by KD Robichaux
I hit the button over and over, knowing damn well it won’t make the elevator move any faster, but if I don’t do something to expend some of this anxiety, I will have a full-on panic attack. When the doors ding open, I jump inside and hit the button for the parking garage.
I run to my car, thanking the gods the door unlocks automatically as I get near it with my keys, plop down into the driver seat, slam my foot down on the brake, and push the ignition button. I back out of the parking spot like a fucking stunt driver, hardly glancing in my mirror to see if anyone is behind me. Wilmington is an hour and a half away. I’ll never make it in time with just a little over an hour to get there to stop Corbin.
I make it to the highway without passing any cops, but as soon as I see the exit that will put me on the clear shot to the outer banks city I’m heading to, my foot presses on the gas, the needle shooting up well past the speed limit. Using the buttons on my steering wheel, I try calling Corbin again, but it goes straight to voice mail without even ringing this time over the Bluetooth speakers. I don’t leave a message knowing he’s turned his phone off, which means he’s probably already in place—wherever he plans to murder Alan.
I reach over and grab the paper off my passenger seat. It’s so obsessively organized that I find Alan’s Tuesday activities quickly.
Tuesday
A.M.
7:00- Morning run/workout at campus gym
9:00 – 10:50- Class 1
11:00- Lunch, normally on campus
P.M.
12:10 – 2:00- Class 2
2:00 – 5:00- Office hours, Room 262, same hallway as classroom
5:00 – 6:00- Dinner, Denny’s on Ocean Ave.
6:00 – 8:00- Teaches private acting class in local theater next door to Denny’s
8:00- Returns home, 342 Magnolia St. Apt. 2C
Glancing at the time on the dashboard, I see it’s now 7:22 p.m. Trying my best not to swerve, I type in his home address, seeing how that’s where he should be at the time Corbin wrote on the Post-It note in the folder. When Siri is done calculating, it tells me I should arrive at 8:27 p.m.
“Fuck!” I yell, slamming my hand down on the steering wheel. I should give up. I should stop racing down this highway at breakneck speeds, turn around, and wait for Corbin to return home in the morning. There’s no use.
But it’s the memory of why I lied to him ten years ago that keeps me moving toward my destination. Alan had been so strong, completely immovable when he attacked me. He wasn’t some little pipsqueak who got lucky in his mission to overpower me. No. He was a pretty big guy. Not as muscular as Corbin by any stretch of the imagination, but taller and had mass to him. If I were to go back to wait for my love to return, and then him never show up because Alan hurt him, I would never be able to live with myself.
I have to get to him.
I GLANCE AT my watch. 7:58 p.m. From my car in the Denny’s parking lot, I have the perfect view of the front door to the local theater where Alan is finishing up tonight’s acting class.
I’ve fantasized about this moment over and over since the very second the truth was revealed. So many ways I could make him pay, but the result was always the same. It would cost Alan his life for what he did to my wife.
I know our code, a life for a life. But what he’d done to Vi… he had ruined hers that night, making her live with what happened for the past ten years, so what the fuck is the difference? And no matter how much healing she does, no matter how happy we will be from now until the day she dies, we’ll never get that time back, and she’ll still have to carry around the memory of her assault. I’ll spend the rest of my days on this earth trying to make her forget, but it will always be there. Even if she goes a long time without ever thinking about it, something could always trigger the memory. A stranger in passing who looks like Alan. A waft of whatever cologne he was wearing that night as we walk through a department store. Fuck, who knows? The tiniest, most inconsequential thing could pull it back out. It’ll never fully disappear.
And it’s with these thoughts in mind that when I watch the cocksucker himself exit the building and get into his Ford Focus that’s seen better days, I follow him. I keep enough distance that the wannabe actor will never suspect he’s playing the part of prey to my predator.
