C H A P T E R 9
C H A P T E R 9
FUCKING SEE ME!
Puppeteer
“ H ave you ever thought about dying?...” She's asking me so I can comfort her in her decisions, and I don't care what happens to her. Like she said, she is doing the job for me. This way I don't have to dispose of her myself. Maybe just dump her in the sea, or burn her body so it leaves no trace, but a selfish part of me is hating the idea.
“No.” I lie. She doesn’t need to know she is the reason I am still breathing right now, and for that I want the satisfaction of taking her life myself.
“Why do you do it?...” Because it’s all I've ever known. Pain, death, grief, hurt. It’s what makes me the monster that I am. Happiness? Happy ever afters? It’s all one big joke. We all fucking die, and you can only delay the process. No amount of Love can keep you breathing forever. And some people don’t even deserve that. I don’t deserve that. Death is my gift. I know that, and I have accepted that, just as she has. It’s a ticket to freedom. It’s a sedative to the suffering.
“Because it calms me.” Death keeps my monsters at bay. and it’s something I don’t expect her to understand, and hopefully she won’t have to try much longer. She doesn’t even have the energy to react to my words, only stare into the void, a vacant expression paints her gaunt face.
I really don’t have time to sit around and watch this. I have shit to do. I stand to my feet, gazing down at her lifeless body, merely conscious. She will hopefully be out by the time I'm back and this shit will all be over. I can go back to my original plan and take myself out once I've finished some business, living a life amongst the dead only makes you want it more. Maybe this resentment I'm feeling is jealousy.
I go to exit the bedroom when weak hands take a gentle hold on my open pockets, tugging with little strength against the mesh fabric.
“Thank you…” My chest constricts. She doesn’t know what she just did, but I do, and this changes everything but I can't admit that to myself yet. Thank you? Thank you for what? She is dying because of me? And I wish she’d hurry up and get it over with so my mind can fucking relax. Her eyes are closed, her hold on my pockets seemed to be the last strain of strength she had as her arm falls limp to the bed. She said six hours minimum? Maybe she calculated wrong. Stupid girl.
I close the bedroom door behind me and gather my things from the garage.
“I’ll be back in a bit boy.” Shep tilts his head at me, seating himself in his bed. He knows the drill but he is also curious as to why there is someone else in the house right now. We don’t do company. He has been my company for the past four years and it’s nice to be seen without an insistent voice down my ear. Dogs don’t talk. They just whine and tear your shit up instead, but he's tolerable. He’s been the only thing keeping me remotely fucking sane.
I lock the front door behind me before making my way to my truck, perching myself in the driver's seat and all I can think about right now is her when I should be taking care of other shit. She has been nothing but a hassle. I drive myself down the uneven dirt track which is overgrown with grass up to the bonnet until I meet the main road. The road map in the passenger seat beside me circles my next target. It’s in the complete opposite direction from her house . Why am I even thinking about that right now?
I drive. And drive. My foot getting heavier on the gas.
It’s called a Hypopen… and it's back home. You’re out of luck if you’re looking for redemption...
The engine roars, mimicking the sound of my rage as I grip the wheel tightly, grinding my back teeth trying to take my mind off the forgiveness in her eyes, her limp body on my bed, her acceptance as she lies there and waits for her end like a good little victim feeling all sorry for herself, but I’m not the one doing it, it’s not enough. This ending is wrong. Her death is wrong. Everything about this is wrong…If anyone is going to kill her it’s going to be me, how it should be.
Thank you…
Her words repeat like one of my mom’s old CD’s, grating my gears as she would replay it through till the early hours of the morning just to keep the voices in her head quiet. Voices I have now inhabited. Her voice . My very own burnt CD.
She will never forgive me. I know that. I don’t want her to. I’m selfish. I’m as selfish as they fucking get, and I will save her ass just to kill her again if I have to. Whatever this is eating her alive is taking my kill. She is mine to kill. I didn’t do all this shit for something to wipe her out for me. I want to watch her bleed for me, I want to take her last breath.
My boot burns the break.
Fuck this shit.
I run my hands over the leather casing of the steering wheel, whipping it to the left into a side road, reversing the burning tires to come back on myself. I am twenty minutes in the opposite direction, and now almost four hours from Indiana.
What the fuck are you doing Hayden.
My hands and feet take control, my subconscious guilt is eating me alive, boiling my blood red hot as I keep my foot on the gas picturing her lifeless face. I accelerate. Completely oblivious to the speedo. 40…50…60…70…80…90…100…110.
