by Jami Alden
He caught his reflection in the oven door. His nose was swollen to twice its size—most likely broken. There was a lump over one cheekbone, and one eye was swollen nearly shut. He looked kind of like Sloth from The Goonies.
He became aware of a throbbing in his face, a pulsing ache that made nausea twist in his gut. He focused on that, ignoring pain in other parts of his body, the burning ache in his ass, the feeling that he had been torn apart from the inside out.
“I tripped and hit my face on the table,” he said, looking not at Sarah but at their mother.
She tore her gaze from the TV and spared him a glance, her eyes widening when she saw the condition of his face. He saw the flash of guilt in her eyes as she took another gulp of wine.
She knew.
She knew exactly what Scott had done to him.
But all she said was, “You better get some ice on that.”
After that, he’d done everything he could to get himself and Sarah out of the house when Scott was likely to be around. But sometimes they ran out of places to go. He came to dread the sound of Scott’s muffler buzzing up the driveway.
Became physically ill at the smug, knowing leer on Scott’s face if he showed up and their mother was already passed out.
And the fucking bitch knew exactly what would happen if Scott came around and she was too drunk to fuck him.
And she didn’t fucking care, as long as Scott threw her a little extra cash and saved her from her self-imposed loneliness.
The rage in him built every day. Every time he was beaten, used like an animal. But he kept it in check, because he had to protect Sarah. He didn’t tell anyone, knowing if he did they’d be separated, and he couldn’t bear to be away from her, the only good person in his life. The sister who took care of him after Scott got his hands on him.
At least, he let Sarah tend to the black eyes and busted lips. But he’d never let her know the rest. He couldn’t bear the humiliation if Sarah knew he let himself be used, even if it was for her protection.
But then a few weeks ago, he’d caught Scott looking at Sarah in her tank top and cutoffs. Running his piggy eyes over her long skinny legs, licking his greasy lips at the sight of her small breasts, just barely making an impression against her shirt.
He’d done his best to get them away from the house, and when they were stuck, he would antagonize Scott to keep his attention focused on him, away from Sarah.
He knew it was only a matter of time. He knew he couldn’t protect Sarah forever. Sooner or later, Scott would get his hands on her.
As he watched the cloud of dust get closer and closer, watched as Sarah continued cluelessly with her construction project, he had a gut-twisting hunch that today might be the day.
“Sarah, you have to get out of here!” he said again.
Their bikes leaned against the side of the house, but it was too late. Even if he could get Sarah on her bike in this heat, they’d have to ride by Scott to get out to the road.
Scott’s view of the yard was obscured by the scrubby bushes that lined the driveway. There was still time. “Go to the neighbor’s okay? Just for an hour or two,” he pleaded.
Sarah stood up and threw down the stick in her hand. “No! I’m tired of this! This is our house, not his. Why should we have to leave whenever he comes over? Why do you put up with the way he beats on you? When he gets here, I’m gonna tell him to get out of here or we’re gonna call the police.”
Fear choked him as he envisioned what would happen if Sarah made good on her threat. Sarah, bloody and beaten on the floor, sobbing from the pain of having her soul stripped away. He couldn’t let that happen. But he couldn’t tell her that; he didn’t want her to live in fear like him. “If you call the police, we’ll be taken away. We’ll be separated,” he said, frantic now as Scott’s truck drew closer.
She tossed her chin. “No, they won’t. We’ll just tell them he’s the one beating on us. They’ll take him away.”
Sarah he co little to remember the one time he did tell someone one of Mom’s boyfriends had slapped him. The terrifying week when he and three-year-old Sarah had to go stay in the group home where the older kids pulled her hair and stole her food.
Now he was starting to wonder if maybe being in foster care would be better if it meant Sarah was safe from Scott.
Even so, Scott could do a lot of damage before the police came.
He had only seconds. He grabbed Sarah by the arm and yanked her over to the driveway. Ignoring her protests, he pushed the button on the trunk of his mom’s ancient Buick and shoved Sarah inside.
