Page 3 of Like An Animal

THE SHADOW

I lean my head under the boiling spray and watch as the water turns from red to light pink, dragging the evidence of my crimes down the drain with it.

Luckily my hair is naturally pitch black so not even Bronwyn noticed a red tint to it.

I got lucky it didn’t seep through my shirt on my excursion to deal with one of the pricks on my shit list.

The legal system would have a field day with me if the cops ever realized that I am the reason dead bodies keep popping up all over the place. At this rate, there will only be women left in this town by the time my little ghost graduates. It’s their fault for fucking with Bronwyn.

I’ve made it clear that no one is allowed to touch her. Some people accepted it as some older brother type protection.

No.

I don’t see her as my sister. I’ve had plenty of “step-siblings” in my life. They were annoying as fuck and always wanted me to talk or spend time with them. I knew they were a temporary fixture, but Bron was different from the moment I first saw her.

I’ve been obsessed with her since I was seven years old and saw her running around the neighborhood playground, her hair wrapped in bead-filled braids, a smile that outwardly looked happy, but her eyes didn’t match what she wanted everyone else to see.

No one else noticed the dead look locked in her gaze.

She was just a ghost amongst the living, much like me–someone who was there but couldn’t experience the same feelings everyone else did.

Excitement, joy, love. It was all distorted yet more intense. . It was everything and nothing at all.

I saw it all in her eyes.

Since that day, I would look for her in every crowd.

I became her shadow. I didn’t talk to her or even approach her, but I did watch her.

When Kathy married David, suddenly I had my obsession under the same roof as me.

Having her in my orbit made my fixation more potent and beyond powerful.

I’m not just protective. I’ve become so possessive and jealous of any time she spends with anyone else.

My little ghost has no idea that I have a long list of people who have either looked at her weird, made fun of her, or tried to fucking touch her that I’m working through, slowly killing every last one of them.

However, I’m still trying to decide where to put Tiernan McGowen on that list. He had his fucking hands on her and I saw the look on his face.

If she had agreed to leave with him, he would’ve taken her to his bed.

That should make him a priority on the list, but killing him would require a lot of bloodshed and I rather like Colin.

He’s just a kid, but Tiernan is one of his close friends and they all live together.

Decisions, decisions.

I almost killed that fucker right then. So what if their whole group killed me afterward? It would’ve been worth it. No one cares about me, not on a deep level anyway. Would my friends be sad? Sure, but they’d move on.

I doubt my little ghost would even notice.

I wash my hair, clean the rest of my body, and climb out of the shower. After drying off, I throw on some pajama pants and leave the bathroom. I stop when I take a single step into the room and see her laying in my bed.

I know I told her to lay down, but the actual sight of Bron in my space, in my bed, breaks something deep inside me, something hidden deep under my flesh.

I swear, if those sheets smell like her in the morning, I’ll never wash them again.

I’ll just stow them in a vacuum-sealed bag so I can smell her anytime I want.

I walk over to the bed, pull back the covers, and climb in behind her. I know she would probably feel some type of way about it, but I can’t help moving over to her and taking her into my arms. I bury my face in her hair.

I’ve always wondered how she smelled and I take in the hints of vanilla in her strands.

I half expected her to push me away, but when her hand lands on my forearm, she does the opposite. She holds on tight.

I swear, one day I’ll take her far away from this place and put that fucking predator in the ground before I do. She won’t know about it though. He’ll just be someone who disappeared from her life. She’ll forget he ever existed and I’ll erase his touch from her skin.

That won’t even compare to what I’ll do to him when the time comes. That time isn’t now though.

One day soon.