61. Chapter 60
Chapter 60
Maeve Henderson
I hear the jingle of keys and feel Leon patting my back. It all startles me out of my sleep, and I jolt up, the soreness all over my body hitting me like a truck.
How long was I even asleep?
Okay, better question: why don't I feel any more rested?
I could sleep 20 more hours if he'd let me, although I think that's considered a coma.
My pussy throbs, my butt stings, my nipples are still tender from today, and my whole body feels worn and sore in an incredible yet terrible way.
“I’ll be at the door.” Leon says quietly.
He kisses me on the temple and hops up, walking out of view of the front door.
Sean, Carlie, and Shelby come stumbling into the apartment a few minutes later.
They’re giggling and talking loudly about the fun they had at the bar they’d gone to.
So Shelby is my replacement roommate.
I hope she’s safe.
I hope Carlie and Sean haven’t touched her.
We may have had a falling out, but that doesn’t mean I want her to get hurt.
“Okay, Colby was such an easy target.” Sean says with a loud laugh.
I hurry and duck behind the couch to hear what they’re talking about. I need to know.
Shelby laughs next, and I hear her stumbling further into the apartment. “I know, right? I didn’t even have to spike his drink to get him into bed.” She bragged.
What the heck?
Is Shelby in on whatever they’re doing?
They’re raping people. That’s sick!
Carlie laughs next, and I have to crawl around the couch so they don’t see me as they make their way into the kitchen. “Yeah, but Sean would’ve never gotten a turn if we hadn’t spiked his drink. Sucks that it made his dick limp after about an hour, though.” She says.
Oh my god.
They're all in on it…
How did I not see this?
How did I live with Carlie and Sean for years and never notice what they've done and how they are?
I feel the weight of every one of their victims on my back; I feel their pain and their torment; I hear their voices shouting in my head about how I'd let them down, how I'd abandoned them by not seeing this sooner.
I have to shake the thoughts away and tell myself that this isn't my fault.
I didn't do this to those people.
I didn't rape Abby or any of the others that I may never know about, but the voices in my head tell me that silence is complacency, and I was silent for years.
The voices are telling me that allowing these three to live is saying that I'm okay with what they've done.
I'm not, but Sean is my only target.
Sean is the attacker, right?
I need answers before the voices start screaming and everything else is drowned out in a mess of noise that I can't escape.
Why do I feel like this? It's haunting.
Okay, showtime.
I stand up and clear my throat, smacking a metal baseball bat in my hand that Leon had grabbed for me.
I feel powerful with this, but I don't feel like me.
“What the fuck?” Sean says when he sees me.
It's sad and funny that they don't look or act nearly as drunk as they did a few seconds ago.
Is this all a part of their act?
Is this a routine that they've practiced and perfected?
I wonder if they’ve always faked it just to take advantage of people. I wonder if they had ever planned to take advantage of me…
‘Sit.” I say sternly to the three.
Shelby barks out a laugh and wraps her arm around Carlie’s shoulders. “You sit.” She demands.
The voices in my head get louder, shouting, “kill,” until I can't focus on anything else, and I have to shake the noise away to get a moment of peace.
“That doesn't work on me anymore.” I say with a chuckle.
I swing the bat and knock everything on the coffee table onto the floor, grinning at the mess of broken glass now littering the cheap carpet that I'd just had my brains screwed out on.
“Now.” I add in. I swing the bat again, laughing happily when it collides with the TV, and the screen caves in.
Carlie jumps as if she’s afraid, but Sean moves to lunge at me.
Leon comes around the corner so quickly that I jump, but his anger isn't directed toward me. No, his gun and his fury are pointed at Sean. “Sit the fuck down!” He shouts at him.
It used to scare me when he had that cold, murderous look on his face, but right now, I’m nothing but turned on.
He spares me a glance and winks at me before focusing on the three again.
As I stare at these three, not even recognizing them and having no respect for them, the voices grow, screaming in my ears until all I can do to shut them up is swing.