A short time later, he pulls into the parking lot of his rundown apartment complex and I keep driving, turning into the parking lot on the opposite side of the building. I cut the engine and hop out, grabbing my backpack full of tricks out of the back seat before I close the door quietly. I still haven’t decided which tool I’ll use to make him suffer. Or maybe I’ll take the time to use them all. With only an hour and a half drive home and Vi not expecting me to get back until tomorrow, I’ve got all night to play this game.
With Brian’s help, who kept surveillance on Alan after the job he finished up three weeks ago, I know exactly what he does every night of the week, right down to when he likes to take a shit. No friends to speak of, no family in this state, the only people to miss him will be the students and staff at the university, and even they won’t know something’s happened to him for almost two days, since he doesn’t teach another class until Thursday afternoon.
I check my watch again as I climb the stairs leading to his apartment, passing no one on the way up, and I see it’s 8:11. Knowing that he always drops his shit at the door and heads straight into his bathroom to shower every single night like clockwork, entrance will be a breeze.
I stand in front of his door and pull off my backpack long enough to grab the black leather mask and matching gloves inside, tugging them on. How poetic to kill the motherfucker while wearing the very same hood I wore while I acted the part of him during Vi’s anger expression scene. It was this mask she stared up at as she healed herself with her screams. And it’s this mask that will be the last vision Alan will ever see, burned into his mind for all eternity as he’s finally dragged through the gates of hell.
I pick the lock as easily as I would open his front door with a key, entering the dank apartment and shutting it behind me silently. I hear the water running behind the wall immediately to my right, and I set my backpack down next to the bathroom door. I close my eyes for a moment, bracing my hands against the doorframe, shifting through the Rolodex of ways to make him pay.
A sinister grin spreads across my face behind my mask, deciding exactly how to begin. I’ll have to be careful at first; with him in the shower, I don’t want to risk him slipping and smashing his head open. No. That would be entirely too quick a death for someone deserving of torture.
I hurry to his tiny kitchen, pulling open drawers almost noiselessly as I search for the one thing I’ll need. Bingo. I slide it into my pocket and make my way back. I bend down and unzip the front pocket of my bag, pulling out the preloaded syringe full of street-grade fentanyl, one of the many drugs Alan went to rehab for. I uncap the needle, holding it up and pressing the plunger just enough that a tiny bit of the liquid comes out, making sure there’s no air in the tube. Then, taking a step back in the narrow entryway, I lean my back up against the wall directly in front of the bathroom door and wait.
I can only imagine the shock Alan will feel as he opens the door, completely unsuspecting, and sees me standing here, entirely dressed in black, my leather hood in place. I’m sure I look like a fucking executioner, or maybe Death himself.
The water shuts off, and I hear the rings holding the shower curtain screech across the metal rail. I stand up straight, syringe gripped in my hand with my thumb on the plunger, hearing shuffling, as if he’s drying off with a towel. I glance at my watch one last time—8:22 p.m.—before covering it with my black sleeve.
Finally, I hear the doorknob jiggle, and every muscle in my body tenses, a panther ready to pounce. The door opens, and all the steam from the shower billows out, revealing Alan with a red towel wrapped around his waist. When his eyes discover my still form right in front of him, it’s a look of confusion that crosses his face first, as if
he’s trying to figure out if he’s just seeing things. But as I raise the needle in my black-gloved hand, I finally get the reaction I was waiting for. Pure unadulterated terror fills his black, soulless eyes.
Before he can even take a breath, my hand shoots out with flawless precision, jabbing the needle and depressing the plunger in the inner crease of his elbow, his arm stretched out in invitation with his hand still on the doorknob. Even though my emotions are in this job, the kill completely personal, my head is clear. I still have to make this look self-inflicted. Alan being a former druggie just makes it so beautifully easy.
“Fuck!” he yelps, jerking his arm away, but it’s too late. He stumbles backward, his ass landing on the sink behind him as his towel comes loose, toiletries and his glass bottles of cologne falling to the tile floor beneath his feet. They shatter, setting off an explosion of sickly strong scents—so potent I can smell it through the leather of my hood.
“Evenin’, Al.” My voice is almost maniacal, and his eyes widen as I step closer.
