My Little Lilac
Flynn
I don’t know whether I want to savor the moment or throttle her for being so careless. I settle on the former because this is heaven. Never mind the fact that I am one hundred percent going to Hell, I will destroy every demon in the place if it means I can spend the afterlife in Heaven with Hazel.
I frown at that, not liking the thought of Hazel dying. There are very few people I care whether they live or die but apparently, this girl, with her heart shaped face and freckled cheeks, makes the list.
Her nose wrinkles as she snuggles under the blanket I draped over her and my obsession deepens.
I’ve never met someone with so much emotion, so much color. Never met someone who made the world so… fucking quiet.
The second I saw her dancing around her room the constant pressure in my head just dissipated and I’m tempted to carry her around with me for the rest of my life just so I never have to feel it again.
I hate the pressure. It builds gradually at first, like an itch I can’t scratch until one itch becomes a hundred and I want to tear my own skin off.
The first time I worked out how to make the itch stop, I was eight. Some bigger kid was pushing my sister around, so I’d strolled over and stabbed a compass in his ear. Perforated his ear drum.
He’d been screaming loud enough to break glass, but I just stood there in wonder at how quiet my mind had gone. Like a lake at night instead of a crashing storm.
Should we be worried you find violence so peaceful? My sister’s voice echoes in my head and the corner of my mouth ticks up. Probably, Hope, yeah.
I lean forward and flick the TV off, torn between the need to never let my new obsession out of my sight and my desire to know everything about her. Hazel. My Lilac.
I roll my tongue around her name, loving how sweet it tastes on my tongue. Wondering how sweet other parts of her will taste.
I press the heel of my hand against my hardening cock, willing it to calm down because there are a couple dozen police officers looking for me and I have other things I need to do before I leave.
Hazel’s house is small. A bungalow with barely enough room for two. It’s clear though, the second I step into her old bedroom, that this is a home. I may not feel love like other people do but Hope taught me well enough to know that this room is filled with it.
Love is like… being able to breathe. Like feeling the sun on your face or a blanket wrapped around you.
I know I loved my sister, but it never felt like that to me. My love was fierce and possessive and no doubt far too lethal for someone like Hazel to ever want.
I curl my fist at the thought and then I search for the guilt I should feel because the truth is, I’m not sure I’m going to give Hazel a choice.
Photographs of her and an older lady, Hazel’s grandma, are pinned to a corkboard.
Young Hazel makes warmth curl in my chest, stronger than it ever has before.
Maybe ten years old with her hair in braids and a crazed, lopsided smile as she leans towards the camera.
There’re photos of her with friends too.
A girl with a curly black bob and another with blue French braids and a pierced tongue.
The girl with the blue hair features in more of the photos, her hair changing from color to color over the years before I find one where she must only be twelve years old with light blonde hair and no piercings. Wright, perhaps.
I grit my teeth at the surge of anger that remains from when Hazel uttered that name. The thought of some other man being in her house, in her bedroom…
I breathe through my nose, unclenching my fists.
Wright is just a friend. I don’t have to add anyone else to my list tonight.
A list which, until a few hours ago, I thought was finished.
I swat away thoughts of the one man I still have to kill.
I don’t want to think of him when I’m here in Hazel’s house, don’t want to tarnish her home with his evil. It’s bad enough that I’m here.
I unpin the photo of Hazel as a kid, feeling a little calmer after I’ve slipped it into the waistband of my uniform. No pockets for the criminally insane. They don’t trust us not to hide a weapon, which would be smart if I actually needed a weapon to kill.
I experimented with a whole host of ways to cause damage after the compass incident, but I don’t like the detachment weapons provide. People use guns and knives as an excuse, a way to take the act of murder out of their hands, to make it easier to end a person’s life.
I already feel detached enough from the world.
When I’m killing someone, I want to know I’m doing it.
I want to feel every second as their larynx crushes, as their lungs run out of oxygen and their throat bulges against my palm.
I want to feel the kick of their pulse as it fades under my fingers.
I want to know with utter certainty that they will never be able to harm anyone ever again.
So long as you’re only hurting bad people, Flynny.
That was Hope’s rule, and I never had a desire to break it. I was a good little sociopath, never even crossing the line into killing people. Not until I found Hope on the floor with her wrists slit.
