Thirty Judgment Day
Alistair
Us ually after I hurt people I have this rush of elation that floods my entire system. It takes away the hunger, it feeds the anger, just long enough that I can regain control over my life.
I get my fix for the day and I’m set until the next time I feel the need to destroy someone.
Right now all I was feeling was self-loathing. So much of it that every breath felt like I was inhaling gasoline. More fuel to the fire inside of my chest that was not going out any time soon.
My left hand wound tighter around the steering wheel, my foot punching the gas as my car tore across the asphalt. The gauge on my dash was trying to let me know this vehicle couldn’t go any faster, but even so I kept my foot to the floor.
Music busted through my speakers and I could see out of the corner of my eye, Rook, air drumming against the dash, slinging his head back and forth to the beat. I watched my headlights peer down the nearly empty two-way road, trees on either side as we approached our destination.
When you’re going that fast one slip of your wrist would send you rolling, the car would fly into the trees killing both of us almost instantly. But neither of us could be bothered. We focused on the dense sound of music, the drums that thundered and shook the glass of my windows.
I told myself the feeling would leave after tonight. I would wreak havoc, end a life and the annoying tugging inside of my chest would leave. Pressing on the break for the first time since leaving the carnival, I began to slow down just enough to not flip the car as I make a right.
Briar was a pawn in a large game of chess.
A piece that had surprised me and had been fun to play with.
I’d gotten what I wanted. I’d had her down on her knees with those pretty little eyes staring up at me, I had her twisted around my fist, I had my fingers deep in her cunt and watched as she found a high like never before with my name cursing her lips.
I had broken her.
Showed her that she is no better than I am.
Just another person addicted to how it feels when you do something bad. I ripped away her idea of what she thought she wanted, shedding light on how all the dark parts of her were her power.
I tore her down, just to build her up, only to yank the flooring right out from underneath her. Watching her crumble before my eyes.
But that was what had to be done.
I could not afford to have her poking around, getting involved where she shouldn’t be, asking me shit she doesn’t understand.
It was better to break her heart now. Get it out of the way before something worse happened. Before she built this imaginary world with me in it, shoving me into a dream I had no business being a part of. Expecting me to be something I am not. Something I will never be.
I wanted this, I thought.
So why the fuck did I feel this way.
With ease I pull into the driveway of the condemned house, right outside the weak metal gate that does a shit job of keeping people out. The no trespassing signs are so old that rust holes have started to eat away the words.
Rook is out of the vehicle before I’m even in park. Electricity courses down my arms as I look up at the small two-story brick house. The night had come fast, it always does during this time of the year and the liberating task at hand we’d all been anticipating was only a few minutes away.
A gust of strong wind picks up a pile of leaves, carrying them across the brown yard, the draft howls through the house, slipping inside the damaged roof and between the cracks of the boarded windows.
The last time I saw this place it housed a dead body. Tonight, it would do the same.
I step around to the back of my car, while Rook opens the trunk. Headlights blind me as Thatcher’s vehicle comes into view. Both him and Silas pull in next to me, cutting the engine and stepping out.
We don’t talk, no words need to be said. We know why we are here and that pressure hangs heavy on each of our shoulders.
“Catch.” Rook mutters, tossing a long-handled axe in my direction.
I snatch it from the air calmy, squeezing the wood in my palm, feeling the weight of the weapon in my hand. The chisel-shaped blade flashed in the night. And ideas for all the ways I could kill someone with this appeared in my mind’s eye.
Hearing the sound of distorted wails as Thatcher and Silas walk from the back of their car, each of them carrying a half of the body of a restless Greg West. He fights, trying to kick his duct taped feet free.
We follow their lead through the dead yard, up the unstable front steps and through the entrance of the trap house where we had found Rose.
Stepping inside was similar to walking into a time machine. The last time we’d been here, Rose laid motionless on the same floor that we toss Greg onto. The boards on the floor creak with his weight, head banging onto the ground as he tries rolling around.
Thatcher and Silas had waited outside of his house after we left the carnival, waiting for the perfect moment to snatch him up as he walked to his front door.
