FLOWERS

Lilac

"PLEASE! I DON'T WANNA DIE! I DON'T WANNA DIE!" A rope was placed around his neck. In a quick second, it was pulled tight. He struggled and struggled, but after a moment, his body went limp and swung loosely, a meter from the ground. Next up was the wife. She screamed and screamed until her body, too went limp, but instead of a rope, a knife to the throat took its place. Alonzo then turned to the little boy, scared and alone. Curled up into the corner. Crying. Alonzo smiled kindly at the child and tiptoed slowly towards him."Please don't hurt me, sir?" The little boy's voice quivered as he spoke. His voice only excited Alonzo."Come now, little one. I only mean to bring joy." Alonzo reached down and picked up a me metal bar from the floor. "But first, I need my pregaming session. That way I'm all pumped up for the show. You understand, don't you boy? It's all in the name of entertainment.""6 minutes Alonzo!" Called a voice from the other side of Alonzo's dressing room door."I need only three!" Alonzo called back. He turned back to the boy and crouched down to his level. He grabbed his purple top hat from the shelf next to him and placed it on his short, curly blond hair. "Now then. It looks like our time together will be cut rather short." He gently placed his hand on the boy's cheek and lifted his face so that he had a full view of it. "You're a quite beautiful boy, aren't you? Tell me, son. What did you want to do if you grew up?"The boy had tears running down his face. He whimpered and cried."Go on then? I'm curious." Alonzo smiled a toothy grin. Each tooth perfectly whitened and beautiful."I-I wanted to be like my mom." The boy forced out."And what was your mother?""She was a songwriter." His mouth quivered as more tears poured down his face."That's wonderful. Was she a good singer?" Alonzo placed the metal bar into the boy's mouth.The boy nodded back."I love music myself. Music is the voice of the soul. Go ahead and look straight up for me."The boy hesitantly followed his order and looked up to the ceiling."What a good, good boy. Obedient." Alonzo chuckled. "Do you know the music that comes from my soul?" Alonzo's voice filled with excitement.The boy closed his eyes, tight."Screaming." Then the room went silent and nothing happened. The boy opened his eyes to see what was happening until he looked up to see Alonzo staring straight down at him with a wooden mallet above his head. He swung the mallet down onto the metal pipe sending it down the boy's throat. The boy felt only pain as the large object went where it didn't fit. His mouth filled with a liquid metallic flavor. Alonzo swung down again sending the pipe down even deeper. The boy felt a bone in the back of his neck crack with a loud snap. Suddenly he found he could no longer move his body. Alonzo swung down a third time, missing the pipe and instead smashing the boy's nose and knocking his head backward, completely breaking his neck. The boys head sat at an unhealthy angle. Luckily, the boy could no longer feel anything. His boy's body slumped to the floor. Alonzo crouched back down and grabbed the end of the metal bar. He placed his other hand on the boy's face and pulled the bar out of his throat with all of his might. As the bar left the boy's throat, blood splattered the floor, and the neck crumpled completely, leaving the head dangling from the skin of the neck and whatever other pieces weren't completely broken. A mix of blood and split, leaked from the boy's mouth onto the floor. Alonza took a deep breath and brought the metal pipe to his mouth. He ran his tongue along its surface, making sure to taste whatever fluids and pieces of flesh and bone had manifested itself onto it. The taste filled Alonzo with excitement.The dressing room door opened and a black figure with a white mask appeared on the other side. "That's three minutes, Alonzo."Alonzo turned his head to face the black and white figure. Meat and blood seeped from his mouth. He took the blood with his finger and drew two lines from the corners of his smile to his ears. He laughed and stood up slowly. "Perfect timing." He stretched his back until he heard a pop and then cracked his neck. He faced the black and white figure and smirked. "I'm ready."---"I wonder how he's never been caught. I mean, he's over 100 episodes now. This had been going on awhile. There has to be something behind it." Sam commented as he took another handful of popcorn to his mouth.Lilly watched intently as Alonzo drilled into David Cane's hand. The screams of the accountant filled her with joy."Maybe there's like a whole underground community, ya know. I mean there's supposedly this giant pedo ring in Hollywood. Who's to say Alonzo the Great and his Circus of Horrors isn't part of some huge underground world. Maybe they have their government system or some shit. I don't know.""Your screams fuel that cash into my pocket, David. I can't thank you enough for your contribution." Alonzo stood up and faced the audience. "Alright ladies and gentlemen. What should our next course of action be? I believe David's hands could use a break. Who hasn't contributed yet today? I'm looking at you Guest6347. We're all waiting for you to join the fun. I'll give you all a moment to decide."Sam thought for a moment and looked to Lilly. "What do you think Lil'? We've got those fifty extra tickets from the last episode. You wanna join play?" He gave that cute smile he always had and Lilly was all for it. She nodded excitedly. "Okeydokey. How about a baseball bat to the outstretched leg. Have him crack the kneecap." Sam typed in his suggestion adding with it his 50 tickets and waited for the outcome."Guest6347! