother and father were on their way to a friend's for a dinner party when they were struck by a drunk driver going eighty in a forty-five. My father died instantly on impact, and my mother died shortly after in the hospital from her extensive list of injuries. My father, David, was a Romanian immigrant with no family here or back home, and I never knew anything about my mother, Gwendyln’s, family other than her maiden name. I tried to look up relatives over the years, but it’s hard when you don’t know where to start.
