Chapter 12

The first incision wakes him up, ready to scream. He’s unable to, of course, since I’ve already gagged his disgusting mouth.

I’ve doubled up on gloves for this particular task. Holding on to his limp dick, I cut transversally from proximal region to distal.

“Good on you to wake up, Pauly boy. What do you think of my work so far?” I ask with a smile as I point to his butchered dick.

It’s now spread open like the loaf of an Italian sandwich, waiting to be filled with delicious salami, roasted peppers, and mozzarella. Alas, I don’t know why I’m likening his disease-infested dick with an Italian sandwich… Perhaps because I aim to fill that gap with a corrosive agent to give him pain to rival that which he’s inflicted on others.

My stomach growls in hunger.

Ah. That also explains it. Hopefully, Minnie left something for me to eat since I predict I’ll be rather famished after I finish with this exertion.

Paul wiggles in his seat. I’ve left his chair on an incline so he can admire my handiwork while he still has time left on this earth.

As I busy myself around, gathering the necessary materials for the filling, Paul continues to struggle, perhaps thinking he actually has a chance at escaping.

I take my materials and lay them out on a table in front of him.

There are only three materials: a bottle of water, a bottle of chlorine, and a pack of concrete mix.

When Paul sees the items, his eyes bulge like crazy, and he renews his efforts, this time with more vigor.

It’s useless.

Those straps can hold someone double his size with no issue. Scrawny Paul won’t be able to make them budge.

But because his reaction to the items was so amusing, I decide to give him a chance for last words—or, perhaps, a delayed apology.

“You fucking psycho,” he cries out when I remove the gag. “W-what the hell do you think you’re doing? I’ll have you fucking arrested. Fucking creep.”

“Now, Pauly, I think you have the places reversed. You are the creep, not me.” I smile.

“You’re s-sick,” he mumbles, sweat gathering atop his forehead from the pain.

His dick is still bleeding, and I note he can barely stand to look at the mess in his groin.

Slow shudders take over his body.

The moment I’ll pour the bleach, he’ll likely pass out again.

I sigh.

That’s not fun.

“How many women have you drugged and raped?” I raise my brow in question.

He just stares at me.

“If you answer, I might take pity on you…” I lie. Of course I’d never take pity on someone like him. But perhaps his answer will enrage me enough to get even more creative with his punishment.

“I-I don’t know…” he stammers. “I never counted.”

“You never counted? I find that hard to believe. A man such as yourself needs the validation to feel like a man, no?”

His lips flatten.

“Ten, twenty?” I ask, though I imagine those to be low estimates. Then again, figuring in the numbers of the people he supplied with the drug would make the numbers much higher.

He scoffs.

I smirk. There he goes.

“Fifty?”

“As if,” he mumbles under his breath.

Ah, it seems he still has the strength to do so. Perhaps I should remedy that.

Grabbing the bottle of chlorine, I pour it generously over his split dick. The moment it makes contact with his open wounds, I push the gag back into his mouth to muffle his scream.

Then, just in case, I look at the screen that shows Minnie in her room.

She’s finished her fashion parade and she’s now in her pajamas. Her hair, too, looks to be freshly washed, which I appreciate.

Despite not speaking to me much in the last week, she’s held her part of the deal. She washed every single day.

I checked, of course. And by that I mean I went close enough to her to sniff her.

On second thought, perhaps I am a bit of a creep, but it’s not in any malicious way. It’s just to check if she washes daily. There’s also that natural scent of hers that always goes to my head. See, I have honorable intentions, unlike slimy Pauly over here.

Her pajama is a cute set comprised of silky white shorts and a button-up shirt. The pants are short enough to emphasize her legs, and for a moment, I forget that I’m supposed to be torturing a rapist.

Minnie, Minnie… Why are you so distracting, little heathen?

I watch her for one more minute while Paul’s thrashing subsides. As I predicted, he passes out from the pain. Alas, that was my aim with it.

Although bleach can help prevent an infection, it’s also a highly caustic substance that burns through tissue—especially an open wound.

I’ll allow Pauly here a few seconds to rest while I prepare the cement mixture.

Very magnanimous of me, I know.

I resume my humming as I use a small bowl to mix water and the cement powder until it’s a homogenous substance. From the corner of my eye, though, I continue to watch Minnie, focusing in particular on her features.

She’s in bed now, reading a book. Her expression is one of pure rapture, and I’m immediately curious to know what book she’s reading.

