Chapter 3 #2
He tries to spit them out, but I hold his jaw closed until he gags on his own depravity.
"Celeste Sterling writes about monsters," I tell him, pulling the pages out so he can breathe. "But you're not a monster. Monsters have purpose. You're just a parasite."
The first cut is shallow, across his chest.
Not enough to kill, just enough to introduce the concept of what's coming.
Roy screams, the sound echoing through the forest.
No one will hear.
We're two miles from the nearest house, and the wind carries sound away from town.
I work carefully, the way my adoptive father taught me to dress deer.
He thought he was teaching me patience, respect for the animal.
He never knew he was teaching me to see the body as a puzzle to be taken apart piece by piece.
The difference is, deer don't deserve what they get.
Roy has earned every second of this.
"Please," he whimpers when I pause to select a different blade. "Please. I haven't touched her. I was just looking."
"Just looking." I test the edge of the skinning knife against my thumb. Perfect. "Is that what you told yourself about the girl in Columbus? The one whose license is in your bag? Were you 'just looking' at her too?"
His eyes widen.
He hadn't expected me to go through his things so thoroughly.
"They were willing," he tries. "They all—"
The knife parts skin and muscle like butter.
Roy's scream turns into a gurgle as I open him up, careful to avoid the major arteries.
Not yet.
He needs to be conscious for this.
Needs to understand that every choice has consequences, and choosing to hunt Celeste was the last choice he got to make.
I hang him from the tree like the hunters do with deer, using the same rope that bound him.
Upside down, blood rushing to his head, keeping him conscious even as his life leaks out onto the platform.
The symbolism isn't lost on me—prey animals strung up for processing, returned to the food chain.
Except no animal will eat what's left of Roy.
Even scavengers have standards.
"You know what she wrote in her first book?
" I ask conversationally as I work. Roy can't answer—shock has stolen his voice—but his eyes track me.
"She wrote that monsters don't choose to be monsters.
They're made. Shaped by trauma, by pain, by the failures of a system that should have protected the innocent. "
I pull out her book, the prison library copy with his notes. "But you chose this, Roy. Every time you hurt someone, you chose. Every photo you took, every woman you followed, every sick fantasy you wrote—all choices."
The deer skull fits perfectly in his chest cavity once I've made enough room.
The ten-point buck I killed three days ago, cleaned and bleached, antlers spreading like a crown from the gore.
I position it carefully, making sure the empty eye sockets face outward.
Anyone who finds this will understand the message: the hunter became the hunted.
But I'm not done with the artistry.
Using Roy's blood, I write across the platform in careful letters.
A quote from Celeste's second book: "The difference between justice and revenge is who tells the story."
Let Sterling puzzle over that.
Let him wonder why the killer knows his daughter's work well enough to quote it from memory.
Roy's intestines unspool like rope, and I weave them through the branches in intricate patterns.
By the time the sun rises, they'll be frozen in place, a grotesque art installation that won't be found for weeks.
The snow that's starting to fall will cover any tracks, any evidence of my presence.
Roy will become another cautionary tale, another reason for people to lock their doors at night.
He's still breathing when I finish, though barely.
His eyes find mine one last time, and I see something that might be understanding.
Or maybe just the random firing of dying synapses.
Either way, his story is over.
I collect what I need—the single photo of Celeste at her window where she looks most like herself, lost in thought, surrounded by her childhood room, but somehow above it all.
The rest of his collection goes into a pile at the base of the tree.
I pour the accelerant from his own camping supplies over it, then light it with his matches.
The photos curl and blacken, Celeste's image consumed by flames over and over until nothing remains but ash.
The smoke will dissipate before anyone notices.
Roy himself won't be found until spring thaw, if then.
The animals will avoid this place—they always know when death is unnatural, when something has been marked by a predator they don't understand.
I climb down carefully, testing each branch despite knowing they'll hold.
Sloppiness is how predators become prey, and I have too much work left to do.
At the base of the tree, I look up one last time.
Roy has stopped moving, his body swaying slightly in the wind like strange fruit.
The deer skull glows white in the moonlight, a beacon of judgment in the darkness.
The walk back to my cabin takes an hour through the forest paths only I know.
By the time I arrive, snow has covered my tracks completely.
Inside, I develop the single photo I kept in my darkroom, watching Celeste's image appear in the chemical bath like a ghost materializing.
She's beautiful in her solitude, unaware of being watched, unaware of being saved.
Tomorrow, I'll leave something for her.
Not a threat or a warning, but a gift.
A single raven feather on her windowsill, black as ink, soft as a whisper.
Something beautiful to counteract the ugliness Roy brought into her orbit.
She won't know what it means yet, won't understand that it's a promise.
Ravens are messengers in the old stories, carriers between worlds.
This feather will be my first real communication with her, though she won't know it.
She'll probably think it blew there naturally, or perhaps wonder at its placement.
But some part of her, the part that writes about darkness and destiny, will recognize it as significant.
But she will understand, eventually.
I sit at my desk and open my own journal, the one where I document everything.
Every kill, every reason, every moment that leads to these necessities.
Tonight's entry is longer than usual, detailed with Roy's crimes and his punishment.
Someday, when Celeste is ready, she'll read these.
She'll understand that every death was for her, a clearing of the path between us.