Page 68 of The Way We Rot
“What are we watching?” I asked, squeezing the razor until it pierced through my palm. The tension of the moment, the false casualness, could snap any second.
“Your victim and his family on this stage, fucking frolicking and innocent,” he spat, waving an arm, still keeping his eyes off me.
The bitterness in his voice was awful, caught in the back of my throat, but I turned away from his angry face and looked at the screen.
A group of kids, maybe in their early teens or just before, were on the stage before us, with little marionette puppets in each of their grasps as they performed a show. There was laughter, an audience, and big wide grins from everyone.
“It seems so old-fashioned, even what, twenty years ago,” I commented, smiling at all the happy young faces. I recognized Adrian’s, all chubby but still a bit scowly, and the boy next to him, who was clearly hisbrother. Jake. The man I’d killed in what they told me was cold, brutal blood.
“It was,” he said, his voice warmer that I’d heard it, almost wistful, sad. “But my parents loved it. They met here, you know. It was special to them. Made it special for us, too. They both got their love for it from their parents, and it passed down, I guess.”
I didn’t get it, didn’t understand the connection to a dilapidated place like this, but I don’t think I was supposed to understand. He had no desire or need for me to.
Adrian was confused too; that was clear in every action he took. In how he flip-flopped from professing my death to fucking me into an orgasm. Giving and taking, ruining and wrecking. He knew what he wanted about as much as I did. I think.
“I can be your marionette, if you want,” I said, gesturing to the ropes hanging from the rafters. “You can do that to me again.”
“It means nothing when you want it.” His voice grew darker, his hand clawing into the armrest. I noticed the gun in his other hand and wondered if he’d reloaded it. No more games. “It was supposed to hurt;you were supposed to be afraid, to beg like… like he did.”
My heart squeezed, and I curled forward. Jake Darling, again. That man, the one I’d lured away from his friends, from his brother. He wanted to fuck me, a woman he had just met. He wrapped his hand around my throat in the alleyway when I kissed him.
I didn’t know if it was going to go further, if he had plans to hurt me. I knew that now with the clarity of time it was a normal thing, but then, that was enough to sign his death warrant. That, and his relationship to the detective working on my case.
Jake took the drink I gave him with such ease, chugged it down with a grin on his face, and when he went all sloppy and let me guide him away from his life, he kept promising me the time of mine.
Regret.
I actually fucking felt regret.
But Adrian had no way of knowing that. That was too much, too vulnerable. If I told him that, this might all crack, shatter. It couldn’t. Not yet.
So I pushed instead.
“He cried for his life,” I said, voice hard. “He begged for you, his big brother, to come save him. He begged me not to do it, but I did anyway. And I made it hurt. He laid there, unable to move, but still begging with his last breaths.”
Adrian stiffened, and knowing I would fail, I lunged for him, razor above my head, ready to take what he wanted to give.
He caught me; the razor suspended above our heads, and looked from it to me. “I should kill you and fuck your dead body, bring you no more pleasure,” he said, promise in his gaze, anger renewed, his grief feeding it.
“Do it then,” I demanded. “Fucking do it, Adrian. My head hurts.”
The gun came across my temple with a hard thump, and I fell to the side, slamming into the seats and then onto the floor. The world swam as he stood and placed his feet on either side of me, looking down, the gun pointed between my eyes.
“I will,” he promised. “I fucking will. Because no matter what happens, what I try to do, we end up back here. You have to die, little killer. It’s the only way the world can be free. The only wayIcan be free.” Hisvoice built to a scream, cracking, rageful, bellowing straight into my face. I took it, flinched, but stayed, eyes right on his.
Tension intensified between us with the gun piggying in the middle. I’d had my hands wrapped around the handle, and almost been able to end his life.
Now mine was in his.
And I was ready.
Thirty
Adrian
Idragged her onto the stage, letting each sharp edge bash into her as I yanked her up. She wasn’t fully unconscious; gentle mutterings falling from her lips as her mind swam, as it so often did. But she was docile, not fighting me as I moved her.
After I’d fucked up and not killed her, gone back on my word to play the game through, I’d been a mess. She’d been laid out on my bed, sleeping, relaxed and comfortable, and I stumbled away, vomit in my throat, hatred in my bones.
