"I don't know his name, man. I swear to god!"
Damn, I love the sound of begging in the morning. I'm lost in the way this fucker squirms and for the briefest moment, I can leave her behind. She's like a fire, all-consuming in the center of my world. The flames haven't gone down with the distance between us, if anything they burn hotter, so I've been needing a distraction like this one. Thankfully, this idiot got himself snatched outside of a bar earlier tonight and I'm the lucky bastard who gets to pull the information out of him.
"Don't believe in god, so you better try again."
We've only been in this basement together for a few hours, but the way things are going, he'll be squealing sooner rather than later. He's covered in his blood, my handiwork showing in the way his eye socket swells and his nose bends in at least one place. He left a trail when I dragged him across the floor from his chair to the corner of the room he's slumped against now. The blade of my knife is shiny in contrast to his neck which is caked in blood and dirt. I watch the skin around it dimple as I press the blade into him and I feel his flesh give way as I puncture through it, quickly followed by the pitiful cries of the grown wussy who can't take an ounce of pain.
"I don't know anything!" I push deeper, further, yet I'm not focused on the contortions of his face for any tells that he may be lying the way I should. I'm focused on the way my blade glints in the light, the same one that was in my pocket the day my friends took Dorothy to Ray's house– the day I went after her and tied our fates together in a knot that neither of us can undo.
As much as I hate to admit it to myself, I've been clawing at the damn thing for weeks trying to loosen her hold on me. I'm powerless to her, she has stretched into every aspect of my life like a disease. I need her to get the fuck out of my life because I know that she'd never willingly be in it. The urge to chase her down and retake her is unbearable, I'm just a man, after all. A man lucky enough to know the most beautiful woman on earth, and while obsession is understandable, it's really been fucking up my life.
"Think harder," His split cheek and neck wound have matching blood flow now, it's fascinating, but I don't have time to turn this into a science experiment. Skull needs to know whatever this guy does and I need to get on with my life before I descend into mad science down here in this shitpool basement. "Last chance." I bare my teeth at him as I twist the blade slightly and fear flashes through his eyes right before the pain settles in.
"Atherton Avenue! I met him in an abandoned house on Atherton and Thirty-Second, it was blue. Please stop!"
There it is. I pull my knife away and wipe the blood on my sleeve before thinking twice about it. The little bitch is gasping for air like I was choking him or something, holding his neck like I slashed it, which I haven't– yet. I don't move out of his space, still looking down at his pitiful stance on the floor. "You get kicked outta that bar earlier tonight?" His nervous eyes find mine and I can see his gears turning, deciding whether to lie or tell the truth. Slowly, he nods his head. I'd act surprised, but we both already know why he ended up on the sidewalk when he ran into the bikers from Skull's Club. "You're pretty shitty at slipping roofies, huh?" I scoff at him, the ridiculousness of this situation settling in my chest and successfully pissing me all the way off.
Images of the important women in my life getting roofied at bars flash through my head and the intrusive worst-case scenarios continue to play out in my mind until I'm shaking with rage. I do this work for them as much as I do it for myself; strong women have shaped my life and I don't like the idea that they've got a target on their back simply because they're chicks. Fuckers like this rarely learn a lesson, opting to keep taking whatever they want, whenever the hell they want it. Until they're unlucky enough to land in front of me.
"It's not like th-," His words are cut off by the blood bubbling out of his mouth, mixing with the waterfall from his neck. My reflexes don't always take control, I'm usually good at holding them back, but not today. My knife and hand are warm with his blood and the pooling around us is filling out quickly. He's dead long before his corpse slumps to the side, but I don't even need to check, the damage speaks for itself.
There's no sink in this torture chamber, so I skip every other step as I bound up the stairs and throw open the door. Heading for the kitchen in the run-down farmhouse we're working out of today, I vaguely register muffled sounds and shuffles around me, but the only thing I can think of is scrubbing every speck of blood from my skin. Just the way Doe likes it. She didn't like the blood on my hands during our last day together and now, something in me doesn't like it anymore, either.
A firm hand claps down on my shoulder, "Dammit, Bill! I told you to take it easy down there." Skull must have gotten here some time since I went downstairs, meaning he could've come in and stopped me whenever he liked. Sure, I understand why he doesn't want an unnecessary corpse on his hands, but it's not like the Club has squeaky-clean hands to begin with. If he wanted the shitpie alive, he should've been downstairs with me. That's not my fucking problem.
"I took creative liberty. You have an issue?" I shouldn't be challenging him, not here in front of his men or anywhere, for that matter. I owe him a lot and probably wouldn't be living half the life I am if he hadn't taken a chance on me when he did. Yet, for some reason, it rubs me the wrong way that he has an opinion about what just happened down there. He pays me for my expertise and discretion, yet he's here grading my performance.
Trust me or don't, nothing in between.
His fingers squeeze my shoulder hard enough to send the message, but his gruff voice pipes up anyway. "We'll talk about it on Sunday. I think you could use the rest of the week off." He's not trying to make me feel inferior, he's kindly telling me to get my shit together before Sunday and I don't know how the hell I'm going to do it. Distractions aren't working, I have to find a way to put out the fire that burns between Doe and me, but just the thought makes me sick to my stomach.
I've never felt this way before about anyone and a part of me thinks I'd be a dumbass to let it go, but she left me. Granted, I never gave her a choice in the first place. I'm outside on my bike and my brain is running on autopilot as I rip out of the grassy lot onto the county road. I can't slow my racing thoughts, but one question keeps coming back to taunt me: did she leave because I'm a monster or because I took her? I effectively stripped her of her free will when I decided to take her and took away her privacy before that. I thought I could make her like me enough to stay but maybe that card was never in the deck to begin with. Maybe she was always going to take back her freedom,
because it was never mine to keep.
YOU ARE READING
Stalking the Dancer || 18+
RomanceONGOING /// She's an injured dancer trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered career. He's a broken man with an addictive personality. Like oil and water, they don't mix well. When watching isn't enough, he gets much more than he bargained for...
