C H A P T E R 14
C H A P T E R 14
CORRUPT SYSTEM
Puppeteer
Play - ‘Shadow - John Mark Nelson’
A fter over thirty minutes of protesting getting into the damn bed she's finally passed the fuck out. All that fight must have been so exhausting . I know I said I wouldn't watch her, but I lied. She does dribble in her sleep though, that part was true. She isn't unpleasant to look at, I'd rather see her wearing my blood but that's beside the point.
She's been out for around three hours and I've studied her breathing, how her subconscious reacts to me. She won't admit it but she feels safe and part of me hates that. Her damp strands of hair are stuck to her cheek and her mouths slightly open, breathing gently beside me, her wrists curled in under her chin facing my abdomen. I don't plan on doing this forever, but something wanted me close to her tonight and it wasn't invited. I could say I'm being considerate but that doesn't explain the dire urge to touch her tender skin under my fingers. How my eyes are fixated on the plush complexion of her plump lips, how I have to fight a smirk when she makes those sleepy whines against my skin. I'm just fucking horny and I need to get laid. Jesus .For some reason the thought of it does nothing for me right now. I say that as I wet my lips just looking at hers. It's freezing but my body is red hot, even sat here half naked. Luckily it's not light enough in here for her to see anything if she was to wake and by how frigid she was to intimacy, it’s dawning on me that she hasn't exactly had much experience even without finding a love interest. She's clean . Which tempts my urge to corrupt her all the more, in her skimpy little pyjamas and her fragile little frame.
Prison wasn't exactly swarming with Angels. The closest I got; I watched die once again. Right in front of me. Intimacy is something I avoid like the plague. I wouldn't have called it a relationship; I didn't love her. We just gave each other what we wanted and that was that. She was rough round the edges but she made for a good fuck and a vent. I’d say she was the closest thing I had to a friend. She was probably the only person on earth I trusted. Maybe there was something there, but it was never love. Loneliness at best. I don't make love . I take. I take until I'm satisfied. I've never told anyone I love them and I don't plan on it. The last person I uttered those filthy words to was my mother and look where that got her. Dead . When I ‘care’ people get hurt, it's a reoccurring curse. After a while you realise you weren't built to consume the touch of purity, only eat away at others in hopes they might warm your cold, hollow heart.
She cares too much for her own good. She finds empathy in the shallowest beating of her own heart, it's how she survives. Or it's my fault for not being harder on her. She is clinging to this premonition that there is good in me when there isn't, that version of me etched herself into the four walls I was confined to for six years. She's fighting me but we both know harming her is the last thing on my mind and maybe that's why she is pushing my fucking buttons. She will come unstuck if she continues to search for this redemption every fucker seems to think I burrow. I chase death, I feed off it. It soothes the monster I've become and she will learn. I don't want her close but keep finding myself moulding myself to benefit her needs. Not my own sick and depraved needs.
She should have fought louder. She should hate me deeper, fear me harder, yet she's passed out safe and sound beside me without a care in the world. Even shackled down as her dainty fingers cup the air, she looks peaceful and it's making me gnaw my jaw.
Tomorrow she will deny that my company gave her any comfort but she's not looked this content since the night I brought her here. She's deprived of affection and I've somewhat given her a taste to ease her subconscious when I shouldn't have. I shouldn't give a damn how she feels, yet I'm sat here counting the freckles on her face, withstanding the unbearable metal sinking into my shoulder blades as I suck in nicotine with my bare back against this bed frame, keeping a bed warm for someone who should be buried in my back garden. I exhale from my cigarette slowly, bracing my neck against the bar, staring up at my uneven ceiling remembering the countless nights I'd have to brave my demons until the sun came up and then I realise.
It's silent.
My mind is quiet.
A little too quiet. The only thing taking up residence in my mind right now is her , when I should be concentrating on more important shit, like my next target. I need to sort it out.