I told her she could avail herself of my library as long as she didn’t damage the books—no doggy ears, markings, or torn pages. So far, she’s been well-behaved, which I do appreciate.

Once the mixture is done, time is of the essence before it hardens.

Grabbing my electric wand, I plug it in and power it on. Pressing it to the dampest portion of slimy Pauly’s body, I send a couple of powerful shocks that startle him back into a state of consciousness.

Once more, he tries to scream. And once more, he cannot.

“I can’t have you missing the most important part of this session, Pauly. You see, there’s nothing I abhor more than a cowardly son of bitches like you. And you know what I hate the most? Creeps who hurt women,” I tell him with a smile on my face.

I’ve always detested rapists, but since Minnie has arrived into my life, my distaste for them has reached new heights. Perhaps it’s because she was almost a victim twice. Or perhaps it’s because I know she’s a magnet for men and their unscrupulous desires.

Every single woman this slime bag hurt was a potential Minnie, and that makes me even more enraged.

“Since you used this particular organ to commit your crime,” I start, pointing at his split dick, now red and swollen from the chlorine that’s seeped into the tissue. “I shall have to punish it first.”

Grabbing the bowl, I place it over his dick and slowly tilt it. The substance pours down between the two halves of his dick, filling it up like the sandwich it reminded me of.

This is a fast-drying concrete, so it will take around half an hour for it to harden.

Paul’s eyes are once more wide with horror as he attempts to push against his bounds.

He’s barely conscious, and liquid pours out of the split dick—not blood, something else. It seems that his urethra burst, and that’s urine.

I shake my head.

“Disgusting.” I tsk at him. “That deserves a punishment, Pauly boy.”

Leaving behind the terrified rapist, I head over to one of my cabinets and open it. I browse the selection of tools as I think what would be the most fitting one for what I have in mind.

I suppose a saw?

Hmm.

But as I contemplate how to hack Pauly apart, I happen to glance upon a funnel. My gaze remains fixated on it.

“Aha!” I exclaim, giddiness erupting inside of me.

This is all new territory. And despite my rather absentminded state as of late, Pauly’s kill is the best I’ve had in forever.

Since two years ago, as a matter of fact.

Perhaps I have finally gotten my mojo back.

My mood is soaring as I pick up the funnel and go back to the table. I pour more cement powder into the bowl and make the mixture more watery.

Pauly is beside himself with fear as I remove his gag and place the funnel in his mouth. He tries to move, but it’s useless. He even tries to bite down on the narrow end of the funnel—how he still has the strength to do so, I don’t know.

Alas, with a bit more force, I manage to shove it down his throat so he cannot get it out. Taking advantage of this position, I pour the mixture from the bowl down his throat.

He makes some choking sounds, as one would expect. He gags and thrashes some more. I suppose that’s what his victims experienced, too, on that drug.

“How does it feel to be helpless, Pauly boy? Not so great, no?”

I don’t know how long it will take for the cement to fortify inside his body. There’s a lot of wetness there, after all. But hopefully, it will not be too long. I still want to sleep a few hours. And it will take me quite a while to slice up his body and dump the parts in the furnace.

I release a deep sigh.

It seems this night will be a long one.

Another glance at the screen has me smiling. Minnie is on her belly on top of the duvet, holding the book with both hands as she reads.

Cute. So damn cute.

I spend a few moments admiring her, which strengthens my resolve to get rid of this little pest. This way, the world will be safer for her and women like her.

Since I’ll have to wait for the cement to grow hard inside of him—and that’s quite the pun—I decide to watch an episode of Supernatural. This one has been long overdue, and as I play the show, I realize how much I was looking forward to it. That was before Minnie, of course. Since she’s barged into my life, I’ve barely given it any mind, except when I recall how messed up my previously perfect routine is.

By the time the end credits roll on the screen, I’m yawning.

Have I gotten too old for this torture business?

While I admit it was fun while it lasted, now that I have to clean up and cut him into pieces, I’m almost…reluctant.

It’s late. Minnie seems to have gone to bed too.

Maybe I can wrap this up quickly and get some hours of sleep as well.

Going to my tool cabinet, I grab a medium-sized saw and head back to Paul.

Let’s see if he’s still alive after that cement soup.

As I reach his side, I note that his dick has fallen off. The cement was too heavy for the skin holding it together, so gravity did its thing.

Pauly, too, shows no signs of life.

I check his pulse.

Nothing.

His abdomen is distended. His neck, too, is solid to the touch.

I just hope the cement won’t make it harder for me to cut his body.

