13. UNHOLY VERDICTS

13

UNHOLY VERDICTS

YARA

T he pull of another kill was like a seductive call I couldn’t run from.

“ Come. Come,” the voice begged, screamed. There was nowhere to hide from the voice. It was inside me; it knew all the places I could go.

I’m coming.

Before I killed Victor, I needed to stage a few things first. The story had so many parts, and I couldn’t miss anything. One slip, and they would lock me up for life. I had no intention of ending up inside a prison.

A few days later, when everything was exactly where I wanted them to be, I was ready for the sacrifice.

On a stormy Thursday night, I was waiting for Millicent outside The Mirage. She came out at two o’clock, high as a kite.

I had already found routes where the traffic cameras were on every bend and corner, found a few that were malfunctioning, and found alleys where I could slip back into darkness without being noticed.

Every thread needed to be precise. The detectives I worked with were not fools. They would ask all the questions they had to, and I had to give them satisfactory answers.

Millicent fumbled with her phone, trying to hire a personal driver to take her home.

“Ma’am. Do you need someone to drive you back home?”

“Already here?” she slurred, throwing her key at me. Before I could catch it, it fell to the ground with a plunk. She opened the back door, got into the backseat, and soon fell asleep.

Grabbing her phone out of her fur coat, I sent a quick text to Victor and put it back inside.

Meet me at the storage unit for some fun.

I drove her to Danbury Street and parked her car in front of a house for rent. Taking a glance around, I hastily pulled my hoodie up. After giving Millicent a dose of ketamine, I walked away.

Millicent would wait here until I killed Victor and set up my scene.

“Sleep tight, Millicent.”

Victor parked the car and smiled at me when I waved at him. “Millicent Wark sent me and—”

“I thought she was coming,” he said. “But you’re so much better. Come on in.” He opened the storage facility for me with a sleazy grin.

Soon, I was on a “date” with my story in the storage unit littered with broken things and dust mites. There was a small bed against the wall, and the yellowish air conditioner made a growling sound as it tried to survive the decay.

Victor took a sip of his cheap wine that was in a mini refrigerator—the only thing in this place that wasn’t riddled with deadly bacteria. “To an amazing night,” Victor said, and I smiled, clinking my glass of wine against his.

“It’ll be an amazing night, indeed.”

“You know you’re so beautiful, don’t you?” he slurred, touching my cheek. I gritted my teeth, refusing to give in to the need to shudder. The touch was revolting, but it was all a part of the game. My game. Knowing that he wouldn’t walk away after tonight gave me the patience to bear it all.

“Yes. I know,” I said, my smile direct. There wasn’t even a smidgen of doubt in my mind about how strikingly beautiful I was. My beauty often gave me exactly what I wanted. Men like him. I had learned to use my beauty to manipulate, to trick, and to reel in my fishes.

Laughing, he leaned closer to me, his lips bumping against my cheek. I sat there, not moving a muscle. He was already half drunk. Just a bit more, and I could cut him to my heart’s desire.

“What do you like in the bedroom… or in a storage unit?” he asked with a chuckle that made worms wriggle beneath my skin. “Do you want to show me? I’m game.”

“Of course. Why waste time?” I said, grabbing my backpack and retrieving the handcuffs and leather ties. His eyes widened, and then he gave me an excited smile, his eyes darkening in lust.

“Should I bind you, or do you want me to—”

“I want to do it to you. You’ll enjoy it,” I said with a smirk. “More wine, first.”

After five minutes, I stood up, motioning him to follow me. He staggered behind me toward the steel bed. He had brought many girls to this place before me, but I’d be the last one.

Pulling on latex gloves, I asked him to lie down. He was so eager to please me he didn’t even ask about the gloves. In a matter of minutes, he was bound, shackled, and secured to the rusty bed frame.

I grabbed my phone and switched on the music. Middle of the Night blared from my phone as I rubbed my hands together with a smile. “I like music when I’m working.”

He groaned when I cut his shirt off with the scalpel and then moaned when I let the cold, sharp metal run along his skin. “You came prepared,” he said, his eyes half closed in pleasure.

“Welcome to your hell,” I whispered. He stilled when I softly cut into the skin above his carotid artery on the right, and then I did the same to the left. A startled scream left him as blood dripped down his side.

“What the f-fuck?”

“Don’t you like it?” I whispered. “You enjoy pain, don’t you? Or is it only pleasurable when you’re the one causing pain?” My lips widened as I pressed a finger against the X marks.

“What are you—what the fuck are you doing? Millicent would kill you if she—” he screamed, trying to move against the bondage that kept him in place.

“Fuck Millicent. She’ll be in no position to do anything to me. I lied to you, Victor. You’re not here because I want to fuck you…” I trailed off, pressing my scalpel firmly against his throat. “I do want to fuck someone else, but he’s not available for now. I have to wait until he’s ready to become mine. You know…” It was so liberating to tell someone that. The secrets were one too many, and Irene wasn’t always easy to talk to. “He’s someone like me. Someone I wouldn’t mind touching me. Someone so unlike you.”

Victor now knew more things about me than anyone else, but of course, Victor would be dead soon, carrying my secrets to his grave.

“You know what I am, don’t you? Your vice is women. My vice is men like you and blood. Murder.”

“You-you’ve done it before.”

I nodded. He swallowed and lay still, his eyes darting around in a frenzy.

Everything felt different, more vivid and intense. Bright. Peaceful. “I brought you here to kill you because that’s me. I can’t… not kill you.”

“You… who the fuck are you? Why are you doing this?”

“Remember the girl you impregnated and then cruelly watched as she bled to death in a public bathroom?”