“Stop it!” she yelled. “You can’t lock me in here—”
He finally lost it. “If he finds you, Scott is going to hurt you! You think he just beats on me, but that’s not even close to the worst of it! I’ve seen him looking at you, Sarah, and if he gets his hands on you, he’s going to hurt you, way worse than he’s hurt me.”
Something in either the words or the tone finally registered. Green eyes wide with fear, Sarah ducked into the darkness of the trunk. “Don’t leave me in here for too long,” she said in a thready whisper.
“I won’t close it all the way. As soon as we get inside, you get out and run next door and call the cops.” He would distract Scott, get him to take out his violence on him and give Sarah plenty of time to make a run for it.
Hands shaking, he carefully placed the trunk door so it rested against the bottom but didn’t latch.
He stepped away just seconds before Scott screeched to a stop in front of their house.
Scott got out of the car, adjusting his belt under the beer gut that spilled over the waistband of his Wranglers.
“Mom’s inside,” he said, arms folded across his skinny chest, chin tilted with as much defiance as he could muster.
A stained Seahawks cap shadowed his features, but he could see Scott’s squinty eyes darting around the yard. “That ain’t who I’m looking for. Where is she?”
He backed away, toward the house. Scott followed, stalking him up the driveway. “She’s gone. At a friend’s house.”
“Little fuckin’ liar. Her bike’s here. I know she’s here.”
He swallowed hard as Scott got closer to the Buick. “She walked.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ lie to me!” Spit flew from Scott’s mouth, and his heart froze in his chest as Scott’s fist slammed down on the trunk of the car, hard enough to make a dent.
Shit. Sarah was locked in. Stay quiet, Sarah, please stay quiet.
“You think you can keep me away from her? Her skinny little ass is mine, same as yours!”
Rage swelled up in him, a blinding red wave. Before he knew what he was doing, he launched himself at Scott, kicking, screaming, punching, scratching, biting. He got in only a few blows before Scott threw him down, steel-toed boots hitting his ribs. He lay there, stunned, helpless to defend himself against blow after blow.
He was vaguely aware of being dragged inside, thrown to the floor of the kitchen. Another kick and something cracked. Everything went black.
He woke up, the pain hitting him like a Mack Truck. He’d been out for a while, judging from the way the sun slanted across the kitchen floor.
He rolled to his side, tried to push himself up, only to collapse under the weight of the excruciating pain. This was by far the worst Scott had ever gotten him. Every nerve roared with pain, inside and out.
But at least he’d taken it, and not Sarah.
Sarah!
She was still in the trunk. Holy fuck, she was still in the trunk.
Pure adrenaline launched him off the floor, past Scott snoring on the couch, out the front door as his brain frantically tried to calculate how long he’d been out.
How long had Sarah been trapped in the trunk of the car, the sun beating down in the triple-digit heat?
Long shadows crawled across the front steps and patchy lawn. The temperature had cooled a couple degrees, but the yard and the driveway were still glowing under direct sunlight.
Please, please, please.
She looked so peaceful, curled up in the trunk. Her dark wavy hair half hid her face; her thick, dark lashes cast shadows on her cheek. One hand pillowed her face, palm up, like she’d settled in for a nap.
But he knew with an instinctive, crippling dread, Sarah wasn’t just asleep. Her limp hand, her skin, already cooling despite the heat. Her total lack of response as he dragged her out of the trunk, screaming her name at the top of his lungs.
He laid her out on the lawn and put his mouth over hers, trying to breathe for her and pumping her heart like he’d seen on TV.
He sat back on his heels, the pain in his body fading as he sobbed. Sarah. His baby sister. Dead. She must have been so scared when she couldn’t get out. Trapped in the trunk, cooking like a chicken in an oven.
They’d done this. They’d killed her.
Rage propelled him inside, where the worthless sack of shit lay sprawled on the couch. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a carving knife from the block on the counter. He was going to gut him like a fucking fish, but first things first.
