A Love to Kill

Part Five

So now hopefully you're becoming a little more sympathetic with Rodger now that you're familiar with his past. I'm really falling in love with this story. It's so dark, and Rodger/Dawn are such tortured characters. And I finally gave the story a name! I love the name, mostly because of the double meaning. Double meaning, you ask? What do I mean? You'll have to think on that won't you. And you thought I couldn't be clever :)

Dawn was silent as Rodger drove to where they were going. He wasn't sure if he should be doing this. He was sharing an incredibly intimate part of his life with her. Why was he even doing this? Maybe she would only see what a monster he was instead his humanity. Maybe she wouldn't understand. Rodger focused on the road, suddenly regretting what he was doing. Why should he reveal his inner secrets to this girl? To this future kill?

But somehow, he knew Dawn would understand. He hoped she'd understand.

"Is this...?"

"Yes." Rodger had pulled into a graveyard. He solemnly parked the car and held Dawn's door open for her.

"What are we doing here?"

"You'll see."

She studied him suspiciously again, but upon seeing how sullen his expression was, she got out of the car. Besides, Rodger already had her cornered. If his goal was to kill her, her position would already be hopeless. Rodger began walking over the grass, looking at each tomb stone with little interest. He could the crunching of grass as Dawn followed him. His shift in behavior had caught her interest.

Rodger stopped in front of a rather large tombstone, and sat in front of it, legs crossed. His heart wept even looking at the wrenching slab of rock.

"Angela and Timothy Wolfe." Dawn read aloud. "Beloved Always." She looked at him. "Who are they?"

"My parents." His voice almost cracked. He couldn't believe after all this time he still mourned their death. He hated himself for his own weakness.

"What happened to them?" she whispered.

"I killed them." This time his voice did crack. He didn't realize that seeing them with Dawn and admitting this to someone would render him so emotional.

Dawn probably would have run upon hearing this, but Rodger's visible agony kept her rooted to the spot. "You killed them?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Rodger shook his head. He needed a minute. "I...It's difficult to explain. And even if I did you probably wouldn't understand. But I killed them. When I was seventeen. They were the first I killed."

Dawn sat beside them and took his hand. Rodger looked up at Dawn with surprise. "Why did you do that?" he asked. She should be appalled right now, not comforting him.

Dawn shrugged, and remained silent for a few moments. The wind howled. "Were they good parents?" she asked.

"The best I could wish for. But we were poor, and well, things went south. Their marriage was failing because of the stress. Everything was falling apart. And they were miserable. I could see it in their eyes. They would stare at each other, and I could see that they wanted to die more than they wanted to live. By then the compulsion was the strongest it had ever been in my life. Before then I had been killing stray mongrels and cats that were starving themselves to death and repopulating, making everything worse for them. The compulsion when I was approximately sixteen demanded for human death. I ignored it for a year. But when I saw them like that, and when they looked at me as though they knew things weren't going to work out, I knew I would be relieving their pain. They still loved one another underneath everything. The tension just caused them to be bitter. I knew that if I killed them, they could be eternally in love. I thought-I think-they would prefer that more than separating. They really did love each other. So feel victim to the compulsion and did what I thought would help them."