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE!" Alonzo exaggerated an excited gasp that then turned pissed off. "Good job spending the money I gave you... But I'm a man of my word. A deal's a deal. Let's break David's leg!" He propped up David's leg on a stool so that there was nothing under it then walked off frame.Sam and Lilly watched excitedly from Sam's desk.When Alonzo came back, he held with him s baseball bat and a single, giant, rusty nail. He walked over to David and slammed the end of the nail into David's kneecap. David howled in pain. Pleading nonstop. Alonzo just laughed at his Misery. "Don't worry David old boy. This will only hurt like hell." Alonzo slammed the bat down hard onto David's leg. "Look at it this way, Now your leg bends both ways!" He slammed it down again, sending the nail all the way through along with completely inverting David's leg.Lilly cheered with excitement at the man's misery and looked over at Sam to see his enjoyment, but was instead met with silence."There you are Guest6347. Maybe spend some real money next time." Then Alonzo went on with his show. Sam sat completely quiet for the rest of the show. He was not ok. Lilly studied him carefully, doing her best to find out something from his expression, but instead only found shallow information. He was sad. That was helpful... Honestly, she had no idea, so she nudged Sam's arm lightly like a kitten trying to get some of his attention.Sam quickly exited out of the website leaving Lilly blue balled to the extreme, but her mind was focused on Sam now. Sam stood up from his desk and walked over to the bathroom door. Lilly followed behind him quietly. She rubbed her he'd on his back and tried to listen to his breath, but it still sounded slow and calm. He wasn't panicked. So what was wrong?"I killed my stepdad with a bat when I was 16 years old." The suddenness of that comment completely surprised Lilly. She backed up slightly, not out of fear, but out of shock. He was a killer too. HE WAS A KILLER TOO!Lilly grabbed his hand and turned him to face her. She smiled gently at him. She wanted him to know that he was safe with her. He could say anything he needed to."He beat my mom to death and... he called her a slut and that she deserved it so... We got into a fight and I killed him with a baseball bat." He looked away and shook his head. "Not before he did this to me." He pointed up to his eye patch. "He stabbed me in the eye... Left me with a scar to always remember him by, I guess."Lilly gently took both of his hands into hers and stared up at him."I bet you don't wanna be around me now. I'm some sort of psycho. I don't know why I like watching those red room videos... I'm a freak. I just told a crazy person to bash some guys leg in... What the hell is wrong with me..?" He pulled his hands away from her and covered his face. "I'm a monster." He slumped to the floor and pulled his knees up to himself. Lilly followed him down and sat next to him with her back against the bathroom door. She sighed and turned Sam's face to look at her. Sam hesitantly followed her hand. She carefully reached up and touched his eyepatch. He didn't resist so she continued. She lifted the eyepatch to see what was underneath. His eye was stiff. It didn't move at all. Around it were four deep scars. His eye was disfigured and discolored. It was absolutely unusable and completely ruined. And to Lilly, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She leaned in and kissed his eye. Then she kissed his cheek as she fully removed his eyepatch and through it to the floor. She kissed his lips. They were better than Benny's. His lips were soft. Just soft. She pushed him back and climbed on top of him. Sam closed his one working eye and kissed Lilly back. She lowered him to the floor and let his tongue enter her mouth.Maybe this is why Peggy talked so much about sex. But Lilly didn't need sex to be close to Sam. She already was close to him. Closer then he knew. With Sam, her brother couldn't touch her.She leaned down next to Sam's ear and whispered. "I've killed so many people." She then kissed his cheek and moved back to his mouth.He pulled away and looked into her eyes. "I know." He smiled and pulled her back in.Sam and Lilly were more then sex could ever be. They had something that no one else could. True and pure trust. The man on the cross couldn't even argue that.