3. Black
BLACK
DALTON
W ell, no one ever said piss smells lovely. A clear container holding a substantial amount of urine the color of hay rests next to another container filled with congealed pig’s blood. A smile pulls at my lips, leaning my head back and letting the soothing notes of Bach wash over me, chasing away the restless energy that’s dogged me for days now. Amanda’s list proved fruitful, and I fought a simmering rage upon discovering my late adopted father’s solicitor on the list.
Turning my back on the table housing my cooking ingredients, I face Jacobson Black. Bound with rope tethering him to a chair, he appears frail, sickly even. My upper lip curls at the idea of feasting on cancerous meat. Too busy following his every move for the past three days, I haven’t found time to check his health records. Oh, well.
If I had dogs, he’d make a hearty meal for them. My bare feet slap tile, approaching the unconscious older man.
Wrinkles line his face, and gray streaks pepper his hair. Looks like he’s led a long, hard life. How fortunate it’s about to end.
A slap shatters the quiet in between transitions, mournful notes chasing the echo. Shaking out my stinging hand, I glare at Jacobson, watching his eyes slowly blink to life. Shaggy furrowed brows cause his wrinkles to deepen. My smile stretches wide as he begins the predictable routine of tugging on the restraints, mouth opening and closing in shock. Mock innocence paints my face, concealing my rage that rises with the crescendo of the music.
“Hello, again, Mr. Black. I was hoping we could revisit the topic of my birth parents.” My lips morph from a smile, setting the tone of the evening. I played nice and asked politely after my father’s funeral for details about my adoption. He gave me nearly the same spiel as the adoption agency. Knives find their way into my hands, as familiar as a lover’s caress.
No shirt dons my torso. A harness crisscrosses my chest, leather sheaths lovingly holding my beloveds.
I want his blood to stain my fucking skin as I carve the truth out of his traitorous, weak body.
“Start talking, Mr. Black, before I lose the little patience God saw fit to bless me with,” I sneer at the elderly man.
“Mr. Lewis, please. I can’t—” His denial ends in a high-pitched scream, blood welling around the point of the knife I stabbed straight into his right leg. It does precious little to calm me. I am tired of waiting for pathetic people to deign to tell me the truth about where I come from. The knowledge should’ve been gifted to me long before now.
Mr. Black gets to suffer from both sets of parents’ lack of insight into how I’d cope with being left in the dark.
Left in the dark.
“Please let me out! I’ll be good!”
No, that bitch is dead. I bury the other blade into Mr. Black’s other leg. His squeal tickles my ear, urging me to do more damage, to disappear into the alluring embrace of bloodlust. I step back, letting air sweep into my chest. It heaves up and down as I’m caught in the pendulum of the past and present.
Darkness pressing in on all sides, choking the life from my lungs.
Blindly, I stumble toward the container of golden liquid, snatching up a funnel in the other hand.
“Please,” Mr. Black weeps, sounding like the bitch that bleated like a fucking sheep during the funeral. If Deaton and Rhys hadn’t hemmed me in on both sides, I’d have found her after the burial and granted her wish of seeing Charles again.
“Quit whining. You’re giving me a headache and I can’t decide what side dish you’d go better with. How do you feel about mashed potatoes and gravy?” I ask nonchalantly, forcing my breathing to calm. We’ve barely gotten started.
His wrinkled, turtle neck swivels left and right, the movement agitating the rest of his body. Blood drips in a steady trail, pooling beneath the chair. Licking my lips, I walk back toward my prey. Maybe if he used his brain to tell me what I want to know, he could save himself some pain. He doesn’t know he’s already dead.
Dead man walking, Mr. Black. Say hi to Death for me.
“Listen. I googled recipes. And the consensus is you need something acidic to tenderize meat. The pH of urine is between four and eight. So I figured I’d save money by using mine.” Jacobson folds in on himself, surrendering to deep, wracking sobs. Maybe if Samantha paid more attention to my tears, I’d have more sympathy for the crying of others.
His weeping is fucking with the vibe Bach is setting. Classical music, tenderizing meat, getting answers to long sought after questions. It should be a great fucking night. I should feel euphoric instead of edgy, body twitching with a whirlpool of emotions. Giving up on untangling the thread of bundled feelings, I sink into what I do best.
Meat meet hunter. Let’s make dinner.
“Well, looks like we’re doing this the hard way.” It’s his only warning before I transfer the funnel to under my arm, slip another blade free and use it pin his testicles to the chair. The scream he releases would make a soprano jealous. I use the opportunity of his mouth being gaped open to shove the funnel nearly to the back of his fucking throat. While he’s gagging around it, I pour the acrid liquid into the funnel.
His body convulses, and I jerk back in time for him to vomit all over his lap. Tears, snot, and blood mingle into a nasty stench, curdling my appetite. Fuck eating him. He’s going to be barbecue for some wild animals.
“Morgan Daniels,” he croaks from a raw and probably burning throat. My head tilts, silently urging him to spill the rest of the tale everyone thinks is best kept from me.
“Her father tasked me with managing her conservatorship. She was gravely, mentally ill. And pregnant with twins. I thought it was a mercy letting her keep just one. Charles and Samantha tried for years to conceive…” The rest of his raspy words slip through my ear canals and back out.
Twins. Only kept one.
The world spins, the opposite of a funhouse mirror. I’m the fucking clown in this circus. The one given away.
