Final Cut

by T. S. Worthington

  Bill held her close to him as he pressed his face against hers. Teri had the most delicate skin that he had ever seen or felt. It was like the most perfectly crafted silk that had ever existed. Bill found that when they were in bed together then he often would stroke her arm for hours on end when he could not sleep. He just wanted to catch a few winks at some point. Please… please…

  Bill had considered taking some sleeping pills but everyone he talked to frowned on that. Apparently they were highly addictive but he didn’t really care. He just wanted some damn sleep. He knew that with everything that he was going through having quality sleep was of the utmost importance or he would never be strong enough to do what must be done for the day.

  His phone dinged right then. At first he thought it was just another Facebook notification, but the notifications did not ding; they just vibrated. Looking at his phone now cradled in his hand he could see that someone had sent him a direct message on Facebook.

  The message was from Andrew. For some unknown reason Andrew had never developed comfort with talking on the phone, or even texting although Bill had explained to him time and time again how texting and IM were really the same thing. For whatever reason Andrew was convinced that having a real cell phone would result in being excommunicated from the church. It was an idiotic thought, but no matter how many times Bill had told him how flawed it was, he just would not get it through his head. The paranoia had set inside of him too deeply.

  Bill often wondered how easy it was to brainwash someone that way and why some people were susceptible to it and others were not. Had he himself been brainwashed a bit by Daisy Fox’s killer? He doubted he would refer to it as brainwashing because he had his own ideals so strongly in place that he did not break his belief system for nobody.

  Andrew just wanted to know if Bill would want to hang out and shoot some pool later. Bill replied back that he was probably going to crash after they finished watching a few TV shows or maybe a movie.

  While looking at his phone’s main menu Bill noticed that he had just received a Facebook notification. He tapped on it and it was the memory of what had happened a year ago at the lake up in Tuska. It was a funny memory, one that Bill had not thought about in a long time.

  Teri was suddenly interested as she watched him looking at his phone.

  “Wow, this is classic!” Bill said.

  “What? What happened?” Teri asked.

  “Well, this is the cabin party we had last year at the lake as kind of a final fuck you to winter. I’m surprised that we didn’t do it this year,” Bill said. He wondered if his accident had kept people away. He had not really spoken to most of the guys in that group since camp the previous year, which had been a total blast. Bill had always felt that summer camp should be for adults who can properly appreciate it. No games and no work. Just fun and more fun. He missed hanging out with the old gang. It had hurt his feelings a bit when a lot of them did not check in and tell him how happy they were that he was ok and not dead after all. Not even a damn Facebook message from most of them. It kind of pissed Bill off a bit the more he looked at it.

  “Hey, check it out,” Teri said. “There is Buzz.”

  Bill looked at the old picture of his friend and noticed that the man was already shit faced and was holding two cans of beer in each hand ready to pound them down for the right photo op. Of course that was how he had the accident and had fallen too close to the bonfire when he tripped over some gravel when they were playing flag football, which was not a bright idea in and of itself for anyone to play ball that close to a fire.

  Bill remembered that Buzz had burnt his hand pretty good up to the wrist.

  The wrist…

  Buzz always wore a huge wrist watch on his left wrist since the accident that concealed the burn scars very carefully. Most of his hand healed up fine, but there was just a softer spot on his wrist that had burnt pretty nasty and left an ugly looking scar. The rest of the group had teased him about it for the next couple of months, but of course they were glad that their friend was ok. Bill was the only one sober enough to drive so he took Buzz to the hospital with second and third degree burns and waited while the doctor pumped him full of pain meds and wrapped him up. Buzz had not been a happy camper for the rest of the trip.

  Bill quickly tapped on Buzz’s profile and went to his photos and began to scroll through them. It was taking some time; it was completely insane how many pictures this guy had on his phone and how many pictures he had that were just close ups of his face (some selfies and some not).

  “What are you looking for?” Teri asked scooting closer and watching Bill scroll through her brother’s Facebook pictures.

  Finally Bill came to a picture that plainly showed Buzz playing some volleyball at his family reunion that his family had every year up in Cleveland. It was always a lot of fun and even though they were not family Bill and his parents had always been welcomed there. When he was a kid it was usually just him and he rode with Buzz’s family.

  In the picture he was staring at Buzz was in the middle of the serve and you could clearly see the scar on his wrist as he brought his hand forward.

  It was the same scar he had seen on the wrist of Daisy Fox’s killer in that video.

  Buzz killed Daisy Fox.

  Chapter 13

  “TIGHT SPOT”

  Teri was looking at Bill like he was insane. She seemed suddenly frightened of him. For the past minute he had been looking at Buzz’s picture and saying to himself repeatedly “Buzz did it Buzz did it Buzz did it. It was Buzz the whole time” as if it was a mantra that if he chanted it enough times it would change history and somehow make it not true.

  Bill felt like his head was going to blow and he struggled to take slow, steady breaths deeply into his diaphragm. His air supply was shaky and this was adding to his lightheadedness.

  All this time. Right under his nose. But why? How? How could his best friend since childhood be a vicious killer?

  “What are you saying?” Teri asked.

  “It’s Buzz. Buzz is the killer…” Bill said. He was not consciously aware of how much sense this did not make to Teri.

  “What? Buzz killed what?” Teri asked. He could hear the fear in her voice, shaking and scared. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Buzz killed Daisy Fox. He killed her,” Bill said. His voice was quiet. He could barely hear himself speak.

  The idea that his best friend was capable of murder, let alone the kind of brutal murder that Bill had been forced to watch too many times, was just completely out of the scope of his understanding at that moment. There had to be a logical explanation. It could not be Buzz.

