My hand closed around his wrist stopping Johan from making the strike that would kill us, eyes meeting Mitch’s as he began to back away from the bed. Fear filled his gorgeous face, twisting it into something nearly unrecognizable. I squeezed Johan’s wrist, feeling and hearing the bones within it crack as he dropped the knife to the floor, the clang of the metal on concrete a satisfying sound. I let my eyes drift from Mitch to Johan, scanning his face with a sinister grin on my own that mirrored the one that had been on his not even moments ago. His screams quenched the thirst for vengeance in my soul that I couldn’t deny.
“Oh, little pigs. You’ve been naughty, naughty boys,” I said, Hyde’s voice emerging from within my vocal chords as she brought him down towards us to look directly in his eyes. The terror I saw there caused that smile to grow even more, anger filling me to the brim and spilling over to drown him in this very room.
With one hard push he was stumbling back into the darkness, the sound of him hitting the floor just as satisfying as the sound of his bones crunching beneath my fingers. I still felt his wrist breaking reverberating through my muscles. I turned to find Mitch gone, but I knew Johan was curled into the darkest corner of the room, hoping I couldn’t see him and he could live. Neither one of them was going to make it out, that was for sure. I would just let Johan think he could possibly make it out, crushing his hope with my hands just like I had shattered the bones in his wrist. Hyde’s promise to watch him bleed to death was one she fully intended to keep, but she wanted her hands on Mitch first. The one who had hurt us so badly that we wouldn’t be able to recover. Not because he had truly inflicted so much pain and agony, but because of the psychological turmoil of his words that went even deeper than Johan’s actions. That and the burning pain of the liquid capsaicin that hurt more than the gash down our belly that stung as we moved, but Hyde ignored.
She reached down towards the cuffs binding our feet and broke them open, freeing us to move around where we had been stashed. Where these evil men had killed four women prior. Where they would never kill again. And we would see to it. We walked into the darkness towards the door that I knew was hidden beneath it, reaching out with what little light there was to find the handle. Our hands met nothing but a metal slab with two jagged piece of metal where there used to be a handle but it had been removed. I was beginning to see the stupidity in that plan when Hyde pushed on the door and it slid open with a loud, metallic scrape. I would’ve cringed at the sound if I had had control of my body, but Hyde did squint once we were in a very well-lit hallway that only led to one place. Another metal door at the end of the hallway, which I was sure led to yet another room like the one I had been in if not a supply room that led to the exit. From what I knew about Mitch he wouldn’t just run. He would fight back because, in his mind, what he was doing was right. He was ridding the world of an evil that shouldn’t exist. He may have been right, but those like me had the same right to live. The same urge to protect what was ours. The same instinct to survive.
Hyde walked towards that door, the floor cold on our bare feet and the chill in the air causing us to break out in goose bumps, but we did nothing to pull our only covering closed. She wanted him to see what had been done to us, to know that this was why he must die. Would she take their hearts like the others before? I wasn’t sure and I didn’t believe I’d get an answer just yet. My sweat gelled on our flesh in the cold air, but we kept moving, reaching the door in what felt like mere seconds. The gray brick of the building was somber, surrounding the metal door like a gloomy cage. A shiver ran up our spine at the thought of it. That was something I hadn’t expected from Hyde, but she was always surprising me in small ways. This door’s handle was still intact, but we pushed it since that was how the other door opened, but met resistance.
We pulled the door open, a rush of even cooler air greeting us and causing the grimy and bloody shirt to billow around us somewhat like a cape. I was nowhere near a superhero, so the thought made Hyde giggle just a little.
“Little pig, little pig,” she taunted, moving farther into the room and laughing when we saw the tools they had planned to use on us and so many others to fill their self-righteousness. Our hand caressed a bone saw that was lying on one of the many metal tables throughout the expanse of the large space. “Really?” she yelled as she laughed. “How pathetic.”
The thought ran through our mind that she could snap him like a twig with her bare hands, but then why would she even need the tools we kept in the kill room?
