The Way We Rot

Prologue

Penny

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

He gargled.

Not the chicken. The man between my thighs. Blood bubbled up from his throat and spat out all over my white dress. Fucking mess.

“Ask me why,” I demanded, driving the knife deeper into his gut, twisting the blade to catch each disgusting organ. It made me a little sick, but that churning told me I couldn’t stop. The only way through this was to make sure they felt every bit of pain their victims did.

Forceable entry, unwanted intrusion. My gut roiled as his body spasmed, nicking tendons and nerves, freaking out his muscles.

This wretch of a man thought he could rape women. Thought he could hurt whoever he wanted. Now he’d never walk again, spine mangled, organs mashed to a pulp. I swallowed down the nausea, determined not to look away, and kept working, destroying.

He’d never take a comfortable breath again either, because these were his last, and they were ragged, wet.

He was going to die. But not before I finished this joke.

After the first time, I learned my lesson.

Joking with them, pretending, talking to them like they weren’t evil, like we were friends — it got me through the necessity of it. The gore of it.

I grabbed the man’s mouth, leaving the knife sticking out of him just under his belly button, and moved his jaw.

“Why?” I said in a deep voice, making him speak to me, return the sentiment that this was okay, normal.

His eyes were so wide and angry, the fear that made him piss his pants ten minutes ago not fading, only festering.

I winced again, swallowed down bile and pushed through. He needed to hear the end of the joke. He needed to laugh. Only then…

“To get to the rapist’s house,” I spat, tilting my head. “Knock knock.” He didn’t answer, and that was worse than the blood and guts. Worse than the stink burning my nostrils. I needed him to laugh; I needed him to give me something back. Proof. But I got nothing.

The man said zip, just let a little more blood dribble from his mouth like he was dead already.

Oh, shit. Maybe he was. But when I slapped him again, wincing at the sharp noise, he groaned, drooled a bit more red, slow and oozing, clinging on when I didn’t want him to, not really.

This part was the hardest, when they were trying to dig their claws into the life I was snatching. But they couldn’t be here. Not anymore.

“Who’s there?” I said, moving his jaw up and down like he was some kind of sick puppet. He glared at me, the same look in his eye as all of them.

I leaned in real close for the punch line, almost nose to nose, relishing the metallic stench wafting from him.

It meant he had minutes remaining at best. But this was too good.

He needed to hear it before he left this earth and spent his afterlife reliving what took him to his death. His actions, and his alone.

“The chicken,” I finished, eyes wide. He didn’t laugh, so I sat back up.

My thighs squashed down over his, making him cry out in pain because I’d stabbed them a bunch as I worked my way up to his dick, which was now sitting shriveled by his head.

I looked at it in mild shock, in disgust. I’d touched it, sliced it free and placed it next to his head like some kind of sick freak.

My head shook so hard my brain bashed against my skull.

It fixed nothing.

“Now.” I yanked the knife from his gut, ignoring how it caught on his spine, and brought it up to his chin.

“Did you not laugh because you didn’t get it, because you didn’t find it funny, or because you’re about to die and all rational thought is out the window?

” I paused for his response, but got none.

Discomfort heated my stomach, threatened acid and bile. “Please tell me.”

The blade cut a thin slice over his Adam’s apple, scraping up to the tip of his chin, then all the way back down to his collarbone.

His eyes lost that final ebb of focus they had, any sparkle remaining flattening, dulling.

I sat back and watched, satisfied to have given him an awful last memory at least. Even if I had failed in keeping my emotional distance. Yet again.

It’s what he wanted to do to me, after all, what they all did.

When I was like this, in the middle of taking a rapist out of this world, I questioned every man I’d ever met.

Every single one. And they all looked like monsters, all rapists, all on this planet just to hurt, to take.

Me. My sister. Anyone who identified as female wasn’t safe in this world.

Or that’s what I told myself, because anything else was unbearable.

And seeing this man beneath me lose his life drip by drip, well, it was one less danger to worry about. It hurt, the pain of knowing what I’d done. The horror of it would make me shake, have me spending days on an adrenaline crash, confused and messy, but it was worth it.

Whatever festered inside of me was hungry, always so damn hungry.

With an almighty rip of air from his ass, his body betraying his dignity in his last second of life, he blinked out. His face slackened, fell to the side, and his eyes dulled to nothing, like foggy glass, empty. Peaceful, in the most frustrating way.

