As the swords my father had displayed on the wall behind him shone in the sunlight, and I imagined jumping up, grabbing them and slicing through him, his face warped, became demonic, engorged.
“You just wait until you meet your fiancé; you have no idea what hell he has coming for y—”
“Hello!” a voice called, a familiar voice. My brother. But not the one I wanted it to be. Father watched me react, a little glee in his eyes when I showed only more fear. Charlie knocked on the office door and Father summoned him in.
“She looks good on her knees.”
The muscles in my arms burning forced me to stop again, stretch and breathe. Even though I had moments to spare, I was unable to keep going. He was too heavy, and a solid five minutes of dragging his body had worn me out, my adrenaline fading into something more humming, less aggressive and energy-giving. But Theo knew I wasn’t where I said I’d stay; he probably knew by now someone had been dragged from that car. He wouldn’t be far behind.
Still, I dropped the man who’d helped create me, then helped take away my sanity, and kicked him in the stomach before stretching my arms above my head.
He didn’t wake up, which didn’t surprise me considering he hadn’t stirred at all when I yanked him over tree roots and rocks. I frowned and booted him again, considered checking his pulse, but he let out a groan. I needed him awake, at least a little, so he could witness who it was that was killing him, maiming him, taking what tiny life he had left and making it horrible. What good was it if he left the world thinking it was a tree that took him out? Where was the pleasure, the karma, in that?
With my foot, I pushed him onto his back and kicked him in the side again, watched his arms flail a little and his mouth quirk down, but his eyes remained shut.
Rage hurt me. Made knives scratch across my skin and fire burn up my nose and down my throat. He wasn’t waking up. How dare he? That monster in me was rolling around, aching to get out and maim.
I sat on Father, squashing his lungs, and twisted the knife in my hand, playing with it, enjoying the way the mental shone under the starlight leaking through the trees. It wasn’t a big knife. Theo had given it to me for protection, to use only if I absolutely had to. But I considered this protecting my heart.
Holding back vomit, I pinched his eyelid between my thumb and forefinger and sliced, with care, through the papery skin. I carved the knife over the bulge of his eyeball, avoiding puncturing it, until I could rip his eyelid free.
I dared him to look away from me then. Like before, with Damon, this was about making myself known, showing them just what their actions had created.
Father’s cold eye stared up, unseeing, emotionless. I breathed heavily for a moment, watching, waiting for a flicker of recognition, of life. But nothing.
So I repeated the process, rougher this time, more confident, sawing through the thin layer of skin and chucking it to any woodland creatures looking for a midnight feast.
Blood poured into the exposed eyeballs, and finally, bloody finally, a glimmer. A flinch of life beneath them. I gave him a wicked grin and stabbed him in his collarbone the second I saw that light switch back on.
He watched me, unmoving, body broken, but mind awake, as I stabbed him again, this time in the top of his arm. I just wanted him to bleed, to soak the woods with the blood he’d forced from me. The same volume, the same pain, taken from him by force like his precious cult liked to do to their women.
“You… bi—” he tried to croak out, but before he could, I grabbed a fistful of mud and shoved it between his lips. His eyes widened and his jaw worked, so I crammed another handful in. It was wet, full of rocks and debris and worms, and I pushed more in.
I kept shoving and squashing more in, using my fingers to compact it into his throat, to force it down like he was a stupid duck on its way to being foie gras. When the muck was spilling out and he was spluttering, turning purple, I forced it up his nose too, his stupid, unblinking eyes watching me with horror the entire time. But he didn’t fight me off; his limbs didn’t seem to be working right.
Maybe the car crash had severed his spine. Or maybe when I dragged him through the woods I’d dislodged something. But he was at my mercy, and I let myself relish it. Theo would be along soon, and while I wouldn’t hide this from him, it felt more… primal than last time. Personal.
I didn’t take my eyes off my father as he suffocated. It was too easy a death, too simple, not enough time, so I needed him to damn well know that it was all his fault. He’d helped create the monster sitting on top of him, celebrating as he breathed earth into his lungs and asphyxiated on rocks and insects.
I dragged the knife down his throat, just the tip. If I stabbed through, would the mud burst out of the wound? Would he explode with earth and grit? How far down was it? Did it hurt? His eyes couldn’t widen, his throat couldn’t cry out, and his arms and legs lay lax.
Despite all that, I still saw the moment life left him. Something dulled. Something small and insignificant blinked out behind his eyes, and it was like his entire body deflated, just a tiny bit.
He was at peace. And that wasn’t good enough.
So I stabbed his body. “You don’t deserve to have a whole heart,” I told him, pushing the knife between his ribcage and swirling it around to make sure I scrambled the organ to pieces, holding off the urge to vomit as I did.
“You don’t deserve to have functioning lungs,” I said next, dragging the knife through his flesh, twisting it, lifting and stabbing back down until his torso was a mess of gore. I sliced through his dress shirt to see my handiwork better, the nausea abating with the thrill.
“All of it needs to go; you need to be a mangled wreck inside.” I kept stabbing, frantic, aimless, needing to destroy a little bit of all of him. Stomach, liver, damned gallbladder — they all needed to feel my blade.
I would never be satisfied while he was even a little bit whole. Not just dead, but dismantled, mush.
When I moved the knife to his groin, I swear he flinched. My head shot up to his face, determined to see the signs he was faking it, that he was tricking me so he could escape after. He flinched; I know it.
“You always were a liar,” I told him. “A fake.”
I went easy as I pushed the blade into his dick through his trousers, going slow so he could feel each millimeter of the metal. Every. Single. One.