Killing gets rid of the pressure, but I have enough control that it’s not something I need to do and as soon as I’ve finished with the people who hurt Hope, I’ll stop.
Hey Dexter, don’t think about murder in your future wife’s bedroom. Girls don’t like that.
My lip curls up. Noted, Hope, noted.
I leave the room and make my way through the rest of the house, scowling at the empty refrigerator and the stacks of bills on the table. Hazel needs someone to look after her.
I find her backpack hanging by the front door and smile at the patches ironed on to the navy canvas. All rainbows and hearts and books. Hope would have liked her.
I flick through the lilac notebook I find inside, filled with yet more stickers and Polaroids. A journal. I have a feeling I’m not supposed to read those. Something about privacy. I put the journal back.
Her keys and purse are in the outside pocket of the bag. I hook the keys, with their lilac pompom keychain, over my finger and take out her driver’s license.
Hazel Olive Halloway. So fucking pretty. I read it over a couple of times, memorizing the details before slipping it back inside her purse. I’m not done with the keys though.
I whistle a quiet tune as I duck into the kitchen, opening drawers until I find what I’m looking for. I hold the spare keys up, sorting through them until I find the ones that match the keychain. I palm the spare keys, then put everything else back where I found it and return to Hazel.
She’s still sleeping, the slightly wavy, light brown hair that falls just past her jaw fanned across her cheek.
I slide my arms under her tiny body and she murmurs, her brow pinching. “Shh, Little Lilac,” I whisper as I lift her up. “Go back to sleep.” My voice smooths out the furrows on the bridge of her nose and the rush that hits me is intoxicating.
Flynn’s in love. Hope singsongs in my head.
I carry Hazel back to her bedroom and lie her down on the double bed. It’s not made so it’s easy to pull the covers up over the blanket she’s wrapped in. Unable to resist touching her again, I trail the back of my fingers across her cheek before tucking a loose strand of silken hair behind her ear.
I want to stay, to watch her all night like the freak in the vampire novels Hope loved, but in a few hours the manhunt for me will have escalated. If I’m going to make it back to my brother’s, I need to move now.
After closing and locking Hazel’s window, I make my way back to the front door. The alarm panel on the wall is turned off, because of course it is, and I want to drag her over my knee when I see a piece of paper with the code on it tucked behind the panel.
I add the scrap of paper to my magpie collection before slipping out of the front door and into the early morning dark.
The Seattle lights are too bright for any stars to shine but the streetlamps glow golden on the sidewalk as I stroll down the street. I should be looking out for patrol cars but all I can think about is Hazel.
Only you Flynn, would crush on a girl so sweet and fluffy she’s more likely to run from you than to you.
That’s what Hope would say, except Hazel didn’t run from me.
She made me hot chocolate. Granted the hot chocolate was so bad it could well have been her attempt at killing me but still. My Lilac is braver than she looks.
I breathe in the cold, enjoying the damp air on my skin. After three months of stale rooms and white corridors the freedom feels good.
A light drizzle opens up the sky and by the time I get to my brother’s house my hair is damp, the prison top sticking to my chest.
A police car is parked out front of the three-story, architectural digest building my brother designed himself.
I duck into the shadows of the neighboring house and go around to the back yard, whistling under my breath as I climb the spiral stairs to the roof terrace and step over the gap onto my brother’s house.
I hop the privacy wall to his roof-top breakfast area and then slide open the balcony doors to his bedroom and walk down the floating staircase to the ground floor.
“Honey, I’m home,” I call as I stroll into the open plan kitchen and living area.
Lachlan’s sitting at the marble topped island, a glass of whiskey on the surface. His gaze flicks up before returning to his iPad. “You’re late. I was starting to think you’d gotten yourself caught again.”
I shake out my hair, sending droplets flying onto his limestone stone floor, and hold up a finger.
“First of all, I wasn’t caught the first time, I turned myself in.
Second of all, you try walking the streets with the whole precinct after you.
” I strip off the damp top and replace it with the black T-shirt Lachlan left folded on the back of the eight-seater couch.
“Besides, I found someone prettier than you to keep me company.”