He went to the meicine cabinet, got two packs of the smelling salts his mother kept around in case there was an emergency and she needed to be roused from her alcoholic stupor.
He went into her bedroom. She was laid out like a beached whale. Her blotchy skin was shiny with sweat and grease, a trickle of drool pooling under her on the mattress. Her tank top rode up her back, leaving a six-inch swath of skin bare. He wondered how she’d feel if he peeled her skin off as if she were a banana.
He cracked the smelling salts and waved them under her nose. He wanted her awake. Fully aware of what was being done and who was doing it to her.
She roused with a snort and rolled onto her back. Her gaze was fuzzy at first, but he knew the split second she realized what was happening.
The terrified knowledge in her eyes, the choking sound as she tried to scream, sent a rush through him, pleasure and power so extreme, it almost filled the hollow ache left by the thought of Sarah’s lifeless body sprawled on the lawn.
He raised his right hand, the knife clenched in a death grip.
Wait.
Scott was left-handed.
He quickly switched hands.
He was almost as good with his left hand as his right, a fact he’d discovered when he was six and had broken his wrist.
Before she could scream, before her drunken body could catch up with her brain’s warning to fight, he brought the knife down as hard as he could. The blade cut through the skin like butter, obliterated the resistance of bone as it penetrated the soft tissue underneath. She let out a feeble choke as blood bubbled out of her mouth and spread like a lake across the front of her shirt.
He yanked the knife out, adrenaline coursing through him as he stared at her horrified eyes.
“You fucking cunt,” he yelled. “It’s all your fault. You let him do it. You knew all along, and you let him do it. You’re a fucking whore who whored out your own kid.”
Her mouth moved. No sound, but he could read her lips.
“I’m sorry.”
Red mist fogged his vision. His blood felt like it was boiling out of his skin.
Sorry.
Sorry.
She could take her sorries to the Devil when she met him in hell.
One last slice across her neck and the bitch was gone, gaping like a trout as her bloodshot eyes filmed over.
He made sure Scott’s prints were on the knife, too, before he roused him. Scott put up more of a fight, even managed tturn the knife on him and slice him across the arm.
Then Scott was gone, too, the knife buried to the hilt in his chest.
He staggered outside, fell to his knees next to Sarah. Sobbing her name over and over, begging for forgiveness for not keeping her safe, not killing them sooner.
In the dream she changed, her features morphing, changing. She was no longer a child. She still had the same green eyes and dark hair, but the face and body were those of a woman.
His body jerked as he realized he wasn’t holding Sarah.
He was holding Megan.
Her dead eyes opened and she reached up to caress his face. “You were supposed to save me. We were supposed to be together.”
He jerked awake, his heart galloping in his chest, cold sweat filming his body. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold on to the last shreds of the dream. He wanted to hold on to it, hold on to Megan, reassure her everything was going to be fine. They would be together. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
He flung his forearm over his head, swallowing back a wave of guilt. He thought of Sarah all the time, lived with the guilt every day, but he hadn’t thought about what led up to her death for a long, long time. Had shoved it so far back he could almost pretend it had never happened, that it was all a bad dream.
When he did let himself remember, he remembered only the good parts. The euphoric power that surged through him when he cut his mother’s throat. The rush of feeling the blade pop through Scott’s breastbone.
He felt his cock harden under the sheet at the memory. Like a first kiss or a first fuck, there was nothing like the first kill. It was the one and only time he’d killed on pure, savage impulse. Now his kills were deliberate, purposeful, and carefully managed and directed.
He’d learned so much that day. Like how good it felt to have someone at his mercy, begging for their miserable, worthless lives.
Not to mention how easy it was to fuck with the cops. They’d gulped down his self-defense story like a fish sucking down a juicy worm. They’d even called him a hero, fending off a maniac who had already broken his wrist, cracked his ribs, not to mention the other damage.
As for Sarah, he told them she’d locked herself in the trunk. He hated to do that, make her look foolish, but there was no other way.