  But that burn was exactly the same. There was no other person it could have been He saw that burn on the hand of the killer on that video. His eyes did not deceive him.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Teri asked. She was clearly being freaked out and Bill’s first instinct was to pull her close and hold her, but he was too lost in his own head.

  “He has the same burn scar. I saw that burn scar on the video of the murder. He killed Daisy Fox.”

  Teri’s jaw gaped open. She stood up and walked behind him pacing back and forth. Bill knew that he was not explaining a lot of what that meant but apparently she had picked up all of the right words out of it to catch his drift. She was starting to realize that her brother was a murderer.

  A sharp pain to the back of Bill’s skull turned the world completely black. He saw nothing before or after.

  ***

  Bill’s eyes flew open. He was suddenly aware of everything that had just happened and most of what was going on now. The blow to his head had put him in a good daze, but it had not knocked him out completely cold. During the haze he could hear voices even though they sounded muffled and he could vaguely make out what they were saying, but not enough for it to really make sense.

  “Well, look who is awake,” Buzz said. They were standing in
Bill’s kitchen and he was now tied securely to a kitchen chair with several lengths of rope. Bill tried to move but it was no use. He was stuck, completely at the mercy of Buzz.

  “Good. I was afraid I’d hit him too hard,” Teri said walking into the kitchen. She gave Bill a wicked smile that did not even look like the girl he’d fallen in love with. Her demeanor was cold and a bit goofy which made for an unstable combo.

  There they both were, right in front of him. He had been too blind to see that he was being played like a violin the whole time. Bill felt disgusting and sick to his stomach. He could not even bear to look at Teri.

  “Aww, I think he is mad at me,” Teri joked.

  “Yea, you really did a number on him little sis,” Buzz said.

  “Why?” Bill asked. “Why did you kill Daisy Fox? And why were you playing games with me? Shits and giggles?”

  Buzz laughed heartily. “Well, yea it was fun. Don’t get me wrong, but it was so much more important than that. You see I spied that little peach Daisy one day when I was driving through Cutler on my way back from hanging with my cousin Jordan. She was so perfect. I had to have her. And I did. I had her several times, but apparently I had her a little too much. Turns out the slut was pregnant with my kid. I offered to pay for the abortion, but she wouldn’t take it. She was going to keep the kid and she was going to tell everyone I was the father. It would have ruined everything I’ve worked so hard for all these years. So I wasn’t left with a whole lot of options here, Bill.”

  “You are disgusting,” Bill replied.

  “Watch, what you say about my brother,” Teri said leaning in close to Bill’s face. Her face wore an expression of utter hatred and impunity.

  “So, you were just along for the ride?” Bill asked.

  “Well, I love my big bro and I wasn’t about to let some little gutter trash like Daisy Fox sink her teeth into him. So I became the bait and we took care of her the way we do.”

  Teri and Buzz slapped a high five.

  “That’s touching. But what about me? What the hell did any of this have to do with me?”

  “Well, you were our insurance policy,” Buzz said. “You see there is always a chance of getting caught with something like this and I don’t like to leave things up to chance. I mean we are pretty sure we erased every bit of traceable evidence, but that’s what everyone thinks until they are sent to the gas chamber. So when you had your little accident then we decided that would be the perfect cover and everyone would gradually come to find out that Mr. Russell was not so perfect. But then the craziest thing happened—you survived!”

  “Sorry to spoil your plans,” Bill said.

  “Well, I guess it will still work out for the best. You see you are going to kill yourself because you can’t live with the guilt of what you’ve done. See our plan still works just the same way, with only a minor delay.”

  Bill struggled tightly against the ropes trying like mad to get at least a hand or even a damn finger free to begin working on the rope. He could feel the panic beginning to set in on his mind and his body felt sluggish and heavy. He had to remain calm and breathe. Panic was the very thing that would get him killed here.

  Buzz and Teri both looked at him laughing their asses off, which only served to infuriate Bill more as he struggled harder against the tight ropes.

  “I think he is trying to make a break for it,” Teri said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t like the guy if he didn’t have spunk,” Buzz said. “But it is annoying.”

  Buzz pulled the revolver out of his belt and reared back to deliver a heavy blow to Bill’s head.

  BANG!

  At first Bill thought he was dead. He’d been shot. He was a goner. His life was over. There was no doubt about it.

  But when he saw Buzz fall to the floor with the wound in his chest he realized that he was not the recipient after all.

  Teri swung towards the door swinging her own pistol at whoever had fired that first shot. Before she could get halfway she was filled full of holes and crashed to the ground beside her brother bleeding all over Bill’s kitchen floor.

  A second later Frank appeared beside Bill and began undoing the ropes.

  “Frank? How did you know?”

  “We had no idea what we would find here, but that shrink called us and said she felt that you were planning to do some harm to yourself or somebody else. Looks like she was wrong on both accounts.”

  “I told you that shit was a waste,” Bill smiled

  Bill could not bring himself to even look at Teri, lying there on the floor. Even after he knew who she really was and what she was capable of there was a part of him that still loved the Teri he had grown to know and cherish. But that girl was gone. In fact she had never existed.

  In the weeks that followed Bill continued to see Dr. Wild. It was nice to have someone to just talk to about everything and he found after a while that it was really starting to help him cope with all of his demons.

  But he was done with looking for love for a bit. He thought he had a good thing going and then disaster struck twice.

  It just goes to show you that beneath every rose is a thorn ready to strike.

  The End

  Other books available by T.S. Worthington on Kindle, paperback and audio:

  Darker Still

  Payback

  Rising Darkness

  Grip of Night