Chapter Eleven – Abby #3
I exit out of his camera roll, plug the phone back in, and shut the screen off. My voice comes out quiet when I say, “Okay, I saw enough. He’s a shit guy. Cut him up, boys.”
Beside me, Royal huffs, “Who the fuck you calling a boy?”
“You’re right,” I say, setting a hand on his arm—on his very muscular arm.
“You’re no boy. You’re a big, strong, sexy man who’s about to add another notch to his serial-killing bedpost. I can’t wait to watch.
” I drop my hand from his arm and bring that hand to where my mouth is behind the mask, blowing a kiss up at him.
Probably doesn’t have the same effect it would have if I wasn’t wearing the practically antique hockey mask, but whatever. The action serves its purpose and calms Royal down, the big baby.
“Damn straight,” he growls out, and you know, I think my coochie actually shivers when he says that. That growly, gravelly tone? It had an immediate effect down there, if you know what I mean.
Uh-oh. I think I’m in danger, and not the life or death kind. These guys are making it really hard for me to keep my cool.
I take a step back, away from the bed, to give Royal the space to work.
They don’t need me to tell them to start; they get right to it, and what would you know?
This time, there’s no stage fright, no anxiety of performing in front of an audience.
This time I watch not through slats on a closet door, but from the very first row.
And it is spectacular.
Watching them work. Seeing how easily they do it. They’re butchers with those saws, butchers who know exactly how to cut their chosen slice of meat. That’s what we all are, deep down, anyway. It’s what men like Mal think of women and girls, so why shouldn’t they be treated the same way?
We might not get them all. Men like Mal might outnumber us hopelessly, but damn, does it feel good to even the numbers a bit. One by one, we do what we can, because society sure as fuck isn’t.
This rage inside of my heart isn’t just feminine. The kind of rage inside of me isn’t female-specific. No, Royal and Ezra feel it, too. So does Hawthorne and apparently their Benefactor.
It’s hard. It’s fury. It’s not something anyone should feel, and yet we do. We’re left to pick up the pieces of our lives after someone like Mal dropped a bomb and blew everything up. We’re the ones who stand still while the smoke clears and see what we can salvage from the rubble.
We’re monsters. We’re criminals. We’re bad people, yes, but at least we’re better than men like that. We are a result and they are the cause, so no one has any right to get angry at us without also getting pissed at them. Without them, we would not exist.
Limb by limb, piece by piece; Royal and Ezra cut Mal apart in record time. They work like gods of their craft, wholly uncaring of the blood and the gore. I divide my time between staring at Mal on the bed and the two men on either side of it.
Last time I was so shocked I was speechless, and then I rambled like I’ve never rambled before when I busted out of that closet thanks to that stupid spider. Here and now? I am simply in awe. I am witnessing freaking Picasso here.
Gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed by a man before, let alone two of them at once.
There’s got to be something majorly wrong with me to find them as attractive as I do, especially right now. I must be broken or something, because my heart shouldn’t be pounding as fast as it is—and not for the dead, mostly-dismembered guy on the bed.
No, my heart is beating fast for them.
The funny thing is, I can’t even see their faces as they work. Their gazes are shrouded in shadows from the eyeholes of the hockey masks, so every part of their expressions are hidden. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve never been so attracted to anyone before.
I need someone to slap me out of this, STAT, otherwise…
Otherwise I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s fun teasing them. It’s one thing to suggest a hookup just for fun, but what I’m feeling right now is pretty far from the initial lust I felt toward them in the beginning.
It’s more than that, I think, and that’s legitimately terrifying to me.
The terrified feeling in my heart gets pushed to the side when Ezra stops before he cuts into Mal’s ankle. “Come over here,” he says, the first words either of them have spoken since they began their ritualistic dismemberment.
The saw drips blood, the gory picture of severed limbs on the bed not a finished painting just yet. I don’t know what he wants from me; I’m only supposed to watch and learn tonight, but I move around the bed all the same. Royal watches me go, but he doesn’t stop what he’s doing.
Once I stand beside Ezra, he offers me the bloodied saw and whispers, “Here.”
My breath catches. Royal freezes and looks at us both. Ezra doesn’t withdraw the offer, though. He keeps that saw offered to me as more blood drips off the sharp edge and onto the bed.
Is this a trick? A test?
I’ll let you in on a little secret: I was never a good test-taker.