Plugging the saw in, I start with the bottom. First are his feet, which I cut at the ankle. Easy enough.

Then I slowly work my way up.

Even with how tired I am, the sound of the saw is music to my ears as it cuts through Paul’s bones. Blood splatters all over my gown and goggles, and I smile at the result of my work.

I dump the cut body parts in a bucket at my feet, which fills just as I dump the thighs inside. All that’s left is the torso and his head, but it seems I’ll need a new bucket.

Taking a small break to find another bucket, I glance again at the monitor to see what Minnie’s up to—or mostly to watch her sleeping.

I stop dead in my tracks.

She’s not in bed. In fact, she’s not in her room.

I grab my phone and go through the different cameras in the house in an attempt to locate her. And when I see where she is, true horror grips me.

She’s in the basement—in the furnace room. She’s looking around, her expression tense. Slowly, she raises her eyes and looks straight at the camera.

Panic unlike I’ve ever known swells inside of me, and I quickly scramble to hide all the evidence.

It doesn’t matter that there’s a huge block of steel separating us. The mere thought that she might find out the truth about me and decide to leave me makes me act irrationally.

I cover the bucket with Paul’s lower body with a towel, and I dump his torso into another bucket without bothering to cut it up some more—she might hear the sounds of the saw.

But that’s more difficult than I imagined. Instead of going in smoothly, I have to cram it inside, using my weight to push against it. Just when I think I’ve made some progress, a loud crack erupts in the air and his neck snaps.

Paul’s head rolls on the floor.

Fuck!

I run after it, grab it, and stuff it back in the bucket before covering it with another towel.

Then there’s the mess on the floor.

That’s a lot of blood.

I won’t be able to clean that up in time.

Fuck.

Why is she in the basement? And why is she now poking around the hidden entrance to the other side of the basement?

“Marlowe? Are you there?” she calls out.

More panic.

How the hell does she know I’m here?

I look right and left for a way out.

What if she somehow finds the way in? What if she sees me standing in the middle of a sterilized room that’s currently stained with blood, with butchered body parts lying in buckets?

No. I cannot have that.

She’d get scared then. She’d run off. And she has nowhere to go—nowhere safe.

That cannot happen.

She cannot leave.

Not now, not ever.

In a burst of desperation, I grab a white sheet and lay it on the floor. I head over to Paul’s lower body and grab his thigh, which should still have plenty of blood inside it.

Puncturing a few strategic spots alongside the inner thigh, I spray the blood all over the sheet, mimicking a Pollock design.

I’ve never been the artistic type, but I do think this might be a Pollock.

If nothing else, I’ll go with some modern nonsense. No one knows what those mean either.

“Marlowe? Where are you?”

Minnie’s voice intensifies as she walks around the ante-basement room. As she studies the area, she stops right in front of the door to my room.

Her eyes narrow in suspicion and she places her hands around the surface of the door, feeling it out.

The door won’t open to anyone but me, since it requires biometric information. But if she finds out that is a door, she’ll want to know what for, what I’m hiding.

She’ll grow suspicious, and that will feed into her negative feelings about me. It won’t be long before she grows to fear me and decides she’s much safer far away from me.

No. No. No.

She cannot leave.

She’ll stay here. With me. She’ll clean my house, cook my meals, and give me something pretty to look at. A little misogynistic, I know, but do I get a pass if she’s the only one who’s ever made me feel that way?

Probably not.

Goddamn it.

In my panic, I’m once more getting lost in my thoughts and the many what-ifs.

Perhaps if I wait, she’ll leave.

So I wait.

Minutes trickle by. My ADHD runs rampant, making me pace around like a madman—not that I am not one.

Minnie remains in front of the door, studying it. I can tell the wheels in her brain are turning.

She’s a smart girl. If she brushes her hand against the right part of the door, a screen will light up, asking for log-in credentials.

Fuck.

Then I’ll be truly fucked.

Odd how my last concern is the fact that she might go to the cops. No, my only concern is how she’ll react if she knows this side of me.

So what if she also hurt someone in the past? That was legitimate self-defense. What I’m doing here might technically be considered self-defense by proxy since I’m defending her and women like her, but I doubt she’d understand my reasoning.

Lately, I barely understand it myself.

She touches the door again, dangerously close to the screen.

This is it. I need to make a decision.

Taking off my goggles, gloves, surgical gown, and all the stained equipment, I dump them on top of one of the buckets and cover them neatly with the towel.

The plan is to convince her to go back without inquiring about this room. The Pollockesque charade is a last resort.

