He nods, not asking me more. He knows about my predilection to hunt them before I kill. I could just shoot him, but playing with bodies, manipulating them, and then skinning each one is fucking delicious. The feel of their skin stretching before I tan each inch to preserve it is like nothing else. The final act of tattooing each one using the burned ash is god-like, a visit to Elysium. “There’s a body in the bushes. Forty feet in. Leave it there, but strip him of any discerning information.” It will be another unexplained dead body.
Onyx heads in that direction. Scout starts the new rig; its engine hums. Cade closes the doors, and it pulls away. The original truck is abandoned on a highway, the human cargo gone.
“Fucking bastard. Let me go.”
“So you do speak. I wondered.”
Bending, I stoop next to the guard leaning against a large oak tree. No longer as fat as before, he lifts his mottled face up to me before he closes his eyes again.
A hard slap to his face has his eyes springing open again. “No. No. No. I want you to stay awake, friend. We need to talk.”
My prisoner starts cursing at me, and I chuckle. He has some spirit left. He won’t for much longer, but for now I’ll let him insult me. He looks very different from how he looked four days ago when Onyx dropped him off in my woods, bound and gagged. My camera picked up his heat signature immediately. I followed him out and removed his hand and leg restraints. It wasn’t much fun if they just lay there. It was the hope of escape that enhanced my bloodlust.
So I let him run, just as I do with all the others. I let them try to survive in the 80-acre wooded area filled with coyotes, foxes, and poisonous snakes. There’s a small lake that is about 50 feet deep, filled with aquatic life and temperature ranges stratification to support diverse life and to dispose of rotting flesh. It’s an ecosystem that I’ve created. Enough edible plants are growing so that he could survive.
I like to let them believe they have a chance to escape their living tomb. I watched and waited. It didn’t take long. He stepped into one of my bear traps. Watching him screaming, moaning, my cock getting harder and harder. I enjoy the pain he’s feeling. My level of sadism has grown since I first stabbed my stepfather’s body and removed his head with a hacksaw. Watching them slowly bleed to death, or listening to them sufferthrough the torture of me removing their genitals or their other appendages, feels damn good. Right now, my fingers itch to cut him. Watch him bleed.
I crouch down next to him and smile at the condition of his body. He’s covered in poison ivy blisters. One eye is completely swollen. His lips are cracked from thirst and hunger. There are cuts and abrasions on his face. He’s sweaty and even smellier than before. My eyes travel to his foot. The bone is most likely broken, or he may have severed tendons when his weight triggered the trap. I’ll know once I start dismembering him. Crusted blood coats the festering wound. It must have bled profusely, but now some has coagulated, but with the heat and the multitude of microbes, the wound is infected. Yellowish pus oozes out around the mangled muscle and fat. I spot a few maggots crawling around, feeding off his dying body. All evidence that the flies are well acquainted with my prisoner. His good eye is glazed with pain.
I ask him in Spanish. “Where does El Jefe hide?”
Slowly he lifts his head, “I fucking told you. I don’t know. No one’s ever seen him. He’s like you. A ghost.” Each sentence is pained, accompanied by breathless pants.
“So who gives you the orders?”
“His enforcers. But everything comes from someone even higher than El Jefe. He’s a billionaire or something. He owns half of New York. Everyone is involved. The senators. The governors.” He flops back down on the ground. “Just kill me. I’m already dead once they know you have me.” He laughs, his lip cracking more, blood collecting in each opening. “One day they will find you, El Búho. Even the best predators can be hunted and brought down.”
The mockery in his tone generates memories of Ivory and Angel’s broken bodies, reminding me of their helplessness. It ignites the rage in me, and I pull out his tongue and slice throughit neatly, relishing his garbled screams. He drops to his knees, grabbing his mouth, choking on his blood. I step back and watch him struggle to catch his breath. He starts to crawl away, low moans coming from his mouth. He can no longer talk, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to run again, dragging his useless, rotting foot behind him. I easily trail him, stepping on the wound once I get close enough. I smile at his weak attempts to remove my hand. I whisper the words of atonement for Angel and Ivory, “Iniuriam tuam ulciscar.” I pull out my second knife, the one I’ll use to end his miserable life.
He flops to his side and holds out his hand, an entreaty in his gaze, a plea for clemency or grace, but I don’t have any goodwill left for men like him. The image of the little girl from a few days ago flies through my mind. God knows what fate she would have suffered. The same as Angel, a voice echoes inside my head.
