5
Well, fuck.
I haven’t been able to stop swearing all day. Even internally, I’d managed to stop the habit for so long. Now, it feels like I have almost a decade of swearing to make up for.
And I sure feel like swearing, right now.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This is the worst thing he’s done to me yet. The worst!
Forget the public spanking or the public sex. Or the private sticking ax handles and rifle butts up my body. This is the absolute worst thing.
I sag to my knees, my eyes burning with angry tears as I take in the very dead professor at my feet.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all.
My mind is reeling from the realization that the next kill on my list has been taken from me. Professor Alistair Cotton is dead, and I don’t need to look at the note handwritten in blood to know who’s responsible.
See you tonight, baby. Love, Daddy.
Asshole! Fucking asshole!
No matter how strange it felt to kiss him earlier today, I’ve never been more dead-set on killing anyone. Finn Austen took my name from me. He stole it. I can’t forgive him.
My chest heaves as I make my way back to my car.
Fuck, I have a problem. I always knew I did, but Finn’s right—what’s going to happen to me after I’ve reached the end of my purpose?
My body is wracked with pain, I see actual stars…
this isn’t normal. I mean, none of it is normal, but the loss of that name makes me physically ill.
I know I can’t help the killings—I’ve never tried to. But isn’t there any way to stop the mindcrushing pain that cripples me now?
Finn. Finn Austen.
That’s the only way to stop it, I suddenly realize. My chemical hyper-fixation latches itself onto him. Mentally, I add him to my list, in the place of Professor Alistair Cotton.
I’m killing him next. He’s going to die before Mr. Campbell’s wife does. He’s going to die before any of my fourteen remaining victims do. The last one is Mr. Campbell. But Finn is next.
Which means I need to kill him before midnight. Before the four people on my list who will be dying at 12:04 a.m.
I don’t think my body could handle it if I had to switch around the order of my list. Professor Cotton being stolen from me has made me reach my limit.
But the ball starts at 8. That means I have four hours to kill Finn Austen. Four whole hours.
That should be doable… shouldn’t it?
_
When I reach the gymnasium, loud music assaults my ears, the bass making my temples throb.
No, we’re definitely not in the 1950s anymore.
Or the 1770s, my favorite decade for music.
But I’d even take Chuck Berry over this crap.
Damn it, it makes me want to puke. It’s a good thing I never eat before my kills, or I probably would throw up.
I enter the large space. A half-assed attempt has been made to convert it to a ballroom, but you can still see the basketball hoops despite the frilly decorations that cover them.
Clusters of balloons don’t hide the rafters, and there hasn’t even been an attempt to conceal the painted lines on the floor.
Everyone’s wearing masks, and that part is thrilling. I know Finn must be in this sea of faces somewhere, but I have no idea who he could be. I stop by the refreshment table, serving myself a glass of punch but firmly avoiding the food, as I scan the room.
I don’t see any visible face tattoos. But then again, there are a number of full-face masks. Even some hoods. He’s probably one of those.
I feel kind of like an idiot with my sparkly cat mask.
I’m not even half-hidden, am I? Then again, my hair is pulled back into a tight bun, and I’ve colored my hair pink.
Not with any permanent color, just one of those box colors that wash right out.
Still, I wanted to do something different. Something fun.
Finn Austen sure brings out something strange in me.
Between the pink hair and the half-face mask, maybe I am hard to recognize. Or maybe it doesn’t even matter. Finn seems to know just about everything about me anyway.
Which puts me at a disadvantage, I guess, since I never bothered to find out the first thing about him. But that only makes the hunt all the more thrilling.
I go from group to group, milling around and listening in on conversations.
Edging away from the main room, I come to a stop in one of the narrow, darkened hallways when I see four guys surround a skinny girl with curly red hair.
One of them has his dick in his hand, pumping it, while another guy has a cell phone out.
And a third has her pinned to the ground, forcing her on her hands and knees.
“Go on, suck.”
I’m coming up from behind her, and I can’t see her face, but I can tell she’s crying by the way she’s sniffing. And those red curls…
“Piper?”
There’s just no way. And yet, from behind, she looks exactly like the closest thing to a friend I’ve ever had. My idiot lab partner, whom I once tried to help by injecting with Synaptrex. One of the two drugs that my mom developed and that, alone, gives you photographic memory.