I walk over to my brother, and he slides a brown envelope across the island. “Passport, new identity. A house in the Caymans in your name.”
I drag my teeth over my bottom lip. “Yeah, about that. I can’t go yet. We missed someone.”
That gets Lachlan’s attention. He puts the iPad down on the island, blue eyes brighter than mine piercing into me. “We tracked down everyone in that video.”
“Sleet talked. Apparently, there was someone behind the camera.” My lip curls in disgust, the blubbering begging face of Garret Sleet, my fellow inmate, still fresh in my mind.
The coward gave up the leader of their sick society in hopes of saving his own life.
It was never going to work. Every single person in that video wrote their death sentence the second they entered that room.
“You have a name?” Lachlan asks.
“I do.” I lean against the island next to his stool and cross my arms. “You’re not going to like it.”
Lachlan’s jaw ticks. He runs a hand through his hair, the same coal black as mine except his only has the slightest wave to it. “Every single person in that room dies, Flynn. That’s what we promised her.”
I dip my chin. “I know.” People used to think my brother and I were cut from the same cloth, but unlike me, Lachlan doesn’t have any trouble connecting to his emotions. He just doesn’t like to show them, shutting all those pesky feelings down under a cold mask.
I watch him with fascination as he fights to keep them contained, his arm resting on top of the island, the tendons flexing as he curls his hand into a fist. “Who was filming?”
“Christian Claren.”
Lachlan stares at me, the way he does when he’s searching for patience. “As in Senator Christian Claren?”
I raise my brows in faux innocence. “Oh, now that you mention it, yeah. I guess they must be one and the same. Funny.”
“You’re not killing a senator.”
My humor drains away. “Yes. I am.”
Lachlan steps off the stool and paces past the island. “He is the most beloved political figure Seattle has ever seen. He spends his weekends volunteering, he’s building a free-clinic—”
“He filmed the video, Lachlan,” I cut him off. “Maybe he just likes to watch, maybe he stayed behind the camera so as not to incriminate himself, but what do you think he did after they stopped recording?”
The muscles on Lachlan’s jaw flutter as he grinds his teeth.
“You just said it yourself,” I remind him. “Everyone dies.”
“Not at the expense of you,” Lachlan snaps, spinning to face me.
I don’t react. He knows nothing he can say will change my mind. And I know he’ll help me do what needs to be done. For Hope. We’ll both reach the same conclusion, my long-distance relationship with emotions just means I get there a little faster than Lachlan. Eventually though, his shoulders drop.
He unbuttons the cuffs to his pristine white shirt and folds up the sleeves. “We take our time,” he says, his voice low. “You do this right, and you don’t get fucking caught.”
I smirk. “Don’t think you can get me off for a second time?”
“Do you realize the lengths I had to go to, to get you sent to Drayford?”
I stop ribbing him. I may be a sociopath, but we only got away with the insanity plea because Lachlan is a damn good lawyer.
I should have been sent to Washington State Penitentiary, but Garret Sleet was in Drayford Psychiatric Prison so we put on a little show, convinced the jury that’s where I belonged too.
That was three months ago, and as much as it’s good to see my brother’s face, I’ve been dreaming about a shower with proper water pressure for the last four weeks.
I snag an apple from the black ceramic fruit bowl on the island and throw it up in the air before taking a bite. Fuck that tastes good.
“I’m going downstairs, be a good little lawyer and don’t tell the police out front you’re harboring a fugitive.”
Lachlan’s dead gaze makes me grin until he throws my damp prison top at me.
“Take your wet clothes with you.” He turns back to the island before calling over his shoulder, “And stay down there for a while, the police will be back with a warrant to search the place soon.”
“Ugh.” I drag the shirt from where it landed on my head and ball the damp material up in my hands as I walk back out into the hall. Spending the foreseeable future dodging the cops is a complication I don’t need. How am I supposed to stalk Hazel if I can’t be seen outside?
You know most people date the woman they like, Flynn.
I imagine myself tugging on one of Hope’s braids. I’m not so sure dating is in the cards for me and Hazel. I can already feel the compulsion pulsing beneath my skin, the need to know anything and everything about the girl dancing in her pjs, utterly oblivious to the world around her.
Dating is for normal people anyway. Stalking is far more fun.