Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
My hands are folded behind my head as I lay on my bed. It took me about twenty minutes to get back home—much faster than it took to get there—and I’m taking the time to reflect on what I saw moments ago.
Priscilla is angry with me. Not for what I’ve done to Verona, Joseph, and their mother, but for what I’ve done to Laura. She scolded me like a child, telling me it’s hard to find trustworthy people to work for her and that it had taken her about a year to find Laura.
I promised her compensation before I left in any manner she wanted, which she promptly took me up on. I still feel dirty from how quickly she dropped onto her knees, wrapped her slimy lips around my cock, and sucked until I exploded in her mouth.
I did it as fast as I could. Normally, I enjoy little sexually gratifying things like that, but not from her.
Not ever from her.
I decided as soon as I got home that it would most likely be years before I’d go back. The shame of letting her touch me in the way that she did to pay off a debt that really shouldn’t have been mine to bear, completely fucked with my head and I hated it.
So, as I lay here, I close my eyes and attempt to keep those thoughts away. I want to fill my head with the artistry of a slaughtered family. The birth of a beautiful child that I was able to hold for a few moments, and the end of a girl that held no love in her heart for anyone other than herself.
Verona’s screams will stay with me for a while, but I can always take solace in knowing that Joseph went into the afterlife loved and with a name. I can assure myself that I fulfilled the mother’s wishes and gave her what she wanted; an exquisite death.
I run my hand roughly over my face. I can’t get the thought of Priscilla, or the feel of her mouth wrapped around me to secede. Maybe I should begin with the bricks now. Maybe I should just give up my hopes of finding her.
But I can’t and I won’t.
Not yet.
The time hasn’t come to wall myself into my home with my collection of skulls. It wouldn’t come until I was able to bring her in and make her my masterpiece. But the thoughts … they won’t stop. They tell me that the world will be safer when I decide to st op myself. They tell me that she’ll reject me, and that if she trusted me, I would already have her here.
Trust is fragile.
My eyes open and I sit up. There has to be some way to get her to trust me. There has to be something I can do to prove to her that I’m not an ordinary man and that she would enjoy more than the small conversations we have when we see each other.
With a frustrated grunt, I reach into my front pocket and pull out another cigarette. If this continues, I’ll become a regular smoker, and I’ll be forced to remove my own lungs before cancer forms to stop me.
But that would take years.
It won’t take me that long to find her. I just have to go out and look for her. I try to remember where I last saw her, and I’m pretty sure it was at the small organic grocery store near the strip mall.
It makes me smile that she likes to eat healthy; she takes care of her body like I do. I ignore the fact that she had a brown fast food bag in the front seat of her car when she pulled away because it doesn’t make sense to me.
I need things to make sense.
Inhaling deeply, I pull my legs up to my chest and rest my arms over my knees. I try to focus on the rushing sound of blood that poured so freely from Verona.
Was she a virgin?
Probably not; a girl with a mouth like that, with total disregard for her family had most likely taken a cock or two in her day. Most likely at the same time.
I should probably try to get some sleep. Maybe if I close my eyes long enough and let the visual stimulation wash over me in the darkness, when I wake up this evening the world will seem safer.
Things might make more sense, and I can go hunting again. I can go out and find her and somehow convince her that the safest place in the world is with me.
I can put her where she belongs, and I can stop the ever-swirling, maddening thoughts that fill me every day. I can be normal again, and once I’ve made sure that I finally have everything I’ve ever wanted, the bricks will go up.
One by one.
Until even the sun refuses to look at me anymore.