I smash half of the kitchen to pieces, littering glass, plastic, and electronics all over the floor and counters until it's quiet in my head again, and I can focus on the jerks staring up at me in fear.
I've never known this feeling before; I've never been feared, but I like it.
“Tell me about Abby.” I say, dancing past them and smashing a hole in the living room wall.
Leon sits on the TV stand after pushing the shattered pieces of the TV on the floor, keeping his gun in his lap and his eyes on the three while he lets me handle everything.
“Maeve, this isn’t you. You’re being crazy.” Shelby says calmly.
I smirk and come up behind her, pressing my face against hers until her thick vanilla smell fills my nostrils. “Oh, this is me. What were you hoping for? Were you hoping I was still weak and pathetic? That you could boss me around, and as long as you gave me some shrivel of attention, I'd eat it up like a starved stray dog? It doesn't work like that anymore. You threw me out like trash after sleeping with me; now your words mean nothing.” I say in her ear.
I blush when Leon raises an eyebrow at me. I guess I just admitted that to him for the first time; it wasn’t like I was hiding it, but I don’t ask him about all the women he’s slept with.
I don’t think I’d ever want to know about all the beautiful women who throw themselves at him every day.
“Such a shame that you turned out to be a piece of shit, Shelby. I would’ve loved to watch my girl fuck you senseless.” He says with a smirk.
Shelby, however, has a scowl on her face. “Who the fuck is this? Maeve, who is this man?” She asks.
I "tsk" her, tapping the side of her face with my bat, and smirk when she jumps and tries to lean away from my bat. “That is my fiance and baby daddy. I don't know, it's confusing, but that’s not important right now. Tell me about Abby Marino.” I remind them.
Carlie chimes in, laughing sickeningly. “Nobody wants you, Maeve.” She says.
I laugh and sit up to move over to Carlie on the couch, gripping her hair so tightly that she winces when I yank her head back until I can stare down at her. “Answer the fucking question.” I say sternly.
I don’t think I’ve ever cussed in my life before; that felt so wrong coming out of my mouth, but it also felt so right.
What else would I have said in such a serious situation?
Leon clears his throat, making us look at him on the TV stand. He waves his gun around with a frightening smirk on his face. “I suggest you answer, my patience is wearing thin, and I'm already desperate to fuck my girl again. Maybe if you're really good, I'll let you watch before you die, but you have to behave yourselves.” He taunts.
I don’t know why I expected Sean not to be the first to speak, but I’m happy to be wrong. “What about her? We all hooked up at a party, and she freaked out the next day.” He lies.
I smack him in the back of the head, gripping his hair and forcing his head back until he’s looking up at me. “Try again. You and four idiots drugged her.” I say to him.
He laughs!
This jerk laughs at me.
“She must not have noticed Carlie and Shelby there.” He brags.
“What?” I ask.
I don't know why I'm surprised after finding out what they just did to someone named Colby, but I didn't expect this.
Shelby barks out a laugh, laying her head back on the back of the couch to stare up at me. “Sometimes we have to give them a little something to move things along. If they only want Sean, it's not fair for us to miss out.” She answers like it's the most obvious solution in the world just to rape people that don't want you.
I want to contain myself, stay poised, and listen to their story, but the voices don't care.
The voices in my head are screaming at me, shouting that I'm complacent if I let them live, that I'm no better than a rapist if I don't do something.
They're screaming so loud that I don't hear anything but ringing in my ears, and my vision feels cloudy until all I can see is red.
“Shut up!” I scream at the voices as I swing the bat and hear the unmistakable crunch of bones when it makes contact with Carlie’s skull.
I don’t know if she’s still awake or alive, but I keep swinging. I swing and swing, screaming as I do so until everything is silent and Carlie is lying slumped over Shelby’s corpse.
I don’t even remember hitting Shelby, but chunks of her skull and brain litter my shirt, the floor, Carlie’s corpse, and all over Sean.
I hear quiet grunting and Sean screaming, but at least I can hear again.
At least the voices have shut up for a moment.
Leon comes up and punches Sean in the face to quiet his screams, and I feel his hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly while also taking the bat from me, but I tighten my hand around the bat.