“Who are you? W-what do you want?” he stutters, not quite slurring. The drug affects his body first, making everything warm, lax, and heavy feeling. I chose it because it wouldn’t totally knock him out with this size dose. I want him conscious for everything I do to him. Just like Vi was.
“I’m the man whose wife you raped, and I’m here to make you pay,” I answer conversationally, and his head jerks back, clanging against the glass mirror behind him. “Careful now, bud. No knocking yourself out.”
“I-I… I didn’t rape her, man. She came to my office begging for it. She flirts with me every day in class,” he rushes out, his body slowly melting into the bowl of the sink.
I smirk behind my mask. So the motherfucker had done this to more than just my sweet Vi. Makes this even sweeter. “Hmm… this sounds so familiar. ‘Stop fighting it,’ you told her. ‘I know you want me. I see it every day.’” I take another step into the bathroom, and the fucking pussy immediately bursts into tears. “‘Stop all your fucking crying, Vivian. Relax. Just let it happen. You know you want it.’”
The color drains from his face, realizing exactly who I’m here to avenge. “I… I—”
“Raped my wife, when all she wanted to do was make sure you were safe?” I tilt my head, reaching into my jeans to pull out the steak knife I grabbed from his kitchen. I watch the panic fill his eyes. I see the struggle on his face, his mind telling his body to get up and fight, or at least run, but all he can do is jerk his limbs a bit.
I take one last step toward him, raising the knife. “‘If you just stop fighting it, I’ll make it feel good.’” With that final disgusting line he’d said to my baby girl, my fist plunges downward, stabbing directly into the root of his pathetic excuse for a cock.
His face turns ghost white as he sucks in a breath to scream, but my gloved hand clamps across his mouth right as he releases his girlish shriek, smashing his head against the mirror as he had done to Vi in his bed. I twist the knife still in my grip, watching the blood vessels in his eyes burst as he continues to scream against my hand. I look down, admiring how the blood gushes from the hole in his dick, turning the red towel beneath him a darker shade of crimson. Right as I’m about to lift my knife to stab him again, I hear a voice behind me.
“Baby, stop.”
I look up into the mirror, seeing Vi in its reflection. Is she an apparition? Is she the angelic half of my conscience, telling me I shouldn’t break our code? She can’t really be here. How would she have known?
“Corbin.” She takes a step closer, and I feel her hand come to rest in the middle of my back. That’s when I know she’s real. “You can’t do this, baby. You have to stop.”
She goes to take a step to see around me, but I halt her movement. My body would be blocking her view of the butchery that lies before me. “Don’t move,” I order in my Dom voice, and she instantly stills, her fingers flexing between my shoulder blades. “You can’t see this, baby girl. You need to get out of here. Now.” I watch her face in the mirror. Everything in her is telling her to follow my demand, yet she struggles against it. I see her take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Don’t do it, Vi,” I growl, knowing full well she’s mustering her courage, the exact same way she would years ago when she rock climbed. I know after she takes that next breath, she’s going to dyno, leaping into this with her whole heart.
Her chest expands as she closes her eyes, and then she takes one giant step sideways to the right. I watch her beautiful green eyes open in the reflection, meeting the slits in my leather hood, before they lower to the massacre beneath my hand.
She gasps, her hand coming up to cover her mouth, and her eyes raise to look into the ones of her rapist. He’s stopped his screaming, only having the energy to whimper behind my leather glove, tears pouring from his eyes and dripping down over my glove. As his blood drains, his body wilts, and probably the only reason he’s still conscious is because the drug I gave him elevated his pain tolerance.
Vi swallows, meeting my stare in the mirror once again. “You… you cut it off?” she whispers.
“Not yet,” I answer, my voice steady.
“Baby, you can’t kill him. If you do, it will have all been for nothing. All that time I gave up with you, the lie I told to keep you from killing him, to keep you out of jail, it would have been for nothing. You don’t kill people who haven’t taken a life,” she tells me, her voice low but steady.