---"Where are we going?"Lilly didn't respond. She just kept walking. She didn't want to ruin the surprise too soon."Lilly. It's so dark out. We're gonna get mugged or something." Sam followed close behind.Lilly found it ironic that Sam was afraid of other people. He didn't know the true power that he had. Killing made things so much easier. If someone was trying to mug you, Lilly found that intimidation was the best course of action. For instance, Lilly had once found herself in a not so safe situation. She was trying to find someone alone and noticeable when all of a sudden, she happened upon a group of two gang members beating the shit out of some poor sap, behind a bar. Now, this was before she had obtained her prized knife, so improvisation was her best course of action. She started with the tallest of the three. She found that a brick wall could be very helpful when without a bat or other hard-swinging implement. The only problem was that you had to swing the person since the walls were immovable. Slamming the bigger man against the wall a few times seemed to at least knock him out. She'd focus on finishing the job after she had handled the other two problems. But the thing about mob men is that they always have an assortment of weapons on them. In this case the now unconscious object had both a gun and a knife. Now, the problem with a gun is it can cause much-unneeded attention. Must killers don't use guns for that reason and the fact that they can be unreliable? Because of this, Lilly found that the knife would work out much better. This knife was nothing special. It was a measly pocket knife. Not to say that pocket knives are all that terrible, but for trying to disembowel a victim, they can be rather useless. They can cut through skin no problem, the issue arises when you want to reach the vital organs in a single blow. A pocket knife may take 5 to 10 hits before it has a major effect. Not to mention, the idea of it ever going through a human bone is laughable. In this situation, on the other hand, a pocket knife worked perfectly. It may not be effective for a kill, but as a way to stun an enemy quickly, it can do the trick. Lilly buried the blade as deep as she could into the second victim's trachea. Maybe pocket knives are good for some things. Necks don't stand a chance. Blood squirted right onto Lilly's face, which would normally be enjoyable, but offing a victim so quickly was never enjoyable. You see, to Lilly, Killing was about the experience. You don't experience much in a single strike. The third victim was easy. Lilly was wearing high heels at the time and HE was laying on the ground. A simple stomp on the soft part of his stomach sent her heel through his abdomen and into his intestinal region. After that, all she had to do was stir. After that the man's body became a bowl and his insides became a soup. And after that she had some fun with the tall man and had some refreshing alone time.Anyway, what was happening? Oh right. Lilly walked Sam into an ally way. In the middle of the ally way was a drunk man with a bottle in a paper bag. He seemed completely out of it. His head seemed to bobble in the wind, like his neck was poorly balancing a bowling ball. He was dirty and his smell wreaked down the alley."What are we doing here, Lil'?" Sam's voice sounded nervous causing Lilly to immediately turn back to his with a calming smile.Sam didn't know why, but he completely trusted her. He shouldn't have, but he did. She walked up to the drunken man and pulled him out into the middle of the ally. She spread out his arms and legs so that he looked like the Vitruvian Man. The drunk didn't even seem to notice her actions. He seemed too out of it to care. After Lilly had finished setting up the screen, she excitedly ran up to Sam and pulled him over. Sam looked up at her with worry in his eyes. He wasn't sure what was happening, but he didn't know if he was ok with it. Lilly reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out her most prized possession. The fishing knife. She held it in both hands like some sort of relic. She was proud of it. Sam could see it in her eyes."Lilly, are we..?" He trailed off as Lilly reached the blade out to him.Little did Sam know or would ever know, a killer letting another person use, let alone touch, there weapon of choice was an honor in their eyes. That was true trust. They are letting you touch the most personal part of themselves. And Lilly was no different. Her passing the knife to Sam was her version of sex. She was letting him see all of her."You want me to kill him?" Sam spoke in a near monotone voice. He wasn't even sure what timbre to use with a statement like that. He was about to take a man's life for the sake of a girl. This was different than his stepfather. This was someone he didn't know. Someone who might not deserve it. Someone... new. He took the knife from Lilly's hands and examine it closely. It was beautifully crafted. Sam wondered if she had made it herself. What was the story behind it? How many lives had it ended? How many saw it as there last sight? Heard it as there last sound? Felt it as there last feeling? Sam ran his hand, gently along the blade and felt its sharp edges along his course fingers. He closed his hand around the blade. He wanted to feel it cut. He pulled it back and let its shard edges slowly slice into his palm and fingers. Silky red blood dripped down his hand and wrist then dripped onto the dirty, wet blacktop. Suddenly he felt Lilly's delicate fingers wrap around his hand. She carefully placed Sam's fingers on the hilt of the knife and pointed it perpendicular to the nearly unconscious man below it. Lilly met Sam's eyes and smiled sweetly. Then she pushed Sam's hands downward, plunging the blade, deep into the Man's chest, perfectly positioned to hit his heart. Suddenly the man stopped breathing. Sam looked down to see what they had done. Guilt built up in his stomach until he felt very soft lips hit his. The guilt faded into darkness, deep into Sam's subconscious. Locked in a box for a distant day.