Just when he thought he was going to be able to kick his feet up on the couch, click through the sports channel, Thatch had ruined it.
Grabbing him up and throwing him in his trunk.
Consequences of all of his actions up to this point made the air thick.
Spilling blood for our revenge. Tempting the scale of moral compasses just to feel the relief of vengeance on our souls. If I ever got caught, I wouldn’t regret it.
Even if I rotted in a prison cell for the rest of my days, this would have been worth it.
They would always be worth it.
I was ready to hear Greg say the words. We had followed the breadcrumbs and they’d led us to the person we’d been looking for. I just needed to hear the words.
Rook rips the tape off his mouth, the sound of skin and hair tearing echoes, and shit immediately begins to pour out of his mouth,
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“As a unit?” Thatcher ask, “Too many things to count.”
Greg shoves his feet into the ground, trying his hardest to push himself away from the four of us. It’s kind of pathetic actually, the last feeble attempts of a trash human being.
“Did you mean to kill her, Greg?” Thatcher asks ignoring his question, “Or was it just dumb luck that she was allergic to the Ecstasy?”
It’s interesting watching someone who had up to this point been completely confident that no one would ever know what he did. It’s interesting seeing the shock register in their ratty eyes and they begin to think, oh shit I’m in trouble.
“I…I don’t know-”
“We saw the flash drive.” I stop him from even trying to deny it.
I wasn’t here to question him or get more information on the dealings of what he was into.
I had enough evidence with the drive to know the police would look into anything we didn’t take care of ourselves. I came here to listen to him confess.
I was prepared to become judge, jury, executioner.
Like most evil disguised as humans, his mask melts right off his face. He knows he can’t deny it, he is aware of what we have seen. It’s either own up to it, hope that we respect him for admitting it, or go out like a bitch.
“I’m assuming one of you was fucking her? That’s why I’m here?” He mocks, rolling his body so he is sitting up on his knees, his greasy hair falling in his face a bit as he spits on the floor,
“The X was just to make her more pliable for the buyer. She’d been sold the day I picked her up from the library. I didn’t know the dumb bitch would die from it. Cost us money we didn’t have to lose.”
Blind rage takes hold of Rook at the sound of someone insulting Rose, taking the opportunity to acquaint himself with Greg. He twirls his bat, swinging the aluminum stick like a knife through butter, and crushing it across Greg’s side, sending him flapping in the air with a harsh thump.
I silently hoped it punctured a lung.
“You don’t get to speak about her. Not like that, fucking crook.”
It was the first of many painful lessons we would be teaching our professor tonight.
He mewls into the group, pressing his forehead into the dirt, eyes crossed in searing pain.
Thatcher takes the sole of his Oxford clad shoe, pressing it into the same set of ribs that had just taken a major league swing and punts him onto his back.
I felt the tightening in my chest, the pressure increasing across my entire body.
Feeling it in my hands, my neck and jaw muscles as my fury built higher the longer he spoke.
“You think killing me makes it any better? You’ll be just as bad as me, nothing but a killer. This won’t bring her back!” He yells, spit flying from his mouth like white bugs. “She’s dead. Nothing you do will change that.”
I’d been waiting months for this. Spent sleepless nights thinking about what I would do if given the opportunity to get my hands on the person who took Rosemary from us. Burst of memories play in my mind. Of Silas, of Rose, all the good, all the bad.
That was what no one was getting.
We knew she was gone. We knew that no matter how much blood we spilled she wouldn’t come back. She was gone.
We just didn’t fucking care.
I stride forward, “No, it won’t,” twisting the axe in my hands so the blunt end points outward, “But it’ll make me feel a fuck ton better.” I slam the end of the weapon into his throat.
The sound of kindling breaking over a tree crackles through the bottom floor of the house. Greg’s windpipe splinters in his throat from the strike of the back of the axe. The brutal choke that falls from his mouth would make me cringe if I wasn’t so amped up on how good this felt.
High pitched breaths and wheezes is all he can manage. Not another word will come from his mouth.
It’s then that Silas steps forward.
Hands calm, eyes like coal. He stands over Greg, peering down at him so that he can take a peek into what a living human looks like when they lose their soul.