“He took our life, Vi. The second he attacked you, he stole our perfect life together,” I murmur, my hand holding the knife twisting once more.
“But I’ve got you back now. He’s not worth it, Corbin. Don’t do this,” she begs, but it’s too late for me to just let him go.
“I can’t, baby girl. He knows who we are,” I say, and Alan tries to shake his head beneath my grip. He mumbles something, his eyes crossing a moment before they focus on mine again.
“Let him speak,” Vi tells me, and wanting to give her whatever she needs for closure, I remove my hand, keeping it raised in case he tries to scream for help.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he slurs. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone.”
I shake my head. “And how exactly would you explain your tiny dick being fileted, motherfucker?” I growl, dragging the serrated edge of the knife up and down a couple of times, testing just how easy it would be to split it down the middle. I tilt it at an angle, slicing up the center of his balls. But he barely even registers my movement, his body in shock along with the help of the drug. “Say by some miracle you make it to a hospital. What the fuck could you say that would explain this?” I grip the hair at the top of his head and yank his face downward, forcing him to look at the minced meat between his legs that used to be his cock.
He cries harder at the sight, shutting his eyes as he sobs. “I… I don’t know. Please. Just… don’t kill me,” he begs.
“Attempted suicide,” Vi says over my shoulder, and I meet her eyes in the mirror. I allow Alan to lift his head. “You were attempting suicide. What did you give him, Corbin?”
“Fentanyl,” I reply.
“I’m not sure what that is,” she confesses, but I see her author brain starting to work up a story.
“O-one of the drugs… I used to do,” Alan slurs.
“Yeah, but not the one you were on when you forced yourself on my wife,” I growl, wondering why I’m even having this conversation as my hand twists the knife once again.
“Baby, stop!” Vi shouts, and I immediately halt my movement. “You were attempting suicide. You took the drugs, and being the failed aspiring actor you are, if you couldn’t be famous in life, you wanted to be immortalized with your death. You cut your own… penis,” she says, flapping her hand in the direction of his annihilated organ, “as some… artistic bullshit.”
Alan nods at the same time I shake my head. “No. There’s no way. We can’t trust him not to tell the police who we are, that I did this.”
“I’ll do anything
, man. I swear I won’t tell anyone!” Alan pleads, and something in those soulless eyes of his almost makes me believe him.
“Look, Corbin. We got our revenge. He’ll never be able to hurt another woman ever again. He’ll never be able to have sex for the rest of his life, even if he could find a person who would say yes. Let him go, baby,” she whispers, wrapping her tiny hand around my bicep.
I close my eyes, trying to clear my head and think this through. I can’t risk the cocksucker ratting us out. But I can’t do something Vivian is begging me not to do.
“Please. You promised. We swore no more secrets and lies. But you kept this from me. You told me you had another job come in. You made me believe it was something else. A lie by omission is still a lie,” she says, and a wave of guilt crashes over me. “But I will forgive you if let him go.”
The three of us fall silent, the room seeming to hold its breath as everyone waits for me to make my decision. With one last glance into Vivian’s eyes, even though it goes against everything inside me, I nod.
“Thank you,” Alan sobs, making my eye twitch.
“Listen, you sick fucking excuse for a human being. I’ll agree to leave here with you still alive, but I swear to Christ, if you do not follow exactly what I’m about to tell you, there’s an entire team of people who will hunt you down and finish what I started. And they will have strict orders to make it as slow and painful as humanly possible. Do you understand?” I growl.
“Y-yes,” he whispers, fear evident in his face as his chin trembles.
“You were attempting suicide, everything Vi said. Going out with a fucking bang so people would talk about your dumb ass for years to come. But here’s the kicker, and I will know if you say it or not. You confess to the police that the reason you were castrating yourself is because you were ashamed. You couldn’t deal with the guilt of raping the women you assaulted over the years. You will not name names. You will not drag them into your fucking bullshit. You confess, and we’re square. We’ll never hear from each other again,” I offer, and then I wait for his response.