Making sure I look presentable and that there’s not one drop of blood on my body or clothes, I go out.

I open the door and close it behind me, not giving Minnie any time to see what’s inside.

“Marlowe!” Minnie squeaks, jumping back when she sees me. “What are you doing?”

“Why are you here, Minnie? You should be sleeping.”

“I didn’t hear you come home,” she mentions. “Where were you?”

“Who says I went anywhere?” I counter.

“Your car was gone.”

I smirk.

The little heathen’s been tracking my movements? Beneath that facade of nonchalance lies some interest.

“I was out.” I shrug.

She glares at me.

“Out where?” she asks in a low voice.

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who’s barely spoken to me this week, Minnie,” I note.

“Where were you?” she repeats more emphatically, taking a step toward me. Her eyes blaze at me, so much so I feel like she’s going to jump me any moment now.

“Do I have to give you a rundown of all my whereabouts?” I raise a brow.

“Where?” she asks again, aggression oozing from her tone.

I roll my eyes and sigh.

“If you must know, I was at a pub.”

“You don’t drink,” she mentions, her eyes narrowed.

“And how do you know that? Maybe I do.”

“You don’t. I know you don’t.”

Before I get to mull over how she knows that, she continues.

“Who were you with? You don’t drink, so you must have been there for another reason.”

“Minnie…” I groan.

What the hell is with her? This morning she could barely spare me a glance and now she’s interrogating me about my whereabouts.

“Was it a woman?” she asks as she taps her foot against the tiled floor. She’s only wearing her slippers, and as I look down, I make the mistake of also glancing at that little silky pajama she’s dressed in.

Big. Mistake.

I gulp down.

My thoughts immediately scramble as my gaze becomes fixated on her legs. Very fine legs, indeed.

“Did you bring a woman here? Where is she?” Her vicious tone brings me back to the present.

“What?”

“You’re hiding a woman in there, aren’t you? Move aside,” she demands.

“There’s no one there, Minnie.” I sigh.

“I don’t believe you. Y-you’re so secretive, you must be hiding something. Who is it?”

“No one,” I say. “Let’s go upstairs. I’m hungry and I want to know what you prepared for dinner.”

A little late for dinner considering it’s the middle of the night, but maybe this can distract her long enough to forget about the basement.

What the hell got into her, anyway? Why is she so convinced I have a woman in here? She’s been with me long enough to see I don’t entertain guests.

But maybe…

Does she think I’m trying to replace her?

Sure, her cleaning has been ninety percent accurate, but her cooking more than makes up for that ten percent. I doubt I’d ever find a better cook than her. Not even restaurant food tastes as good.

Perhaps she’s merely insecure about her work. She doesn’t have anywhere to go after all, and though she hasn’t been exactly cordial with me, she must want to protect her position.

“No,” she states staunchly, placing herself in front of me as I try to move. “Show me,” she repeats, pointing at the door. “I want to see with my own eyes. You and your one hundred and fifty-seven bodies. What’s one more to that collection?” she mumbles under her breath.

My lips curl around the corners and I barely stop myself from chuckling. Technically, she’s right. I did add another body to that collection. But if I were to say that, she’d once more misunderstand me—not that I did anything to clear that misunderstanding in the first place.

I step around her to leave, but it seems her stubbornness knows no bounds.

She plops herself on the floor, her back to the door.

“I’m not leaving. I’ll stay here until you open the door and show me,” she mentions, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Minnie, you’re being outrageous.”

“Not more than you. You can just show me and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Why do you care so much if I am or not with another woman?” I ask, my blood pounding in my ears as I await the explanation.

Her eyes widen. Her mouth drops open and she doesn’t answer for a moment.

“Well?” I repeat.

“I d-don’t care,” she mumbles, flustered. “It’s all your fault and your rules. I’m not allowed to see other males, but you can go out to pubs and find other females? You think I don’t know that’s where you humans find your one-night stays?”

“I think you mean one-night stand,” I say, a smile pulling at my lips. “And what’s with the you humans? What are you? An alien?”

She blinks in shock.

“Uhm…erm… Anyway, I am not leaving until you show me what’s behind that door. And if it is a woman…”

“If it is a woman…?”

“You won’t like what happens then,” she states, her cold gaze finding mine. To say I’m surprised by her demeanor would be an understatement. But it’s not the first time, is it? Minnie can be both soft and cute but also sharp and alluring. A deadly combination, if I do say so myself—for me in particular.

I stare at her.

She stares right back at me.

