Thirty Judgment Day #2
The Grim Reaper gave up his duties for tonight, handing them over to Silas so that he could sentence a dirty soul to whatever hell awaited him.
This had always been the plan. This had always been his kill. The retaliation he felt would make it up to Rose, because in his mind, he should have been there that night.
Rose was walking home from the library because of a fight they had. I still didn’t know what it was over, but instead of waiting for Silas to pick her up she left on her own.
Whatever his last words were to her were said in anger.
I’d give anything to know the thoughts that swirled in his mind right now as he stood face to face with the man who ended his girlfriend’s life.
With subtle grace, he drops one knee down beside him, straddling his chest and pinning him to the floor with his weight. The floorboards creaked with the disturbance and all we could do was watch, waiting for the moment Silas needed us.
“I hope it’s hard to breathe.” His voice is gravelly as he wipes the dust off his vocal cords, “I hope every single breath feels like razor blades carving your throat wide open.”
His hands, wide, large and powerful sink down onto Greg’s face. Slipping his fingers behind his skull to hold him steady, and allowing his thumbs to brush over his eyelids.
Greg coughed and fought for air, fear of death becoming more apparent and he couldn’t even scream for help that might’ve saved him.
He wiggles, bucking off the ground, the last attempts of a man about to meet whatever maker he believed in. Never to take another breath again.
“I want you to remember this fear in Hell. Remember this pain for eons as you roast alive in the pits of the underworld.”
With unimaginable strength he sinks his thumbs into the sockets of Greg’s eyes. Pressing into the hollows, digging through the delicate skin of the eyelid, seeping farther into the spongy muscles of his eye.
Guttural screams, like a static TV come from Greg’s chest. A pain that would have anyone begging for mercy. Yet, Silas barely flinches. Even as blood vessels begin to pop open allowing blood to squirt onto his chest, coating his thumbs as he gouges his eyes out.
“Fuck,” Rook whispers under his breath as he stands beside me, Thatcher looking at it as if it’s some sort of demonstration and he should be taking notes.
“I hope you think about her, how you could have avoided this had you never laid a hand on her.” He continues, looking unshaken, as if he’s digging into a peach to pry the pit out of the center, the soft flesh giving way to his pressure.
Crimson liquid replaces the hollows of his eyes, streams of the sticky blood race down the sides of his cheeks. The way he curls his thumbs beneath the side of the eye, pulling upwards abruptly. When Silas removes his fingers from inside his eyes, it looked like a digital horror effect.
The way Greg’s eyes dangled from the sockets by tiny nerve endings, jiggling with the momentum of his body’s violent shakes.
Without another word spoken, Silas wraps his hands around Greg’s throat and begins to compress. It takes four minutes to end his life. Four quiet minutes before his legs stop moving, his throat stops making gargled noises, and his heart rate completely stops.
In those four minutes it felt like it was finally over.
For now.
Together we helped follow Thatcher’s instructions on cleaning up the body, picking up any traces of us being here, while he drowned the body in bleach. Making sure any form of DNA evidence we had left on his body was melted away by the chemicals.
As our last measure of covering up our tracks, we let Rook douse him in lighter fluid, before setting Greg on fire. The smell of burnt flesh and fried blood took over any other smell. It came off as a perfume of death and my nose would still be smelling it years from now.
I stood outside of the house, waiting for the body to disintegrate, smoking a cigarette against the brick when Silas came walking outside hood up and head facing the sky, like he was looking for her in the stars.
“You good?” I ask him as I exhale the smoke from my lungs.
“I asked you to stay a year, stay still we figured out who did it and we did that tonight. So I’m not gonna ask you to stay any longer.” He says, still not looking down from the night, “But I’m going after Frank.”
I wasn’t offended by what he said. He knew what being here was like for me. Having to stay longer in a town that raised me to be an outcast with a family that put me there to begin with. I knew he was just trying to look out for me.
But I told him I’d stay till he was done. I promised him.
