The cage is all I need to hear to bring back those visions. I close my eyes and recall the suffocating weight of death in my chest. Those memories flash through my mind in rapid succession.
The waterboarding. The torture. The hallucinogenic drugs and the interrogations. My body still bears the scars of those years. The years that I spent in the secret program made especially for children like me.
Children predisposed to murder.
I was exactly the target they sought out. When they took me from the asylum, it was a simple matter of what my file said. That I had killed my mother. The perfect subject.
I remember those words. Those were the last words I heard before they assigned me a number. A number that meant I was no longer part of the human race. A number that would become my only identifier in the darkest pit of hell. And when I had finally reached the end of my contract… when I was finally able to come home… vengeance could no longer be mine.
I open my eyes to meet River’s. The resolve that wavered before is unhindered now. He smiles because he knows it too.
“Can you just imagine it though?” he asks. “The expression on his face when he learns of all the ways the student has surpassed the teacher?”
I can imagine it. I have imagined it many times.
“If you don’t think you have it in you though, I’d be happy to volunteer,” River offers. “I’m not as well-versed in torture, but I think I’d do a bang-up job of it.”
“Like fuck you will,” I growl. “You stay away from her.”
River could do a good job of it. But the idea of him touching Isabella makes me want to murder my only friend in this world.
“You have plenty of willing subjects to play your games with,” I tell him. “This one is mine.”
He smiles again and leans forward on his elbows.
“Then what are you waiting for?” he asks. “Go and get her.”
One night.
I will let her have the night.
I hate this fucking city. I hate Luke, and I hate this hotel. Anyone could get in here.
Anyone like me.
I stand over her bed and watch her sleep. The scent of lavender clouds the room, and this is how I know she is anxious. She always uses the oil when she’s anxious.
There’s a knife on her nightstand. Because she doesn’t feel safe. She shouldn’t.
There are so many predators out there. Predators like me. Predators like Luke. Even now, her phone vibrates from the nightstand with his name. Over and over. Never any peace. It has to stop.
I retrieve her phone and block his number.
Isabella flips over in the bed, and I freeze. It’s not necessary. She isn’t awake.
She is trapped in a tormented sleep, tangled up in the sheets. And now her breasts are visible beneath the sheer material of her tank top.
My hands ache to touch her.To feel her. I take the knife from her nightstand and trace the curve of her skin. She shivers, and it gets me hard.
I want to taste the blood that flows beneath her milky flesh. I want to feel it between my fingers, sliding over my cock. The tip stops just above her breast, and I force myself to drag it away, digging it into my thigh until it burns.
I must be patient. The rest will come. In due time. I know what I need to do.
The pain doesn’t help. It doesn’t keep me from picking up her journal and indulging in the obscenities of her mind. She writes these lyrics every day. Depraved and melancholy. They speak to me. They speak to me in a way that nothing else ever has.
It is a pipeline straight to the fucked up chambers of her deceptively innocent mind. These lyrics she writes are not lyrics at all, but only her own cravings coming out to play. Today’s song is darker than the rest.
I am so hard I can’t control my thoughts anymore. Her clothes are on the bathroom floor. And this isn’t what I came here for. I tell myself to be patient.But I can’t.