M.I.A.

Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

Corey

Later, once Cutter has released his muse and silence envelops the house, I stand. It's too quiet and Cutter should have come out by now. I lean against the wall and slide into The Room. A moment later, Officer Frank appears beside me.

Cutter is hunched over Mia, wrapping her other leg. She's unconscious again, driven to blank emptiness by shock.

"What the hell is going on?" Frank asks.

I don't answer him for a long moment. To be honest, I really don't know. Perhaps, now that Cutter tasted what it's like to finally finish a piece, he's learned that he needs to care more for them. I know I was that piece. Not only because I remember Cutter telling me so, but because I lived the longest out of all of Cutter's Kids. I'm the only one that lived for two weeks and I'm the one with the most cuts. I lived because I guess that I thought that maybe I'd be saved or he'd let me go once he was done. But it didn't happen like that.

What do you do when you finish a piece of art? You hang it on the wall.

And that's how I died. Unlike the others who died of dehydration and infection and blood loss and shock and being cut up, I died while I was being skinned alive.

A shiver runs up my spine and makes my flesh break out in goosebumps. Cutter got his glory with me, he tasted victory and finally got his trophy. He wants it again—with Mia. He's keeping her alive so he can finish the job...so she can die like I did. In something worse than this.

"We have to help her," I say.

Frank blinks at me like I'm an idiot. "Well yeah, obviously."

Cutter suddenly straightens. He sighs, cracks his neck and stretches his arms over his head. He's covered in blood, both Mia's and Franks, and he's got an insane grin on his face. He collects up his tools and heads out of the room. We follow him.

"So, what do you propose we do?" Frank asks.

I scowl to myself. I don't know. "Did anyone know you were coming here?"

Frank makes a strangled expression, which I take to mean no.

I look away, annoyed with him. "So you just thought you'd come in here, push him until he cracked and then take him down, gun blazing with vigilante justice? Well, I donno if you've noticed, but we're dealing with the next H.H. Holmes here." I gesture at Cutter who is dragging the trash bin across the living room. The heavy barrel scrapes across the floor, dragging up slivers of wood.

Frank doesn't humor me with an answer.

We watch in frustrated silence as Cutter drags the barrel to the basement door, opens the door and topples the whole thing into the dark pit of the basement. It lands on the cement floor with a reverberating metallic clang. A second later, I hear Delilah digging in.

"Son of a bitch," I breathe.

Frank steps closer. "What?"

"He fed me to a fucking mastiff." No wonder I could never find any bodies. That dog is starved for such long intervals that she chews bones down to nothing. Come to think of it, when I first started haunting this house and discovered the poor monster in the basement, I shoved the meaty bones closer to her. Jesus...I gave her my own body parts to chew on.

Cutter shuts the basement door, closing off the sound of Delilah chomping on Frank's remains, and returns to cleaning. But neither Frank nor I move. We just stand, staring at the basement door.