Page 17

Something's Not Right

H ans made it back to his apartment, concerned that he had yet to hear back from Marcy. Where is she? He tried to convince himself that everything was fine, but his gut was telling him that something was off. What was it though?

Bzz. Bzz.

Hans looked at his phone, feeling relief as soon as he saw Marcy’s name come up on the screen.

“Marcy, is everything alright?” Hans felt panicked.

“ Yeah, everything’s fine.” Marcy’s response was quick. “Did you get any info from Charles?”

Hans was quiet. Apparently she hadn’t listened to his voicemail yet, so he explained everything to her in detail, making sure not to miss a single detail.

“S… Great, he knows I’m here. He’s going to figure it all out.”

“I think we need to add a step to our plan.” Hans encouraged Marcy to rent a car from the next town over so that she could dodge Charles’ attempts at staying hot on her trail.

A few hours later, Marcy picked Hans up from his apartment in her rental and they stopped to pick up a couple of pizzas for their evening together with Sage. Even though Hans still had a feeling deep in his gut that something was still awry.

As they started to pull up to Marco’s, Hans and Marcy took note of a car that was sitting in the driveway.

Charles.

Panic set in.

Where was he?

Marcy slowly drove towards the driveway, if nothing else but to just drive past to get a handle on the situation. As they crept up on the house, Hans realized that no one was in Charles’ car. The front door, however, was wide open.

“Shit, Marcy. We need to go,” Hans demanded.

Marcy stopped the car in front of the house and they quickly game-planned how they were going to handle things, promising each other that no matter what happened they were going to stick together.

Hans went first, slowly pacing himself as they made their way up the drive with the intent on listening to see if they could hear any movement or struggles.

As he got closer to the door, he could hear Sage sobbing.

“I’m so sorry,” she was crying. “I didn’t mean to.” Hans’ heart sank, hearing how scared she sounded, afraid of the scene that was playing beyond the frame of the front door. Sage just kept crying and repeating how sorry she was.

That was it though. There was no response. No sounds of anyone threatening her, or any noises coming from a second party that should be in the house with her.

Hans put his finger up to his lips, encouraging Marcy to remain quiet and calm, before he waved at her to follow him inside. Cautiously they entered the house, unsure of what they were about to bear witness to.

Inside, Hans could see feet sticking out from around the corner and a feeling of relief came over him. He didn’t know the extent of what had happened, but he did know that there was no movement coming from Charles.

Hans and Marcy quickly walked inside and as they came around into the kitchen, Charles’ body was lying there, lifeless in a pool of blood. Sage knelt next to his body, appearing to have bathed in the blood like she had just performed a ritual sacrifice.

“Oh!” Sage shouted. “You scared me!” Tears had left streaks down her blood-covered face. “I didn’t mean-”

Marcy ran back to shut the front door, wanting to place a barricade between them and anyone else who may show up. Hans took his place to the left of Sage while Marcy returned to her right side, both of them hushing her cries.

“Sage. Sage, it’s okay,” Hans assured her. He pulled her in close, not caring that soon he was also going to be covered in the blood of his enemy. “We’ve got you.”

Sage nuzzled into Hans’ chest, her breaths slowing as she began to calm down. Marcy reached over and ran her fingers through Sage’s blood-soaked hair. Hans and Marcy looked at each other then to the scene in front of them, noticing that Charles had endured multiple stab wounds to his face and body.

“Wow, you sure do go all out, don’t you?” Hans attempted to break the silence and provide some comedic relief.

Sage glared up at him, just as Marcy smacked him on the back of his head. “Really? You choose now to crack jokes?” Sage rolled her eyes and looked back down to the scene in front of her. “What are we going to do now?”

“Don’t worry,” Marcy assured her. “We’ve got this part covered.”

???

While Hans and Marcy were out disposing of the body, Sage gathered enough strength to take a shower, rinsing the memories of Charles off her body and down the drain.

“Did you really think you could hide from me?” a loud, angry voice called out as the front door to Marco’s home burst open. Within seconds the intruder was on top of her.

“Charles! What are you doing?” Sage struggled beneath him, in shock and trying to determine what the hell had just happened. Where were Marcy and Hans?

