But he only raised his eyebrows.
“How should I know what it means? Looks like a bunch of random numbers to me.”
“It’s not... it’s not yours?”
Fabio shook his head slowly, peering at me as though I was the crazy one.
“But my friend told me—”
I cut myself off as I realized exactly what had happened.
Jules!
What did she say? Maybe you can ask him to explain it to you. Holy shit. She faked it. She faked a stupid secret note so that I would talk to him again. And it worked, better than she could ever have imagined.
Or worse than she ever could have imagined.
Jules, you have no idea what you’ve done to me.
“A mistake, perhaps?”
“My friend...” I choked on the words. “She wanted me to talk to you.”
“That makes more sense,” the man said, relief coming over his face. “Yes, more sense than you being with the police. Here I was thinking that they might be onto me! But no, it’s only... it’s only you.”
The man finished patting me down and then took my arm.
“Look what you’ve caught, kitten,” he said, smiling. “Come here.”
His arm came around my waist again and I walked with him for a few steps before realizing that he was taking me to the kitchen. The man inside on the table moaned.
“No,” I cried. “I don’t want to see—”
“Too bad, little kitten,” he said, pulling me along with him. I stopped walking at the doorway but he was too strong: he simply dragged me the rest of the way. He pulled me inside and dropped me next to the radiator in the corner before rummaging through a kitchen drawer. I clutched my bad leg and stared at the man on the table.
It was the professor; I could see him clearly now that I was close. There were straps holding him down at the neck and arms and ankles. His shirt had been sliced open and he had three long cuts running up and down his chest from his bellybutton to his collarbone. He moaned again and then opened his eyes. His mustache was gone, shaved off.
He had dark brown eyes, eyes like prey. They found me in the corner, and he twisted his head, as shocked as I was that I was here. He opened his mouth, and blood ran down his bottom lip.
“Run,” he said hoarsely.
A new wash of fear swept through me, and I would have run if I had a leg to do it with. But before I could do anything, Fabio stepped over and grabbed my wrist. He snapped a handcuff on me and snapped the other half of the handcuff onto the radiator.
“What are you—”
“I’m glad you’re so curious, little kitten,” he said. He went back to the man on the table and shoved a dishcloth into his mouth just as he began to scream. The screams turned to muffled chokes as he pressed his hand over the dishcloth to hold it in place. “You’ll get to see everything much better from inside, I promise. It’s almost confession time. And we have a lot to confess, don’t we?”
He picked up the knife from the table and drew it up along the edge of the mustache man’s jawline. The man’s muffled scream turned to a high pitch, and I watched in horror. The handsome man lifted the knife up into the air.
He smiled. Dear god, he smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gav
There’s something about killing that soothes me. And after such a harrowing night, I needed to be soothed.
I took the knife and slid it down to the man’s chest. He was bawling behind the dishrag. Behind me, the girl was crying, her eyes clenched shut. Stupid girl. She told me she was curious.
Licking my lips, I took my time. My favorite is the skin on the chest, when it opens up in nice thick slices. Almost like bacon.
I’m not like Hannibal Lector, don’t worry. Human flesh doesn’t interest me, not in a culinary way. I do enjoy watching people realize that they are all flesh, though. It’s something I’ve always known about myself, but most other humans have the mistaken idea that they’re people, not just animals. They think that there’s something separate from their bodies, something different and disconnected from the tissues and tendons that take them from place to place in the world.
They’re no different, though, when they start to die. Like this man, for instance. I slipped my knife under his skin and he howled behind the dishrag. Blood welled up from under my knife and dripped down his side. In the corner, the girl was speaking.
“Don’t do it, please don’t do it,” she said. “Please, don’t hurt him anymore.”
“Shut up,” I said, not looking at her. I still had to decide what to do with her, but I didn’t want a distraction. Not now. “You have no idea how much he deserves this.”
My knife sliced down the man’s chest, down to his stomach. His screams softened the edges of the world. He sounded so much like an animal now, so very much. I took out the dishrag and his howls filled the room.