Page 38 of Carved

The word hangs in the blood-scented air between us like a benediction. Good. Not a plea for mercy or a cry for help, but approval. Satisfaction that the monster who shaped her childhood is finally facing consequences for his actions.

We stand there in silence, two damaged people connected by violence and vengeance, watching Harry Jenkins die by degrees on his own kitchen floor. The tape recorder sits empty between us, its work complete. The confession is preserved, the truth documented, the monster's sins laid bare for posterity.

But what happens next—that's entirely up to the sixteen-year-old girl who just thanked a killer for murdering her father.

Jenkins's breathing grows shallower. His eyes flutter closed, then open again, unfocused now. Blood pools beneath his chair in patterns I recognize from six previous scenes.

Delilah Jenkins watches it all with the calm attention of someone who's finally seeing justice served.

And for the first time in my life, I'm not sure who the real predator is in this room.

PART II

Chapter 9 - Delilah

OCTOBER 2016

Time fractures.

One moment I'm standing in the kitchen doorway, keys still warm in my palm, taking in the tableau of blood and steel and careful violence that has replaced my father. The next, I'm floating somewhere near the ceiling, watching a sixteen-year-old girl who looks exactly like me survey the scene with the unreal detachment of a ghost.

She—I—step further into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut with a soft click. The sound echoes strangely in the sudden quiet, now that my father's labored breathing has finally stopped. His chest no longer rises and falls. His eyes stare at nothing with the flat emptiness of broken windows.

The man who killed him stands frozen by the kitchen table, surgical tools still scattered across the surface like instruments waiting for an operation that will never come. He's tall, lean in the way of people who work with their hands, with dark hair and darker eyes that seem to catalog everything—the angle of my father's head, the precise positioning of his arms, the way blood has pooled beneath the chair in abstract patterns. I have seen him before. So why can’t I place him?

I should be screaming. I should be running. I should be calling 911 or grabbing a weapon or doing any of the things a normal girl would do when confronted with her father's killer.

Instead, the girl who looks like me tilts her head and studies the scene with uncomfortable fascination.

"You can't leave him like this," she says, her voice steady as glass. "It has to look right."

The killer—the Carver,the newspapers call him—stares at her with something approaching shock. His hands, I notice, are remarkably clean despite the violence they've just performed. Everything about him suggests someone who plans carefully, who leaves nothing to chance.

Except for me coming home early. That wasn't part of his plan, I guess.

"I heard about your work," the girl continues, moving closer to examine my father's positioning. She's not afraid of the blood. Not repulsed by the surgical horror of the cuts across his chest and arms. If anything, she seems impressed. "The way you arrange them. The message you leave behind."

I watch from my strange floating perspective as she crouches beside the chair, studying the angle of his head, the extension of his arms. She's memorizing details the way other girls memorize song lyrics or movie quotes.

The killer finds his voice finally, rough with something that might be disbelief. "You're not afraid."

"Of you?" She considers this, head tilted in that particular way I do when I'm working through a complex problem. "Should I be?"

He doesn't answer immediately. His gaze moves from her face to the body, then back again, like he's trying to solve an equation that doesn't balance. "Most people would be screaming."

"Most people didn't live with him for sixteen years." The words come out flat, matter-of-fact. No emotion, no pain, just clinical observation. "Most people didn't watch him terrorizetheir mother until she'd rather die than stay. Most people didn't learn to read violence like other kids learn to read books."

She stands, wiping her hands on her jeans even though she hasn't touched anything. The gesture is automatic, practical. "You did the world a favor. Monsters don't deserve trials."

The phrase hangs in the blood-scented air between them, loaded with implications that make my floating consciousness shiver. Because she means it. This girl who wears my face and speaks with my voice has already processed what happened here, weighed it on some internal scale, and found it acceptable.

More than acceptable. Necessary.

"Help me finish it," she says, moving toward my father's extended arm. "Show me how it should look."

The killer—Kent, though I don't know his name yet—stares at her with the expression of someone watching a fundamental law of physics being violated. "You want to help?"

"I want it done right." She's already adjusting the angle of my father's left arm, her movements careful and precise. "If this is justice, then it should look like justice. Clean. Complete. Perfect."