29 Mike
It is the middle of the night, and I pull myself out from under Nate’s sleeping body, careful not to make a sound, as both my boyfriend and my brother are sleeping like the dead in our living room.
Liam is curled up in the armchair, and from the look of it, I know he must be really uncomfortable. But he doesn’t seem to have the energy to wake up, let alone to go up to his room, and I need him to stay asleep. I need to do what I am about to without any of them getting in the way.
I walk into my room to retrieve my knife.
And this time, it is the same knife I used to have since we lived with Liam’s family.
It’s the one Nathan bought for me back when he first figured out what was going on in my life.
It was when we first met, and in a way, it makes me feel like this is appropriate.
Sentimental, even. I don’t bother closing the door behind me; instead, I move quickly toward the basement, passing the living room again and checking quickly if the guys are still sleeping.
They haven’t even moved. Good. I need to do this fast because I am not risking a fight with my brother over a dead woman who should have stayed dead.
I open the basement door slowly when I reach it, making sure no sound will come from the old door.
I move slowly down the stairs, not bothering to close this door either.
Besides, this time I need it to give me the advantage in case one of the guys wakes up and decides to come looking.
When I reach the basement’s wooden floor, I walk toward the couch where Mary is sleeping.
Even though the basement door stayed locked the first few days, we haven’t really locked it since, and the woman never even tried to escape.
She has been moving a little down here, but mostly stays in the same spot on the couch.
She has refused food, but accepted water and used the bathroom a few times.
Other than that, she stayed in the same spot, waiting for her misery to end, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.
I take a few steps, and she stirs in her sleep as I kneel behind her. Her head is placed right on the edge of the couch, and as I kneel, it brings me directly to the same height. I bring my knife to her throat. It takes only a second before she jolts awake and a gasp leaves her lips.
“I am sorry, Mother, but it will benefit no one if you live. You know too much, you did too much,” I whisper before I slit her throat.
I rise, watching her from above, choking on her own blood. She is completely awake now; her eyes are wide, and blood is spilling from her throat and mouth. She is gagging and gasping for air as I watch the spark of life leave her eyes. And moments later, she’s gone.
A sense of calmness fills me, and my demons are finally satisfied.
I carry her lifeless body up the stairs, out the back door into our backyard, placing it on the ground.
I take the shovel from the shed and start digging.
Liam will freak his mind if he realizes I buried her here, but I don’t care.
Those fucking rules are useless. They are not the reason we haven’t been caught.
It’s the fact that the police are useless and haven’t figured it out yet.
The ground is moist from all the rain and easy for me to dig in; it doesn’t take me long to have a deep enough hole for her.
I push her body in without one ounce of remorse and start covering her up.
When I am finished, I spit on the ground.
“Rot in hell, Mother,” I say the words over her grave, and it feels almost good.
I know I should feel something other than hate and anger.
I have really tried. For a few moments earlier tonight, I even wanted to spare her life for my brother.
He deserved at least one mother spared, but I couldn’t.
I know this pains him. All this death around us is breaking pieces of him one by one.
I am starting to feel like he is a ghost. He is not talking much, barely eats, and disappears for hours at a time.
He has always been a loner, and that hasn’t been much of a concern until now.
Because now it’s different. It feels as if I am losing him, or maybe this time I finally see the reality.
You can’t blame me for worrying; the guy learned that his biological mother let him be raised by a monster and did nothing.
He didn’t even react. It is like the information barely touched him.
This is not like Liam. He feels everything.
He doesn’t ignore his emotions. Yet he seems like a ghost of the man I grew up with.
I know I didn’t handle it too well myself, but this reaction is expected of me.
Like my track record of kills has shown, I tend to overreact and get a little too bloodthirsty.
Liam, though, bottles things up, but he never shuts us completely out—especially when the subject is family.
He has never even once kept his feelings hidden when it was something so close to him.
He can distance himself from the women we kill, but he can’t distance himself when it’s about things we have experienced.
And it seems a little unusual that he acts as if everything we learned the past few days wasn’t anything important.
I walk into the house, and it is like I summoned the guy with my thoughts, because he is standing in the small kitchen with his arms crossed, leaning on the wall right behind the door. He looks at me, and I give him a smirk.
“Mommy dearest is dead,” I announce.
He starts following me as I walk to my room, leaving traces of mud on the carpet.
“I said I would support you! You couldn’t wait to do it with me? Or let me do it instead?” He says, keeping his voice right above a whisper because he is not a fool. This conversation doesn’t need to reach Nate’s ears.
“All this blood on your hands, Mike. You could share the pain for once!” He is angry. Liam is pissed. And that’s a new side of him. He never gets pissed. Not really. He gets angry, but it passes in an instant usually. I have never seen him as furious as he is now.
“Liam, you couldn’t handle it, and you know it.
You haven’t even killed a woman in all the years of hunting them,” I respond, and his eyes fall to the ground.
“We have been hunting women since college; not once have you put your knife even close to them. You live for the hunts, you are more than happy to get rid of the evidence, and that makes you part of the team as much as any of us, but you don’t kill! ”
He looks like I pulled the rug out from under his feet. “Maybe you are right. I wanted to be there for you at least,” he admits.
“I love you for that. You know I do,” I tell him in return and push him slightly to step out of my room, closing the door behind me. “Goodnight, brother,” I whisper against the door.
I walk to the bathroom and remove my clothes.
As I do, I search in the cabinet under my sink for a plastic bag; Liam stashes them in every bathroom when we move in.
I open the black trash bag and toss the clothes inside.
They are ruined for good. Bummer, too—this t-shirt was one of my favorites.
I usually avoid getting my clothes bloody, but sometimes you can’t avoid it.
And when it’s combined with mud, things get even worse.
You can never clean them successfully. Liam has always tossed his clothes after burying a body.
I remove the “L” pendant I wear around my neck, setting it on the counter.
The silver letter shines under the dim light of the bathroom.
Nathan bought it for me a few years ago to remind me of my sister.
And tonight, it seemed appropriate to have her with me more than ever.
Even if I rarely take it off, lately I hadn’t been wearing it.
Tonight was the first night after weeks of feeling so detached from her memory that I finally could embrace it back into my life.
I lean into the shower and turn it on. I clean my face at the sink, removing bloodstains with a towel, and throw it in the bag with my clothes before I step into the shower.
I stand under the hot stream. The water washes the blood off my hair, and I make sure to clean it well, washing it twice.
Maybe I should dye it red; that would hide bloodstains more easily.
I chuckle at the thought. I would look ridiculous as a redhead, and I am pretty sure my boyfriend would break up with me.
The water has turned cold, and I turn it off. Stepping out of the shower, I wrap a towel around myself and walk to my bed. I don’t bother to get dressed; I haven’t slept with clothes on since I was living at Nate’s house, and he would sneak into my room at night, or I would sneak into his.
I get under the covers, allowing myself to sink into the mattress. This bed is surprisingly comfortable. I close my eyes. The rhythmic sound of my breathing carries me to sleep as the night continues existing without me.