Page 17

Baron Dolce

My brother stops dead when he sees me, but if he’s surprised, he masks it well.

“Did you do it?” I ask.

“What do you think?”

“I think you hold onto things even after they’ve lost their value because you remember what they once were, instead of their potential for future use.”

“I never saw Jane before you destroyed her,” he says. “If she has sentimental value to anyone, it’s you.”

“Where’d you leave her body?”

His jaw clenches, and he gestures back towards the forest.

“I’m going to need you to lead me to it,” I say.

“Why?” he demands. “You don’t think I could do it?”

“You didn’t think I’d just accept she was gone, did you?”

“Of course I did,” he says. “We don’t lie to each other.”

“You know me better than that, Duke. You knew I’d want to see the corpse.”

“You can’t study it,” he says. “It would be suspicious if you kept coming back, and you can’t bring a dead body back to the house and just keep it there.”

“Where’s the gun?” I ask. “I didn’t hear a shot.”

“Maybe I found something better,” he says. “There are tons of rocks around here.”

“Did you kill her?” I ask, watching him carefully. There’s a reason we don’t lie to each other, one that goes beyond principle. I know all Duke’s tells. He couldn’t lie to me if he tried. And even though I don’t have tells, and I can lie as easily as I can tell the truth, Duke would know. He would sense it somehow, with some sense that goes beyond intellect. That’s his superpower, the way he understands people, even when it defies all logic.

“Gunshots carry a long way. It might draw attention if someone is at the lookout.”

“Give me the gun,” I say, holding out a hand.

He hesitates a long moment. “What are you going to do?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“That’s why you followed me,” he says. “Because you didn’t believe I could do it.”

He’s not asking, so I don’t answer.

He shakes his head. “You knew I couldn’t.”

“You can’t save everyone, Duke.”

“I can’t save anyone ,” he roars, his outburst so loud and so sudden it startles even me. His shoulders heave as he stares at me across the moonlit space, his breaths ragged and labored.

“Why do you try?” I ask.

“You’re not Batman,” he growls. “A superhero would never ask that.”

“Of course I’m not a fucking comic book character,” I say, giving him a look. “Come on, Duke. We’re not seven years old anymore.”

“I’m so fucking tired of trying,” he says, raking a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if I spare them once, the next time, one of you makes it even worse. And none of them see it anyway. They all hate me like I’m the one who did it. I’m always the bad guy.”

“So stop trying to save people who don’t deserve to be saved.”

“What did Jane ever do to deserve what you did to her?” he demands.

“Jane is nothing,” I say, each word like a curse. “She is no one. A ghost.”

As I approach my brother, I catch the haunted look in his eyes. He knows all about ghosts—those who are gone, and those who live and come back to haunt us when we least expect it.

“Give me the gun,” I say again.

He swallows, his eyes searching mine before he drops his gaze.

“Oh, Duke.” I shake my head, disappointment flooding through me. He’s more hopeless than ever. Those six months without me were not good to him. I hoped he’d learn to stand on his own, harden up without me there to protect him, but the opposite seems to have happened.

“She won’t go to the police.”

“Go home. Make sure Mabel hasn’t run. I’ll clean this up.”

“You’re unarmed.”

“Who’s fault is that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hope that decision doesn’t become the greatest regret of your life.”

I walk away without letting him apologize further. If he was really sorry, he wouldn’t have given her a weapon, knowing it would leave me defenseless. If this goes wrong, that’s the decision that will haunt him until the day he dies.

But like he said, there are plenty of other ways to kill. A bullet might be the most efficient, but it’s the least fun. And this isn’t my first hunt. I hunted Mabel Darling.

For months, from my computer, before I even left Faulkner. I hunted her, and I waited. I lost sleep, lost days, lost myself in webs and dark webs and dark thoughts. I went to places so dark even Duke can’t fathom. And when I found her, I told him.

I could have kept the information, but it wasn’t mine. It was ours. She was always ours.

