Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Connor
My rage won’t fade, even though that guy left and I have Kelsey right here, ready and willing to do whatever I want. She’s got her hands all over me, yet all I can think about is that asshole threatening to call the cops.
Son of a bitch acts like we’re doing anything wrong out here. Old fuck. He’s probably just jealous because he doesn’t have anyone who wants to touch his shriveled up dick tonight.
Kelsey’s fingers rake through my hair as I kiss her, something that normally gets me excited since I have a thing with my head being touched by a girl. Tonight, though, it’s not working.
Goddamned bastard! First he interrupts us, and now he’s the reason I won’t be getting any tonight. If I ever run into him again, he better watch himself. Payback is a bitch.
I lean back away from her and then sit on the ground, wishing I could just clear my damn head so we could get back to the good stuff. Beside me, she sits up and sets her hand on my thigh. Christ, usually that would really get me going, but even that isn’t working tonight.
“Hey, what’s wrong? I know you were having a good time. I could feel it against my leg,” she says quietly, her cheek resting against my shoulder.
“Nothing. Sorry. That guy just really pissed me off. Who the hell does he think he is? We’re not doing anything wrong or even anything illegal. Why come out here in the middle of the night looking for problems? If that’s what he wants, I’ll give him one.”
Kelsey snuggles up against me and says in a soft voice, “Forget him. He’s probably some lonely old guy who misses his golden days when he had fun. Of course, back then it was in the rumble seat of a Model T.”
She giggles at her attempt at a joke, but I can’t find any humor in me at this moment. That guy needs to learn it’s not cool to ruin a person’s night because you’re a miserable old bastard.
I struggle to stand up while Kelsey tugs on my arm to keep me there with her, but all I can think about now is teaching that guy a lesson. Ripping my hand from her hold, I glance down at her and see I’ve ruined my last chance with her tonight.
“Where are you going? I thought we were having fun,” she says in disgust as she gathers up her clothes.
“I need to take care of this. That guy is going to learn I’m not the person to fuck around with tonight.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? Just sit here and wait for you?”
With a shrug, I answer, “Do whatever you want. I’ll be back in a little bit. If you’re here, good. If not, whatever.”
As I set off to find that old guy, behind me she curses me out for being an asshole like she thought I might be. Too bad. We could have had a nice time if it wasn’t for someone rudely interrupting us.
“I’m not waiting here, Connor. Just so you know,” she calls after me, like she’s trying to punish me for leaving.
I wave off her comments as I focus on making it back to the main path so I can find that asshole.
He headed toward the road, so that’s where I’m going.
If I’m lucky, I won’t have to follow him all the way back to his house since I don’t know where he lives.
I’m guessing it’s in one of those houses right where we parked tonight before walking into the woods.
He probably hates anyone who does that because they’re going to have a good time, and he can’t stand that.
Shithead. I can’t wait to show him he screwed with the wrong guy tonight.
I see a figure ahead of me, but I can’t tell if it’s him or not.
It looks like this person is the same height as the guy, but I don’t want to go jumping some tall chick by mistake.
I break into a jog to catch up to whoever that is, but a few seconds later, I see them turn around and it’s not who I’m looking for.
Dammit! I can’t lose that guy.
I run past the person in the dark and focus on finding my way to the street. He’s already home by now, I bet. That’s what I get for staying with Kelsey.
By the time I reach the edge of the woods, I see the guy I want.
He hasn’t reached his house yet, thankfully.
I sprint up behind him and grab him around the neck to take him by surprise.
He lets out one tiny, frightened cry, but a second later, I’ve got him down on the ground.
I jump on top of him and stare down into his eyes so he knows it’s me, the guy whose night he ruined.
His face is a mess of wrinkles, and around his mouth the lines from always frowning are the deepest. Just as I suspected, he’s a miserable fuck who’s always ruining things for others.
Pinning his shoulders to the ground, I grunt out, “How’s it feel, asshole? Couldn’t just leave me and the girl alone, could you?”
He mumbles something, but I don’t understand him in my rage. I’ve never been this angry in my life. I swear to God I could kill this man.
I squeeze my right hand into a tight fist and cock my arm back, and then it’s like the rest of the world suddenly fades away, leaving only the two of us in the world.
He looks up at me with horror in his eyes but doesn’t try to stop me as my hand comes down toward his face.
My fist connects with his nose, breaking it instantly.
Blood spurts everywhere as he shakes his head back in forth in agony, spraying blood across his cheeks.
The second punch comes fast, right after the first one, but this time my fist smashes into his cheekbone. It’s like every ounce of rage I possess is being channeled into my hand, so when it hits him, it sounds like a heavy thud.
For the first time, he tries to stop me.
With his left hand free, he swats at my face to make me stop, but it’s no use.
I’m blinded by the need to teach him the lesson of not fucking with me.
He cries out when I pound my fist into his face for a third time, but the sound seems far away and muffled, like he’s underwater screaming at me.
I couldn’t stop now if I wanted to, and not a single cell in my body wishes this was over.
