Inurse the cup of coffee I brewed after catching a couple hours of sleep. I sit in my usual seat on the back porch, facing the woods. The sun is at the highest peak of the day, but the trees in my backyard block out the majority of its rays so I’m not blinded.
Sightlessly staring at the dense foliage as I wake up, I reflect on the last twenty-four hours during Hellfire Night. It’s a blur. Itwas a night full of torture and murder. But one thing stands out from the rest.
I wince at Aiden’s question from this morning replaying in my head like a goddamn broken record I can’t seem to stop.
“Would you fuck your sister?”
The answer is a strongno. I’d rather stick my dick in a wasp nest than do anything with Madison. Just because I stroke my dick to the thought of her doesn’t mean I forgot about her hanging out with those assholes in high school, or about who her piece of shit father is.
The back door slides open, drawing me out of my thoughts. I don’t need to look to know who it is. Hawk’s large, familiar form steps into my periphery and sits on the lounge chair beside me. He kicks out his legs, folds his arms behind his head, and relaxes with a soft sigh.
“Jaxon texted me earlier,” he says. “Mickey’s dead. The bastard went to Jaxon’s home and tried to kill him and Dahlia.”
My eyebrows rise up my forehead as I turn my head toward Hawk. He continues staring at the woods as though the forest put him under a spell too.
“Is she okay?” I ask.
I know Jaxon is fine. He’s always been the type to bounce back from any injuries. It’s his half-sister we all protect and worry over. It’s been that way since middle school.
Hawk smirks at me. “She’s fine. Jaxon killed Mickey with a sourdough she made earlier this morning. Can you believe it?”
“You’re shitting on my dick.” My imagination runs wild as I picture how Jaxon could have used the bread to kill someone. “How the hell is that possible?”
Hawk shrugs. “Don’t know. I didn’t ask, but I believe him. Jax has always been”—he tongues his cheek as he considers the right words for our best friend—“creative with how he hurts people.”
I nod, fully agreeing with him. Call him John Wick because that bastard can kill a man with a pencil if he really wants to. If anything, he surpassed the movie character by killing Mickey with sourdough.
“Do we need to do cleanup?” I ask.
Hawk nods. “Aiden is already on it, but we’ll need to join him soon. Jaxon doesn’t want Dahlia around the dead body, so he took her out on a date as a distraction.”
I can’t be mad at my best friend for protecting his girl’s mental health. I first saw a corpse at the ripe age of seventeen when my stepfather took me to Hellfire Night to prepare me for what was to come. A man ran toward him, and I’d held my breath, hoping he would kill my stepfather, but the barbed wire on Jerry’s bat sank into the man’s face and ripped it off in gnarly chunks. When he fell to the ground, Jerry beat him until he was nothing but bloody scrambled eggs. Seeing dead bodies changes you. It changed things for me, anyway.
I down the rest of my lukewarm coffee and stand. “Let’s get this over with.”
Hawk follows me as I head inside. I set my empty mug on the counter and grab my leather jacket, gloves, and motorcycle helmet. Hawk’s helmet sits beside mine, along with the keys he tossed on the counter.
We don our gear and ride to Jaxon’s house on the other side of the abandoned neighborhood. One of my favorite songs blasts through the speakers in my helmet, drowning out any thoughts. Riding has always been my happy place. It’s the closest I can get to the feeling of flying. Controlling a powerful machine that can kill me creates an adrenaline rush that never dulls, no matter how many times I ride.
As soon as we pull up to Jaxon’s house, Aiden shuffles out the front door, ass first, dragging Mickey’s dead body outside.I park my bike, remove my helmet, then help Aiden move the body.
“I’m chopping him up,” he says as we move the corpse onto the dead grass. “I’ve been dying to fuck him up for years.”
“Welcome to the club,” Hawk calls as he strides toward us. He lights the cigarette hanging between his lips.
I drop Mickey’s legs and straighten to my full height as I eye his mutilated body. Blood stains the fair skin at his throat where it’s been slashed. The cut isn’t clean, like what a knife would do. I wonder if Jaxon somehow used the sourdough to slash Mickey’s throat. The fucker barely has a face because of how badly Jaxon bashed it in.
Hawk stands beside me, smoking his cigarette and staring at the corpse with the same flat expression I’m wearing. Aiden stares at the body for a good minute with a scowl before he kicks it multiple times, each thrust of his leg rougher than the last.
I don’t need to question him about why he’s doing it.
Something happened to Mickey that made him feel the need to hurt others, but I don’t care enough to find out. It would humanize the asshole, and I don’t have it in me to feel sorry for whatever trauma he went through. People like Mickey are full of hatred that rots them from the inside out. He got what was coming to him, and I couldn’t be any happier about it. It’s just unfortunate I wasn’t there when Jaxon killed him so I could watch the terror screwing up Mickey’s face as he realized he was going to die.
“I’m guessing Jaxon slashed his throat open with the bread,” Hawk says, voicing what I was just thinking. “Who knew sourdough could be used as a weapon?”
Rigor mortis already set in, stiffening Mickey’s corpse, which doesn’t budge all that much from the brunt of Aiden’s kicks. I part from my friends and walk to the shed full of tools behind the large house. The door creaks as I open it, and I’m met withthe aroma of sawdust and mildewed wood. Chains hang from the ceiling and gently sway in the wind blowing inside the structure.
I search through the tools and find a shovel, then a chainsaw. Even though Mickey is dead and can’t feel anything, I still want his corpse to be taken apart in a gruesome way. He doesn’t deserve to be hacked into pieces like all the rest of his friends. Knowing Aiden, he’ll want to use the shovel first, since it’ll be bloodier and more gruesome. Mickey deserves nothing less.
