"Tom, I love you."
But Tom was now Justin. He was a horrible being, an unscrupulous killer, a sexual obsession, death in person, aberration in human form. He was suffering, pain, macabre, fetishism, the most hated, the last corner of the human mind.
The knife edge shone again despite being blood-soaked, and this time it pierced a rib and reached Stella's heart that was beating wildly, but it stopped immediately. Her crystal eyes and outstretched hand lost the breath of life, and a part of her came out of her body to a place where no one dares to point. No noise, no screaming, no pain. Strangely painless. Light ceased to be perceived in her open eyes.
95
Louis drove as fast as his vehicle adapted to his handicap allowed him. Still, he went down on the throttle, and the wheels squeaked at every turn he took. Under the influence of the moon, Louis looked like a madman behind the wheel, his eyes open wide and his forehead speckled with beads of sweat. His hair curled backwards as if the wind brushed it. The whitish light illuminated the asphalt, and every inch of the way, the same light grew smaller and narrower, reducing his field of vision on an isolated road. Through the exhaust pipe came out a blue smoke sprinkled in the wind, like a sulphur demon breathing in a weary way.
Louis stepped deeper into the gas pedal, and the engine roared, breaking the silence of the night.
96
"Ah... after tuh... twenty comes... tuh... tuh... ten..."
The countdown had come to an end, and Tom knew it now. A fleeting image showed him the face of his mother begging him, with a grimace of pain. With a stupefaction on it. He did not remember anything else, even though he knew that something really bad had happened. He looked down at his hands and began to cry. He was scared to death in spite of everything.
97
Samantha was dressed in a blue sweater and jeans shorts. She had bare feet and long, disheveled hair. Her eyes, swollen like boots, were turning a dark color in the eyelids and around them. She had the music on, but at a low volume, just to pretend, she thought. She wanted to make people outside that there were more people inside. It was an outdated trick, but she did not know it. Barricaded on her couch, she let the minutes go by into the night and waited for dad whimpering and sobbing.
98
If he did not stop to refuel, Louis would come home at dawn, and if things went well he might arrive even before the sun appeared timidly from behind the mountains to illuminate a new day with its long golden fingers.
99
Suddenly someone knocked on the door several times. Samantha’s eyes widened, and her heart sank into her chest. She began to sweat more. The visitor insisted again, and the noise echoed between two mountains. She put her feet on the floor to put on her sneakers. Her heart had turned into a stinging in her temples. She slipped on her right sneaker, and silence reigned among the music that was still low. Still, at some point, Samantha had stopped listening to it and focused on the knocking on the door.
She put on the left sneaker and with trembling legs went to the stereo and turned it off. At once, the silence became ominous, cruel. She also turned off the dim light in the living room, and it was all dark with the imperceptible light of the moon filtering through the cracks in the closed windows.
Suddenly, she heard a voice that at first seemed strange to her, but that after some seconds seemed familiar to her. She had heard it once.
"He... hello nuh... neighbour."
Silence came again.
Samantha took refuge behind one of the many doors in the living room and kitchen. She wanted to be as far away as she could from the front door.
Again, there was a knock on the door. This time softer, less intense, and followed by the voice.
"I am your ne... new nuh... neighb... neighbor"
Oh god, Samantha thought, staring dumbly at the dark ceiling, as if her guardian angel were there. There was nothing in there.
"I ju... just waaaant to... talk to... to..." he had stuck on that syllable and continued "you..."
Samantha remained silent. She was motionless, but she feared that the pulse of her heart would be heard on the other side of the door. The voice continued.
"Suh... something is wrong with... with mo... momma"
After this, absolute silence reigned again. Not even rats could be heard in the yard. This time it seemed that the silence became long and that at last the retarded Tom, because she had recognized him, would have gone with his music elsewhere. Samantha relaxed a little, and her legs stopped shaking so much. Now her heartbeat was regulated like a high-precision clock, although she was still sweating. When she thought it was over and had returned to the couch, this time without turning on the stereo, he knocked on the door again. This time it was with more fury and with such intensity that even the hinges trembled hidden to one side of the door frame.
