Her breath quickens at my use of her real name.
“So,” I continue, “I was released and the urges were still there. I was so good at restraining them I even impressed myself. I had a few slip-ups. Jodie, for instance.” I wave the knife in her face when she stops paying me attention and looks down at the blood seeping from her thigh. “And then someone,” I tap the blade to her nose indicating I mean her, “thought they would play games with me.”
“I have the right for justice for my brother. Let me go,” she growls, and thrashes at the restraints
“Some people create their own storm and then cry victim when the lightning strikes them. You wanted my attention.” I walk over to her drapes and pull the tie backs free. I bend down and tie each ankle to a chair leg. “You have it.” I use the knife to slice the flimsy piece of material covering her in half, exposing her bare skin beneath it.
“Oh, and here I was thinking you were a natural blonde.”
“Is that what you want, Ryan, to fuck me? You didn’t need to tie me up to do that. Just do it and get it over with.”
I laugh at her bravado
“Where’s the fun in that? You’ve read my file, Doctor. I like pain with my sex, and my subjects tend to move around a lot which can be tricky.”
“So you know who I am, so what?”
“You’re some dead guy’s sister who wants what . . . revenge?” I laugh dragging the blade up her thigh again; a red trail blisters its path.
“Yes!” she sobs. “It didn’t make sense to me why someone would want to kill my brother, and in such a brutal vile way. He was a good man, a good brother.”
“Aren’t we all?” I mock.
The shock must be setting in because the bitch’s eyes focus on a spot on the wall and then she tells her life story to me.
“I always wanted to be a Doctor to help people, but when my brother was murdered and his murderer was deemed a psychopath, unfit to stand trial and sentenced to the institute of Bluewater for the criminally insane, I felt cheated.”
How does she think I felt? I want to poke holes all over her. She’s so annoying.
“What kind of punishment was that? He’s sick so he can’t help it, my grandparents would say,” she says in a disgusted voice scrunching her face up. “I wanted to scream at them HE KILLED YOUR GRANDSON, but they never approved of him anyway. When our parents were killed in a car accident he wanted to keep me with him but they wouldn’t let him, they wouldn’t help him financially and told me I would need to get a scholarship to pay for college if that’s what I wanted to do. My brother said I was his responsibility and he was going to make sure I went to college and become a Doctor.” He sounded like Blake, apart from Blake could back it up; her brother was a drug dealer.
“I know what you’re thinking. Everyone thought it but they don’t look at the bigger picture or the reasons behind him dealing. They just judge him for dealing and write him off as a scumbag but he wasn’t. He was my brother and I loved him. We only had each other, like you and Blake, but you were nothing like us. He let the devil in you grow and fester, he let you kill, and then you turned on him.”
I stab an inch into her stomach and get real close up to her face.
“You call me the devil, yet you killed innocent people.”
“Despite your swagger, Ryan, you’re not very bright, are you?” she spits. “You made me want to become a psychiatrist, you know? After my GrandDaddy’s best friend, Gregory, told me that’s what he did as a profession and helped me understand more I wanted to learn from people like you and try to understand, but there is no understanding you. You’re not even human. You wear the body but inside it’s just nothing, nothing but evil.”
“Gregory Leighton?” I’m not going to dispute the fact I’m empty inside, but if I’m evil for murdering people, then so is she.
“He opened a lot of doors for me. He made sure I was put under the right Doctors to learn and complete my degree. He had a lot of influence, he helped me to get where I am today.”
“Tied to a chair, bleeding out, about to be fucked in every orifice by the man you hate? What did you have to do for him; did you have to fuck that decrepit old man?” I shiver.
“Only when my grandfather died, and then a year later my grandmother passed as well. He gave me somewhere to stay before I left for college and I gave an old man a thrill in his old age. It gained me his money and contacts. I came back eight years ago for a position he opened up for me in the outpatient department in Bluewater.”
Crazy bitches giving therapy to crazy people, Perfect.
“I was content after a little time, knowing you were locked away and you couldn’t do anymore damage. We both know the other side of that place is no picnic. But Leighton came to me one day, elated. He said you had a breakthrough.” She laughs and it sounds as crazy as she is.“Over the years I watched him become obsessed with your recovery. He hurt me every time he said your name. He was acting like the person who committed your crimes no longer existed, like you were not the same person, but I knew someone capable of slicing or battering another person to death had no freaking cure!”
Says her.
“What about poor Mr. Wallis? You bashed his skull in? Little Miss Sane.”
“You really are dense,” she mocks.
“Your skin isn’t,” I say, stabbing another inch into her soft flesh. “You were saying?
She gets her breathing under control and carries on talking. “One of my patients, Belinda Ruth, is a nurse and a psychopath. She was the first one I had encountered in my sessions. These were voluntary sessions so I wasn’t expecting what I got from her.” This intrigues me. I nod my head to tell her to carry on. “Her victims started off as ill patients on her rounds, making their deaths appear natural. She stacked up quite an impressive death count.” She inhales and exhales a few times before continuing. “I should have reported her but she fascinated me when she told me that she couldn’t understand that a criminal brought in from a shooting or stabbing or from a prison riot they caused, why they had to help them. Surely it was safer, better to let the wound do its job. Why waste the medical stuff on people like that? Drink drivers and hostage takers? She was so passionate about it and I ended up talking to her about my brother and you. There was a connection there between us.”
“She was as crazy as you and you recognized yourself in her, that was the connection. Yet my crazy you condemn, but your girlfriend’s is okay as long as she does the killing of people at death’s door anyway, or the people you approve of?”
“The only person I want dead is you,” she snaps.
“Then why not just have me killed?”
“Because I wanted Blake to do it, like he should have when you were young and he knew you were different.”
“He was as much a victim as anyone, and you’re fucking crazy. Your brother was no one and he had a big mouth. I should have fucked it violently before bashing his soft, stupid head in!”
She squeals like a banshee and thrashes in the restraints. I pinch at her lips and bring the knife to them, making her eyes expand and her breathing quicken
“Keep screeching and I will cut your lips off and staple them to your bitch’s corpse, now who the fuck is she and where is she?” She begins laughing so I slice into her cheek with a warning.
“I never meant for it to turn out this way. People didn’t have to die if Blake had just put a bullet in you to begin with. I had to adapt and make a new plan and you were so busy trying to fool me like you did Leighton that you didn’t notice me playing you.” I slice the other cheek and she begins to cry again.
“You were sending that bitch to kill me anyway after Sean. That was your plan. Tell me where this bitch is?” I move the tip of the blade up to her tear duct and savor the sight of her tears soaking the blade.