I can’t even say anything.
I can't even fathom what I've done or if I even care…
Shelby’s head is in pieces, with her brain, blood, teeth, and hair covering the couch and the floor, as well as my outfit.
Carlie’s head is still intact, but I can see her skull caved in at the back of her head; I can see pieces of brain between the pieces of skull, still pulsing.
I wonder if that means she’s alive.
My hand shakes as I reach for Carlie to check for a pulse, but Leon stops me by gently grabbing my wrist. “How about you take Sean to the car?” He says calmly to me.
I nod, letting Leon take the bat from me as he hands me the gun.
I don’t think I want to know if Carlie is still alive, but I have the feeling that if she is, she won’t be for long.
Leon will handle that.
So, I switch my focus to Sean. “Get up, Sean. We’re going to the car.” I say sternly.
He laughs at me, rolling his eyes and shaking his head like I’m not the one with a gun pointed at him.
“Fuck you, Maeve. I was nice to you! You’re a fucking psychopath! I should have never let Carlie move you in here!” He shouts.
I open my mouth to respond, but I’m met with blood splashing on my face and the taste of copper sitting on my tongue.
A moment later, I see Sean drop to the ground and Leon standing behind him with the bat in his hands and a crazed look in his eyes.
Blood pools on the floor, soaking the carpet and slowly making its way toward me. “Step back, ma fleur.” Leon says calmly to me.
I can’t believe I just possibly killed two people, but mostly, I’m surprised that I don’t feel upset.
I startle when I feel his hand squeeze my shoulder, and my attention is forced back onto him, but at least it's quiet in my mind when I turn and smile at him.
“Go upstairs and get undressed; I will be there in a minute.” He says calmly.
I nod, feeling like I'm on autopilot as I walk upstairs and into what used to be my bathroom and strip myself naked.
It doesn't feel like I'm in control of my body; I feel like a passenger in my own body and life.
Leon comes upstairs and showers me, carefully washing every inch of me. He cleans the welts on my body and scrubs the dried blood from my skin, but all I can focus on is the rusty-colored water circling the drain until all that is left is suds.
It leaves a faint brown stain on the side of the tub, and I find myself focusing on it despite Leon carefully and lovingly touching me.
Why can't I focus?
Why can't I enjoy how his hands feel or how soft his touches are?
Why can my mind only focus on the blood running down the tub and disappearing?
Even when he pulls me out of the shower and dries my skin, my mind pictures the blood running down the drain, and it makes me wonder why that's what's stuck in my head and not the look of Carlie and Shelby's exposed brain or Sean's blood almost touching my feet.
Why is it the bloody water that matters?
“Put this on, ma fleur.” I hear. It finally snaps me out of my haze, and I look up at Leon to see that he's already wearing what looks like Sean's clothes and holding an outfit that I can only assume is Carlie's.
I toss on the scratchy shorts and the thin t-shirt that he'd grabbed for me and follow him downstairs. It's surreal to stand here and see the wreckage.
It's broken pieces and fragments of what used to be my life, destroyed in a way that can never be repaired.
Can I ever be repaired?
Is this living room a representation of my life? Destined to be changed forever…
As wrong as the scene around me feels, something feels so cathartic about what happened tonight.
Even as Leon scrambles around this bloody mess, I feel a sense of calm overwhelm me, but why is he packing?
What is he doing?
He's filling a laundry basket with clothes, another with appliances, and another with food and toiletries.
“These aren't my things.” I mumble, but I'm unsure if what I said was loud enough for him to hear.
He takes everything to the front door and grabs my hand, pulling me to the door with him and sitting me on the porch steps. “Sit and stay here, okay?” He asks calmly.
“That's not my stuff…” I repeat, not even sure why I'm telling him, but it's the only thing I can think to say.
Well, not the only thing; he was right that I have the same darkness as him.
Maybe he was right that all of my broken pieces could fit into his, and we could be whole together, but how could that be?
How can I bring a baby into a world where we kill people?