So I shared it.

And when I went to find her last December, I could have contacted her. I could have taken her for myself. Instead, I waited again. I waited, and I watched, and it nearly fucking killed me seeing her with those men. Each time she logged on and found a new one, thinking she was invisible, I was watching. I was watching, and fucking dying when she went to meet them. She was putting herself in danger, but I couldn’t intervene. She was letting them touch her, but I couldn’t do the same.

I held back every fucking time, not just because I knew they would die for the sin of touching her, but because she wasn’t mine.

She was ours.

Jane is not ours. She’s mine. Sparing her wasn’t Duke’s decision to make.

It’s mine.

It’s only right that I kill her. I gave Duke the task, but I suspected he would fail, even hoped for it. That’s why I came out here. Not just to confirm her death, but to have the chance to do it myself if he didn’t. I could have made him stay and watch. He would have done it, out of guilt and some form of self-flagellation. But this is my chance, the chance I’ve been waiting for. The chance to take a life, one that has been mine for some time. It is my right to decide when it ends.

I want to watch it drain from her eyes while I cum. I want to feel my power as I take that one thing that no man has a right to take—life. When her life becomes truly mine, when it cannot be taken back, I will become a god.

So, when Duke is gone, I take out my phone, and I check her location. I inserted a tracker into her after the first time she ran, though she never got far. She hasn’t gone far this time, either, just a few minutes down the hill, back towards our place. She probably misses me, craves the constancy I provided, twisted as it was. She’s broken, her mind so warped that she’ll return to her captor rather than brave the unknown, the challenges of life on her own. She doesn’t know how to live without me anymore.

That thought pleases me.

Unfortunately for her, I can’t take her back. Not if I want Mabel.

So I follow my living dead girl through the woods, down the hill, back towards the road. I hear the soft rush of tires on the pavement, the near silence of the car letting me know it’s mine, that Duke is obeying my order.

I check my screen, for one moment jolted by the thought that they planned this, anticipated my interference, and that he’ll stop and pick her up.

But whatever her plan, I intend to put an end to it. Before she can reach the road, I catch a glimpse of her through the trees, creeping along like a spider, her skinny limbs swallowed by an oversized hoodie I recognize as Duke’s.

I shake my head in disgust and quicken my pace. Jane glances back over her shoulder, then hurries a little faster. Chuckling under my breath, I match her pace, watching her through the trees. I’ve almost closed the distance between us when she starts to run, a lurching, wobbly attempt that’s so pathetic I find myself laughing aloud, if only to heighten her fear. The sound is chilling in the night, combined with the wail of the pines overhead. A hiccup of terror escapes her, and she trips. A keening, hopeless wail echoes through the trees as she hits the ground.

I stand over her, watching her sob and shake like a beaten dog.

“You’re so pathetic it’s not even fun anymore,” I say, bending to roll her over.

The gun comes up so fast I barely register it, instinct alone making me flinch backwards just as the shot goes off. It echoes through the forest, so close it sends my heartbeat into overdrive, adrenaline surging through me. I wrench the gun from her hand and clock her in the face. Blood spurts from her nose, and she thrashes under me, flailing blind and wild like an animal acting on instinct alone. I pull back and pistol whip her again, and this time, she stops fighting, only gurgling on the blood and mumbling incoherently.

I tuck the gun into my belt and toss Jane over my shoulder. I don’t carry her far, just a bit further from the road. She doesn’t fight anymore, which is disappointing. I can hardly get hard enough to fuck her once I throw her down. She just cowers instead of running. She’s no fun at all.

Pissed at her lack of response, I drive into her with every ounce of brute strength in my body, grinding her into the dirt and twigs under us. I can feel her shivering and crying, but she doesn’t even scratch and kick the way she used to.

“I’m going to kill you,” I snarl at her, driving into her harder still. “The least you could do is fucking scream.”