And I wouldn’t break it. Not even if it meant dealing with the trauma that comes with this place.
I walk up behind him, placing my hand on his shoulder, “I’m with you, until the very end of this. I’m with you, Si.” And I meant that. I would be here until the end, whatever that meant for us.
He nods, accepting my answer, “She used to say you were the most like the older brother.”
I furrow my eyebrows, my throat suddenly clogged, “What?”
“Rose. She used to say that you took on the older brother role, so that you could be what you never had. Always looking out, making sure nothing ever happened. It was one of her favorite things about you, because she knew I’d be alright as long as you were in charge.
” There is a faint smile as he stares up into the night, telling me something I’d never heard before.
I’d never told Rosemary about my family, but when you grow up around someone, it’s hard not to notice the inner workings of someone’s life. She knew enough to put certain things together.
I let silence takeover. Allowing him some space, some time to think about what just happened. To come down from the adrenaline high we all were experiencing.
Somewhere deep down I knew Rose was in the clouds angry with us. Angry with Silas for risking our lives just to avenge someone who was already dead. I could see her slitted eyes and furrowed brow.
But even so, we could die knowing her killer met the same fate.
That was enough.
“Alistair!” Rook shouts from inside of the house, barreling through the entryway to the front porch.
“What?” I ask, suddenly snapping back to high alert. Ready to fix whatever problem had just arisen.
“Lyra, she called me on messenger.” He announces.
“Lyra Abbott? What does she want?”
“Just take it, here,” He shoves his phone at me, letting me grab it and place it to my ear.
“Hello?” I say, confused being a massive understatement.
If she is calling me to bitch me out over Briar, I’m going to let her know very quickly this is not the right time for it.
“Alistair! Oh, thank God. I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour. I didn’t have your number, and you don’t have Facebook, so I just started calling the other guys on here hoping you’d—”
“Lyra what the fuck is going on?”
I end her rambling, hoping she can get to the point.
“It’s Briar.” She says on a breath, “Is she with you?”
I’d delivered enough punishments to earn me a title in hell. I’d sent fear through more people than I could count. Pain in random men’s bodies just for fun during fights.
I had gone my entire life almost without feeling this for myself.
Absolute panic.
I feel it in my chest. Like someone stabbing it with knives, each burning and digging into my flesh. My heart pounds so hard it vibrates my entire rib cage, the rapid thumping echoing in my ears.
There is a ringing there as well, like a siren. So loud and high it nearly bursts my eardrums. Pins and needles prick my fingers, my toes, everything turning to numbness in less than twenty seconds.
It was as if I’d submerged myself into water for a little too long. Held my head beneath the surface so long that when I came up, gasping for air, my throat burned and my brain was screaming at me to never stay under that long ever again.
I’d never been scared before.
And I imagine this is what terror feels like for others.
“No. She didn’t leave with you at the carnival?” I manage.
“Oh God, Briar.” She starts to weep into the speaker, sounding out of breath, “After you guys left I waited by the bathrooms and she never came back. I got a message from her phone saying she was going to your house, but it’s almost two in the morning and she hasn’t checked in.
She’s not answering her phone either, Alistair what if—”
“Stop.” I don’t need her to say the words. I don’t want to hear them out loud.
I knew what she was going to say and the reality that it could be true made me want to hurl. I’d just watched a man have his eyes gouged out of his skull and I barely flinched.
Yet the prospect of Briar being kidnapped and possibly sold as a sex slave was enough to send my stomach into a fit of kickflips. I pictured her fighting, doing everything she could think of to defend herself.
Cause she was a fighter and I knew she wouldn’t go easy.
But even so, all I could see was them using her. Touching her. Violating her.
“Wait,” I say out loud, my brain spinning, “You said she texted you? Said she was going to my house?”
Lightbulbs explode inside of my mind.
The urge to throw up is quickly replaced with a bomb of fury that is seconds from exploding.
“Yeah, why?”
“I know who has her.” I tell her, “And I’m going to fucking kill him for taking her.”