I feel powerful, and with every time I hit his face, that feeling grows exponentially.
I’m not even sure the strongest man in the world could pull me off him right now.
I’m like some kind of superhero with powers no mere mortal can withstand.
I’ve never felt like this before. It’s better than anything I’ve ever felt before in my life!
Over and over, I slam my fist into his face. At some point, he stops crying out and then a little while later, he stops trying to defend himself. From that point on, it’s just me whaling on this guy and teaching him the lesson he never learned in all those years he’s been alive.
I’m like a man possessed because even when his face is so bloody I can’t tell if I’m hitting a human or some kind of pathetic animal, I still keep beating him. It’s like I can’t stop.
But the truth is, I don’t want to stop. This is how I’ve always wished I could feel but never found a way to achieve it. I’ve tried drugs and alcohol. I’ve tried all that happy talk bullshit my mother thinks helps. It never did.
This is what I’ve needed to feel good. If only I’d known this before tonight, I would have beat the hell out of someone already.
This guy isn’t the first person to make me want to lash out.
He’s just the unlucky son of a bitch who set me off on a night when something inside me said I wasn’t going to stop myself anymore.
The sound of someone screaming pulls me out of my ecstasy, and I sit back on his bony legs as I drop my hands to my sides. The man lays beneath me a bloody mess, his body still and his eyes closed. I look around to see where the scream came from and see Kelsey running away.
Fucking girls. They always have to make a big deal out of everything.
I push my fingertips against the guy’s shoulder to rouse him, but he doesn’t move. That only pisses me off more, so I lean down and bark in his face, “Stop playing dead, asshole!”
He doesn’t react at all, so I grab him by both shoulders and shake him. His head lolls back like some kind of oversized dandelion after the stem snaps, but he doesn’t respond.
“Wake up! Stop being such a fucking pussy! I only hit you a few times. Wake the fuck up!” I yell in his face, but it does no good.
I press my fingertips to the side of his neck to feel for a pulse. A second goes by but I feel nothing. Then two. After ten seconds, I pull my hand away as I shake my head uncontrollably in disbelief.
He can’t be dead. I only hit him a few times. What the fuck? Who dies from being hit in the face?
Panic races through me as I swivel my head left and right to see if anyone saw me. No one is there. Thank God. All I have to do is get up and run away as fast as I can, and nobody will know what happened.
I push myself off him and look around again to make sure I’m alone. My heart’s racing so fast I feel like I might puke. If anyone saw me, I’ll go to jail.
Backing away from the body, I stumble over a rotting log and nearly fall, but I catch myself by grabbing onto a limb of a tree. I can’t stop looking at him lying there.
Dead. Because of me.
I didn’t mean to kill him. I only wanted to show him that he should leave people alone, for fuck’s sake. We were only trying to have a good time out here in the woods. We weren’t hurting anyone.
Then I remember Kelsey screaming. She saw me. She’s probably running back to find her friend to tell her what happened.
I can’t let her do that. Nobody can find out what I did.
She needs to know she has to keep her mouth shut.
The Present
I shake my head as water rolls down over my face.
I’d hoped a shower would make me feel better, but my mind insisted on going back to that night nearly twenty years ago.
I haven’t thought about what I did for so long I think I convinced myself it never happened.
That man ceased to exist that night because of my hands, and somehow my mind made him disappear over the years.
Until Bryan was murdered.
Nobody knows I killed that man. If anyone did, the police would have come to get me by now. It’s been nearly two decades. If they knew, I would have been arrested before this since I know there’s no statute of limitations for murder.
Then again, I made sure nobody knew. At least I thought I did.
I covered him up well enough, and then the six inches of snow that fell in the early season storm that came through the area a few days later made sure nobody would find him for at least a week. By that time, I’d made sure to tie up all the loose ends.
For all those years, I thought I’d gotten away with it. There was nobody to tell the police what happened because everyone who knew was gone.
Except for me.
Then tonight, I saw the face of someone who did know. All those years hadn’t changed them enough to make me not recognize them the moment I saw them standing in front of me.
But that’s impossible. There’s no way she could have been at that gas station tonight. Or any other place, for that matter. She couldn’t have been at the self-checkout at the supermarket or on the nature trail the other night.
I killed her to make sure she kept quiet. I know she was dead. I wouldn’t have made a mistake like not checking before I buried her.
Yet it’s like she’s been haunting me. I don’t know how, but it’s her.
She’s alive? How is that even possible?
Scrubbing my face as I let the shower rain over my head, I tell myself I’m losing my mind.
Dead people do not show up nearly two decades later to haunt you at the grocery store and the gas station.
That must have been someone else who looked like her.
They say each of us has a twin somewhere in the world. That’s it. It has to be.
Kelsey is still just as dead as I left her in the woods that night, in a shallow grave that would have been covered over when it snowed just like the old man was. Whoever that woman was I’ve been seeing around town is just someone who looks like her. It has to be that.
It has to be because the only other choice means that terrible secret I’ve kept for all these years is going to come out.