Well, I considered it helping, because she was failing science hard. Maybe she wouldn’t have seen it that way, since I wasn’t really planning on asking for her permission. Anyway, it never happened, because she left, and the boy who got the injection instead was Finn.
I can’t even pretend it was an accident. I stared right at him as I pushed the syringe in his neck, and I felt pretty gleeful about it, too.
The sight of the red-haired girl on her knees brings me back to senior year in high school. I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. “Piper?”
The three bullies pause, one of them still with his dick in hand, as she slowly turns around.
No, it’s not Piper.
She looks almost identical to the girl I used to know in high school, except that her eyes aren’t messed up. But I’ve aged five years, and I can only assume Piper has too. This girl doesn’t look older than eighteen.
“What did you call me?” she asks.
“Sorry. You look a lot like…” Well, I guess the only way to describe her is: “my friend.”
“I don’t know any Piper. My name is Billie.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, nice to meet you, Billie.”
Even though she’s wearing a mask, I can still see the look of utter confusion in her green eyes. I guess it is kind of weird to interrupt a bullying session in order to exchange pleasantries with the victim.
“Alright, hon,” says the guy with his dick out. “How about getting the fuck out of here? Unless you want some of this too?”
He gestures to his cock which is, objectively, tiny. Especially compared to Finn’s massive one, the memory of which sends a shiver coursing down my spine.
“Yeah, sure.”
“... Sure?”
“Sure, I’d like a taste of it. Come on over here, sexy.”
His friends snicker while he stares at me, just as confused as the Piper clone—Billie—looked moments before. But then, he waltzes over to me, a smirk painted on his face.
“On your knees, hon. Suck me off.”
I obey smilingly, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my Dior dress. Thank god for those.
The guy with the phone at once loses interest. He seems to have eyes only for Billie, while she looks both relieved to no longer be the center of attention, and more confused than ever.
Tiny Dick Boy stops right in front of me, and I wrinkle my nose when his cock hits my lips.
“Open up, hon.”
“Fine. But do you mind not calling me hon?”
“Oh yeah?” he sniggers. “Whaddaya want me to call you?”
“How about… the girl who’s about to chop your dick off?”
Before the words have time to sink in, I’ve taken out a knife from my pocket, and hacked his cock clean off.
He stares at me, then at it, for a fraction of a second.
And then I hear the highest, most window-shattering scream, leave his parted lips.
Two more screams mingle with it, those of his friends, as they turn disbelieving eyes to the pile of bloody flesh lying on the floor.
While the psychopath-looking guy with the phone arches a brow in mild surprise.
“That was fun,” I say. “Come on.”
I grab Billie’s hand and tug her away from the scene of the crime, running through the halls and not stopping until we’ve left the building by the back door and gone into the forest that borders it.
Then I double over, laughing so hard it makes my stomach ache.
“Damn, that was fun! I haven’t had so much fun since… since…”
Well, I guess since earlier today, when Finn spanked me in front of an entire lecture hall, then made me come outside.
It’s a bit weird to realize it, and I pause. Then I turn and watch Billie as she retches on the forest floor.
“What… the hell… is wrong with you?” she gasps.
“Here.” I toss napkin I took from the refreshment table earlier on. “Clean yourself up, you look disgusting. No offense, of course.”
She looks like she’s far past taking offense. She glares up at me. “You just… chopped… his penis off! Ew!”
“I mean, better off than down your throat, right?”
She removes her mask, wiping at the sweat and tears that inundate her face, and I’m taken aback by how much she looks like Piper.
“Piper also liked to use anatomically correct words,” I observe, crouching at her level.
“I don’t care.” She chokes out a sob. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Don’t you mean… you’re welcome? Pretty sure I just saved you from being violated. And what was that guy planning to do with his phone? Distribute it to the rest of the college? Why are they bullying you anyway?”
“Yeah, sorry…” She sighs, leaning back against a tree trunk, hugging her knees to her chest. “Thanks, I guess. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Cass.” I remove my own mask. “Why are they bullying you?”
“I’m used to it.” She shuts her eyes, wiping away a tear. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.” No, it shouldn’t matter. But it does. I don’t think I’ve lifted a single finger in my life to help anyone other than myself… except, maybe, Daddy. And Piper.
And she looks so much like Piper…
“Tell me,” I insist.
“It’s my brother and his friends.”
“What the hell?” Out of all the things I’d expected, that wasn’t one of them.