“Please,” she begs through hiccupping, burbling breaths. “I have a kid back in—”

“Try,” I snap at her, wrapping my fingers around her throat. “You know I like a little fight. It makes me cum so much harder.” I drive my cock deep into her resisting cunt, loving the way it clenches so tight around me when she chokes out a sob. I wish I hadn’t sent her with Duke, so I could have done this in daylight when I could see her face, watch it twist with torment when I ram into her cervix with each vicious thrust. She curls in on herself, wracked with another sob, her knees clenching around my hips.

“I might let you live if you scream good enough for me,” I say. “I might even keep tabs on you so we can do this again someday. Give me a good one, you filthy cunt. You make it so tight for me, and nice and dry. I love that friction.” I thrust into her as hard as I can, pushing up on the hand that’s around her neck so I can see her face screwed up with pain in the moonlight.

My skinny little victim gives a strangled cry.

I tighten my fingers, loving the way she gasps for air. It makes me feel powerful. Her life is in my hands, just where I want it. She grips my wrist, her bitten nails not even long enough to break the skin, and I stab into her mercilessly. “That’s right, little birdie. Scream for me now. Your life depends on it.”

She opens her mouth and lets out a sound that’s barely louder than a squeak. Fucking pathetic. Mabel screams like a siren when I give her a reason. Thinking about how soon I’ll hear her scream again brings me closer, despite the barely audible attempt this breathing corpse managed. I thrust into her harder still, unleashing my frustration and disgust, my fingers cutting into her throat as I picture Mabel Darling under me, taking the brutal pounding instead of this sad little pussy.

I’m so close.

I adjust my hold, gripping her throat with both hands now. This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for. If she can’t scream for me, she has nothing to offer. Nothing except her life.

I squeeze, bearing down with both hands, my muscles knotting and sweat breaking out along my temple as I cut off all her air. I pin her with my hips, burying my cock balls deep inside her so I can feel the walls of her cunt milking hard for my cum like a thirsty bitch as she struggles and spasms under me, her body desperate for the air I’ve deprived it. It’s not orgasm making her clench up. Her whole body is gripped in a fight for its life.

“That’s it, little bird,” I taunt, my fingers pressing deeper into her throat as my cock throbs inside the stranglehold of her cunt.

She can’t make a sound, can’t take a breath. All she can do is squeeze tight around me—her knees gripping my hips, her nails somehow breaking the skin on my hands until my blood drips down like rain, her pussy choking my cock so tight I see fucking stars as I explode, my cum shooting into her sucking core as her body bows against mine in one last, desperate attempt to sustain life.

I take it. It belongs to me now, not her.

I can almost feel it, suspended in the air between us like a mirage.

She’s mine for one moment, more alive than she’s ever been, every cell in her body charged with the will to live until I strip away the last of her consciousness.

She collapses before I’m even done, her body going limp under mine. Aftershocks tremble through my body, little spurts of cum squeezing from my tip into her bruised cervix. She’s too small to take a guy like me, but I’ve forced her to take every inch of me for months. It’s not like it matters when I do internal damage. This was always her fate.

She’s no longer human, just a dead thing, my cock the only living part inside her. I wish I could see her eyes deaden, feel her life flow into my body like a breath of the cool, coastal air that smells like pine and dirt and pussy and blood.

It doesn’t matter, though. I finally did it.

I am more than a man now. I choose life or death for other beings. I am a god, with power over the very forces of life. My body bucks with arousal at the thought, my hips jerking forward and sliding her along the sandy needles. I release her neck and brace my hands on the ground, breathing hard. I give a few more thrusts while I’m still hard, but she’s too limp to offer much excitement.

I drag my slick cock out of her and sit back on my knees. Then I pull my phone out and shine the light down. My cock stands stiff, streaked with red. Her legs lie open, her knees slack, her cunt leaking my cum and her blood. The only picture I take is with my mind, but I take a long minute to memorize her. I won’t carry evidence, but I want this memory to look back on later, to remember her struggle and my triumph when I jerk off to the moment when I became a god, when I took the gift of life into my hands and made it mine.

