Page 11 of Insidious Heart
No, the fucker startssingingin the shower instead.
Little John fucking owes me for this.
I cross my arms against my chest as I lean a hip against the counter, and when Bruce remains oblivious, I clear my throat.
“What the fuck?!” he yells as the shower curtain whips open, revealing way more of this asshole than I care to see flopping around. “Who the hell are you?”
I smirk. “You know you’re tone deaf?” Bruce gapes at me as I shake my head. “The acoustics are pretty good but you can’t sing for shit. I’d recommend not quitting your day job.” Then I glance out into the bedroom at the comatose woman on the bed. “Not bad, by the way. But since I found you because of yourday job, maybe youshouldquit.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” He follows my line of sight, swallowing hard when he realizes how this looks. “My wife and I were—”
“Do you know what I hate almost as much as rapists, Bruce?”
All the color drains from his face as he blinks.
“Liars.” I push off the counter and stand right in front of him, the only thing separating us being the side of the tub. “I fuckinghateliars almost as much as I hate rapists. Especially when theylieto seventeen-year-old girls before they drug them andrapethem.”
Bruce backs into the tile wall behind him, his hands raised as he continues to lie. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about. My wife and I were just… a night away from the kids, you know? Letting loose and—”
“Bruce!” I bark, then grin when he jumps sky high. “That woman is not your wife, and you knowexactlywhat I’m talking about.”
“I don’t, I swear. I have no idea—”
“You mean you’ve already forgotten poor little Maci? The underaged girl you met at a diner then chatted up for an hour about babysitting your kids you haven’t seen in years? The one you roofied, in her milkshake of all things, before you all but carried her out of that diner and brought her to a place just like this where you did things just like that”—I gesture toward the bed—”to her?”
“I… I don’t…” Bruce swallows hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s really too bad, Brucey.” I shake my head and tsk. “I was hoping this would be a little more meaningful for you.” Then I shrug. “Oh well. Doesn’t matter to me; I’ll enjoy this either way.”
“Enjoy what?”
What is no doubt an evil grin splits my face and I momentarily wish this sick fuck could see it through the mask. “Killing you. Keep up, Brucey boy.”
His eyes widen to the size of dinner plates and his jaw drops, but before he has the chance to move or make any sound at all, I strike. Quick as lightning, I lunge forward and drive the ice pick right into Bruce Carpenter’s carotid artery, the sharpened point sinking into his flesh like a hot knife through butter.
His blood sprays against the front of my suit, splattering against the tile wall and shower curtain. And that's when the euphoria really kicks in; when that high starts to tingle in the back of my skull and work its way over every inch of my skin like warm honey. Every one of my senses come to life and has the scene before me playing out in vivid technicolor as I watch the blood sputter and spurt around the metal in his neck, quickly covering his chest and thinning as it flows in wide streams under the water pelting against Bruce’s now useless body.
I smile as the bastard blinks wide eyes at me, grasping and clawing at his throat, his mouth opening and closing like a gutted fish on the chopping block. “Little John says hello.”
With a harder than necessary yank, I pull the ice pick from his neck only to shove it right back in. I stab him over and over, even as his body crashes into the tile wall, and even as the final breath in his chest leaves his lungs. It isn’t until I’m satisfied that I stop, and when I do, I’m panting and struggling for control.
Control I’ve conditioned myself to exercise. Control I have to maintain in order to keep from turning one body into more.
It would be so easy to walk into the bedroom and do the same to that woman. Simple. Too simple, really, but it would keep my high going all the same.
I could walk in there and kill her in any number of ways, each one more satisfying than the next. Two in one night, doubling the high, sending my serotonin levels through the roof. No one would be the wiser either, merely chalking it up to one of the other motel guests in a neighboring room or something far more sinister if they were so inclined.
I could take her apart limb by limb until I was sated, until this aggressive craving inside me was nothing but a low buzzing in my veins.
I won’t though.
I won’t kill the woman—the victim—no matter how much that sick and fucked up side of me wants to.
I will not kill her.
I have to keep repeating it, keep saying the words on a loop in my head because the second I stop, the second I get too confident, my control will slip completely and I’ll make a choice I can’t take back.
Instead, I pretend like the woman isn’t there and keep repeating those words as I get vertical and walk back into the room to get what I need from my bag.
