Phobias

by Ryan Horvath

  Miedo winked dramatically at the two-way glass.

  The blood streaks on his chin made the gesture that much more heinous.

  The President shuddered while she continued to listen.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  “So will you do it?” Olivia asked Justin. “Will you kill him and set me free?”

  Justin never hesitated. “Yes. Yes I will.”

  “That’s good. Thank you, Justin,” Olivia said. She loosened her skirt, and let it fall to the floor. She wore nothing beneath and she hopped up on the counter. She parted her legs and pointed to her private area. “Now come down here and have some of this and I’ll tell you how we’re gonna pull this off.”

  Justin had only been able to have a handful of one-on-one encounters with Olivia or Marcus and, given the carnal ideas he had in mind, he wasn’t going to miss this rare opportunity. He buried his face between her legs and while she moaned and writhed, she told Justin how she wanted her polygamous, thieving husband to die. Justin mostly ignored her talk. What she was saying was no longer relevant to him.

  In fact, once he’d brought Olivia to Orgasmville and back, she calmed down and decided that killing Marcus wasn’t such a good idea. Instead she was just going to take the money, hide it somewhere of her choosing, and then refuse to return it until Marcus ended his marriages with the other two spouses.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  “The next part is what really got me going,” Miedo said. He started to rock back and forth. “Even though my mind had already come up with its own plan, this is where Miedo was born.”

  ~*~0~0~*~

  “Besides,” Olivia said as she pulled her skirt back on. “I could never be alone. I’ve never been alone in my whole life. The thought of it scares the hell out of me.” She gazed out the window over the kitchen sink. “It’s probably my biggest fear. Or phobia. Whatever you want to call it. But the thought of being alone is so scary the fear consumes me.” She shuddered slightly. “You scared of anything like that?” Olivia asked without turning to look at Justin.

  Justin didn’t answer her question. Instead, he asked two of his own. “Why let the fear consume you? Why not consume the fear instead?”

  Olivia turned slowly and faced the young boy who’d just given her exquisite cunnilingus. His expression looked dark, ominous, foreboding. Olivia opened her lips to reply, but found she had nothing to say.

  Just then, they heard the automatic garage door opener. Marcus was home.

  “Go on home now,” Olivia said. “Let a wife yell at her husband in peace.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “And go out the back door. I don’t want him to know you were here tonight.”

  Justin did as he was told. Well, mostly anyway. He hurried across the kitchen and to the back door. But next to the back door was an access staircase that led to the basement. And having been down there to enact a fantasy of Marcus’s, Justin knew the basement crossed the length of the house and that there was another staircase that led back up to the first floor. As he crossed the basement, he stopped and scanned an old work table that had a smattering of tools on it. Justin looked at the assorted items and then heard Marcus and Olivia strike up an argument. Justin finally selected two items from the work table as the voices above rose in crescendo. He slipped the rest of the way across the room as the yelling was quieted. Sounds of regret and apology could be heard.

  Justin cared about none of this. He’d been consumed by Olivia’s confession. Justin felt weird since hearing it. Not bad. Not bad at all in fact. It felt tingly. Tantalizing. Enticing. And his own response to her was as captivating. Why couldn’t he learn to consume the fear of others? He knew at that point, that whatever he had become, he was going to spend his life learning how to do just that.

  But first, Justin had to get past this. The plan he’d devised while Olivia herself plotted had to be seen through to completion. It was his next initiation of sorts.

  Justin made his way up the other staircase and came out between the front door and a small water closet. The sounds of the young couple’s fighting had stopped. They were past apologies, and Justin could hear clothing being shed and dropped. Then he heard the familiar gasp Olivia released when he or Marcus would first penetrate her.

  Justin waited and counted off the seconds. He’d been intimate with the couple enough times to know they often became oblivious to the outside world when in sexual repose. After five minutes passed, he came out from behind the wall.

  Marcus was taking Olivia on the counter right where Justin had just orally serviced her thirty or so minutes before. They were both gasping and grunting in pleasure. Neither of them heard him.

  Justin readied the first of the two items he took from the basement. It was a large, flathead screwdriver. The handle was four inches long and the rusty metal stake was well over ten. Justin knew basic anatomy and he lined up the screwdriver. With great force, he slammed the tool into Marcus. Justin was careful to avoid the ribs and aimed for the man’s heart. Justin didn’t force the screwdriver in far enough but, since Marcus hadn’t been prepared, he jolted. But that only made things worse for him as instead of moving forward and away from the object in his body, he pressed back harder into it. The tip of the screwdriver found Marcus’s heart. He only had seconds left, and he began to shudder. It seemed as if he was trying to cry out but couldn’t. Justin suspected he’d impacted a lung on the entry.

  Olivia thought Marcus’s odd movements were a new sexual maneuver. She had her eyes closed and was so lost in her focus that she didn’t realize anything was wrong. When she felt Marcus’s penis slide out of her, she opened her eyes, planning on giving him the look that told him to slam it back into her. Instead, she saw Justin.

  “Justin?” she said with confusion. “I thought I told you…” Then she saw Marcus on the floor, impaled and twitching in his last ticks of life. “Oh… Oh… m…mm…Oh my God! You… You did it…!”

  Justin saw a look of relief in her eyes but, looking deeper, he recognized something else. Olivia would betray him. She would sell him out the first chance she got. But Justin nodded at her. “I had to.”

  “You thought it would be just us? That’s so sweet,” Olivia said.

  Justin heard the unharmonious tones of a seasoned liar.

  “Come here and kiss me,” Olivia directed.