“How do you know—” His eyes widened, shock vibrating along his body.

“I was the one who had to cut the fetus out of her dead body. I was the one who had to see you prance around with more women like nothing was wrong with the world,” I said, cutting another X across his chest, slightly to the left of his sternum. Exactly where the apex of his heart would be. One hit, and he would be fucking gone.

“Please, let-let me go. I didn’t mean to,” he begged. Tears trailed down his cheeks, and oh, how sweet it was. The fear.

“Don’t worry. When I’m done with you, you won’t feel anything, Victor,” I said in a singsong voice as I yanked out a plastic coat from inside my bag, quickly pulled it over my yellow dress, and wore the waterproof medical boots.

“Are you ready?”

The high note of a song vibrated along the walls of the storage unit, hitting every right note.

“Did you ever play pirates when you were young? X marks the spot. Before I go digging for treasure, I need some of your blood. You know, to set the scene.”

I inserted a needle into his vein and waited for the blood to fill the bag.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Victor, already half-unconscious, asked, his voice a broken song.

“Writing a perfect story. Everything has to be exactly so… to make it easier for the cops to catch your killer . I have to control the narrative, or it’ll be a clusterfuck, Victor. We don’t want that, do we?” I pressed the scalpel against his cheek with a grunt, and he shuddered.

“You’re the one who’s…” he trailed off. “Killer.”

“Well, the cops don’t know that, do they? Follow along, Victor. Don’t be a dumb bastard.” Removing the needle, tube, and blood bag from his body, I put it away. Turning off the music, I exchanged the scalpel for the knife I had stolen from the one who was going to become his killer—Millicent Wark. His pimp.

The knife fitted perfectly in my hand, like a creature made for me, singing, humming for a taste of blood.

Everything was quiet except for Victor’s voice. Begging, pleading for mercy, and then cursing me out.

I plunged the knife between the third and fourth intercostal ribs and stopped just before I hit his liver. I didn’t want it to be over too soon.

Where would be the fun in that?

He shook his head, broken screams bubbling out of his throat.

“You’ll thank me for this.” His screams might say otherwise, but in the end, he’d find relief from his sickness. That was a blessing no one could have given him. Only I could. “Everyone will. Rebecca…will. She was what, eighteen? Was she the only one? Or just one in a hundred?”

He thrashed and spat blood at his side, his face twisting with murderous intention. He was no longer begging. He was wide awake and foaming with rage.

“She was a whore. She wanted me. They all wanted my money, wanted their pussy filled with my seed. I gave them what they begged for.” It made me angry, the way he spat the words out with derision.

Fuckwad.

Girls. They were only girls. Years younger than Irene.

“Rebecca didn’t ask to die like an animal,” I snapped.

“H-how do you know, bi-bitch?”

“I know,” I said as I put just a bit more pressure into the knife against his cock, and he let out a loud howl.

“You’ll regret it,” he said, his eyes burning with hatred. “I’m warning you, you cunt.”

“We’ll see,” I scoffed as I traced a line down his cheek with the knife. “Rebecca was desperate. Millicent and you used these girls’ desperation, used their hunger to feed your twisted monsters.”

“Stop. STOP. Please. Let me go. I won’t tell anyone about this.”

“Oh, I know. Dead bodies tell no stories.”

“I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you and eat you and then fuck your dead body.”

“How? You’re dying tonight, right here, right now. So how will you kill me, Victor? Enlighten me, please.”

I couldn’t stop the peals of laughter as I let my knife speak with his skin. Cut, stop, press. A seductive dance. Repeat. Until the song was only his scream and my laughter.

It was compelling, the music he made! I craved the music as much as I craved blood.

Some nights, I’d sit with the blood on my hand and wonder if I was a good person or a very evil one?

To the man under my knife, I was a monster, a heartless heathen.

“You’ll die a painful death, whore. I’ll tear your pussy apart and then—”

But he wasn’t the only one in this world. He was only a very small part.

Right now, somewhere in a rundown building, a girl, barely at the brink of womanhood, could be thanking me for saving her from this man. I was not a monster to her.

“Oh, shut up. Don’t waste your breath.”

“Victor, it’s time for you to go.” I plunged my knife into his chest. Once. The glug of blood echoed in the emptiness of the cold room. His eyes were wide and unblinking as he stared at me. “Let go, Victor. Death is your liberation. You’re free now.”

“You’ll die for this. My b—”

I thrust the knife directly into his liver. This time, he screamed at the top of his lungs, and I stabbed them next.

“Death by exsanguination. Your body is slowly being deprived of the oxygen it needs to survive, and you… do you feel like you’re swimming underwater?”

He wailed. I smiled.

He screamed, then, with full force, gathering the last of his strength, and I screamed with him, releasing my anger in waves before piercing his heart with one last accurate jab.

The sound of the metal cutting against his flesh, hitting against his ribs, filled the air.

“It’s over.”

He shuddered. The bastard was relentless—I had no idea how he was still holding on.

“You’re a stubborn asshole, aren’t you, Victor? But hope is cruel,” I said as I thrust the knife into his stomach until the darkness in me dispersed into him, until the overwhelming echoes of the demons in me quietened, until there was only the sound of the blade meeting his flesh and the hot spray of blood on my face.

He was gone, carrying my demons with him. For now, everything felt blissfully quiet and breathtakingly bright.

I was whistling.

“Look what you made me do, Victor.”

This was the part of my ritual I loved. The part where I wrote stories with them.

“Sleep tight. May no angel ever feel the violent touch of your demons. May they rest in peace! You may not.”

“I’ll see you soon, Victor. Your story is just beginning.”