Samantha was startled, and this time she felt adrenaline galloping like a horse under her chest. She thought she was going to explode anytime and the door was going to shatter at any moment.
"Open! Damn motherfucker!" The scream was heard to a long distance, but it was an almost empty street and except for one or two houses occupied by elderly couples, about two blocks away, there was no one around.
Now Tom was Jack in the first blow he made with both fists, and Justin when he raised the ax with both hands. The blow sounded thunderous and frightening at the same time. There was life in that set of noise as the ax was taken out of the splintered wooden door.
Samantha, again shakily and eerily frightened, headed for the stairs, stopped, thought, and finally went to the kitchen in search of a knife.
The door buckled under each new blow, and the edge of the ax could already be seen through the door, shining under the dim light of the moon that could enter. Samantha imagined this by the noise.
"Slut! You like to touch your nipples! Do you like to touch them?" His voice sounded hoarse, grave, and rough, everything at once.
Samantha found what she was looking for. When she felt it, she knew it was the biggest they had. The knife.
"I'll give you what you need, you slut!" Justin shouted as he unloaded his ax on the already chipped door. The wood gave way and made a huge hole through which he could already pass an arm through.
She made her way back up the stairs in the utter darkness. In the last few days, she had become used to her new home and could recognize every corner of it without seeing. When she hit her big toe of her right foot on the first step, the blows ceased suddenly and she thought she heard whimpering out there.
Sobbing, Tom looked at the door and then at the ax. He did not say anything, he only whimpered, and again his other identity took hold of him. Justin again raised the ax and unloaded it heavily on the door, which jumped and splintered. Two blocks from there, a room light flashed. The Pattersons had heard something in spite of their excellent deafness. An emaciated, horribly wrinkled face peered out the window and saw nothing but the mean moonlight, then closed the window again. For the Pattersons there, nothing was happening.
The door folded and splintered, splattering splinters of different sizes. The ax had become stuck in the twisted wood. Justin’s eyes flashed with incomprehensible wickedness, and he grabbed the ax again with both hands as he placed his heavy right foot over what was left of the door. He pulled toward him, and the metal edge of the ax shone under the moon. By now, Samantha was already upstairs with the knife fastened with both hands.
Waiting for him.
100
Louis was focused on his fierce car race. As he pushed the accelerator, the bluish smoke marked the way the vehicle was going. A cat crossed the road. Or was it a rabbit? It did not matter. The fact is that he heard a clonk, and whatever it was out was thrown to the gutter, all torn, and blood stained the road and the dense air of that hot night.
101
Justin stepped over the wreckage of the shattered door with the ax clasped tightly in his hands and his body hunched over. His bulging belly was a strange burlesque silhoue
tte amid the shadows. He walked a few steps into the center of the room and scanned to the whole area in the dark. He was on the lookout for an accelerated breath or an uncontrolled gasp that revealed the situation of his victim.
But she was upstairs. She went to her room, sliding her feet on the floor, but quietly. No noise that would betray her. She sweated copiously and felt the scent of fear, like the smell of sulfur or the contrary, like copper. In any case, it was a petty taste.
Justin sniffed the air. Except for the smell of pussy, he hated all the smells. He sniffed Samantha's secret like the trees do in the spring season. He began to have an erection.
"Do you like being touched?" Justin asked, gritting his teeth. “I smell your pussy from here."
The ax was still tight in his hands, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the gloom, and the strange shapes that drew the moonlight that penetrated through the doorway. He began to drag his feet like a kind of metallic mop. The noise broke the silence of the night. In the distance, a dog barked twice, and Justin shook his head and looked back across the room, ax in hand, while his cock was now a massive mallet of a hammer.