“Oh dear,” she answered, “it’s just more fun that way.”
We looked around the room, trying to ignore the menagerie of tools that lined the walls and table tops but not succeeding. There were ball ping hammers, different types of saws, as well as a large number of implements used to dismember a body as well as so many others to enact their torturous plans including vials of liquid capsaicin and Liquid X. It was enough Liquid X to put down quite a few horses. Possibly even an entire ranch full of them. How did they even get that much of the stuff? Hyde then gripped the edge of one of the tables and flipped it over, sending tools flying and skidding across the floor. Rage filled my mind, my veins burning with it as my blood boiled. Our blood. The blood that was drying in an uncomfortable crust on the shirt that covered our back, causing a small itch but I ignored it.
“Oh, Mitch,” she called out. “You can’t hide forever. Not from me.”
She glided across the cold floor and turned at the sound of the thick soles of hiking books moving across the floor, spying a shadow moving across the far wall. He thought he could be sneaky, but nothing escaped Hyde. There was a loud explosion and a burning pain exploded in our upper arm. We turned down to look at the damage. We had been grazed by a bullet and the both of us were genuinely surprised. A gun didn’t seem like something that would be in this torturing mastermind’s arsenal, but alas. I was looking down at my arm with a bullet graze, and fuck did it hurt, but Hyde managed not to pay any mind to the injury at all. She was more interested in finding Mitch and then killing Johan.
“Where the fuck are you, you little bitch?” she hollered, scanning the room for another sign of Mitch’s existence in the space. He was there, but damn was he good at hiding like a sniveling coward. “I thought you were some kind of badass. Why are you hiding from a sniveling, defenseless woman? And using a gun?” She made a tsking sound like she was scolding a disobedient child. Another gunshot went off but Hyde turned her head, turning out of its trajectory just in time for it to hiss past our cheek and slam into the wall behind us. “And here I thought you were a man. At least Johan didn’t run.”
We moved to the middle of the large room and flipped another table, knowing full well he wasn’t hiding underneath any of them. This was a scare tactic. This would bring him out whether he wanted to face the music or not. We just had to bait him enough to get him to show his face and put down the gun.
“Oh little pig, let me in,” she paused, making the tsking sound again as she took another brazen step forward, “or I’ll blow your house down.” She flipped the table to her immediate right, sending a hand saw skittering to the ground to slide up against the nearest wall.
“You’re the first to ever fight back,” Mitch said as he stood.
The only thing we could see was his solid, muscular form out of the corner of our eye to the left, gun pointed in our direction. We turned to look at him, eyes meeting once again. Resilience filled his eyes. Mine were filled with cold, dark rage and Hyde only fed into that with her terrifying clarity. That clarity made it so much easier to see through the haze of red that anger brought, becoming the calculating monster I had always known her to be. And now the both of us would be. I had considered her a curse before, but not now. Not while I stared down the barrel of a gun.
“They weren’t as strong as I am. That or they didn’t know what I do,” Hyde said, the words slithering off of our tongue as she used our index finger to point at her temple, tapping it a few times to make her point. �
��The gun won’t save you, you know?”
His eyes narrowed, and then he replied, “Probably not, but it’s worth a shot. At least, I know it can hurt you, and that’s good enough for me.”
“Even if it still means your death?” Hyde asked. We knew the answer, but it would make this so much better if he would admit his fault so we could shove it back in his face before we killed him.
He nodded. “Absolutely. As long as it means I can take a monster like you down with me.” His gaze never wavered, and his hands never shook, confirming my own thoughts about what humanity tried so hard to hide from themselves. The reason they created a God and a Devil to give them an excuse to use as leverage for their actions. To separate what I was from them even though we were the same.
I was upon him within seconds, hand gripping his that held the gun and the metal of the barrel slightly touching our skin. He fired the gun, burning our hand but Hyde didn’t let go. She didn’t even scream out in pain. There was going to be a nice blister there later. Hyde pushed him up against the wall, causing a few pieces of the bricks the place was made of to crumble to the ground. This seemed to finally register in his mind that we were a lot stronger than he gave us credit for.
