Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Penny
Icouldn’t be as elaborate as him, didn’t have hours on the internet to research, or the wherewithal to do anything crafty. All he’d done to me… just looked exhausting.
So I knocked him unconscious and wrapped the rope around his arms and legs until even I couldn’t undo it, just a mess of knots and twists that kept him constrained.
My body hurt. As soon as I had him tied up, the remainder of the rope knotted around a pole, I left him there, stumbling away, my mind a foggy chaos, running on fumes.
Every step made my pussy throb and tug with the drying blood and tender wounds.
My muscles screamed from being pulled too hard, and my head pounded.
I needed medicine. Bandages. Fucking morphine and antibiotics. I didn’t really know, having never dealt with this before, never tried to heal myself or anyone else. I knew I needed something. Before my heart gave out, before I bled my veins dry onto the dirty floor.
This wasn’t how I wanted to go. Alone and festering.
Crying with every messy step, I somehow ended up navigating my way back to Adrian’s bathroom, sweat beading across my entire body as the pain made me almost black out. I had to rest against whatever wall was closest until my head stopped swimming, then I could push on.
I rummaged through the cabinets, bottles and packages falling out around me as I shivered and shook — adrenaline rocketing through me and mixing with the endorphin crash.
There. Pain killers. Fucking antiseptic. I climbed into the shower and lifted one leg, screaming deep from my gut as I poured the liquid between my legs. My tooth went through my lip, and my jaw squeaked from the pressure of holding myself up and accountable. It would be so easy to slip away…
“Holy shit,” I cried. “Holy shit.”
Panting, I continued working, running warm water over myself, then patting it dry, rubbing in ointment, and slapping on as many bandages as I could. It was a mess, but my pussy was protected now.
Bruises and cuts everywhere, but they would heal. When I touched it to put the ointment on, it was the right shape, everything where it should be.
Just injured. Broken.
I took a whole pile of painkillers and collapsed onto Adrian’s sex bed, sleep taking me away fast.
At least a full day passed like that, a day and a bit, based on the changing light, where I drifted between the bathroom and the bed, trying to heal, to recalibrate.
I didn’t go and check on Adrian, almost hoping he was dead down there.
At least then this could end on a fizzle, and not the car crash I knew was coming.
I wished I were no longer alive as pain ravaged me and I was all alone. But my life was no longer mine to take; my death didn’t belong to me at this point.
Adrian deserved it, I decided. And I’d let him seize it. But something was stopping me from walking down there, setting him free and handing him a weapon.
So I slept and recovered until eventually my stomach was so empty it screamed, and I went in search of sustenance, hobbling around the space, trying to focus my mind.
Still bandaged up, I threw another of Adrian’s t-shirts over my head and wandered out on bare feet, looking for the kitchen. It was time to take the next step.
With a pile of food in my arms, I padded through the apartment, through the winding halls and back into the theater.
It was still so spooky to me, this building.
All shadows and ornate carvings throwing dark shapes across the walls and lights.
It was too elaborate, too well-planned for the man who seemed built from the same chaos as me.
Why not just shoot me in the forehead in the prison? Why all this?
Adrian was watching me from the stage, right where I left him, when I walked into the theater and down the central aisle. He had one arm free, but was still stuck, trapped like a caged animal. A scowl, a bump on his head, and questioning, resigned eyes.
“You stink,” I told him, climbing the stage steps and sitting cross-legged next to him, placing some of the food on his lap. A bag of chips, some soft apples, and a loaf of bread with no filling or spread.
“You look like shit,” he responded with a grunt, reaching for the bread.
I laughed, shifting about to get a position comfortable for my injuries, hissing when I landed just wrong. “You mutilated me.”
He shrugged, despondent. “Deserved.”
“I think so too,” I admitted, looking down, scooping up one of the almost too ripe apples and taking a bite. It was tart, making me wince.
“I keep hoping you’ll tell me that Jake tried to hurt you, you know. I keep hoping you’ll have reasons for everything you’ve done. I’ve been sitting here, the whole time, just fucking trying.” The words spilled from him, heavy and hard. “It wouldn’t make sense, but even if that’s what you thought…”
I handed him a bottle of water, listening. It was tough to look at him, but I did.
“If, maybe if you were defending yourself, I could stop.” He turned to me, eyes shiny, hard.