This was not the plan, none of this was ever the fucking plan! I had it all mapped out and she’s gone and thrown a curveball in the mix. The needle of the compass is spinning out of control and all I can do is drive. Even if I wanted to stop the car I couldn't. It's like I am not in control of the wheel anymore.
Whatever this is, it needs to quit it. I don’t give a flying fuck about her, I only care about my body count. She needs to die by my hand, that is it. Then I can chill out. I don’t target women, but everything inside me wants to tear her apart from the inside out. That disgusting purity she brands herself with, it needs to be sucked out. She can’t just give the fuck up and take the easy road. She needs to see how ugly the road full of potholes are, where you puncture a tire and you swerve off track. Where it almost kills you and you get the fuck up and get back behind the wheel again. Where you face danger head on and you don’t cower.
She is better than this. I don’t pity her. I loathe her naivety. She needs to see how ugly the world really is. How ugly the people around her are.She needs to understand why people do bad things, and why she’s truly been hidden away for so long. I’ve never known of her existence because her Father hid her from his past, covered it all up with lies and a fake image. She deserves to know that before she dies.
She needs to understand Me.
??
I pull up in front of her house expecting to see it smothered in tape and police cars but there is nothing. It’s a Saturday and it’s Halloween so I suppose my plan worked perfectly. No one has noticed. The house is just how I left it. Desolate and free to enter. It looks like they aren’t home. I cleaned up my mess and exposed of the bodies, leaving a note on the front door that says they went on holiday for a week so they probably won’t notice for a while. Not until the middle of next week anyway. I force entry in somewhat of a hurry. The house that now homes my Puppets memories. I make my way upstairs, facing the door I assaulted and traipse my way inside.
I'm wearing clean gloves so I leave no fingerprints and I start searching her room for the pen. Her bedside table is the first port of call and my suspicions were correct. I pull out the drawer to a grey case full of her prescription and Hypopen, tucking it away in my rucksack as I stand in her bedroom, peering at it now that I'm not chasing her through her house.
Even her room is pure. Bright and simple, plants and homework scatter her desk and dressing table. A Bass guitar hangs on the wall and I cock a brow. I never took her for the bass guitar type. I search for other bits and pieces I may possibly need as I have no intention of ever coming back here again. I go draw by draw, sifting through clothes, books, and other various girly things she has. I take more clothes and grab her phone and charger from her bedside table. Why am I taking her phone? It’s not exactly like I'm going to give it to her.
A calendar hangs by the bedroom door, smothered in so much writing you can barely see the paper. I turn the pages. Times and appointments, reminders and schedules are plastered all over it. No wonder she wants to kick the bucket. What a life to live, does she even get time to breathe? It goes all the way into next year and there is not one holiday? Although she has some interesting things in here. ~ Happy Dooms Day to me. Another year older and I'm still single. Yay!~ I laugh to myself, not because it’s funny, but because I relate. I’ve never been in a relationship with anyone and after I got thrown behind bars I stopped waiting for it. It’s a waste of time. She’s not missing much.
I shove the calendar in my rucksack making a quick exit, being here already far longer than I planned and jump back into the truck, flooring it back to her , spending the next three and a half hours convincing myself I am losing my mind. She’s my hostage. She means nothing to me. She's Collateral Damage. Nothing more. I’m doing my moral part and being considerate . She never did anything wrong, none of this is her fault, I ripped her life away selfishly and now I'm trying to make it up to her when I should be cutting people’s heads off. This is ridiculous . But I won't take back what I did, and I will never apologise for grieving my own way.
Even if it did pass this grief on. She can learn to live with it like I have. Even burnt to ash and dust it never gets better, it doesn't get easier. It just becomes more bearable to withstand, but only if you are strong enough to fight it. If she is my karma for chasing my revenge, then so fucking be it. She is beautiful damn karma to say the least. That much is certain. As much as I hate to admit it to myself. Having her around has given the house a weird aroma I cannot shake. Maybe my loneliness is showing, but having a plaything has kept my mind occupied and stopped the voices in my head. No one’s stepped foot in that house apart from me since the day I was dragged out of it into the back of a van. People were so afraid of it, afraid of me, afraid of the stories, that they wouldn’t even touch the place when I was gone. I came back six years later exactly how I left it… We left it.
Broken .
Play - ‘Breathe Me - Sia’
I pull up the drive, it’s now dark out and I forgot to leave lights on for her. Not that she would notice, she is in La La land. I drag my heavy-duty bag and rucksack from the passenger seat, striding inside the front door. I never use the front door? My bags are thrown to the floor, taking out her prescription she needs. There is no movement or voices from the bedroom as I approach, and I am met with her lifeless corpse, sprawled out on my bed, she’s practically blue, and a sharp rock slides down my throat as my chest clamps shut.