“Drop the fucking gun,” she said through gritted teeth. When he didn’t let go, she gave his wrist a squeeze, digging our nails into his flesh. “Drop it.”
He cried out and dropped the gun, the sound of it hitting the floor just as pathetic as the man who had been holding it. We looked deep into his eyes, feeding on the fear that flowed out of them, taking in as much as we could until the rage was so strong inside of us that we could no longer hold it back.
“I’m not the only monster in the place, Mitch. You hide behind your justifications and your excuses. You even created a devil that you could point the finger at to blame for the darkness that’s inside of you, using it as a scapegoat when you get caught being what you are. You can’t hide anymore. Not from me.”
With one swift punch, she pushed our arm into his chest cavity from right below his ribs where you could easily penetrate it, gripping his slimy, bloody heart in our hands. His eyes widened, and a pained gasp escaped from between his lips, a small rivulet of blood running down his lips with it. She leaned into him, putting our lips right next to his ear to whisper.
“Now I see you, little pig, and you’re just as sick as the wolf kicking in your door. The only difference between you and it? The wolf doesn’t ignore what it is. It embraces it.” She gripped his heart even tighter and pulled down with a jerk, ripping his still-beating heart out of his chest cavity and listing it into his line of sight so he could see it in the few moments he would still be alive. “I believe you wanted to show me my own after removing it from my chest, didn't you? Well,” she paused, looking down from the warm heart in our hand and back up into his wide fading eyes, “here’s yours. Now I’ve got to take care of your twisted little friend.” She looked at the heart in our hand and smirked, throwing it over our shoulder to land and roll to the ground with a wet plopping sound.
Hyde loosened our grip and let him fall to the ground at our feet, slumped against the wall with his head lolled to the side. His eyes were wide open, the expression filled with terror still plain on his face and his jaw slack. We took a step back from Mitch’s body, turning only our head towards the metal door that separated us from where the spot where Johan had planted himself in my torture chamber. I was also sure that he had not moved from the spot, petrified at the sight of what he had only heard about and not seen. He would learn soon enough.
We walked towards the door, quickly closing the distance between the hallway beyond it and the door that led to the room where I had nearly lost my life. I would have if it weren’t for Hyde’s words, pushing me to find the only way to save us both from the fate these two horrible men had planned for me. For us. That was something I was still getting used to.
I froze in front of the door, not wanting to see this room again and halting Hyde’s progress. She sighed with our hand nearly touching the metal handle, irritation and a tiny bit of understanding in that sound.
“I don’t know if I can go in there,” I said, hearing my own voice again while speaking to Hyde as if that would matter to her at all. I felt out fingers flex and roll. Hyde was becoming impatient but didn’t want to push me. I did want Johan dead, but the sight of the room itself may be enough to stop me in my tracks once I made it across the threshold.
“The man who hurt you and raped you is just beyond this door. Are you saying that the strain of the events that happened in this room will stop you from doing what needs to be done? Well, will stop me?” Her voice cracked as she said the words like she could honestly feel my psychological pain as her own. “Will you let it stop us, Blythe? Can you let him go unpunished?”
I shook our head this time. She was letting me have my moment to honestly think about what I wanted, but why? We both had control of this body at this point, each one letting the other take the small actions and say the words that needed to be said.
“I don’t know what I want. I wanted to before but…”
“But what?” Hyde was trying not to yell, but she nearly failed in that. She was attempting compassion where normally there wouldn’t be any. “If we let him live he could do this to someone else. There is no but. There is only action.”
Hyde gripped the metal handle, and I let her. There was no urge to stop her then. Not when she put it that way. I had wanted to kill him before and had nearly let my own fears in that darkened room stop me from slaughtering a mad man who did what he wanted when he wanted. Without Mitch to hold him back what would he do? Who would he hurt? Who would he rape? Who would he kill? Plus, Hyde never broke a promise so who was I to make her start? I let my shoulders sag and felt my lips curve up into a smile.
