I almost act ignorant to his interrogation, but when his grip on my hair tightens enough to rip several strands from the roots, I blink an incalculable number of times instead.
“So more than the standard three you’re used to hearing?”
After taking a moment to appreciate his personal understanding about my ‘condition,’ I nod. He grinds his teeth together so loudly it overtakes my stomach’s worried gurgle. When I crank my neck back to peer at him, frantic to tell him that the number has returned to the standard three, he pushes me back with so much aggression, I skid across the rubbish-lined floor.
“Go shower. You smell like shit.” When he spots the faintest shake of my head, he locks his eyes with mine then snarls, “You either wash off the skank seeping from your pores, or I will fuck it out of you.” When I rise to my feet, he steps closer to me. “But it won’t be like it was in the motel or the truck because by the time I’m done with you, you won’t be breathing. That…” I wince in pain when he grips my thigh hard enough to reopen the cut he made yesterday. “… will seem like child’s play.” Nothing but hurt beams out of him when he snarls through a clenched jaw. “So go and fucking shower before I do something I can’t take back.”
twenty-six
DEXTER
When the shower switches off, I wipe at the sweat careening down my face before acting as if I didn’t spend the last twenty minutes searching Megan’s house top to bottom for any medication she may be hiding.
I’m pissed.
Peeved as fuck.
I thought Megan understood me because she too was emancipated from the normality society demands, that we’re wired the same way, but after discovering two pills missing in a canister with my name on the label in the bag she packed, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re anything alike.
She killed my father’s little pet, but perhaps she only did that because the voices in her head coerced her to. Maybe the rage that burned her alive had nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with her being medicated
If I were being honest, I’d admit I’m not overly pissed about her self-medicating. Everyone handles trauma in their own way. I am more concerned about the warnings the voice I ignore more than I listen to is hitting me with.
It is the voice of reason.
It’s telling me that the whole basis of Megan’s craziness is the medication she was forced to take for years on end.
If that’s true, I’m more fucked in the head than I thought.
Obsessions are meant to be reciprocated and screwed up. They’re meant to make you the most unhinged you’ve ever been and come with a heap of fucked-up shit you’d pretend didn’t exist just for the briefest glance from a pair of skitzo eyes.
I thought I had that with Megan, that our uniqueness was what would meld us together.
Now I have no fucking clue which way is up.
Little Ms. Sunshine with the psychopathic eyes might not be screwed in the head at all, and for some reason, the acknowledgment of that frustrates me more than my reason for traveling thousands of miles in the direction opposite to the one I had planned to take when Megan’s lips circled my dick after she licked off her virginal blood.
I wanted to protect her, but now it appears as if the only way I can do that is by letting her go.
Over my dead body.
I whack my head three times, hating the stupid thoughts constantly flooding it of late. It was my belief I could be more than I was born to be that saw my mother killed. I can’t make the same mistake twice.
My thoughts shift from my past to the present when Megan enters the room in nothing but a towel. Her hair is drenched and hanging heavily down her back, and her skin has been scrubbed raw.
She took my comment literally when I said she smelled like shit. She didn’t, but if I didn’t assault her verbally, I might have assaulted her physically.
Usually, I wouldn’t hold back. If a woman’s disobedience needs punishing, I’m more than willing to cross that line, but since she unearthed the truth for me and freed some of the mess inside my head, I can’t take the same route this time.
“Not a dress. Wear pants.” Megan’s eyes stray from the floral dress she was about to slip on to me. They’re as pleading as they were when she silently begged for me to shower with her instead of dumping her favorite shampoo onto the moldy shower floor and leaving the bathroom as quickly as I entered it. “You won’t need to be easily accessible.Well, not for me anyway.” I was meant to say the last sentence in my head, but it’s clear from Megan's expression that I spoke it out loud. She looks as distraught as my mother did when she realized I had set her up. I told her it was time for her to be free. That she didn’t have to follow his rules anymore. I lied. As I do now too. “It’s time for you to go home, right? Back to Nick. That was the plan all along, wasn’t it?”
Megan shakes her head so fiercely she becomes unsteady on her feet. “Ugh,” she grunts when I push her away with the same aggression I used when I discovered her canister of blandness.
My shove is brutal, but it barely slows her down. She’s up in my face in an instant, and even quicker than that, she falls to her knees and wraps her arms around my thigh.
“Begging will do you no good. It’s too late for that now.”
She once again aggressively shakes her head before she clutches me even tighter. “Uhn.”