“ Puppet ...” I stand frozen. Glaring at the white crust on her lips like frostbite. She can’t be dead. There is no way it killed her that quickly. But why do I even care? She’s gone. It’s done. It’s over. This is over.
Then why do I feel my jaw clenching and my fists tightening at the sight of her. Why is my chest heaving beneath my rib cage?
“Hey.” I reach over to sit beside her, she’s stone cold against my skin as I touch her. I lean my ear against her chest, and a shallow heartbeat aches beneath hers. Her body's fighting.
“Wake up.” I grab her arm, nudging her to respond to me but I get nothing.“Stop playing.” Nothing about this is beautiful, she looks hideous, death looks ugly on her. My mind closes in on memories I don't want to remember. Mom. Mom! Hey. Wake up. Mom, talk to me! Say something! My grip tightens against her feeble flesh, squeezing it in the palm of my hand, her brittle bones moulding into my own.
I can’t do this shit. I reach over for her case, frantically unzipping it, rummaging for the orange and white Hypopen in its pouch, holding it in my hand as I stare at her. I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing but something takes a hold of me. I pull off the red lid and inject it into the fleshy part of her upper arm that is exposed to me, clicking it. I don’t even know if this is going to work, I don’t know if she is too far gone. I sit staring at her waiting for any signs of life and she gives me nothing. Her arm slams hard against the mattress as I let it down from its cuff, finding my thumb rubbing against the red rim of her wrist.
“ Puppet . Come on.” I bite my tongue, both hands clasping at her forearms, my inky fingers tainting her nude skin.
“Wake up.” I inhale a large sigh, keeping my composure but my heartbeat has other ideas, rattling its cage as I rattle hers, shaking her arms in frustration, suddenly clinging onto that tiny heartbeat still pumping, but she’s floppy and vacant. “Wake the fuck up!”
She’s still out, unresponsive, nothing is happening, why isn’t anything happening, surely something must have happened by now!
“Come back to me!” I’m quivering, riddled with the past, plagued with the images of my dead Mother, how she laid there on the wooden floor and choked up blood into my lap, unable to speak, unable to move. All I could do was accept that those were her final moments as I pressed my fingers against her open wound. I couldn’t do anything. Only watch as the life drained from her body. Nausea crawls up the centre of my chest, nuzzling its way into the back of my throat as I roll her on her side.
“Come on. Come on. Fight it!” Fucking wake up! Anger consumes my actions, and without thinking my fist hits the wall, puncturing a hole in the plaster. I can feel unwanted sweat building beneath my eyes, squinting to hide the evidence. Evidence that is very much noticeable. Feelings that are too present for my liking. All of this is bullshit!
“Stay with me!” I’ve spent my entire life pushing that night down, locking it in a box so it didn’t destroy me, but the way her dark locks are resting against her porcelain cheeks, the freckles splattered against her soft face, cut out from clouds, sculpted by angels. I miss those damn eyes. I need her to wake up and fucking LOOK AT ME. I need her to fucking see me . See me for what I am. What she is doing to me and punish her deeply for it.
“God dammit, don’t you dare fucking die on me!” Not now. Not ever. I shake her relentlessly, digging for a breath, a sound, anything.“I hate you for making me give a shit!” I hate it. I hate it. I hate everything she is. I hate how she’s crawled under my skin like the flu. Trembling to chase life back into her inanimate body.
An audible gasp inhales beneath me as she sucks in a deep breath, not chasing it fast enough as she chokes on air, grabbing her throat like I'd slit it open. I wish I had. It means I wouldn’t of just had to relive the worst day of my life with a girl I shouldn’t even give a fuck about. I’ve known her for 24 hours. I’m pathetic. She claws at her skin, eye’s bulging out the sockets as she glares at me and I let go of the heavy breath I’d been holding, exhaling relief as she gawks at me with pits of fear I’ve never been so happy to see. She sees me and I don’t know which eye to look at first, bouncing between them like if I look away, I will die. I felt like I was dying all over again, over a timid hostage that should be dead and buried in my back garden. What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Hello Stranger…” My voice is calm, deep, most likely shaky. She searches around the room for a reason as to why she should be alive right now, looking into the eyes of a killer who just saved her sorry life.
Because I’m about to make a fucking promise to her.
That the only person that will take her miserable life is me, when I see fit, not when she fucking chooses.