I remove myself from the bed, placing my t-shirt beside her without even thinking, captivated by the crack of light cutting her face in half. She looks ethereal and I question my perception of beauty for a moment as I admire her before making my way out the door to the living room. I tap my leg at Shep, directing him outside for five minutes before a subtle tilt of my head leads him back to the bedroom, slipping on another black tee hanging off the back of the sofa before making my way to my part of the house.
I unlock the garage door that's accessible by the kitchen where two doors sit side by side. Neither are the stairway to heaven, but they both serve me the purpose I need.I unlock the right door and slip in, locking it behind me before my ass hits the chair and artificial light almost blinds me.
I've been after a lead for months and the bastards finally slipped up. He recently purchased a new car which gave me access to all the finer details like where he now lives, his place of work, his phone number, and with a little push, access to all of it. He's been out of town all week on a business trip and it was too far for me to travel with my little cockroach in the mix, so I'm patiently waiting for him to come back. I'm sure the sick fuck can't wait to get back and let some anger out on his kids, but hopefully I will catch him before he has chance. I have a day to kill before he's on a flight back to Chicago meaning I have yet another 24 hours to twiddle my thumbs and occupy myself until he lands.
My computer is littered with open tabs, documents, images and personal details. It’s my mom’s old computer that I've inherited for work usage. I’m disconnected from the Chicago police department but my computer skills are a little more advanced than them, meaning I have access to everything they do without being detected which makes my life a whole lot easier, but also twice as risky.
I do bad things, but only to eradicate worse. I do bad things to tame the trauma inside of me. I do what I do because I realised it was what I needed to do to feel something. It's what kept me alive. I sat in the compounds of my own mind for six years and held on to the part of me that thirst for blood. It is now programmed into me and it's what I will keep doing until I eventually kick the bucket, but until that day this is all I know and I wish I didn't.
The things I had to suffer to get to this point I would only wish on people just as sick and twisted as him. I am that wish . But I am not him. Children and women beaters hide amongst a society that covers them up because they raise money for charity and sit on wads of cash. Someone's gotta fucking do it. My consequences are just my count down with a broken clock. I don't know when that will be but when it happens, a bullet will find a home inside my chest where it belongs.
Before I know it the room is glowing with golden accents. I stare at the clock, unphased by the time before exiting my nook and lock the door. There are things in here I'd rather she didn’t find, not for my benefit, for hers. She's not strong enough yet. Yet . I huff at my own inner words, amused that I think she'll even be around that long.
My feet find the kitchen, dragging my dead weight, reaching for the kettle to make myself a much-needed strong coffee. It's routine, but I must have exerted far too much brain power because I feel like I've been hit by a bus this morning and my face feels drier than the Sahara Desert with yesterday's face paint I couldn't be arsed to wash off. I say couldn't, but I actually couldn't even if I wanted to. Not when playing super nanny anyway.
I take myself to the bathroom and wash the crusty, murky paint off my dry skin before smearing another picture back on. Some might say it's unsanitary to use someone else's blood like makeup but it's my trophy. A reward I wear with pride, it feeds the sadistic freak in me that was drummed into my flesh and carved into my cheek, running the crimson over the ravine travelling the corner of my mouth.
“ Give us a smile baby girl. Show Daddy how happy this makes you.”
The basin of the sink cracks underneath the palms of my hands, oblivious to my own strength as IT'S voice haunts my hollow skull, even dead it speaks to me, the devil on my shoulder, the ghost in the walls, my very own form of insomnia. The only time it seems to shut the fuck up is when I take another waste of oxygen, it’s my hit of oxytocin, my own personal remedy. No prescription can quiet the darkness that lives inside me, only death , death is my sedative to the war inside my head, others or my own.This is something she will never understand and I don't know why but subconsciously, I hope she does. Something inside me prays that when she realises the truth she will look at me differently, but not with sympathy, with understanding. I don't want her sympathy, nor do I deserve it and something tells me she will cling to it either way. I want her to understand this was not her fault. If anything, she was also a victim to something she was not even aware of, I want her to see that the system failed her too.