Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
But for some reason, she always said she liked my voice, because it was mellow and made her feel safe.
Me? Making someone feel safe?
Me, who pictured shooting people with my arrows whenever I went hunting with Dad?
She was clearly a bad judge of character, poor Harper. But I liked her personality, mostly because it was so different from mine. Where I feigned happiness, she was always smiling and laughing, making everyone feel safe and welcome. She volunteered at charities and stood up to bullies and was genuinely a good person.
Too good, actually. I suspected she cried herself to sleep, and she did.
Because Harper’s life that looked perfect on paper was, in reality, a living hell.
After a three-year battle, her mom died of cancer when Harper was ten, and after that, she was brought up by her dad, David—a local Pilates coach who everyone adored.
Once Harper had a panic attack when she was kissing me in the locker room after a football game. She was hyperventilating badly and kind of threw up on me.
I helped her clean up and she burst out everything in a heap of tears. Her dad had been sexually assaulting her for years, since her mother’s death, and told her she was her mother’s replacement and that it was her duty to satisfy him. In fact, he started in the final months of her mom’s life, when she was too out of it to notice anything, let alone protect her.
Harper said she tried to talk to one of her neighbors, but they said that was impossible. They said David was such a good guy, and Harper was just a troubled teenager who wanted attention.
Harper was ugly crying and choking as she talked. She kept hugging me but also looking like she was about to be sick again. She wanted affection. Craved it, even. But the male touch disturbed her, and she hated that she couldn’t have sex with me because it would only remind her of David.
So I promised to talk to my mom and dad and get her help
She smiled and told me I was the best thing that had happened in her life. I asked her to come spend the night with me, no pressure, and said I definitely wouldn’t fuck her. She could stay with my mom if she wanted.
I simply didn’t want her in David’s vicinity anymore.
But she shook her head and kissed me, this time without hyperventilating. Then she hugged me close, telling me how much she loved me.
The next day, Harper was found dead in the bathtub after cutting her wrists open.
She killed herself.
Because of her father.
I watched with a tilted head as David cried at her funeral. He looked so sad and pitiful, as if he wasn’t the razor that had slashed Harper’s wrists.
Everyone showered him with sympathy, hugging him and calling him a saint for surviving both his wife’s and daughter’s deaths.
He touched Harper’s cheek in the casket, patting her cold skin, and I had to stop myself from cutting his hand off.
But it was at that moment that I decided he’d die.
Because he took Harper away from me.
Because he should’ve been in that casket, not her.
I spent a few weeks planning his death, taking my time to learn his habits.
Like with hunting, you have to be patient with your prey and wait until all the circumstances are aligned.
Then, one night, I slipped into his house unnoticed. I planned to spike his wine that he drank every Tuesday and Thursday with his bath.
The undetectable sleeping powder would make him fall asleep and drown.
A freak accident.
It wasn’t violent enough for my taste, but it was more methodical.
But then I heard his obscene groaning sounds.
So I grabbed a kitchen knife and went upstairs.
I stood in the darkness as I watched David fucking the sheets on Harper’s bed and moaning her name as he thrust his hips between the pillows.
I snapped, I think, because the next moment, I was behind him and I’d slit his throat. Then he turned around and I stabbed him in the chest and his dick.
My palm held his face on the bed as I stabbed and stabbed until he was lifeless, unmoving, just a pile of blood and shocked, lifeless eyes. Then I cut off his dick and stuffed it in his mouth.
I looked at him and felt nothing.
But I wanted to see Harper and tell her it was over now. She could rest in peace.
If there’s a Heaven, she better get access.
I cursed myself for not killing him earlier, actually. When Harper was ten.
Killing a man in cold blood made me feel nothing, but I was still left with a bloody crime scene. So I called Grandpa.
I needed a lawyer, and I didn’t want to wake Dad up.
Grandpa came straight away and found me sitting in the corner staring at the blood on the knife. He immediately understood the situation. He didn’t scold or even blame me. He just made a few calls and said he’d bury the whole thing.