Tears continued to drip down her face as all of the flashbacks started coming to her at once. Memories that she wished she could forget…

The victims of all of her murders, their faces burned into her mind as they had passed. It didn’t matter if their deaths were justified or not, she had still committed one crime of passion after another, and even some that she had premeditated.

“You don’t have to do this,” Charles cried out, placing his arms over his face as if that was the only place he wanted to try to preserve. It was the first time that Sage had ever seen him in this light… this man was nothing more than a coward.

Sage took a heavy breath, slowly releasing it into the air.

I’m the one who created him to be that way.

She twisted the knobs of the shower, adjusting the temperature, causing the water to get hotter as she squatted down to the bottom.

She screamed, releasing the tension and the stress and everything that had been weighing her down.

Outside the bathroom door, she could hear the front door burst open and Marcy’s voice calling out to let her know they had returned.

Marcy’s footsteps got closer to the bathroom and as she opened the door she was bombarded with steam.

She flailed her arms to clear the air and was finally able to see Sage, naked, peeking through the curtain as the hot water continued streaming down.

“Sage?” Marcy’s voice sounded concerned. Sage wiped her cheeks, forgetting for a brief moment that what she was wiping away was nothing more than water drops from the shower. She stood up and twisted the shower knobs once more into the off position and stepped out.

“You never cease to amaze me.” Marcy smiled, reminding herself that not too long before this, Sage had been covered in the blood of the man who had been out for revenge.

The moment between them was interrupted when Hans called out requesting help in cleaning up the mess that he had been abandoned to take on alone.

Sage walked out of the room, smiling, pulling Hans away from his current project where he was on his knees scrubbing the tile with a hydrogen peroxide solution.

“I could get used to this.” Sage sat down on the couch sideways, propping her feet up on the arm.

“Of me cleaning up your messes?” Hans shook his head while rolling his eyes, questioning the sanity of the relationship he was getting into.

Sage laughed. “Hopefully that is the last mess that will need to be cleaned.”

“Well, at least you didn’t kill Charles on the carpet.” Hans paused. “Though I do need to ask… What happened?”

Sage took a deep breath as she replayed the incident in her head, explaining that Charles had come crashing in, how it was clear that his intentions had been on trying to finish what he had started when they were teens.

“He didn’t even attempt to check and see if anyone else was here.

It was just the front door, then bam, I was trapped beneath him.

” Sage continued to explain how he had attempted to force her to perform oral, smacking her when she bit him.

Hard. The thought made Hans cringe. Not just the thought of Charles sexually assaulting her, but also the thought of having his own cock bit that hard.

“After that, he smacked me across the face and called me all the names in the book. While he was fumbling around I managed to get free. Knocking him off to the side and I was able to run to the knife block in the kitchen.” Sage’s eyes started to well up.

“I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted him to stop hurting me…

The flashbacks from the assholes in the forest came pouring in causing me to see red. ”

“It’s okay, Sage,” Marcy comforted her.

“Then I was like, no, he is exactly like the assholes from the forest, and I continued plunging the knife in and out of him. He cried out asking me to stop but his words became garbled and it was too late. He was gone.”

“You did what you had to do.” Hans stood up, grabbing his cleaning supplies and headed into the kitchen to dispose of the sponge and cloth and wash his hands.

“It’s not like Charles was any form of innocent.

” Hans scoffed, wishing he was the one who would have had the opportunity to kill Charles himself.

He returned to the couch where Sage was, her head on Marcy’s lap. The light hit the perfect spot to where he could see the mark that Charles had left on Sage when he smacked her.

A rumble escaped Sage’s stomach breaking the silence they had created for two seconds.“Well, sounds like someone is still hungry.” Hans poked her.

“I thought you two were supposed to get pizza?” Sage retorted quickly, poking Hans back in the arm.

“Had someone not decided she needed to be out for blood today…“ Marcy pet Sage’s hair. “We could have already enjoyed fresh pizza, but instead, it’s now way past cold.”

Sage sat up and looked back and forth between the two of them.“Let’s get some fresh pizza on the way to the hotel.” Sage stood up and walked to the bedroom to grab some clothes to put on. “I’ll pay!” she called out from the other room.

Hans and Marcy looked at each other, giving their shrugs and nods of approval. As quickly as Sage had disappeared, she reappeared, presentable to the world wearing a black flowy v-neck t-shirt dress that she had cinched at the waist with a belt.

“ Ready?” Sage asked.