102
The wheels of the vehicle left rubber strips on the road, and two disquieting whitish lights projected tremulously on the road. Louis thought of Tony, of Eillen, and of Samantha. A part of him told him that his daughter was in danger. He accelerated more, and the engine responded with a roar.
103
He turned on all the lights he found in his path. Touching the walls and touching the cold light switches with his fingertips .As he pushed it to the side, the dim light lit up the living room, the kitchen, the stairs, and up to the top of the first floor.
He saw that no one was down there, but he did not bother to look too much in the first floor. It was obvious that she would have fled to the top floor. Any killer knows very well that the victim is not hiding behind a chair or under the table. Somehow, psychopaths know the minds of their victims and enter the game of mouse hunting with a certain privilege.
"Do you know that I can smell your pussy from here?” Justin said as he lifted his right foot to put it on the first rung of the ladder. The wood creaked beneath his massive 46 foot. He now lifted his left foot as he leaned his left hand on the wall and continued to hold the ax in his right hand. Every step was heard with a crack of dry wood that Samantha could hear.
The dingy light of the living room's lamp told him the way to go. Now Justin disappeared, and Tom came back.
"Nuh... neighboooor..." he saw the ax in his hand and was about to drop it after being horrified by that vision. They were behind him. Those purple arms. Now they were under the steps, touching his right ankle. "Whore!" Now it was Justin again, a huge, furious, obsessive mole. Crack, crack. Steps betrayed him. He was getting closer.
Samantha, with her frozen brain, was stuck behind the door of her room, rigid and motionless with fear, listening to the footsteps and opening her eyes wider, as if that were a relief. She was silent in the darkness.
Justin turned on the light in the hallway and saw several doors on both sides of the hallway and one at the end of it. He lay still, his ax in his hand—Jack sometimes had a roque mallet—directing his cool gaze both sides.
All the doors were open except one.
"I'm hard as a club, baby! I know where you are" and he walked slowly toward the closed door with noisy footsteps as if he were dragging sand into the soles of his dark shoes, now holding the ax with both hands. He was preparing to lift his pudgy sweaty arms.
Samantha's heart betrayed her, and her smell. There's no better smell than the pussy, Justin said. That smell repeated, and he dropped the edge of the ax on the door. A thunderous blow sent up some white-painted wood chips, and behind the door, Samantha jumped back as the knife slipped out of her hands. There was a jingling of metal. Justin heard it.
"I knew you were here, bitch."
And again he threw the ax over the door, creating a new fissure.
Across the door, the darkness was not exactly Samantha's best ally to find the knife, so she turned the light on with a thud and the edge of the knife shone on the ground like a fallen star from the sky. Her heart racing, her sudden faintness, the copious sweat and the taste of fear.
"Oh! What’s going on?" Now she was Sue. “I’m Miss Sue. Do you need anything, miss?" The sharp woman's voice made Samantha more uneasy and wondered what the hell she was up against.
She did not answer. It was obvious. When you are being chased with an ax, you do not open your mouth or breathe, except for the gasp of the icy fear, the fiery horror.
"I'll take you whore in less than a minute!" Said Justin's voice now as he dropped the ax again on the door. Now he could see her expressionless eyes through the hole in the door. They were terribly swollen and open like two bulbs illuminating the road.
Samantha walked back trembling toward the window, stifling a cry with a fist in her mouth. She was lost. She knew it. But there was an angry animal inside her that had not yet awakened, but soon it would.
104
There were still more than sixty miles ahead of him, and Louis, sweating copiously, accelerated harder and harder, squeezing his right foot against the cold gas pedal. The engine roared and spat out trails of blue smoke, but it could not go any faster. The speed was still constant. Louis calculated that in thirty or forty minutes he would have reached his destination and that everything would be all right. All right? What had Louis thought? Nothing could be further from the truth. It would take a little longer. Enough for everything to go from bad to worse.
105
"Hey, girl! Do you have a cat inside?" It was the identity of Charlie speaking in Tom's mouth. I have a kni..." Suddenly he realized that it was not a knife but an ax that he held in his hands "an ax in my hand. That’s fine. I'll cut his head like a chicken."