I don’t remember acting. My mind just blanks and I’m suddenly staring into the grisly, brutally shredded chest cavity of Jacobson Black, letting two knives slip from limp fingers. Red tints everything.
Sinking to the floor, surrounded by piss, vomit and blood, I can’t help but think this is the biggest fuck you from the universe. My own chest feels just as ravaged as Mr. Black’s. I did nothing to deserve this.
“ I’m not your mother! Quit calling me that, abomination!” Her words filter through my brain on a loop.
Pick one. Keep one.
Maybe Samantha was right and Morgan Daniels sensed it when she held my twin to her breast, letting Jacobson ferry me away. I hope they’re all still living. My only regret tonight is killing Mr. Black before I could get a location from him. But rest assured, Daniels’ family.
I’m fucking coming for you.
* * *
B urnt flesh saturates the air, snaking down my nostrils to cause a Texas sized migraine. Or maybe that’s from carting the one hundred plus pound carcass of Jacobson Black from the trunk of one of the cars I inherited from my father’s passing to the woods surrounding Rhys’ cabin. The ex-navy seal enjoys living outside the boundaries of society.
And I like taking advantage of the seclusion to burn bodies behind my cousin’s home. It’s a win-win for everyone. He doesn’t mind the smell and he’s probably out managing his bar.
Twigs snap under heavy footsteps and I don’t turn around, watching the flames lick at Mr. Black’s corpse, consuming his meat to feed the hungry fire. Shapes dance and writhe in the mesmerizing light, lulling me from the thoughts taunting my brain.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Deaton says, smoke spilling from his mouth to float in my line of sight. The fucker is going to choke and die on a cigarette one day. I can’t summon any remorse over the potential demise. He made his coffin, fully prepared to lie in it when his time comes.
I hope I’m as laissez-faire when it’s my turn to meet the reaper. For now, Death doesn’t bother me. It’s an everyday occurrence, a sentence I mete out to others. I wasn’t even present when Charles’ heart gave out, cock at half mast inside his young mistress.
Is she really a mistress if his wife has been dead for over five years?
“Tell me what’s going through your head, Zac. Cause whoever the fuck you’re burning smells fucking awful.” I bark out a weak laugh, tears stinging my eyes. Deaton’s right. Jacobson smells like fetid meat. Not even wolves would want to dine on his cold flesh once the flames die down.
I didn’t even get to marinate him in pig’s blood. He died too quickly, frail body giving out beneath my flurry of strikes, sharp metal tearing through tender flesh. The memory superimposes itself in my mind, but I still barely recall slipping the knives from their sheaths.
One minute he’s breathing, croaking his way through a tale I wasn’t prepared to hear and in the next he’s dead.
“I’m fine. You can go. Unless Rhys sent you out here.” I doubt the veteran called Deaton. No, my cousin possesses an unnatural sixth sense of when I’m dancing near the edge of the abyss. It mocks me, whispering for me to jump in, that it’ll numb all of my problems.
But it can’t rewind time to convince Morgan Daniels I’m worth keeping. It’s the albatross looped around my neck, choking any air I manage to inhale.
“She was wrong, Zac.” Deaton doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to. Ten years older, but he’s caught flashes of the dark side of his aunt Samantha, the side she hid from her husband before I killed her.
How does he know that it’s her haunting me and not Charles?
Maybe because Charles never locked me in closets or withheld food from me.
I’d be dead if not for Deaton. One day, he took one look at the bones protruding through my skin and insisted I have dinner at his house with his parents. Despite anticipating a cruel trick from Samantha, I agreed, tear-stained and pleading with my mother to let me go with him. She only agreed after Uncle Dick promised to keep me for the night, giving her a reprieve from my presence.
Deaton’s pity used to sour my stomach and make my skin itch. Instead, gratitude stings my insides because he saved me that night. Who knew how many more missed meals my young body could take before it gave out?
Samantha Lewis certainly didn’t give a fuck.
I could never repay him, even if I despise the leash he pulls taut around me from time to time. I’d kill for the fucker. I just hope he doesn’t make me bury him in his emo damn clothing. Black is my color.
Remembering his off-hand but spot on comment, I open my mouth.
“Maybe. Or maybe she was right. Maybe if she hadn’t behaved the way she did, I wouldn’t have turned into a monster. Either way, we won’t know now, will we?” Pulling my eyes from the dancing streaks of light, I lock onto my cousin. Sharp, defined facial features catch the inconsistent light. It brightens brown eyes to a beautiful hazel.
“I guess we’re both monsters then,” he remarks in a bored tone, head turning to lock eyes with me. Emotion rarely swims in the brown depths, and I never appreciated it more than I do now. I couldn’t stand his pity tonight. He hides it pretty damn well, but in the earlier days, it bled through nearly every selfless act.
He’s the literal fucking wind beneath my wings. Blinking, I avoid the eyes that see too much. Numb lips move, spilling the poison in my veins.
“I won’t rest until they’re dead, D. I can’t. I need to do this.” My voice cracks only slightly and in typical Deaton fashion, he doesn’t question me further. In my peripheral, I catch his head moving up and down, a lit cigarette held between his lips.
Together, we stare into the flames, watching it burn away my sin. If only it could do it for every one of them. Tonight, I’ll take the win and tomorrow, I’ll resume the hunt.
Morgan Daniels owes me some fucking answers.