Chapter 37
Thirty-Six
Adrian
Iknew Penelope was still in there, thinking and planning and plotting, drifting away to that place she must go to when her actions were no longer justifiable. But her body was still. Waiting. Patient.
Pliable.
I moved her arms to her sides, uncurling each of her fingers until her palms were flat. Then I ran my hands down her legs, making sure they matched up, dead straight, toes pointed up.
Shoulders pushed back, soft tits falling into her armpits, nipples pointed up.
Her chin, I tipped, revealing her glorious throat in its entirety.
There were beautiful bruises, purple and blue, marring most of her skin.
Wounds, healed and unhealed, slices and slashes I’d caused, she’d caused, decorated her skin in a beautiful tapestry of pain.
Everything she deserved, everything I promised to give her.
I closed her eyes for now, so they didn’t dry out before I was ready.
Then I reached for my tools.
The first part of her I worked on was her hands. Her fingers bent and flexed independently of one another, and in all the puppets I’d seen, that didn’t happen. So, I needed to fix it.
I took the first long, thin needle from the tray beside me and pushed the sharp tip under her fingernail.
Her body resisted as it drove all the way to her knuckle, nicking the bone.
I had to reposition it, wiggling the needle point until cartilage gave way.
I kept shoving the needle until it reached her knuckle, and her finger was pin straight.
On the second, the needle went all the way through, sticking out just under the pad of her middle finger, an ooze of dark blood tinting the metal.
“Fuck,” I grunted to myself, yanking the needle back out and trying again. It was tricky, but so fucking worth it to see her lose even more of her autonomy.
It took me almost an hour to do all ten fingers.
But it looked great, even with sweat on my brow from how much fucking effort it turned out to be. Her fingers, splayed out, unbending.
Satisfaction warmed my gut, and I carried on with the task at hand. Through all of it, Penny said nothing, did nothing. Unflinching closed eyes and a down-turned mouth with nothing to say.
It was almost too quiet.
With the small knife, the blade barely an inch long, I began to work, copying the joins on the marionettes hanging around the workshop, carving shallow lines along all her joints in jagged swipes. It was harder than I thought it would be, digging my blade around her elbows, her knees, her wrists.
Blood streamed from the wounds as I worked, slicing around her ankle bones, her hips, all rough, curved lines.
I almost missed her snarking, the way her breathing picked up and her eyes burned with anger, the sniping and teasing and pulling and pushing. Sighing, I looked at her face for a few moments.
Too calm. Too still. It itched under my skin, so incorrect.
I ripped into the carving around her elbow, the one on her arm littered with half-healed pockmarks, separating the skin until it gaped and blood seeped.
Nothing.
My nostrils flared.
But I carried on, carving the lines of a puppet into her flesh.
I’d let them heal over, rip into them again and again so they scarred. Maybe even find a tattoo gun and dig ink into them to make them vibrant, bright, there forever so she would never forget. It wasn’t her death I wanted to claim, not at all. It was her life. Her life under me. Forever.
The hardest lines to carve were on her face. The two running from the edge of her lips to her jaw snagged and caught, so I had to pull the skin taut to get the line smooth. These were the most important ones. They had to look good. Believable.
But I went too deep, slicing all the way through her cheek, leaving her chin hanging half off her jaw, teeth and gums exposed.
“Oh fuck,” I hissed, pushing the skin as it if might just stitch back together. “Shit.” It looked garish, barbaric, ugly. For a few moments, I floundered, trying to figure out what to do. How to fix it.
Steadying myself, I stared down at what was becoming my masterpiece. Despite the slash down her jaw, she was fucking beautiful. Disgusting and diseased, but beautiful. I sliced the other side, the knife slipping through her flesh with no resistance.
For a second, nothing happened, then her chin flopped forward, her bottom lip going with it, inverting and exposing more of her mouth, milky teeth, almost too sharp, and pale gums.
“You look fucking hideous,” I told her. She said nothing. “Penelope.” Nothing.
Sighing, I pushed the skin flap back up and used one of the thin needles and some clothing thread to stitch the area back together. The lines there were jagged now, prominent and ugly.
But the effect was the same.
I was taking away her voice. Her say. Never again would she be able to tease or chide. I missed it now, but I knew with time it had to be gone. Her ability to speak, it had to be gone. She was a puppet now, a tool to use for enjoyment only. If she had her voice, she had a say.
My head throbbed with pain and anger, my sight wavering, the tool in my hand digging into my palm. Carry on.
When I pried her eyelids back open, it was the first time I hesitated for real. And instead of slicing her eyelids off, as I planned, I pinned them so they couldn’t close.
It was garish, but I could tell she was awake just from the way her eyes blazed. The thick pins made her look ridiculous; her eyelids stretched to a point in the middle, angry and red, turning purple, ripping.
