Chapter 10 Cooper #2
My hands, trained for sutures and compressions, become instruments of brutal reversal.
I pull the metal wire taut. It sinks into the soft collagen of his throat, meeting a resistance that is intimately human.
A wet, gurgled choke escapes him, the sound of a drowning man trying to refuse his destiny.
I watch his neck squirm back and forth, as saliva and blood froth down the edges of his throat.
Panic gives him a burst of stupid strength. He tries to grab the metal wire again, the instrument biting tighter into his skin. His nails, dirty and blunt, claws at my hands, raking over my knuckles. They scrape like mini jolts of fire. The pain is a wakeup call, shocking me out of my hesitation.
This is real. This is happening. Fucking commit, Cooper. Don't be a pussy.
Adrenaline surges through my brain, burning away the last shreds of theoretical morality.
I can feel my teeth tighten so hard they might crush each other.
I lean my whole weight into it, pulling the wire against his flesh until I feel the vertebrae of his spine.
I am eliminating a predator. A deviant that doesn't deserve the oxygen of this world.
I pull harder, with every ounce of my strength, so that this bastard will not mutter another word ever again.
He deserves hell. All seven layers of it.
A strange, chilly clarity washes over me. The struggle in my hands, the gurgles of his throat—are no longer. I sliced my first tumor. I am part of the cure.
My body doesn't tremble with shock; instead, I feel a nauseating, righteous power. It's a dark, energizing current that whispers of a terrible truth: I have never felt more horrifically alive.
I glance down to the woman who is lying on the wooden floor. The slow, steady rise and fall of her back is a stark counterpoint to the absolute stillness I created in my hands. A life ended, a life preserved. The math of it is brutally simple.
“Good job Cooper,” Reed praises as the life drains from the bastard’s limbs. “You can drop him now.”
The command breaks my trance. My fingers uncurl, and the wire slacks. The man's heavy weight collapses to the deck with a final, dull thud, the boat bobbing in response.
I feel… monumental. A new tower from which I can see the world. Powerful. Monstrous. Alive. I took this man’s life. I stole his last breath and showed him that the reaper doesn't always wear a hood—sometimes, he wears a ski mask and has the hands of a healer.
Reed is crouched down next to the woman, checking her pulse and covering her body with a jacket. “She’s breathing, we need to keep her warm.”
“You okay?” he asks without looking up.
“Yeah… I feel fantastic,” I stutter, while pride and revulsion flood through me.
He slides a hand to my shoulder. “You did what you had to. Now we have to keep this woman alive tonight. No telling what he drugged her with.”
I pick her up to carry her inside the cabin to protect her from the elements and crank up the heat. As I set her down on a long bench, I pull an emergency shock blanket to preserve her warmth. Her head twitches, while her eyes stay closed.
“So what do we do with his body?” I ask, as Reed steps into the cabin.
“What do you want to with it?”
“Maybe dump him to the bottom of this lake?”
“No, no, no… that would be too kind,” he snickers. “Usually I like to keep them alive a bit longer to torture some information out of them but considering the training I didn’t want to interrupt your virgin kill.”
“Well thank you, I appreciate that.”
“So, I’ll leave the question up to you, my little mouse—my serial killer apprentice. What should we do with the body? Should we dump in the lake and be smart about it? Or smear every ounce of his insides across this vessel to send a message?”
“Uhhh…,” I stutter, not particularly enthused about option number two.
“Alright I’ll start with gutting him. Here’s the other scalpel, start slicing off his neck. We’ll leave it as a nice surprise for the police.”
I grip the scalpel, slicing the blade against his girthy throat. Back and forth, as the lukewarm blood begins to leak to the floor, covering my feet in crimson. I fight the urge to vomit the oatmeal bar from three hours ago. I shouldn’t have eaten.
Not in front of him. Show him how strong you are. Prove his family wrong. That he didn’t make a mistake by bringing you to Wolfston.
While I continue my challenge of Hulk’s throat vs. smallest scalpel ever manufactured, Reed slices all four quadrants of his abdomen open, pulling out the steaming intestines, oozing in fluids.
“Smells like shit. How fitting for this asshole,” he says with a devious grin, smearing the slick entrails against the inside walls.
“Who exactly are we sending a message to?” I ask, biting down the bile.
“To all the abusers, pimps, and predators in this country. Make them understand what will happen to them when it’s their turn. It needs to be a murder of passion to make it go viral,” he says, as if we are actually going to roll out our podcast.
“Okay… do you really need to redecorate with him to get your point across?” I snap as the head splits from the torso.
He tilts his head, blood streaking down his cheek. “It has to be theatrical. Nothing screams murder porn like each organ sliced to bits to make the autopsy indeterminate.”
