Page 24 of Burn For Me

There had been very few instances in my life that I wished I could freeze a moment in time, but this was one of them. As I turned to face Dave, his eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open in a comedic display.

“Hello, Dave,” I said and let my fist fly before the man had time to recover. My knuckles collided squarely in the center of Dave’s face, the crunch of his nose breaking, warming my heart. I was getting good at breaking noses.

The beauty of breaking the nose was the incapacitating and instant blindness that takes over for a few moments as the body registers what the fuck just happened. Well, unless the person was a professional fighter, then that rule didn’t apply, but Dave was not so lucky.

He was still stumbling backward and falling toward the floor as I stepped over the threshold and locked the two of us in together.

“I’m guessing you weren’t expecting me.” I smiled and dropped the duffel I’d been carrying.

Grabbing the front of his shirt, I let him have it again and again. His arms came up as he tried to protect his face from the vicious blows, but nothing was going to stop my fist from finding its mark.

I didn’t stop until my leather glove was slick with blood, and he went slack in my hold. Making sure he was indeed knocked out, I dropped his body like it was a hot potato before I killed him. I was planning on killing him anyway, but snapping his neck would’ve been too easy and far too kind for him.

I was panting hard but felt alive and invigorated with the exertion. Wandering over to the blinds, I pulled them closed to make sure someone didn’t call the police and say, “There is a man tied to a chair from a building across the way.” That would just never do.

Dragging Dave over to one of the kitchen chairs, I propped his heavy ass up like a bloody, decorative rag doll. His head lulled back and forth as a soft moan escaped his lips.

Whistling the little tune that was becoming my own personal anthem, I snagged what I needed from my duffle, zip-tied Dave’s hands, and then attached them to the metal chair legs before doing the same thing to his feet. With a heave, I pulled the oven away from the recessed area and glared down at the dirt and grease that covered the floor.

Gross.

“Really, Dave, I think you could have cleaned your home a little better. There’s even mouse shit behind here,” I said. “Don’t you know this is very unhealthy let alone a fire hazard?” I looked at the limp skin sac in the chair, but there was no response from the man.

Moving the oven as far as the gas connection would let me, I’d take care of finishing that part of the job in a second. The farm was a treasure trove of long-forgotten supplies. I’d still had to buy a few things to make my little white phosphorus bomb, but Mr. Giltbert had ordered a large amount of bagged fertilizer for the fields that never had been used. It was the number one ingredient that was needed, and now I had enough cooking to take out all of Miami if I wanted. I hadn’t planned on doing anything quite that extreme, but the thought of watching it all burn to the ground did have its appeal.

Pulling out my homemade toy I smiled wide. I’d had a moment of brilliance, and with a few tweaks and a time-release canister, I’d proudly made my first bomb. I held it up and admired the work. It was still rough and not close to what I’d planned to learn when it came to bomb-making, but it was a fucking fantastic start.

With a smirk on my lips, I placed the canister on the kitchen counter covered with takeout containers. Once dipshit Dave regained consciousness, I was going to need to cover the sound of his screams, so I made my way to the television. Grabbing the remote, I clicked on the television, and it was already set on the sports channel.

It was currently playing a basketball game, so I turned up the volume. The crowd picked that moment to cheer, but it wasn’t quite what I needed. I was really starting to resent all these fucking technological advancements as it took a few minutes to figure out how to use the guide on the television remote.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” I mumbled as I clicked on the channel that was doing something called live streaming. A guy was talking, but what he was playing intrigued me. It was some sort of war game with gunshots, explosions, and screams.

A soft groan had me looking over my shoulder, and Dave was starting to come around. I tossed the remote onto the couch and stalked toward my prey.

“Dave, so nice of you to wake up.” It was easy to tell it took him effort, but Dave managed to lift his head up and look at me through his squinted eyes.

“Look, man, I’m sorry,” Dave panted out.

“For what exactly,” I asked and pulled open his fridge door. Grabbing the carton of milk, I opened it and gagged. “Man, that’s disgusting. Are you trying to give yourself food poisoning?” I tossed the carton into the sink and watched the chunks glob out into the drain as the stench made my stomch turn.

“You know what I’m sorry for,” Dave mumbled and then spat blood onto the floor.

“You’re going to need to do better than that.”

I looked over my shoulder at him as I bent down to see what else was in the fridge. There was an unopened bottle of orange juice. Snagging it, I chugged half the bottle. Leaning against the counter, I stared at Dave and waited for him to continue.

“I’m sorry I hurt Adalyn. She was always nice to me.”

My hand stilled with the bottle of juice touching my lips. A sound close to a growl left my mouth.

“Don’t say her name. You don’t get to say her name to me.” Dave looked down to the ground, and his shame angered me.

Dave flinched back as I stepped forward and grabbed his battered jaw. I forced him to look at me as I got in his face.

“You can’t even say what you did, can you? You can’t say the word rape,” I said, my voice low as my hand shook with rage. Dave winced as if the word hurt him. “If you were man enough to do the act, you should be man enough to own up to what you did. You’re pathetic.”

Dave jerked his head away from my grip and glared up at me. “Man, you don’t understand. Jim is a real fucker, he….” Dave stopped, and I could almost see the wheels turning. “Wait, how do you have Jim’s phone?”