Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
I straightened and focused on the pretty woman in front of me. “You want to know how he tore off all my clothes and stared at me?” I demanded, my voice rising. “How he took away my dignity before he even started touching me. Torturing me.”
I coughed, and liquid sprayed from my mouth. Some of it hit his face. It was blood. But he was already covered in it. His hands were stained crimson. Coughing up blood meant I was dying, right? Please, God, just let me die.
“Do you want me to tell you how I was chained to the wall like a dog?” I asked, quieter now.
Emily was standing with her arms folded, staring at me. Her face was blank, used to hearing horror stories, I guessed.
I could still hear him breathing in my ear, even though birds chirped outside. I’d decided to go there, into that locked drawer in my mind. Now it was all coming out.
“Do you want to know how he told me how worthless I was? What I whore I was?”
“Dirty, filthy, slut. You have no respect for yourself. This is your fault,” he ranted as the knife went in and out. In and out.
My fault.
My fault.
Sinner.
Whore.
The birds chirped again.
I was in the living room, the warehouse. I steeled my spine at the jarring transition.
“Do you want to know how I was sure, certain I would get out of it, how someone would come for me until he started tearing into my belly with a knife? You want to know that I felt his cold hands inside of me after he cut me open? And that even though the wounds are healed, I swear, I can still feel him, rooting through my insides.”
Emily looked pale. Unsure. But I could still see that light in her eyes, that sick fascination. The need for more. Fuck, if she had the opportunity, I bet she’d be writing this down in a fucking notebook.
“You want to know every detail, and you get a thrill when you find out they’re worse than you ever could’ve imagined. Sure, a serial killer who rapes and kills his victims is interesting, but that’s rather … pedestrian, isn’t it? No one’s gonna get a Pulitzer writing about the garden variety psychopath.” I shook my head. “Beau Granger is it for you. While everyone else was buzzing around this small town, desperate for photos, for some kind of souvenir or photoshoot, you were researching.”
I picked up a pile of photos from the coffee table. Crime scene photos. They made my stomach turn. Before, when I was investigating, I was able to chomp on a bagel while inspecting the graphic images. Now my empty stomach clenched with the need to force up bile.
I dropped the photos back down.
“You are smarter than all of them, right?” I asked, tilting my head and scrutinizing her. “You realized that there had to be another victim, one they weren’t talking about. Maybe you weren’t sure if they were alive or dead. And it took you a long time to figure that out because the police reports were confusing, not containing all the information they should’ve. But when you found out not only was there another victim, but that victim was alive. Wow, you hit the jackpot.”
I clapped my hands.
“Now that you’ve found me, what would you like from me?”
She opened her mouth as if she were going to reply to me, but I didn’t give her time. I was on a roll. Or I was having some kind of episode. Whatever it was, this was a long time coming, and I was at the tail end of it. Thankfully.
“You would like me to give you every single part of my suffering for your fame, for your glory. You want me as a sacrificial lamb.”
She picked up a coffee cup, taking an anxious slurp, not taking her eyes off me. “No, that’s not at all what this is.”
I didn’t even respond to that. There was no reason to try to argue with her. She’d already convinced herself that she was doing the right thing for the right reasons. It was how she was sleeping at night. But by the look of her bloodshot eyes and the maniacal sipping of coffee, I was guessing she wasn’t sleeping all that much. Good. I hoped everything I told her gave her fucking nightmares.
“Aren’t you curious?” Even though she was uncomfortable, maybe even scared, apparently she couldn’t help asking questions. “What he was? How he got to be like that?”
“Am I curious about the life of a man who destroyed mine?” I laughed. “Am I curious about what he possibly could’ve gone through as an innocent child that could turn him into that? Am I meant to spend more time wondering about him so I can find a reason, an excuse for his behavior?” I was ranting, unable to believe she actually thought that was a valid question to ask. “No, because there is nothing anyone can go through that could explain why they do that to other humans. There is no sense or excuse for that. And he has stolen enough of my life as it is; I’m not giving him another millimeter of space inside me.”