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“I can’t do this, Wayne! I can’t kill him, please!”

“Stop fighting me,” he muttered, his voice low and dangerous against my ear.

“No!” I cried instantly, the word tearing out of me. My free hand flew to his wrist, nails digging in as I tried to wrench it away. “No, I won’t! Please just let me go!”

Christopher made a broken sound in front of me. “Evie…” he rasped, and my resolve shattered into something frantic and desperate.

“I’m sorry,” I choked, shaking my head at him, tears spilling faster. “I’m so sorry. I can’t…I don’t want to⁠—”

“Shut up!” Wayne snapped, his patience gone.

“N-no, just listen to me!” I begged, trying to pull my hand away again, my entire body straining against him. “I said I’d do anything!” I cried, my voice cracking into something hysterical. “You don’t need to do this! Please!”

“You’re going to do exactly what I say,” he growled.

“I won’t!” I sobbed, the defiance spilling out through terror. “I won’t do it!”

“Then I’ll do it for you.”

“No!”

He shoved us forward. My feet dragged against the concrete as I tried to resist, heels scraping, body jerking back in a useless attempt to stop it. “Please, please stop, please, Wayne! I’m begging you!” My voice broke completely as I tried one last time to pull back.

But he forced my arm straight.

Pushed it forward.

And drove the sharp tip of the blade straight into Christopher’s abdomen.

A scream ripped out of me as my entire body recoiled, trying to pull away. But Wayne held me there, kept the knife pressed in place like he wanted me to feel it as Christopher screamed in agony. Dark crimson poured from his wound, glistening as it seeped down his thighs. Wayne dragged the cleaver across, warm blood coating our hands as he made me do the final slice. He forced my hand there for one unbearable second longer before he let go of his grip and tore the knife free, laughing as Christopher’s intestines fell from his punctured stomach and landed at our feet. I stumbled forward a half-step as Wayne stepped back, a low, satisfied laugh spilling out of him like this was all some kind of joke.

“That’s a good fucking girl,” he praised, his voice thick with something that made my skin crawl. His body pressed into my back, his grip tightening as he dragged me against him, his breath hot and disgusting against my neck. Christopher’s head lolled back, his eyes rolling upward, disappearing as his limbs twitched and curled until he just…stopped moving. The knife clanged loudly on the floor as it slipped from my grasp, and my hands trembled as I raised them in front of me, a sheen of red coating them.

“No…” I whispered, staring at them like they might change if I looked long enough. “No, no, no.” I looked up one more time at Christopher’s pale, dead face, and screamed. “No!” I cried, my voice cracking under the force of it. My chest heaved violently as panic swallowed me whole. “I killed him!” I sobbed, the words choking me as my knees gave out beneath me. “I killed⁠—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Wayne snapped, irritation cutting through his tone.

“I killed him!”

“Stop all that fucking screaming,” Wayne snapped again, like my grief was something inconvenient he could silence. Before I could even pull away, he bent down and slid an arm under my knees, lifting me off the ground as if I weighed nothing at all. I had no other choice but to wrap my bloody arms around his neck, crying as he deposited me onto the wooden chair by the preparation table. I couldn’t focus on anything but the blood that clung to my dress and skin like molasses.

Jackson’s chains were rattling somewhere in my mind, but I just sat there and cried my heart out as Wayne pulled Christopher’s body down from the hook, his nude body flung over his shoulder, blood seeping into the fabric of his flannel.

“There we are.” Wayne grinned as he splayed his body onto the wooden table, Christopher's head placed right next to me. “You’ll need to practice on the pigs before we kill that sorry fucker over there. Can’t have the coppers thinking I’ve got an accomplice.” He chuckled darkly with a large grin stretched across his face. I watched in a daze, barely registering what Wayne was saying as he drained Christopher of his blood before cutting small incisions into his skin, marking where he would begin removing his flesh.

Once he marked the corpse, he took a scalpel and dragged it through the length of one leg, the blade gliding through the flesh, across the thigh, over the knee, and around the ankle. Wayne always left the fingers and toes for last, as it was a more intricate process. The familiar sound of the flesh tearing filled the silence. The scalpel dragged through muscle with a steady, uneven pull. I took the pieces from him after he removed them, standing on a chair to throw them over the wire, ignoring the fat and juices that ran down my arms.

That task, I knew well.

I stopped crying and moved on autopilot until Christopher was nothing but a slab of bones covered in muscles and tendons—a horrific, yet…familiar sight. Wayne hummed the theme to M*A*S*H as he cleaned his tools in a bucket behind his desk, but I just stood there.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Like a morbid faucet. The blood that had been flowing in Christopher’s veins less than an hour ago was splashing little specs onto my feet. My eyes blurred, but the tears refused to leave again, terrified to be anywhere outside of my body. I didn’t dare look towards Jackson, so I stared at the back of Wayne’s head instead, as if I could burn a hole through it with nothing but hate. My fists curled tighter in my lap, blood drying between my fingers, turning my skin stiff.