The Girl Who Would Be King(25)

I’m a monster.

I feel with every fiber of my being that I should be doing something good with my life, that I should be helping people and ‘saving the world’, but all I have the ability to do is maim, kill, and destroy. It feels so wrong. I’m an abomination. Like I am made wrong – missing some crucial piece of a giant and unsolvable puzzle. I am the Green Lantern without my power ring. I am Captain Marvel without my magic word. There’s nothing to guide me.

There is nothing.



Nothing.



I am lost and alone.



I sleep with the honest intention of

never waking

up.



•

I go after Felice first. There’s something about her being a woman and one of my biggest betrayers that pisses me off a little bit extra. Not that I’m the most loyal of individuals myself, but I am feeling pretty justified and superior at this point. Adrian will, of course, be last, even though his betrayal hurts the most. I’m definitely going to have to work myself up to being able to kill Adrian; I still love him. No matter what he’s done, I can’t seem to help it. I can’t turn it off.

The other reason to go after Felice first is simply that I know where she’ll be: the diner. I stop at my motel room to change clothes. Not knowing how long I’ve been out of commission I assume Adrian has given up the location of my room so that they can ransack it for treasure, and they have, the vultures. Fortunately, they’ve left the things they found to be worthless, like most of my clothes and personal items. I’m not surprised to find my helmet gone and a glance out the window tells me that the bike is gone as well. Felice has surely taken the bike; she’s always had her eye on it.

Maybe I can come up with something extra horrible for her.

The room has been torn up, probably to make it look like a robbery (which it is) or a kidnapping (which it sort of is). I curse a couple times and pull on some underwear, jeans, a t-shirt and my beat up Converse. I put the rest of my stuff that isn’t destroyed in the only remaining duffel and head out the front door. The bag feels light without my beloved cat suit in it (though maybe that’s all in my head). That should be my first question for Felice, although I suspect I’ll forget about it by the time we’re face to face.

I get back in the pervert’s truck with my stuff and the pervert’s old clothes and boots. It occurs to me as I drive that he’s actually the first person I’ve killed – well, except Delia. It seems like that should feel weird or strange, killing someone, but instead it feels totally natural, like taking out the trash or something. Actually that’s a totally bad analogy since I hate taking out the trash. But it feels almost routine, maybe? Like mundane and ordinary, and instead of wondering why I did it, I wonder why I haven’t been doing it more?

A few miles from my hotel, in a dumpster in a McDonald’s parking lot, I throw out the cowboy boots. Two miles from there I toss out the shirts in the trash bins behind a closed liquor store. Then I park the car in an empty supermarket parking lot not far from Felice’s diner. I leave the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition, hoping I’ll get lucky and someone will take the opportunity to steal it, moving it even further away from me. But it doesn’t really matter; I’m about to be a ghost in this town.

On the walk to the diner, I pass an auto repair shop and just casually pick up a dirty tire iron lying around and walk off with it. It feels nice in my hand. Heavy, but almost elegant. I don’t think people give tire irons enough credit. On the surface it seems like the choice of a thug or Neanderthal, but really it has a nice feeling to it; it seems like it has more class than using an axe or something. I like it.

At the diner I see my motorcycle parked outside, clear as day, shining in the sun. Bitch. She has some giant brass balls. I almost want to admire her for it, but there should at least be honor among thieves, or something. I go around the back and wait for her in the alley that leads to the dumpsters and is mostly hidden from everything. It won’t be long until she comes out for a smoke break, Felice is nothing if not predictable. I lean against a concrete wall and train my eyes on the back door of the diner, the tire iron in my right hand, casually resting behind my right leg.

She emerges, true to form, about eight minutes later, pack of cigarettes in her hand – one already in her mouth and the match struck – as she comes out the back door.

“Hello, Felice.”

To her credit, she doesn’t jump, but her normal unfazed expression is totally fazed. In fact, her mouth drops open so far that she loses her unlit cigarette, and the match flame continues to burn toward her fingers.