The Girl Who Would Be King(26)

“You’re gonna burn yourself,” I offer. She looks at the match a second too late and grimaces before dropping it.

“Lola…I…” she stammers. It’s good she doesn’t have words, I mean – what do you say to someone that you left for dead to be eaten alive by dogs, then hit with a tire iron, then dumped in the desert naked and gutted – as they stand in front of you in an abandoned alley?

“The keys,” I say simply, holding out my left hand. She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and takes out her keys. She starts to take my bike key off the ring that houses the other keys of her life. “Don’t bother with that. You won’t be needing the rest of those…like, ever.” She stops, her head still down, her hair falling in her eyes. Her hands shake visibly as she absorbs the impact of my words. She throws the full set of keys over to me. I catch them in my left hand and pocket them without even looking.

“What’re you…” she starts.

I smile at her coolly. “Oh, let’s not ask silly questions now. I think I just told you what I’m going to do to you Felice. I’m going to kill you. And you know what? You totally deserve it. I’ll be honest, when I killed my mother, I felt this twinge – not a twinge of guilt or regret or anything, you understand – but a twinge that I was supposed to be feeling something and that it was missing in me. I suspect I’ll feel that twinge again when I kill Adrian later today, but right now? I gotta say, I’m not feeling any freaking twinge.” With that I let the tire iron slide out from behind my leg. “Recognize this?” Her eyes widen, the whites shining brightly from her face and she finally panics and tries to get back into the diner but I’m on her before she can even turn the knob, pressing her against the door with my body-weight and breathing in her ear, “Let’s not get anyone else involved, okay?” With that I snap the handle off the back door.

“What are you?” she breathes.

“Mmmm. I don’t really know what I am, Felice. It’s an interesting question, but one I’m afraid we don’t have time for today,” I say, totally overloading on over-the-top cartoon villain dialogue. A well-placed blow to the knee knocks her to the ground and she yelps almost quietly, but the next one might not be so quiet, so I have to work fast. I beat her until she looks like little bits of broken bones in a bag of flesh instead of a person. She was dead after the second hit, the rest of them were just for me. Afterward, I pick up her body and drop it in the dumpster where it belongs. There’s blood on the ground, but I don’t care, and I’ve actually remained surprisingly clean, which is nice.

When I’m finished, I head to the restaurant, where they’ll probably all be hanging out like morons, easy pickings, the whole lot of them. When I peek through the skylight though, I’m relieved to find that Adrian isn’t there. I hope he’s not coming at all. Without drama I drop through the skylight and land in the middle of the room, much like last time.

I look around, happy at the shocked faces, though Melvin looks more pissed than surprised.

“Déjà vu, huh?” I say to the room arms outstretched.

“What the hell?!” Enrico says.

“This is impossible!” Albert chimes in.

“Hmm,” I say. “Lets make it extra déjà vu-y…” I point to the safe in the back of the room. “I’ll be taking that.”

They all look at the safe, Jorge as white as a sheet and ready to not only give up any treasure, but also willing to proclaim me either Jesus resurrected or the devil incarnate, I’m not sure which. And does it really matter? Albert and Enrico are similarly ready to give me anything in order to make me leave but Melvin, as always, needs more convincing. I look at him hard. “Please say ‘over my dead body’ – I’m just dying for someone to say that,” I smile. Melvin grins thinly back at me and pulls out a gun. I admit, I’m a little afraid of the gun. Having never been shot I’m not sure what will happen, and if I’m knocked out again, Christ knows what they’ll do to me and who knows if I can recover from their shenanigans a third time. Can I re-grow a head? Melvin shoots at me and I move fast enough that the bullet barely grazes my arm, like a tickle. He continues shooting and I continue moving, and as a result he shoots Jorge in the head. At this Albert and Enrico fully panic and the noise gets ratcheted up a couple notches. I grab Albert and use him as a human shield to approach Melvin, who mercilessly shoots Albert twice in the chest. When I’m close enough that I’m confident I can beat the bullet, I move faster than ever before and snatch the gun from Melvin’s hand, taking his trigger finger with me in the process. He howls like mad and sinks to his knees. Albert is crying at my feet with two critical wounds and I shoot him in the head just to shut him up. Melvin looks surprised; I don’t know why. Enrico has his hands up in the corner of the room.