What the fuck? How many are out there? Samantha’s icy mind wondered. It was obvious that she did not know the "DID". Unable to think, she held the knife harder in her hand, now with one foot on the window frame, as if she wanted to jump from it. But she would not. Inside her, a voice shouted at her not to do it.
"Ahaha, I have it like a rod!" It was Justin's voice again. He struck the door again with the ax. The hole became as wide as the continuous changes of identity. Hundreds of splinters shot through the air like an explosion and fell flat on the ground and on Justin's boots. Sawdust was accumulated in the blue cowboy pants, worn and adjusted, very tight. The next ax struck split the door in two, and now Samantha let out a deafening scream.
Panicked, she could only scream, at least for the moment. Was she going to throw herself out the window? Would she rather die from a heavy blow to the head than a blow with an ax? Did she know that he, the madman, had a sexual desire to quench? At last, as Justin kicked the rest of the door that still blocked his way, her bitter, harsh voice came up his throat.
"I'll throw myself out of the window!" She shouted, all trembling as she stared at the emptiness and the big fat man with an ax in his hand.
"No. You won’t. I know you won't."
And he was right.
"Miss, what are you doing at the window? Do you want to commit suicide?" Said a thin, sharp voice. It was Sue, and the ax was down. Samantha was shocked to see that. That change of identity. Did he controlled it? What had happened to him? He was her neighbor, but now he did not stutter. He had changed his voice several times, and his appearance changed.
"You are crazy!"
"Do you have a boyfriend to spare? My tail is tight, waiting for a hot ass" said William's voice. And he crossed his legs, putting his heels out and knees together.
Samantha was astonished. Every time, she was more afraid. She could smell different smells in every change of voice of her... neighbor?
"There's no better smell in the world than pussy" said Justin now, showing his teeth clenched and his hand reaching for a dick of enormous proportions.
Samantha stared stupidly at the window.
"No. You will not do it."
And he was right again.
Then she put her foot back on the ground and prepared to hold the huge knife in both hands. She prepared to fight him. She prepared for everything that would happen.
His hand was still on "his package" and, with chubby fingers, he looked for the zipper pull. He found it and pulled it down with a sound that echoed in the room. Then the button unbuttoned, and his belly opened the circumference of the waist of the cowboy pants.
"Don't come near! I have a knife!"
He let out a loud laugh as he pulled down the front of his underpants.
"I have a knife!"
"And I have this damn thing" Justin said, wrapping his erect penis in his hand, and moisture set on the very apex of his cock.
"Stay away!" Samantha shouted now, guessing what he wanted to do. With the knife up, she moved to her right, leaning her back against the wall. "You will not lay a hand on me! And less that nasty thing! I'll cut it off!"
Justin laughed again. From that moment, everything happened very quickly, and he remembered.
Tom had been depressed on more than one occasion and had devoted to help himself with the help of whiskey. His mother drank Bourbon, he drank Whiskey. So what? And he saw all those purple arms and hands. He saw them all and had searched for information on the Internet to make a bomb and fly with his mother in the air. That had been his plan on more than one occasion, but he had not done it. Just as Samantha had not thrown herself out of the window.
Justin was back on the scene as she approached the dressing table and hit her hip with it. She let out a snort. And Justin, with the help of one hand, began to lower his trousers, while with his other hand he still held the ax, and his eyes glowed fiercely like a sadist's.
She moved to the other corner of the room, and his pants were already around his knees. Samantha, in her attempt to corner herself more and more, lost her balance and fell heavily on the carpet with a shrill scream.
Justin showed her the ax to intimidate her even more and planned the thing, cutting her neck like a turkey on Thanksgiving. Then, with her head turned towards him, if still, her eyes were open to the stupor, he would rape her while her jetted blood would sprout from her cut neck. In that state, the walls of the vagina contract and it gives the rapist more pleasure.
Tom´s Story Page 14