The sedative didn’t remove pain, only the ability to move. I winked at her and kept working, wiping the blood as it formed, moving across her body to carve and create.
I knew she’d be urging me to do it, to end this now. To do what I needed to do.
Penelope Karner never cared for her life. Every action and reaction, it was always from a place of uncaring. Even inside the prison, when I watched her pick fights or cause chaos because she was bored. Over and over, she tested the boundaries of fate and tried to die.
It was the ultimate thing she wanted. The thing she most craved, even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself. I didn’t know if she did, if when she begged for it, she meant it, or if she thought she was playing me.
And that’s what stopped me. Time and time again.
She wanted someone to take her life from her, to take the decision away from her. If I did, was she winning?
I paused, the short blade at her throat again, reminding myself of what she did to Jake, of how little remorse she had for it. He died with her face the last he saw. He died because she was bored and bitter.
My baby brother died because she overheard him talking about me, about my role in her near capture. Because he was bragging about his big brother, and she was listening.
Anger boiled in my gut again, always volatile, always right there, ready to burst out and react. Seconds flickered over, going from rage and hatred, to regret and disgust.
Do it, Adrian. Do it… She’d be urging me, demanding of me, teasing me with my indecision.
I climbed on top of her, pushed her floppy legs to the side and yanked my cock from my pants, hard and angry for her.
When I drove into her soft pussy, it was wet, clenching around me.
Even through the sedative, she’d be enjoying this.
She was so fucked up she could never resist it.
Resist me. There was no give, my cock chafing as I pumped into her.
I yanked my cock out and scooped some of her seeping blood onto it, jacking the shaft until it was all coated.
Blood was sticky, too thick, but I shoved back in, groaning at how rough it felt.
I rubbed her clit, fucked her until her body shifted up the table. Her hands would be moving if they could, clawing at my skin, urging me to go faster, harder, to destroy her, injure her, kill her.
“Fuck, you feel so good, little killer,” I said through thrusts of my hips, ignoring the way my knees ached, the way my hands were digging into her shoulders to the point where my fingertips were clawing at bone. Blood streamed from her wounds, pooling on her stomach, under her back. I kept going.
She would be moaning, loving this, meeting me thrust for thrust.
I fucked her until everything grew too much, then I filled her pussy with my cum, letting it shoot deep into her, against her cervix, coating her walls with my life. She would flutter around me, no doubt coming herself though she couldn’t move, couldn’t react.
If I looked in her eyes, I could see a fraction of the tension behind them, bliss rocketing through her even now.
She wanted this too, loved this too. My headache abated with the pleasure overwhelming.
And when I crawled down the table and swung her body around so she was horizontal across it, her head and shoulders hanging over the edge, I knew she’d be spreading her legs wider for my shoulders to fit between.
I lapped at her body, sucked the blood off her skin, between her elbows, along her wrists, down her chin. My tongue dragged all over her, tasting iron and sweat and cum, so delicious, depraved. I lapped and licked, then I latched onto her pussy.
She was cold, her skin pebbled from the chill in the air, but I sucked her clit and drove my tongue inside her, eating all my cum back out of her until no more came.
Standing, I grabbed her chin, squeezed her jaw until her lips popped open, and spat my cum onto her tongue. A familiar dance now. She would be groaning, licking her lips, if she could move. Begging for more, teasing me and pushing me.
Instead, I had to work her jaw, massage just under her chin, to get her to swallow it all down. Most dribbled out the side of her bloody lip, so I leaned down to lick it up, feeding it back into her mouth with rough, cold kisses. I didn’t stop until every drop was pooled in her throat.
Gentler than she deserved, I closed her jaw and studied her. Her eyes blazed, I think, but her face was so still.
So damn still.
Everything we’d done, all of it, I remained unsatisfied. I didn’t know if I ever would be. It hurt, the idea that this would never end, that Penny was rooted under my skin in a way that would never change. She was evil, but her evil had infested me, made me rot, turned me into a monster like her.
She was a sickness, a virus, disgusting, impure, vicious and festering. My heart squeezed; my head throbbed. No. She’d transformed me into a person worse than her. She’d won.
My knees slammed to the floor as grief and pain rocketed through me, the images of all I’d done to her, to myself and to others, flashing through my mind like a horror film, like a nightmare digging claws into my skull. Fuck, no.
I hammered the heel of my palm into my head, over and over, trying to force it all away.
I wasn’t evil. This wasn’t me. She did this; she turned me into this monster. A sob racked from me. Jake would be so ashamed.
He would be so ashamed. My brother, mother, sister, even my dad, who was long since gone from this world. They would all despair. Phoebe, my partner who was probably gaining on us by the second, she wouldn’t be ashamed; she’d be furious. Disgusted.
That’s what I was.
A disgrace.
But that was all that remained for me now. Disgrace.