“But I can’t stop. I can’t do it, little killer.
This has consumed me for years, since you refused the stand, since I first heard your name.
You’ve eaten me alive, and I can’t take another step without ending you.
I saw you that night, talking to Jake, and since that moment, your death has been mine. ”
Ripped apart, open and bare for him, I nodded. “I know. And he didn’t try to hurt me. I’m sorry.”
“Did any of them? Like you said?” he whispered, the plastic bottle crinkling in his grasp.
My lips pursed, jaw tensed. “I don’t think so,” I admitted, thinking only of those who I was convicted of killing.
There were more, but I wasn’t ready to share that story with him.
Maybe never would be. “That first one that I was… he hurt my sister, he did. He raped her. But the others… they were just men. Men I thought were harmful.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I shushed him, carrying on.
“I spent a lot of those first years in prison seeing dozens of psychologists, trying to get a diagnosis or something — my family insisted on it.” I smiled at the memories of my sister visiting me, insisting I let them speak to me.
She was so good. She understood why I did it, and I think she felt responsible.
“But they never found anything wrong with me. The last one I spoke to said I had a deep hatred of men and saw the worst in them. That it wasn’t repairable without the intense therapy I refused. ”
I looked at Adrian then, finding his eyes defeated, curious. He sucked down some of the water and handed it to me, our fingers grazing. I took a swig too, nodding at him, that sense of doom sinking over me too.
“So you have no excuse?” he asked.
Did I? Was it mental illness or some burned up, crossed wires in my brain that made me this way? I had no idea, not really, and no one else had ever come close to giving me a reason. An excuse.
We were beyond any of that.
“I have no excuse.” I moved, straddling him, keeping my pussy clear of his body. “So I’m going to set you free, and you’re going to kill me. Move on.”
His eyes were hard as I reached for his ropes, before frowning at the mess I’d caused. “Shit,” I said. “How the fuck do I undo these?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out myself,” he huffed.
“I’ll get a knife.” With a grunt, I stood, glancing around for those tools he had. One of them would work. The time had come.
“On the table,” Adrian told me, nodding his head to a table across the stage. I crossed it, picked up the longest looking blade to carry back to him.
It took ages, but I worked him free. When he stood, I sucked in a deep breath, enjoying it for what it was. My last one.
But it didn’t come. I took another.
“Come on,” Adrian said, resigned, defeated. “I can’t kill you right now.”
“Why not?” I asked, my next breath all juddery, surprising.
Adrian cupped my cheek, his fingertips clawing into my skin. I winced, but stayed still, swaying a little. “I’m not ready.”
With a nod, I stepped away from him.
Both of us grunting and groaning, we walked through the theater, stumbled down the steps to the audience seating, and banged our way through the doors, through the halls and up the stairs to his apartment.
“Wait,” I said as we reached the front door. I’d left it open, so he could see the mess I’d made as I left, but he said nothing.
“What is it?” he asked, turning to me. We were so close, leaning on each other now, halfway gone already.
There was just one thing niggling at me. Sticking in my mind from our time in the prison. It was clear to me now he’d planned everything to the letter to get to me, get power over me and steal me away, but just one thing. “Randal. Did you send him to hurt me?”
Adrian exhaled, rough and jaw tensing. He tried to move away from me, but I didn’t let him. I’d probably tumble down the stairs without his semi-sturdiness holding me up.
“Just tell me. We’re beyond it all now, Adrian. Did you send him to die? Or to hurt me? I haven’t figured it out.”
So quiet, he spoke, “I don’t know.” His eyes blazed as they caught mine. “You were rooting under my skin, Karner, and I hated it. Something had to give.”
“You don’t know,” I repeated, letting it sink in.
He nodded. “Something had to give.”
I sighed, beaten. “Fine.” Nothing more to say on the matter. At this point, it was one of the lesser things he’d done to me. It felt like another world, another time, like Randal might never even have existed. Just a proxy for the first bites of pain Adrian gave me.
We didn’t say another word to each other as we moved into the apartment, focused only on each next step.
We showered together, utilitarian in how we washed each other’s skin. Adrian changed the bandages on my pussy, telling me it looked like it was healing well.
Then we fell asleep in his stained bed, under the sheets, curled up together, fast unconscious.