With that knowledge, I lean down over him and press my knee to his chest, gripping his hair, exposing his throat. The familiar rush of lust, of adrenaline, weaves through my body, settling in my cock. I slice through the skin of his neck, detaching muscles, ligaments, tendons, severing arteries and veins, enjoying the way his body submits to the sharp edge of my blade. Precum flows like the blood from the wound, and I love the coppery smell. Steam rises from the gaping gash, curling in soft wisps in the waning forest light.
Standing, I stare down at his body. He’s already gone, but every now and then his body twitches. I walk back a few feet to the large coil of steel, 3/4-inch chain, with a metal leg cuff. I attach it to his still intact ankle and drag him back to the tree. I glance behind me, liking the sight of his corpse, arms above his head, being pulled like the carcass he is. His slack mouth sluggishly releases a stream of blood into the dark soil beneath his head. His unseeing eyes stare heavenward, and I laugh in disdain.
“God won’t accept you beyond the pearly gates my friend.”
There is no one to enjoy my humor. The other deceased bodies, worm-eaten and festering, are no longer recognizable as human. The wildlife are too busy hunting for their own meal to care.
Reaching the tree, I attach him using the metal hooks I’ve drilled into each tree on the property. Once he’s tethered, I look down at him. The chain is unnecessary; he will never walk again, but it’s what they did to my sister, chaining her while they destroyed her body and spirit. It’s just one more in the long line of perverse rituals I exact on the Mestizos. When his body is bloated and decomposing, I’ll return to see it. I’ll stand here and breathe in the putrid smell of his death, but before I can enjoy that moment, I have to remove the parts of his body I will need, starting with his decapitation and ending with excarnating his body. Soon his skin will be ready for my ink gun.
Killing him is a small victory because for every one I kill, two more pop up in his place. I need El Jefe. I need him to be the one trussed up like a pig for slaughter.
I let him bleed out, my cock hard at the sight of the blood pooling beneath his neck. It feeds the animal inside me to know that I’ve dispatched another one. Another piece of shit is gone. I call their names as I watch, saying it over and over, chanting.Angel. Ivory. Angel. Ivory.Hoping wherever they are, they can hear me.
Once his skin has paled enough, signally that blood no longer travels through his body, I strip him naked, taking every item of clothing. Then I hack away at his hair, remove his nipples and genitals. Like what his group did to my niece and sister, as well as countless women before and after them. Each time I create a mirror image of their murders. Done with that part of my work, I head to the bag I brought with me, opening it to remove the hacksaw.
Removing his head takes the longest. Next are his hands. I toss both into my bucket, ready for my beetles to consume every spec of flesh and then later the kiln.
I puncture his soft belly and remove his stomach, liver, and entrails that will feed the bears, foxes, and coyotes at the edge of the property. I flip his carcass over and pull out my knife, working quickly so I can process his skin, slicing through his back and shoulders. I also remove part of the upper arms, removing the section of skin I need for my trophy. Then and only then do I pose his body, leaving him to rot, naked and humiliated in death.
The fire crackles,and I watch his clothes burn. I lift each time using a branch, feeding the cotton fabric into the flames. A spark bursts when some of the subcutaneous fat I removed from his skin and tossed on the makeshift pyre burns. I breathe in the delicious stench of wood, chemicals, and cooking meat. The tip of the branch glows, and I bring the stick to my mouth to light my cheroot. Once it starts to glow, I toss the branch back into the fire and drag in a lungful of smoke as the flames eat away at the evidence he existed. His shoes, pants, and shirt will all be ash shortly. Ash that I will mix with ink. There is hope that inking him into my skin will appease the simmering rage inside me.
Livia just called and told me that most of the victims we rescued survived, but a few didn’t make it, including one young girl. Nine years old. She died at the hospital from her injuries. Viciously raped, her body couldn’t recover from internal hemorrhaging. I want to kill all of them again. Mutilate their bodies over and over.
Exhaustion coats my body. I just finished prepping his skin, scraping it clean, removing muscle and tissue from the top skin layers. I glance over at my drying rack, where large flaps of skin hang, drying in the heat of the fire. In a few days, they will be ready to be canvased in a few weeks.
A scampering sound reaches my ears, and I turn and watch as my dermestid beetles crawl all over his severed head and hands. His mouth and ears are filled with my six-legged friends. Thousands of them cover each orifice, greedily feasting. Their bloodlust rivals mine.