That peace fascinated me. How someone so evil could appear so relaxed at the end.

Relief and calm settled over us in our shady, dangerous warehouse. Dangerous, because this wasn’t planned. Someone could walk in at any moment. I wasn’t usually so stupid.

Letting myself cool, I watched him for a minute, tapping his eyeball with the tip of my knife to make sure he wasn’t faking, before standing and getting out of the way of any body fluid leaking, gulping down another wave of nausea.

This wasn’t… I fought not to like it. Fought to have a normal physical reaction. Nausea came when I battled too hard.

I’d just been out with my friends, hanging in a bar, drinking, laughing, maybe dancing a little, having a good time before we all crashed back to reality tomorrow.

Things weren’t great at home. Lacey, my sister, was still struggling with PTSD from her attack; my mother didn’t know how to handle it; and I was distant from it, staying away, sleeping rough or in dirty motels to keep my distance as I worked.

Dealing with my own quiet form of coping. Like the lame jokes, like the disassociation I tried to force on myself.

But when everyone went outside to smoke, and I stayed inside, my ears snagged on the conversation in the next booth over. It was this guy bragging to his friend about his brother — about me.

His big brother was a detective, hot on my tail, apparently. He knew things about the case that had been kept hidden from the public. When he told them about my methods with a twinkle in his eye, acid churned in my stomach.

“She sounds scary,” I said, popping my head over the short wall.

Soft brown eyes caught mine, warm and smiling. A lie.

“Oh, she definitely is,” he replied, dipping his gaze to my cleavage before even asking my name. He should have asked my name.

That was his death sentence, I think, though I never quite knew what moments triggered my decisions.

We flirted for a few more minutes before I invited him to the alleyway for a smoke, letting my eyes rake over him, taking in his wide shoulders, the way his hands curled around his beer bottle. He understood what I wanted.

I followed him outside — Jackson, I think — and right away, he whirled on me, tried to kiss me, touched my cheek.

Always proven right. Painful and disappointing, every damn time. My mind didn’t want this, but my body had no choice.

So, Jase and I took a little trip into the warehouse next to the club while he lost consciousness and I almost popped a vein in my temple dragging his heavy frame inside.

Thanks to the roofie in his drink, he was a deadweight and I couldn’t get him far.

It was too close, I knew that. I could still hear the music from the bar, the drunken yelling of happy patrons.

It was about 3am when I left him in that warehouse, unable to touch another woman, hurt another woman. I had to wait until the last of the late night stragglers were gone too, because I was either going covered in blood or ass naked, and I wasn’t sure what would get me more attention.

There were a few times I thought I’d been caught as I snooped from the windows, a group of men shouting for their friend, arguing as they blamed each other for his disappearing. I watched riveted, knowing the man they sought was beginning his long rot behind me.

My current home away from home wasn’t great.

I stayed away from my family as much as I could, as this grew into something more, not wanting to see who I was becoming.

It wasn’t shamefulness that kept me from admitting it; it was that if I told them, or if they suspected, they’d do something to stop me.

So tonight, and for the last week, a dive of a converted motel filled with vagrants and runaways was where I rested my head. It wasn’t great, but it worked for me. They didn’t care about someone coming back all dirty. Most of them were too messed up to realize.

I hummed to myself to keep calm and relaxed, distant, as I strolled down the street, past the bar, now quiet, reminiscing about Joe’s last hour.

Every time, I was desperate to know what they were thinking as that last second of life ticked over - but they were always too scared or in too much pain to give me a coherent answer.

Next time. Because there would have to be a next time.

I didn’t notice as the road got busier. Didn’t notice it was a swarm of police cars coming down both ends of the street, trapping me in.

Definitely didn’t realize they were all falling from their cars, yelling, pointing their guns at me until one of them begged to know why I’d hurt his brother, and my attention snapped.

I think I lost time somewhere. The sun might have even been on the horizon. But the bright beams of the headlights, the torches they all shone at me, dazzled me.

I tried to look at each of the officers, to study their faces, but they were all shouty, in shadow with big lights behind them, pointing way too many guns at one woman.

My hands shook, bile churned in my gut, boiling up my throat. Too many, there were too many to stop, to remember.

“Don’t move!” one of them screamed.

And then there were hands on me.