The man Mabel was fucking doesn’t count. That was a crime of passion. Jane was a carefully orchestrated sacrifice.

Again, I wish I’d seen the light go out of her eyes.

I’m annoyed she couldn’t give me even that in the end. I take my gun out and shove it inside her, fucking her sloppy, limp hole roughly with the barrel. Fresh blood flows as I tear her up with it, jerking it back and slamming it deep inside her, fucking her flaccid body until the ground darkens with a pool of inky blackness under her. It’s not much fun when she’s not even awake to feel the pain, much less scream about it, so I give up in disgust.

I stand and zip myself back into my jeans, drag the hoodie off her and let her limp body flop back onto the ground. Then I scrape back the topsoil before I kick the dirt, pine needles, and debris over her body. No one’s going to go looking for a runaway like her. I don’t have to dig more than a shallow grave. We’re in the woods in the middle of Maine, a few football field’s length from the two-lane road and a half mile downhill from where I parked Mabel’s vehicle at the lookout.

As I walk back, I hear a car approaching. I turn off my flashlight, just in case someone catches a glint of light through the pines, though I’m sure I’m too far for it to carry. I can’t be too careful though. When it’s gone, I switch my light back on and hurry to Mabel’s Volvo.

I slide in behind the wheel, wipe my hands with disinfecting wipes, and then start the car. My clothes and gun have her blood on them, and my shoes are dirtier than I’d like. I’ll have to throw them away, but I can’t discard the firearm just anywhere. I pull the car back onto the road, careful to obey the speed limit. I doubt there are any cops out here right now, but I’m not going to chance getting pulled over. On top of the blood, I’m in Mabel’s car, and she said she was being followed.

It’s best that I got rid of Jane when I did. She was never part of the plan. Soon, I’ll have everything exactly as I want it—school, my chemistry operation, my twin by my side, and the girl who’s always been the plan. She’s too good to kill, my perfect little creation, just like the Alice in Wonderland I perfected in my lab in Faulkner before I went to find Mabel. Once I’ve punished her adequately, I’ll let her join us like I promised, let her into our lives completely, in a way we never did before and I sure as hell never did Jane.

This time, Mabel will be on our side. She’s tied to us now, by this act as well as the man we killed in her aunt’s house. This time, Duke was involved too. The three of us are bound together by this kill, the only three people on earth who know the secret of Jane.

Soon, Mabel will see that she needs us the way we need her, that she’s the answer to each of our desires, the piece that fills the space in the puzzle, a perfect fit between me and my brother. And we’re what she needs too. She’ll admit it aloud once she’s suffered for her god. I had to do this tonight, not just for her, but for myself as well. I wanted to reach this level, and I can’t do it with Mabel. I can’t lose control with her, get caught up in my desire to be a god and forget that I need her to live. After all, how could I rule anyone else if I couldn’t rule myself?

I had to become a god first, prove I have perfect control, before I commit to Mabel. Her purpose is completely different from the hitchhiker. The runaway’s purpose was to make me a god. She may not have given her life willingly, but this god required a human sacrifice to ascend to that spiritual level. Mabel won’t have to make that sacrifice because the girl tonight did it for her.

The fact that I can kill, but I choose not to, proves that I am all-powerful. As a god, I choose who lives too, after all. It’s not just about taking lives. That would make me a murderous psycho, not a god. I’m one level up from an ordinary man, even a king like Duke or a queen like Mabel. They’ll worship me because that’s what I need, and I’ll protect them as they need.

What I did tonight was the first step. It wasn’t just for me, and it wasn’t just because that’s what Mabel asked in return for her surrender. Though they’ll never know, I did it to protect her, even Duke. Losing Mabel would kill him too, after all.

Mabel is for both of us, equally mine and Duke’s. She’s our match, the only girl who could ever endure either of us, let alone both. That’s how I know she’s the one.

After what we did for her tonight, she’ll know it too.