95. Theo Fairview
Alexa Play: The Worst In Me by Bad Omens
“Wake up, sweet girl…”
Swimming through the dream I’d been drifting in, something tickled my nose, and I scrunched it up as I slowly came back to the waking world.
“Cass?” I croaked, my voice still rough with sleep.
There was that tickling feeling again, and as my eyes fluttered open, I found my wife smiling down at me from where she’d perched on the edge of the bed.
She was stroking a finger lightly down the bridge of my nose, and when she did it again, I gave her a sleepy smile and tilted my head so I could kiss the tip of her finger instead.
“Are you ready for your surprise? It’s waiting for you in the basement.”
“What time is it?” I asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with the heels of my hands.
“Almost midnight. Try to hurry. I left Cal down there, and I don’t trust him to be alone with… your present, for very long.”
Feeling a rush of excitement… or maybe anticipation, I shoved back the blankets and swung my legs out of the bed.
I was in a pair of flannel pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt, and I shoved my feet into an old pair of slippers with a yawn.
“Do I need to get dressed?”
“No, what you’re wearing should be fine. Let’s go,” Cass whispered, leading me out of the room at a surprisingly quick pace.
We’d just made it to the top of the stairs when Ryan poked his head out of his bedroom, frowning at us.
“What are you two doing? Have you seen Callum? He never came up to bed.”
Cass sighed, shaking her head in irritation.
“He never told you, did he?”
Ryan frowned. “Tell me what?”
“Fucking Callum…” Cass muttered under her breath. “Alright, you might as well come too. Guess it’s going to be a family affair.”
“What are you–”
“Don’t bother, dude. I’ve been trying to get her to tell me what she’s been up to all day, and she won’t budge. We should probably just follow her.
“Fine. Let me just put a damn shirt on,” Ryan grumbled before disappearing back into his room.
He didn’t take long, and I could tell he was anxious to find his fiancé.
Honestly, I would be too, if I were engaged to Callum.
He needed constant supervision, or he tended to get into trouble. Ryan seemed to genuinely enjoy… supervising him, but right at this moment, I think he was more worried than anything.
We followed Cass down the large ornate staircase to the main floor, then through the foyer to the stairs leading down to the embalming room.
“What the fuck…” Ryan muttered as we descended into the cold, clinical halls of Fairview’s basement.
Cass just tossed her hair over her shoulder and continued to lead us past the embalming room and toward my shitty little gym.
“Cass, what–”
I followed her into the small concrete room, but stopped in my tracks as I laid eyes on my ‘surprise.’
My mouth dropped open, and I barely registered Ryan’s bark of shock as I tried to process exactly what it was I was seeing.
“Is that… Is that our old principal?” Ryan gasped, and Cal bounded up to him with a big smile on his face, nodding his head enthusiastically.
“Yeah, baby! Haven’t you seen him on TV? He’s been all over the news.”
“When the fuck was I supposed to have time to watch TV, angel? Between the wedding planning and the services, you know I’ve barely had time to breathe… What the fuck? Why is he hanging from the ceiling of our basement!?”
“He’s not hanging, baby… Not yet, at least.” Callum smirked, kissing his fiancé happily on the cheek.
I only knew he’d kissed him because of the loud smack of the smooch.
I couldn’t see them.
I couldn’t see anything but Father Samwell, who was indeed standing in the middle of the room with a fucking noose around his neck.
The noose had been strung through the hook that normally held my punching bag, and it was currently loose around the man’s throat.
As my eyes roamed over his body, I slowly came to understand why.
He was bound and gagged, with his hands tied in front of him. All his fingers on both hands were clearly broken and jutting out in all different directions. They must have been broken for some time, as most of them were swollen and bruised.
Someone had ripped open his dress shirt and carved the word ‘Pedophile’ into his chest, and it was bleeding so much his grey suit pants were stained with it. Though… from the strong scent of urine permeating the room, I assumed the dark wet mark on his pants wasn’t just from the blood.
But even all that was secondary.
What had my attention were the large red high-heeled shoes someone had crammed onto his feet.
They were an obnoxious, red patent leather, and he stood there, teetering in them.
