The Apprentice

Chapter 8 🔫 Bari

"This will be over so fast." I promised the woman in chains. Her beautiful, too-perfect body heaved with another sob. "It won't even hurt. It's just your body I need - " That didn't appear to help. She let out a muffled shriek. I realized that, coming from a guy, that can't sound too great.

I sighed. I hated watching her suffer. "Do you want to be blindfolded?" I asked, as gently as I could, and she started screaming again. "I'll do it anyway," I decided, and I undid my tie and tied it around her eyes. Her perfect eyes.

I shakily lifted my gun up to her forehead. This had to be perfect. She could not suffer.

I always hated this part.

I closed my eyes as well.

The caliber was too high for me to even hear the shot. The second I pulled the trigger, my world went silent. My ears started ringing very faintly. I let out a sigh of relief. The worst of it was over.

Now the good part began.

I lit a cigarette and held it for two long drags, and then pressed the tip to her still-warm, ivory skin. It hissed and almost bubbled, and I repeated the process over again for almost fifteen minutes, taking an occasional drag, pressing the cigarette tip to her now-ruined bosom again and again and again. Black circles polluted her.

Next came the knives. The feeling of a knife passing through flesh was immeasurably pleasurable, like a hot ice-cream scooper through old-fashioned vanilla. I drew up and down her arms, across her chest, her stomach, her throat - soon, she was soaked in her own blood from the neck down. There were still patches of unsoiled skin where the blood had dripped instead of flowed. Here, I plunged my dagger so deep that it protruded on the other side and scraped the brick wall behind her.

Shaking, I unchained her, and threw her already-mutilated corpse onto the cold, concrete floor. Seized with a sort of mania, I brought my foot down on her as hard as I possibly could. Right in the middle of her back. I felt bones shatter beneath me. I started jumping on her, grinding my heels in, crushing her skull, shoulders, knees, hands, feet, everything I could.

Her mangled corpse did not react. She just stayed very still and very quiet. Panting, I knelt by her, and lifted her up a little. I hugged her close, and began to cry. "I'm sorry," I told her. "I'm sorry."