Page 118 of Corrupted By You

Either he was acting on his own or someone hired him to do a job.

“Did you have fun sending those messages?” I already broke both of the photographer’s thumbs and was making my way to his other fingers. His texting days were over.

“I-I didn’t!” He wailed like a baby when I severed his index finger. “I didn’t s-send those m-messages! I w-was just hired to take p-pictures of her. I swear!”

Snot, sweat, and tears dotted his mangled face.

“Then who fucking sent the messages?” Ben hissed, standing against the wall adjacent to me. “You have an employer?”

“I just take pictures and—Ahhhh!”

I broke the middle finger on his right hand.

“Please, please,” the photographer begged, hiccupping. “I’m s-sorry! L-Let me go and I w-won’t tell anyone about this!”

I smirked and donned my knuckle rings, watching him with a quiet intensity.

Usually, it took ten minutes for my victims to crack like an egg under my ministrations, their secrets spilling out of trembling mouths. But this one lasted longer than expected.

“Who. Sent. The. Messages?” I crouched in front of him and the fight seemed to return to his tired frame. Like a surge of adrenaline, he wrestled against the ropes in vain, whimpering like a fucking dog.

Tapping my knuckles against his thigh, I sing-songed, “Clock’s ticking, Geoffrey, and the longer you make me wait, the longer I’m going to make you suffer.”

Geoffrey Smith, as I learned an hour ago when I began pulling his nails out of their beds with my trusty pliers, was a twenty-nine-year-old registered sex offender who now worked odd jobs in between to keep himself afloat. He used to be a fashion photographer a couple of years ago, but all of that went to shit when he touched minors. If I had any reservations about hurting him before, they went flying out the window when I learned that piece of information.

You did not hurt children or women in my book.

“I don’t know,” he cried louder than ever. “I’ve never seen them! Our exchanges are encrypted!”

I rolled my shoulders back, glancing heavenwards for patience.

Finding absolutely none.

The mind was a trickster, rubbing salt in old wounds, as I remembered the demeaning words those text messages contained alongside pictures of Darla in her everyday life. At the nail salon. Leaving St. Victoria after work. Going for lunch with her friends. And so on.

Shelooks good in red…

Does she screw like a pornstar?

What’s so special about her that other womencould not compare?

I would have fucked her tight assby now, stretched her real fucking good with my dick.

Then I would let my friends rape all her holesuntil she cried like a little bitch. Maybe even videotapedit for Mayor Hill…

My blood boiled and I snapped, smacking Geoffrey across the face with all my might, my knuckle rings splitting the skin of his cheek.

“Tell me.”Thwack. “Who hired you?”Thwack. “Tell me.”Thwack. “Their fucking name.”

He shrieked as I wrecked his face.

I basked in his cries.

It fed my bloodthirst.

One part of my mind thundered to slow down, but the madness brimming within me demanded my pound of flesh.

No one threatened me and lived to tell about it.