His legs were shaking, and honestly, mine would have been too, because it was clear that if he lost his balance and fell… Well, there wasn’t enough rope to make sure he touched the ground.
“What do you think, baby?”
I jumped at Cass’s warm, soft voice in my ear.
Turning to look at her, I tried to blink, but my eyes were so wide that it felt like I might never blink again.
“H-how… did you…?”
Her eyes shone with affection as she wrapped her hands around my waist, tugging me in close so she could leave gentle kisses up the side of my neck.
“I brought him here for you, if you want him. I thought it might make you feel better to kill him.”
“I… You…”
What!?
My brain wasn’t fucking working.
Holy shit…
Holy fucking shit!
Cass gripped my jaw and turned my head to face her, as I was helplessly staring at Samwell again.
His ugly face was twisted up and stained with tears. He was screaming into the tape over his mouth, but it was so muffled I suspected Cass had stuffed his mouth full of something too.
He couldn’t talk.
She’d stolen his voice.
He had no way to whisper those fucked up words to me anymore.
Her monster had already killed him in my head… but… she was…
She was offering me a chance to kill him in real life, too?
“If you don’t want to do it, or if you can’t, that’s fine, sweet girl. I can do it for you. But whether it’s you or me, that man is dying tonight. You just let me know what you want to do.”
“I… I… Uhm…”
Fuck. Why couldn’t I make words!?
“Someone needs to explain what the fuck is going on before I lose it,” Ryan snapped suddenly. “We have a fucking showing in the morning, and you have a goddamned torture victim hanging by a noose in my basement! This is madness!”
“He hurt Theo,” Cal growled, and finally, I was able to tear my eyes away from the teetering man whimpering before me.
I glanced at Ryan, who looked to me to confirm.
I still couldn’t speak. My mind was stuck on the fact that Cass was giving me the opportunity to kill my rapist.
Did I want that?
Ryan glanced back at our mangled ex-principal, and I watched as he finally took a moment to actually read the word that’d been brutally carved into his chest.
His brow furrowed, then his gaze darted back to meet mine, and I saw it as he started to put two and two together.
“You were in trouble with him a lot… You were always in his office…”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Yeah.”
Ryan glanced back one last time at the gagged and bleeding man, and I watched his eyes darken.
I’d only seen that look on his face once before. It was the look he’d given Damien moments before he shot the man in the head.
“It wasn’t just Theo,” Cass said. “He’s been grooming and sexually assaulting young queer girls for years. He tells them he’s curing them while he assaults them,” Cass explained. I frowned, glancing at her.
She was so calm right now. Her voice was even, and she was looking at Samwell like he was worth less than dirt in her eyes.
She wasn’t angry, and the violent look she often got in her eyes when her monster was near was nowhere to be found.
This was almost scarier.
Like she didn’t think the man was worthy of her rage, but she would kill him anyway with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.
Jesus. What a fucking woman.
Unlike Cass, Ryan looked angry. Cal did too. His pupils had blown, and I could tell he was teetering dangerously close to the edge.
Cal had some… less than legal habits when it came to people like the reverend. Habits he’d sworn off for good once he was free of Damien.
Cal wrapped his arms around Ryan’s shoulders and nuzzled his nose into his throat before nipping him softly on the side of his neck.
“Maybe… Maybe I can hurt him? Just a little bit…”
There was a muscle pulsing in my brother’s jaw as he glared daggers at our old principal, who seemed to be trying to plead through his gag for Ryan to take pity on him.
Man, was he barking up the wrong tree.
If looks could kill, Ryan would have already incinerated the man with his gaze.
But Cal’s words seemed to jerk my brother out of whatever murderous fantasies he’d been entertaining.
Running a hand through his ginger hair, he let out a long, steady breath.
“No, Callum. It’s a slippery slope. If you need to hurt someone, you can hurt me, but you’ve been doing so well… I can’t let you ruin all your hard work over… over this piece of fucking filth.”
Cal whined in protest.
“Puh-lease, baby? Just let me rip out one tooth? It’ll be so quick!”
Ryan shook his head, remaining firm.
“No… but I’ll tell you what, if you give up the tooth and come up to bed, I’ll let you use the scalpels on me again.”