Sarah… Her face floated in his mind again, smiling. His sweet sister, the only one who’d ever really loved him. The only one he’d ever really loved.
But she must have forgiven him, because how else was he getting this second chance?
Megan was his second chance at a normal life, a normal love. No more living under the thumb of those who considered themselves his masters, who thought that without their influence, he would be nothing but a mindless, soulless killing machine.
He’d show them. He’d once had a soul. He remembered what it was like to be normal. Before Sarah died. Megan could give that back to him. Her love would vanquish the darkness, wash away his sins.
He felt a form rustling beside him and reached out, his hand meeting smooth, feminine flesh.
He ran his hand down her arm, over her stomach. He squeezed his eyes shut. If he did that, he could almost pretend it was Megan. But the hip under his fingers was too skinny, the bones protruding into his palms. And she smelled like heavy perfume and dirty sex. Nothing like Megan’s fresh flowers and clean laundry scent.
His fingers tightened around her hip, and he heard her gasp as the bone ground beneath his grip. It was nothing like what he needed, but the sound sent a faint tickle to his balls. He gave up the fantasy and opened his eyes. He couldn’t have Megan yet, but at least he could use this bitch for what she was good for. And deliver a warning in the meantime.
“Sorry,” he said, pasting a sheepish grin on his face. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
She gave him a feeble smile from where she sat huddled against the headboard, her short blond hair standing up in spikes. “It’s okay. I know how excited you get.” The sheet clutched to her chest hid most of the marks he’d put on her earlier, but he could see a faint purple bruise darkening on her shoulder.
She was so easily duped, believing his roughness was a combination of overenthusiasm and lack of skill. They all were, accepting him as the nice, fumbling guy they would throw a free bang to as part of the deal. They had no idea of the monster that lurked beneath, no idea how every wince and cry of pain got him rock hard.
The marks wou
ld put her out of commission for a couple days, but it didn’t matter. There were plenty of other girls, willing and eager to service Stephanie’s regulars. Not that they would want her lately, even without his marks. Her face was drawn, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with dark circles.
“You need to take better care of yourself, Steph,” he said.
She started to flinch as he reached out his hand, then relaxed and flashed him a tentative smile when he traced his fingers gently down her shoulder.
“I haven’t been sleeping much lately, after what happened to Bianca,” she whispered.
“Did you know what she was planning?”
“No.” She ruined the lie by casting her gaze to the sheets, then looked back up to meet his pointed look. “Well, we lived together and I knew she was up to something. I told her not to do anything stupid, that whatever she was planning she couldn’t get away with it.” Her breath caught on a sob. “And she didn’t.”
He slid his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close, the comforting friend. “It’s terrible what happened to her.”
She nodded, buried her head in his neck. He grimaced he slimed him with snot and tears. “I can’t stop thinking about her. How scared she must have been, how much pain she was in…”
You have no idea. His cock grew painfully hard at the memory of Bianca screaming behind the gag. The tight clench of her sex as her body convulsed in pain. “I’d hate to see something like that happen to you.” Oh, he could see it now. Stephanie up on her knees, her long, skinny legs splayed open for his invasion as she whimpered against the cold kiss of his blade.
It would be so easy, and so good, so much more satisfying than what he had to get by on between kills.
But he wasn’t authorized, he thought bitterly. They’d told him to deliver a warning. To make sure she understood what would happen if she did something stupid like go to the cops to talk about her former roommate and colleague.
Like a dog on a too-short leash, he strained to be free. But he couldn’t break free, not yet. There were a few more details, a few more pieces to put in order before he could free himself from their imagined hold.
In the meantime…“The police will be looking for you. You know that.” He slid his fingers in her short, choppy hair, tightening his grip until she raised wide, frightened eyes to his face. “Now that they know who Bianca really is, they’ll be looking for anyone connected to her.” Which pissed him off to no end. He left no loose ends, and he couldn’t be blamed for this one. It wasn’t his fault they hadn’t done a good enough job covering up Bianca’s past. And now the police knew who she was, where she’d lived, and so did Megan.