We engage in a silent battle of wills and as the minutes pass, I realize she won’t give up.

To be more precise, after ninety-eight minutes pass, I realize I’m fighting a losing battle. And I’m hungry. And tired.

Murder does that to people.

With a weary sigh, I walk to the door and unlock it.

Minnie is sporting a triumphant smile as she strides inside, her eyes taking in every inch of the expansive room.

“There’s no woman,” she mumbles to herself.

“Told you.” I chuckle.

“But what’s that?” she asks as her eyes zero in on the middle of the room where my fake Pollockesque painting lies. “You paint?” she asks, her lashes fluttering at me.

That’s rather…distracting.

I clear my throat.

“Occasionally,” I lie.

“And what is it supposed to be?” She walks toward the painting, eyeing it with great interest.

But as she gets closer, she trips on something and loses her balance, falling to the ground.

“What…” she whispers.

I look with horror at what she tripped over and force my brain to come up with some sort of an excuse.

“What is this?”

“Don’t touch it!” I shout, rushing forward and grabbing it before she can do so. The mere thought that she’d touch Paul’s dick makes my blood boil, and I can’t even kill him again. “It’s silicone and cement,” I hurry to say. “And the cement is still wet. I don’t want you to get any on your hands.”

She nods slowly.

“Another art project?”

“Yes… Something like that,” I mumble awkwardly.

“Oh.” She purses her lips. “I’m sorry I accused you, then. I didn’t realize you had a secret art room.”

“That’s right. No one knows I paint,” I say. The lies flow from my mouth with increasing ease. “It’s not something I share with people.”

“I see.” She scrambles to her feet and directs her attention to the stained sheet in the middle of the room. Glad she moved on from the cemented dick, I quickly discard it in a nearby bin and follow behind her.

“Is it because you’re not very good?”

“Excuse me?” I cough, not sure I heard her right.

“I suppose if I painted like this I wouldn’t want others to know either,” she mentions thoughtfully as if she’s not just roasting me to my face. She walks around the canvas, looking at it from different angles and scrunching her nose in distaste.

I blink repeatedly.

“It’s modern art. You wouldn’t understand,” I mumble under my breath. Though that was my first encounter with anything remotely artistic, I find myself rather protective of my blood splatters. They had intention behind them, purpose.

She half turns, raising a brow at me as if asking really. She knows it’s bad and she’s not afraid to say it to my face. Hell, I know it’s bad. But it’s for a good cause, no? I mean, I did rid the world of a rapist to build this art piece. For that alone, it should have value.

“And what is it supposed to mean then? Enlighten me.”

“Loss of life. Blood spilled. It’s a metaphor,” I answer with whatever comes to mind first. Though, I must admit, it’s not completely false.

She frowns.

“With real blood?” she asks in a provocative tone.

“O-of course not.”

“Hmm…”

Crouching down, she swipes her finger over the sheet, picking up some blood. She brings it to her nose.

“It smells like blood to me,” she comments.

“And you know what blood smells like?” I counter.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No.”

She smiles at me. It’s a knowing smile. One that’s as mysterious as it is beguiling. Not for the first time, I wonder just how much I know about Minnie. One moment she’s one person, the next she’s a completely different one.

“Is it because of what happened to your foster father? Did you smell the blood when you stabbed him? What was it, twenty-eight times?” I inquire, purposefully getting the number wrong.

She shrugs, but she doesn’t correct me.

Interesting…

“You forget that I’m a fertile female, Marlowe. I happen to be well acquainted with the smell of blood.”

Her lips curve up in an enticing smile.

So enticing, it’s making my body react in odd ways.

Why did she have to put it that way? And why is the word fertile echoing in my brain on repeat?

Just as I am rooted to the spot, staring at her and seeing her in a very fertile way, she waves her blood-stained finger around before bringing it to her lips.

“No,” I snap. Rushing to her side, I grab her finger and stop her.

Her lips twitch.

“So it is blood. Whose?”

“Animal blood,” I lie.

“I see.” She meets my gaze head-on, as if to communicate she knows this is all a lie. “So you like to paint with blood,” she muses. “Was this your big, bad secret?”

“So what if it was?”

“Don’t get so defensive, Marlowe.” She tsks. “I like it. It’s hot.”

Hot?

Is this the same Minnie as before?

She slowly gets up, her eyes never leaving mine. She reaches out with her hand and cups my cheek.

“You shouldn’t hide, Marlowe. I see you. The real you.”

I freeze.

Just how much does she know?