He chuckles, shaking his head like a disappointed father would. "Well, dear, this is fiction, and you are a fiction writer. If you ever hope to become something in this world, I hope you can find a way to put yourself in those positions. To dig and claw and fight for that inspiration. I've never been a detective either, but I've made millions writing them." He turns back to the screen, his head shaking again and his fingers hovering over the keyboard. "Don’t worry about it. I've got this."
And he goes back to typing and humming. I watch him. Every so often a crooked smile forms on his lips, and I find myself wondering…
A relentless mix of both fear and exhilaration stirs in my head as I glide a finger over the jagged edges of the saw blade, my gaze fixed on her as I wait for a response.
"Please." She chokes on a sob. "Please, God. Please…" Her words are lost on a pitiful cry.
"God?" I smile, looking at the ceiling then back down at her. "Fuck God." I lean in, my mouth to her ear, and I can feel her breath against my neck. "God doesn't give a fuck about you… and neither do I." I pull back and laugh, tossing the hacksaw from one hand to the other.
She's crying so hard she chokes, gagging on her own goddamn tears. "I'll do whatever you want. I won't tell anyone. I promise. I swear. I swear…" Another long sob racks her body. "Just let me go. Please don't kill me. Please." Her eyes are riddled with tears, her plump lips quivering.
I pout, one of those exaggerated ones with the bottom lip sticking way out. "Oh dear, I wish I could help you. I really do. I've just waited too damn long for this."
She shakes her head, those beautiful tears cascading down her pale cheeks.
I slide the teeth of the hacksaw softly over her shackled leg, right at the ankle. Screaming, she fights to yank it away, the handcuffs jangling against the steel-framed bed.
"No point in screaming. No point at all. There's not a soul for miles."
I do it again, and she wails, coughing and choking. It's the look in her eyes—the wide-eyed horror swimming in her tear-filled eyes—that motivates me, propels me to feed the lust that has been burning inside me my entire miserable life.
The typing pauses for a second as he continues that constant humming, and he exhales, tapping his fingers over the desk. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, and he's staring out that damn window. At that fucking shed. With a smile. And that lump forms in my throat.
When the hacksaw's teeth begin making a mess of her flesh, blood spurting from the gnarled skin, her eyes roll back in her head. She screams, a pointless cry that sends a wave of pleasure over me. I can feel my cock swell in my jeans. The thin skin at her ankle gives way to bone, which makes a much different sound when the hacksaw grinds through it. It's like a zipper being done and undone over and over and over again. Her foot is halfway off, veins shooting off like fire hoses, when I notice her face go pale. I set the hacksaw down next to her and walk gingerly to the duffel bag. I pull out a syringe, a vial of adrenaline, and four tourniquets.
Settling back down by her side, I first put on the tourniquet. Not above her ankle though. I set it all the way up near the hip so I can work my way up. Once the tourniquet is fastened, I fill a syringe with a bit of adrenaline, stick the vein in the crack of her bicep, and within seconds, she comes charging back to reality, her eyes bulging from her head and mouth gasping for air.
"Aw, there you are, sweetheart! Good to have you back. You can't go leaving me so soon. Our date has just started."
The humming stops, and Edwin pushes back from the desk with a pleased sigh. "Well, I’m tapped for now. Would you like to go get some food?"
I glance from him to the flashing cursor then back, wondering what the hell he even needed me here for. "Uh… yeah, yeah, sure thing. Let me just go grab my purse."
"No rush, I’ve got a few things to handle first anyways," he says with a grin before walking toward the front door, resuming that damn unnerving humming.
I scoot my chair away from the desk, the legs scraping over the hardwood floor, but my gaze strays to my computer screen. Chill bumps sweep over my skin as I read what Edwin so effortlessly wrote. It’s so gruesome—and that humming and his wicked little smile while he was typing.
It's just a story.
Just words strung together to make thoughts, so I shouldn't feel this moral war waging inside me over what was just written. It doesn't make me sick or deranged that I like this, so it doesn't mean that Edwin is sick or deranged for writing it. It's just imagination… but what makes someone's imagination live in such dark places? What drives our stories to come from within the shadows? The more I watch him write these words, the more I'm a little scared that maybe something's not right with either one of us.
“Only the Lonely”—Iggy Pop