“Look what you’ve caught, kitten,” he said, smiling. “Come here.”
His arm came around my waist again and I walked with him for a few steps before realizing that he was taking me to the kitchen. The man inside on the table moaned.
“No,” I cried. “I don’t want to see—”
“Too bad, little kitten,” he said, pulling me along with him. I stopped walking at the doorway but he was too strong: he simply dragged me the rest of the way. He pulled me inside and dropped me next to the radiator in the corner before rummaging through a kitchen drawer. I clutched my bad leg and stared at the man on the table.
It was the professor; I could see him clearly now that I was close. There were straps holding him down at the neck and arms and ankles. His shirt had been sliced open and he had three long cuts running up and down his chest from his bellybutton to his collarbone. He moaned again and then opened his eyes. His mustache was gone, shaved off.
He had dark brown eyes, eyes like prey. They found me in the corner, and he twisted his head, as shocked as I was that I was here. He opened his mouth, and blood ran down his bottom lip.
“Run,” he said hoarsely.
A new wash of fear swept through me, and I would have run if I had a leg to do it with. But before I could do anything, Fabio stepped over and grabbed my wrist. He snapped a handcuff on me and snapped the other half of the handcuff onto the radiator.
“What are you—”
“I’m glad you’re so curious, little kitten,” he said. He went back to the man on the table and shoved a dishcloth into his mouth just as he began to scream. The screams turned to muffled chokes as he pressed his hand over the dishcloth to hold it in place. “You’ll get to see everything much better from inside, I promise. It’s almost confession time. And we have a lot to confess, don’t we?”
He picked up the knife from the table and drew it up along the edge of the mustache man’s jawline. The man’s muffled scream turned to a high pitch, and I watched in horror. The handsome man lifted the knife up into the air.
He smiled. Dear god, he smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gav
There’s something about killing that soothes me. And after such a harrowing night, I needed to be soothed.
I took the knife and slid it down to the man’s chest. He was bawling behind the dishrag. Behind me, the girl was crying, her eyes clenched shut. Stupid girl. She told me she was curious.
Licking my lips, I took my time. My favorite is the skin on the chest, when it opens up in nice thick slices. Almost like bacon.
I’m not like Hannibal Lector, don’t worry. Human flesh doesn’t interest me, not in a culinary way. I do enjoy watching people realize that they are all flesh, though. It’s something I’ve always known about myself, but most other humans have the mistaken idea that they’re people, not just animals. They think that there’s something separate from their bodies, something different and disconnected from the tissues and tendons that take them from place to place in the world.
They’re no different, though, when they start to die. Like this man, for instance. I slipped my knife under his skin and he howled behind the dishrag. Blood welled up from under my knife and dripped down his side. In the corner, the girl was speaking.
“Don’t do it, please don’t do it,” she said. “Please, don’t hurt him anymore.”
“Shut up,” I said, not looking at her. I still had to decide what to do with her, but I didn’t want a distraction. Not now. “You have no idea how much he deserves this.”
My knife sliced down the man’s chest, down to his stomach. His screams softened the edges of the world. He sounded so much like an animal now, so very much. I took out the dishrag and his howls filled the room.
The girl clapped her hands over her ears. Silly girl. This was the sound of living. This was suffering at its purest. It was beautiful, really. Justice for the innocent. Pain to pay for the pain he had caused.
The howls increased as I tapped the knife’s edge on the man’s hand, just at his knuckle. He balled his hands into fists.
“How did you hurt her?” I whispered to the man. The point of my knife pushed down into the first knuckle of his index finger.
“No,” the man gasped. “No.”
“I didn’t ask if, I asked how,” I said calmly. The man’s eyes sought mine, but there was nothing in them but fear. He was an animal now, and the only thing he cared about was surviving. “Did you hit her?”
“No!”
My knife punctured the skin and I drove the point into the knuckle.
“I saw you,” I said, my voice a sing-song. It wouldn’t be long now. He would confess. “I saw you.”
“No—”
I twisted the knife and the bone popped. The man’s scream brightened the room.
“I saw you.” The calm came over me. It would be soon. The world brightened with color already. “I saw you.”