Desolate (Empathy #2)

“Oh, shit. You’re bleeding!” Clive tells Layla.

Her head bows to look over herself. I rise up behind her, bringing my arms around her chest to pin her to mine. I grin down at Clive’s wide eyes noticing the blood and shard in my other hand. Their screams are the only music I hear as I plunge the glass into Layla’s stomach over and over. It’s so easy. The tight skin shows such little resistance before I slice inside her like she’s a warm, delicious dessert. It’s a rush watching Clive’s shock; he’s trying to swipe at Layla’s blood on his skin. He’s more of a coward than I would have believed. He isn’t trying to stop me; he’s just freaked out by the blood. Layla’s hands scratching at my arm weaken; her breathing is wheezy. Her hands fall, lifeless against her sides.

I push her body on top of Clive. His reaction is amusing. It’s like watching Carrie on prom night. He struggles to push her from him, his hands slipping on the blood. Crawling from beneath her, his flaccid cock dangles between his legs, still laced in Layla’s scent. I jump to my feet and stalk him around the bed. The best night of his life just turned into the worst and last.

“What the fuck did you do?” he cries, searching around the room for the hope that it’s not real. “My Dad,” he begins, but I don’t want to hear about how his Dad is a lawyer. There’s no saving him and there is definitely no saving me.

I whip my hand out, slicing across his jugular. His eyes grow impossibly large. His mouth gapes, trying to speak as a bright red waterfall runs down his chest.

“Fuck you and your Dad!” I laugh.

The high has me flying. It’s like having the best lay of your life. Coming so hard its euphoria, I feel so powerful in the moment of a kill, the superior breed of all these worthless fucks.

I lie on the bed next to Layla and let the darkness consume me.

Why is she still crying? She should be fucking dead!

“Ryan, that’s too deep. You’re going too deep!”

The haze clears and a sobbing Isabella greets me. I feel her hands around my wrist. Looking down to where she holds me, my eyes enlarge at the sight of a shard of glass sticking out of her stomach; her blood varnishing my fingers, and the end of the glass is cutting into my palm. I don’t even remember where the glass came from.

“I gagged you,” I say. That’s the last thing I remember.

“I pulled it out when you put your foot through the table and then stabbed me.” She chokes on the last word. I look over at the table; it’s smashed like she said, the debris littering the brown rug it sat upon. That’s when I feel the throb and burn in my calf.

“You went too deep,” Isabella murmurs again, her voice losing strength as her body sways.

Fuck! Fuck! I pull the glass from her. It makes a squelching sound and clatters to the floor, smashing in two. I catch her as she falls into me and swipe my arm under her legs to carry her to the bathroom.

“I don’t feel good,” she moans.

“Shut up!”

I lay her on the floor; her skin around the wound is angry and weeping. It’s not too big. I grab a towel and hold it over the slice marring her skin. My own palm leaks rivers of blood onto her flesh.

“It’s not that bad,” I tell her, holding up my hand. “A lot of the blood is mine. It’s just a flesh wound but I’ll need to put a couple of stitches in,” I add, casually, trying to make it seem normal and okay for me to stab her

“Flesh wound my ass, Ryan, you dick.” She tries to slap me but I grab her wrist.

“Stop fucking moving and quit bitching. I’ll tell Jodie we didn’t fuck to make it up to you.”

Her mouth pops open. “You haven’t done that yet?”

I shush her and go to fetch one of the bottles of vodka I bought from the fake buying I had to do at Stacy’s Dad’s shop. I grab the free sewing kit that was in the bathroom when I moved in and go to work getting Isabella fixed up. She necks half the bottle before passing out. Pussy. When I’m done, I dump her on the couch and go to bed.



“Ryan!”

I wake to Isabella screeching at the end of my bed. She’s still naked and pointing down at the angry red cut sewed shut with yellow thread. It’s a botched job, but I’m used to bathing in the glory of a kill when I slice into skin; this time I had to fucking heal her.

“What?” I spit.

“Look at the state of this shit!”

She’s going to wake everyone in the entire building if she gains any more volume. I’m tempted to pull her down on the bed, pick out the stitches with my teeth and force my tongue into the wound before ending her pathetic life, but I’ve come too far to let this stupid bitch’s death ruin everything.

“Well, I’m not a Doctor. What do you want from me?”

Her hands go to her hips and her eyes are going to pop from her skull if they get any larger. “How about a fucking bed to sleep in and for you to use black thread instead of this shit! It’s messy! I look like Frankenstein!”

Why the hell do I have to listen to this? The injury is only two inches long; she needs to stop whining.

“You look fine, stop being vain.”

She storms from the room and I hope she’s gone for good. My bladder demands relief after being woken up so rudely. The floor is freezing, reminding me I need to move as soon as possible. I need to have more words with Leighton about it.

My feet come to a halt when I’m faced with Isabella brandishing a knife from the kitchen.

“What the fuck are you doing with that?” I ask, and want to laugh at how tragic she looks standing there naked, stained in blood, her hair erect in all directions.

“How would you like it!” she threatens, pointing the knife at my stomach.

“Do it. An eye for an eye, so to speak. I’ll give you one stab,” I dare her.

Her eyes spring wide with nerves. She’s all talk and has no plans to use the sharp end of that blade on me. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up for me, though. I grab her wrist and pull it forward into my skin. The tip of the knife is quite blunt so I have to use my other hand to add more force. Her head shakes from side to side as she watches in horror the blade entering my skin so easily. She’s mortified and it’s delectable to watch.

Struggling to free her wrist, she manages to pull away, leaving me to pull the blade out. It hurts like a dull ache on the inside and an annoying burn on the outside.

“Now we’re even,” I tell her.

“You’re fucking crazy!”

I look around the place we’re in and cock a brow. “We’re all a little crazy. That’s why I’m stuck in this dump with you.”

“Screw you, Ryan.” She backs away and I follow, holding my hand over the weeping wound oozing blood. Grabbing her clothes that are littered on the floor beside the couch, she backs up to the door and pulls it open without taking her eyes from me. I want to groan in annoyance when I see Jodie standing at my door. She looks between Isabella and me and her bottom lip trembles. Tears are already raining from her eyes, so something upset her before she got here; this is just salt in her wound.

I push Isabella towards Jodie and shut the door on them both. I need to clean myself up.





I’M SICK OF COMING HERE to my appointments.

It smells musky, like the inside of a book unopened for a decade. The walls are white and void, like the walls of the cells they kept me in when I first arrived. A blank canvas, a bit like me.

The drab décor really needs some color; the pretty crimson of the receptionist’s blood sprayed up it would help. I don’t want to be here. It’s an insult to my intelligence considering I fooled this idiot into believing he fixed me. Men are just as easy as women to manipulate. We have one thing that gets us every time, ego. If you feed a man’s ego, he’ll eat anything you give him.

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