  Justin did as she bade him. He gave her his innocence and slipped the other tool out of his pocket. He snatched her by the hair and aggressively yanked it back, causing her to cry out. “But I made other plans, Olivia. You wanted me to kill him so you could take the money and run. What a stupid little woman you are. I saw that pile of money and formed my own plan.” Justin produced a carpet knife. He slowly extended the blade. “You’re going to die here alone tonight, Olivia. Alone. For the first time you will be alone.” He looked at Marcus to be certain he was dead. He was. Marcus’s open eyes stared at nothing. Justin looked deep into Olivia’s eyes and said the word again. “Alone.” A smell unlike any he had smelled before emanated from her. Justin inhaled deeply. It was her fear. It streamed from her. He took it in and it made him feel stronger. “I was right,” he said. “The fear can be consumed.” He quickly jabbed the blade into Olivia’s neck and yanked it, causing a deep puncture and a jagged slash, and severing a part of her vocal cords. “Die alone, bitch,” Justin said as he let her slump sideways on the counter. Another hot wave of fear blasted from her as tears leaked from her eyes and blood seeped from her neck. Justin consumed as much of it as he could. As it coursed through his body, he felt as if he was growing.

  Justin abruptly turned from the dying woman. He wanted her last moments of life to be spent in absolute solitude. He quickly found a paper grocery bag and set to work bagging the cash Olivia had pulled from the safe. Justin didn’t take the time to count it. After the money was collected, he grabbed a dish towel and used it to wipe off the handle of the screwdriver. The knife had nooks and crannies that could collect fingerprints, so he was going to take that with him. He’d tak
e it over to the river and toss it in later that night.

  He hadn’t touched anything else. Both basement doors had been ajar enough for Justin to slip through. And Olivia employed a cleaning service that did an incredible job. They had just been there that morning, so Justin doubted there would be any trace of him. He’d turn out to be right.

  He gave the dying Olivia one last look. She looked terrified as her essence slipped away. Then he snatched the bag of money and quickly let himself out into the cold through the back door. There wasn’t any snow for him to walk through and he thought that was good too.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  “They were my first two,” Miedo said. “And I was never a suspect. Why would I have been? No one ever saw me with them. My parents never knew I went over to their house. I got away with murder and I did it walking away with over seven hundred thousand dollars in cold, hard cash. That was a nice start-up fund. No one ever came to the boy next door looking for that money, either.”

  The agents and cops in the room looked at each other some with disbelief and some stunned.

  “They were the first of many. I created fear experiments after that. I captured and killed seven more people in my teen years. One of them was a rich old bastard who was afraid of germs. That one was fun! And I got another big cash haul out of him. Neither my parents nor my friends knew that, by the time I was eighteen, I had acquired over two million dollars.” Miedo laughed and looked proud. “But I stopped when I was in college. Stopped isn’t the right word; I decided to abstain. I wanted to know the nature of fear, so I studied psychology and found the human mind fascinating. I studied and learned everything I could. I opened up my practice and then decided it was time to end my abstinence. I worked quickly then, but I was rich and felt invincible. I still feel invincible although I imagine you all will do everything in your power to change that…”

  “Damn right we will…,” one of the cops muttered.

  “But in the end,” Miedo went on undeterred, “my legacy is going to survive. I’ve made sure of that. No one will ever forget what I have started here. I promise you. I guarantee…”

  “That’s enough,” The agent from Homeland Security said. “Shut him up. The President and AG have heard enough. We’re throwing this trash in the pit.”

  One of the regular cops smashed Miedo hard across the face. Miedo didn’t think POTUS would like that much but he doubted he’d be called to testify at any hearing.

  “You will never see the light of day again,” the Homeland agent said to Miedo. “But we’re not going to keep you alive that long anyway. Now get him out of here.”

  ~*~0~0~*~

  Miedo was taken from the holding cell and dragged to an elevator. They went down.

  Way down.

  The elevator door let out into a short corridor with a single door at the opposite end. As he was pulled toward the door he could hear voices and wails and groans from the other side.

  Two of the accompanying agents drew pistols while one agent unlocked the door. The moans became sounds of excitement.

  Miedo was quickly tossed into the room.

  The door slammed.

  Miedo was in the dark. He could hear the approach of scuttling footsteps.

  He was sodomized after that.

  Brutally. Savagely. Repeatedly, by monsters that had once been boys as innocent as he was.

  The assaults went on for days. Miedo was powerless to escape.

  One week turned into two. Stale bread was dropped in. Miedo was lucky to get scraps left by the monsters. Water came from a leaky faucet in the wall.

  On the third week, the room was pumped full of a choking gas. Miedo was forced into unconsciousness.

  He revived later, unsure of how much time had passed. He was in a bright room. He blinked and looked around and recognized that he was in something like a dental office. He was even strapped to an unusual chair. He realized some tubes were hooked to him intravenously. He looked beyond himself and was surprised to see a window. On the other side of the window, he saw three people.

  Chad Dean. Holly Nabors, and Calvin Vale. They looked powerful and smug and also free of their fears. Miedo thought he saw pity in their eyes.

  It was the last thing he saw as a chilly liquid was pumped into his veins. He looked at their faces, and as he died, all he could think of was Griffin… Griffin… Griffin...

  ~~50~~

  A month later, there was a wedding. Chad and Holly married. They and most of their friends from Hillsboro had relocated to the Oklahoma panhandle.

  Chad, Calvin, and Holly were cleared of all charges that caused them to flee Minnesota and take to hiding in the American southwest.

  They started to build a normal life.

  One day, a woman arrived on their doorstep. She’d seen them on the news and one of the three of them greatly interested her. She looked rough and unpolished from her life over the last few years but when Calvin first realized it was she, he saw she was sober and appeared to have been for a while. His mother had finally found him.

  ~*~0~0~*~

  A man watched the mother and son reunite from a safe distance.

  His name was Griffin.

  He started to feel a hunger.