Reed rips out the gallbladder, a pocket of bile bursting across the flayed stomach. The smell is atrocious, sour and putrid as it penetrates the moist air.
I can’t do this anymore, my stomach’s bursting, I rush to the edge of the boat, hurling into the water. Vomit—an incredibly disgusting mix of acid-soaked raisins and oats stream down the white hull.
I turn around to see Reed staring at me with a killer smile. “Squeamish, huh? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
I wipe my mouth with my sleeve, shaking my head slightly. “I don’t think so…”
“I bet you would have said the same thing before you strangled your first kill.”
“Yeah well that didn’t smell like a septic tank on fire.”
“Give it time, you’ll find your technique. That’s why they call me the Gutter. It’s a terrible way to go. Bleeding out while your intestines pop out, but sometimes I prefer to let the stomach plop so it can be a little bit more intimate.”
I furrow my brows. “Wait you are the Gutter!? You are the one that terrorized New Jersey and New York City for almost a decade?”
I’ve seen that documentary—dozens of sleazy criminals left torn open to be picked apart by the seagulls while their arms are bound, their mouths gagged.
There was never any leads. Not a single shred of evidence to find out who the killer was.
The biggest cold-case of the twenty-first century.
And now here I am, on a boat with a ruthless serial killer that could slice me open before words escape my mouth.
My cock jolts at the thought. Fascinated at the thought of being at his mercy, while my heart races with adrenaline.
Holy fucking shit.
Please string me up. Please dismember me. Please Dr. Reed. Do whatever your psycho heart desires—I won’t say no.
“Yours truly,” he murmurs, a dark fire burning in his eyes.
“I had no idea…,” I stutter.
“Does that make you want to run? Run faraway to hide in the forest?” he asks, as the dim light of the moon relishes on his face.
“A little,” I say, my eyes glued to his midnight pupils.
“What makes you hesitate?” he asks, stepping closer to me, scalpel in his immaculate fingers, his forearm veins bulging like streams molten mercury. His scent drips of pine, earth, and sweat as his fingers trace my jaw. The blade ghosts my neck as the warm exhale of his lungs fills me with jitters.
My head swoons in a dizzying reverie.
He could be my killer.
My harbinger of rapture.
My lover.
How about both?
I can’t look away from his presence. I’m shocked and obsessed all at once. Waves rip against the boat, like the tides of a storm preparing to unleash chaos.
I want the chaos. The mess. The filth under my nails.
“I can’t look away. Nothing would change what I feel for you.
I want it all. The blood. The gore. The guts.
I want you to teach me your ways. And to love me while you do it.
Teach me what it means to be predator and prey.
Let me feel both sides of instinct,” I say, the strings of my heart pounding at the truth spilling from my lips.
His breath radiates to my ear, his words a phantom presence malingering in my brain. “Curiosity is a dangerous appetite.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I’m ravenous.”
His eyes study me for a long minute, split between hunger and deliberation.
He takes a step back, as graceful as a black swan, sliding the scalpel back into his pocket.
“Excellent. Good job tonight, Cooper. You performed well. I was worried I was going to have to toss you overboard. You have much to learn. And I have much to teach you.” His grin is soft and feral.
I lean forward to him for a kiss. His lips embrace mine in euphoric bliss. The electricity drives through my core, sparking my spine in a dazzling fusion of lust and fulfillment.
This moment is perfect. The blood. The bile.
Maybe not the sleeping woman that almost met her maker, but I digress.
“Time to redecorate this boat?” he asks, pulling his lips an inch from mine.
“If you say so,” I swoon, beginning to smother the bastard Holt’s liver in the interior.
Together, we paint a beautiful canvas of him inside out, the luxurious boat transformed into a glamorous exhibition of justice and innards as we sneak the boat back in the harbor before the breaking of night.
I bend down to remove part of the blanket. The lady is still breathing, her pulse steady while her head gently churns.
“Should we bring her to the hospital?” I ask.
“No, she’ll be alright until the harbormaster finds her. She’ll play an important role in the delivery of our message.”
I stare at him, waiting for more. “She owes you her life.”
“You are one who saved her. You did the hard part. I’m proud of you,” Reed says, his eyes beaming with mischief.
The truth is—it wasn’t hard. It was easy, almost too easy. To feel the last gasp of air leave his lungs and never return. To feel the tone escape his muscle. It felt good. I felt powerful. In control.
I don’t want to go back to normal.
To the mundaneness of what life used to be.
He takes my hand, sparking me awake. “Let’s get back to Wolfston, before we have to decorate with any more guts.”