“That ‘a girl,” Hyde said out loud, the pride sounding in her voice as she said the words.
Hyde opened the door, and I let her, but it didn’t stop my palms from becoming slick with sweat as the panic began to set in again. My heart was pounding against my rib cage, and my breathing came in fast, short gulps of air. If it weren’t for Hyde, I probably would have blacked out from hyperventilating already, but she kept me grounded. Kept me steady. We pulled the door open, stepping into the dimly lit room. A halo of light from the bulb blinking above the bed surrounded me, and Johan was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear him and very well. The shadow of the bed’s lumpy mattress hid him in pure black shadows as he hid underneath the bed like a scared child hiding from an intruder. His breathing was heavy, and I could hear his harsh breaths causing the dust and dirt on the floor to blow across the concrete surface, making small clouds of it that I could barely see in the light. We took a few steps toward the bed, knowing he wouldn’t strike out to reach my position enough to harm me and give himself away. Now, that would be just dumb. Not that I could give him brownie points for intelligence anyways.
“Oh, little pigs, what juicy, tender meals they make,” Hyde taunted as she ran our hand over the metal rail at the bottom of the bed. “Too bad their hearts are spoiled and rotten.” She laughed as she used all of her strength and took over our body completely, throwing the bed against the wall to expose the coward hiding beneath it.
“No! Get the fuck back,” he shouted as he held a knife out towards me. It was the same one he was going to use to kill me and cut out my heart along with Mitch.
Johan came to stand before me, holding the knife out like a lifeline. It wouldn’t save him, and he was about to find that out. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide when it came to revenge, and I had always been told to dig two graves instead of one. That was fine by me since this time I would be filling both with the two men who had attempted to break me and to maim me, only to leave my rotting corpse outside for all to see with a hollow chest and empty veins.
“That’s a cute little toothpick you’ve got there. Too bad it won’t be enough to save you.” Another sinister grin spread across ou
r lips, and I had helped it along this time. I had been afraid of this room and what it had meant for me, but now there would be a new meaning. One more to my liking.
“Where’s Mitch?” he asked even though he already knew what the answer was. Johan was crying and scared, finally knowing how I felt as Mitch and him had cut my body and injected things into it that made my veins burn. They tore at each ray of sunshine left in my soul until there was nothing left but darkness and dust.
“Burning in Hell, I hope. Just like you’re about to be.” We took a step towards him. “And I don’t break promises, Johan.” When we reached out towards him, he slashed out with the knife, not even nicking our flesh as the metal blade whistled past our abdomen. “Now, now, is that any way to treat a lady?”
“You’re no lady. You’re a monster,” he spat back at me, the knife still held out in my direction. Those words angered me so much that I took control of our body, Hyde lending me her strength so I could do what needed to be done. So I could do what she knew I had in my all along. I grabbed his forearm, squeezing and twisting until all he could do was drop the knife and fall to his knees because of the pain.
“You know nothing of monsters you ignorant bastard. Take a look deep inside yourself and you will see you are no different than I am. I admitted that fact to myself a long time ago. That I would always be a monster. A killer. I didn’t have a choice, but you do and look what you do with it.” I squeezed harder. He cried out as I heard and felt one of the bones in his forearm break beneath my eager fingers. “You abduct, torture, rape, and kill women with no remorse. And now you cower in fear when one of those women strikes back. You’re not only a monster. You’re a hypocrite.”
I bent his arm backward and saw blood flow as the bone protruded from beneath his skin, causing him to scream out as the pain racked his body. He started to gag, trying to swallow back the vomit that was threatening to thrust itself from his throat as a result. I reached out with my other hand and closed it around his throat, lifting him off the ground, so not even the tips of his boots touched the floor. His eyes widened, and he clawed at my hand with the good arm, the small cuts his fingernails made stinging as the dirt, grime, and sweat made their way into them.
Big Bad Wolf (A Miss Hyde Novella Book 3) Page 7