Cal immediately brightened at this, nearly leaping up and down with excitement.
“Really?”
“Yeah, angel. Really. Why don’t you go up and get everything ready? I’ll meet you there.”
“Dope!” Cal dropped another swift kiss on his fiancé’s cheek before bounding out of the room to go get the… scalpels ready? Did I hear that right?
Once Callum was gone, Ryan turned his stern gaze on us.
He gave me a once-over before reaching out and resting a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could come to me with this, Theo,” he said, his voice coming out incredibly soft, despite how angry he still looked.
“It’s alright. I… I didn’t tell anybody. I was… ashamed,” I admitted, and my brother’s brow furrowed at my admission.
“The only person who should feel shame here is him, Theo. Whatever he did to you, it wasn’t your fault. You were a child.”
I swallowed, feeling the familiar burn of tears as they gathered in the corners of my eyes.
“I know that now,” I whispered, doing my best to speak through the painful lump in my throat.
Ryan gave me a firm nod before turning his attention to my wife.
“Like I said, I have a viewing in the morning, but it doesn’t start until ten. The new cremator only takes an hour and a half to fully incinerate a body, so if you can just get him in the fridge once you’re done, I’ll have time to check him for medical devices and pop him in before the service.”
Father Samwell’s muffled screams became more frantic as Ryan spoke, and he teetered so violently on his heels that I worried he would hang himself before I had a chance to kill him.
Cass gave Ryan a saccharine grin and tossed her long, glossy hair back over her shoulder.
“No problem. Thanks, Ryan. Have a good night.”
He smiled at her and leaned in to brush a peck on her cheek.
“You too. Thank you for taking such good care of my sister.”
“Always,” Cass replied easily, and with that, Ryan left, and we were finally alone with the man who had stolen so many years from me.
Samwell was still screaming, but the sound was so muffled and pathetic that it barely registered.
Cass turned to look at me with a warm, peaceful smile curled on her blood-red lips.
“So, baby. What’s it going to be? Do you want to kill him, or do you want me to do it?”
With a shaky breath, I stepped forward until I was so close I could reach out and touch him.
I could almost make out what he was saying now.
There were a lot of muffled ‘pleases,’ a whimpered ‘don’t do this,’ followed by a bunch of ‘I’m sorry’s.’
But I didn’t want to hear it. In his massive heels, he towered over me, and as I looked up at him, I remembered all the times I’d been forced to look up at him in that god-forsaken office.
But we weren’t in the office anymore.
And I was no longer a small child who couldn’t defend herself.
But he hadn’t changed.
He was the same.
He would always be the same, and as long as he was alive, I knew he would do what he’d done to me again and again.
Like a sick dog, he needed to be put down.
He was still begging when I made my final decision.
“Theodora?” My name was muffled through his gag.
Even stunted, hearing my name on his lips made me rage.
There was so much I wanted to say to him. I wanted to scream at him and tell him that he’d ruined me. That what he’d done to me had absolutely destroyed me to the point I’d wished for death.
That it had taken me nearly twenty years to even begin to heal from what he’d put me through.
I wanted to tell him that I hated him, and I hoped his soul burned in that fucking hell he’d always told me I was destined for.
But… even as the words ravaged my mind, I knew there was no point. Telling him these things wouldn’t make him repent. He would feel no remorse. It would be a waste of breath, and I was done wasting parts of myself on a man who didn’t even deserve to kiss the ground I walked on.
So instead, I looked him directly in the eyes and smiled.
“Father Samwell…” I addressed him softly. And there it was. What I wanted to see. A small flicker of hope.
Hope that I wouldn’t do it.
Hope that I’d be the bigger person and show him the mercy he’d never shown me.
But no.
I wouldn’t show mercy.
Not for this.
Dropping my gaze down to his wobbling ankles, I felt my smile widen, and I glanced back up at him one last time.
“Father Samwell,” I repeated, unable to wipe the unhinged smile that seemed to now be a permanent fixture on my face.
“You look so pretty in those heels,” I whispered.
Then, I placed a hand on his still bleeding chest, and… I just… pushed.