Page 4 of Little Author

I didn’t plan to kill anyone.

Not tonight.

Tonight was supposed to be quiet, lying low, getting a meal, and finding a bed. Sit and wait for the city to forget I’d ever been in a cage.

But some men don’t know how to keep their fucking mouths shut.

He bumped into me near the corner of the Costa. White hoodie, piss-breath, talking loud with his friend about how he’d ‘fucked her anyway.’

I didn’t give a shit who he meant. I wasn’t a hero to women who’d been raped. Hell, women who were fragile like the one they spoke about made easy marks, but I needed to behave for now.

I didn’t even look at the twit until he shoved me with his shoulder. “ Watch it, prick .”

I turned.

He didn’t even stop walking.

So I followed.

Two blocks. Just enough time for his friend to peel off toward a gas station, and for hoodie-boy to light a cigarette like the world was too slow for him.

He didn’t hear me behind him.

Not until I grabbed his head and slammed it into the alley wall hard enough to crack the render.

He let out a grunt that was more confusion than pain.

I wrapped my arm around his throat and pulled him back into the dark.

“Sing for me.”

I said it.

My mantra. It was a habit, and one that was too damn hard to break.

Bones were easier to snap than killing a habit.

I wasn’t in the mood for confused curses or barked demands.

I just dragged him behind the dumpster, let his legs kick a little, watched the cigarette fall from his hand and bounce into a puddle.

The smallest of squeaks escaped his throat, and I smiled, squeezing harder.

Men were a sad excuse next to women. Women, god, they sang so beautifully when they died. This sad sack sounded like a teenager being wedgied.

I held him until he stopped moving.

When the piss ran down his leg, I dropped him like a toy with the batteries pulled out.

My hands were still steady.

It had been years. Years since I’d touched a throat properly. Years since I’d felt that moment where life shuddered once, then finally gave in to my demand. Kaycee’s death wasn’t my ritual. It was missing too many pieces. I needed my chorus…their songs.

I didn’t feel remorse, and I didn’t experience a sense of release.

I just felt awake.

He wasn’t a project. He wasn’t a message. He wasn’t art, so he wasn’t a part of my chorus.

He was a leak in my system.

And now he was gone.

I stood over him for a moment, watching his eyes, dull and twitching like they were trying to understand.

Then I knelt, took his wallet, and scanned over his ID.

Jason.

Twenty-four.

He was exactly as I figured. Garbage in, garbage out.

I didn’t need the money.

I just wanted to know his name. File away the title given to the soul that was now erased.

I didn’t clean the blood off right away.

It was barely a smear, a touch across the side of my thumb where his tooth caught my skin before he choked. I wiped it on the wall like a signature, left him there behind the dumpster, folded up like laundry because he wasn’t fucking worth it.

I stepped out of the alley and back into the night. The street buzzed with soft neon and cheap as shit electricity, like the city of London couldn’t afford to give a shit when the world slept. The city didn’t notice that one more man had stopped breathing.

Now, she…oh, yes, she had noticed.

I saw her about a block down from the bar.

She had a slim frame and wore a dark coat. She walked like someone trying not to think too hard.

What is on your mind?

Her hands were in her pockets, her eyes scanning.

Not the buildings or the traffic.

The scene.

The crime scene.

My crime scene.

From here, I couldn’t see her face, just her posture. The slow, hungry pace of an animal circling a carcass and pretending not to want a bite. She stopped just outside the caution tape, tilted her head slightly, and stared.

Most people flinch at crime scenes. Even the curious ones. Their bodies always gave them away. Their shoulders were too tight, noses wrinkled, eyes darting like they were afraid to be caught looking.

But not her.

She looked like she was listening to the silence, like she knew it.

What do you hear, stranger?

I stepped back into the shadows and watched her through the fractured glass of a bus stop shelter, letting her silhouette break into pieces.

She stayed a moment too long.

Crouching down and playing in the water of the fountain. She wasn’t bothered by the red hue in the droplets.

She completely missed the whistling moron of a pig waltzing up and tapping her on the shoulder.

They were too far away from me to properly hear their conversation, especially with the rain that started coming down. But she looked uncomfortable, like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Did they know each other?

The pig likely chastised her, so she turned away and walked toward me without knowing. She didn’t run, though she looked like a rabbit that wanted to bolt.

Her hands were in that dark coat pocket, and the closer she got, the more I could make out her sharp jawline and soft brown hair.

Something in me tightened. Something familiar. It made my cock twitch.

Who the fuck is this?

Whoever she was, she didn’t belong to the street.

That much was obvious from her pricey pea coat and shiny high heels.

She didn’t belong to the cops, though the big boy certainly looked at her like he wished she did.

And she sure as hell didn’t look like someone who stumbled on this scene, my scene , by accident.

She looked like someone who understood it. She was studying my canvas. Putting pieces together in her mind. Her hands were like a puppeteer, drawing invisible lines in the dark sky over my killing ground.

And now I wanted to know why.

I followed the woman three blocks to her apartment. Her place was nothing flashy, just a simple flat with an upstairs and a downstairs.

After my shit bag of a cousin ratted me out, I didn’t need any more loose ends.

“What are you hiding, stranger?” I whispered to no one but the darkness around me.

She was in the shower. I didn’t have long to do some quick recon and hook up some devices so I could monitor her. So, I pushed hard.

In the bedroom, I installed some small, unobtrusive cameras. It looked like a pinhole to the untrained eye. I had them in my pocket from the crime scene. I didn’t think I’d be using them again so soon, but sometimes our stories tended to write themselves.

I scanned her phone on the nightstand, getting all the information she had on the bright pink device.

I wasn’t a hacker per se, but years in prison taught me a lot about covering my tracks. I didn’t want any more rude awakenings from people I thought were harmless.

Fear could be damaging.

The steam of the shower billowed out of the bathroom, and I knew I had less and less time to get shit set up and get the fuck out.

I didn’t think this chick would give me a warm welcome.

Maybe I’d been deprived of female interaction for too long, or maybe I was just too curious. I couldn’t help but stare at her in the reflection of the mirror.

Her body was slick and wet with soap. The blurred image made me groan loudly enough that I had to bite my lip.

Holy fuck, this woman is beautiful. If only I could see her face.

She reminded me so much of my kills. Soft brown hair, plump, round ass, hourglass figure I could wrap my hands around.

Fucking hell. Move your ass before you get thrown back into prison. It’s been less than a month, and you are killing old snitches and chasing tail.

I had to get my head together.

The woman caught me off guard.

Her voice filtered through the crack of the steam-filled doors.

She was…

Singing.

It felt like a song just for me.

A beautiful, sweet chorus.