And then it was like she was a new woman, a beast.
She screamed.
Thirty-Five
Penny
No.
Never.
I would not have his hands on my throat. That would not be the way I die. Anything but that.
It flashed across my vision like a blaze, like a comet crossing the sky. I was done playing with Adrian, done letting him push me and toy with my death. For all he’d inflicted upon me, I’d accepted it, welcomed it even, as revenge, a kind of healing. But his hand on my throat?
No.
If only he’d never done that, he would have had what he wanted.
I screamed and shoved him, grasping for the knife he’d dropped, doing everything possible to overpower him. With surprise, with fucking wiliness, I could do it. I was a scrappy little shit when I needed to be.
I’d killed a few men, two more than I’d been convicted of. Nobody was aware that my sister’s rapist wasn’t my first. Not my family, my lawyer, nobody. A story I intended never to tell. And I wasn’t even sure why; it’s not like my sentence could have been any worse. But something in me wanted it private.
It was just mine.
When I learned what had happened to my sister, it sent me back in a flash of horror and choking. To hands on my throat holding me down, laughing and chiding as I choked and gasped, fought with everything I had and got nowhere. It took me deciding my life was about to go, accepting that as my fate, while two friends twice the size of me, and at least double the age, took turns rapingme.
The worse part about it was that no one noticed anything was wrong after. School carried on; life continued. No one saw that I was screaming inside. Not even Lacey, whom I murdered for soon after.
I was alone.
I would never see her again, never share the sunshine and breeze with my little sister. Never run throughthe woods, touching trees and grass, while she laughed with me.
So I let that scream out, let it rot and fester in the world rather than in my gut. I killed both those men, truckers who’d taken a liking to me in the diner I was working in. It took me a year to track them down. One returned though and met the end of my knife in a bloody mess in the back of his cab when he thought he had me for round two.
The other was harder. I found him after my sister’s rapist was dead, and he became number three. As far as I was aware, his body remained food for the coyotes out in the desert. Unfound. Maybe one day some poor hiker would stumble across him, and they’d attach his death to my crimes. I’d been sloppy, after all, probably left DNA and a damn calling card behind in my anger.
But that day hadn’t come yet, so I kept my mouth shut about it. It was almost a game, a folly, knowing how much they didn’t know. Maybe it was a sense of power, a card I held onto. I thought about those men often; their deaths spurring on the ones that came after.
I never even researched them, wasn’t sure of their names or what they looked like. Only that they were sand and bones now, their fate lost to time. Flashes of evil demons on top of me, faces warped, voices mangled, until I took them and destroyed them.
I couldn’t cope with hands around my throat. It took me back too far, to that rot, to that moment I lost my innocence and became this… this devil, this weapon of anger and revenge.
Adrian was stronger than me, and grappling with him wasn’t easy. He gained the upper hand and straddled me, but I had the knife, and I pressed the blade to his balls, pushing just enough that he would be feeling the sharp sting.
“You’re pretending to not care about death,” I told him, trying to catch my breath. “But I know you don’t want to lose your balls before you go.” I pushed the blade a little, applied a touch more pressure, so he knew I was serious.
Problems with fighting naked, tits and balls flying all over the place. We grappled and attacked, clawing and battling. He was stronger than me, but I had a knife to his sack, so everything sat frozen. That wasenough for me to know he wasn’t ready for this to be over. We weren’t done. I didn’t move, the blade staying right where it lay, against his most sensitive flesh.
He scowled down at me, leaning forward, wincing a bit when I think the knife must have nicked him, but not stopping until he was almost nose to nose with me. His fury burned out of him, fiery and hot.
“I’m going to kill you,” he promised, his voice low, commanding, scary. “No more playing games, little killer. You took my brother from me. No more games.”
I pushed the knife up, and I fucking know I caught his sack with the blade that time, because he roared and flew away from me, all long limbs and sinewy muscle darting back, clambering off of me with anger and rage bleeding from him.
I raced after him, knife pointed out, ready to do… something. He’d hurt me so much, and while I’d taken it, relished in it, that deep buried part of me that hated him just for what swung between his legs was bashing down the doors of my mind.
As he scrambled for a weapon, I jumped on him, full body weight slamming across his side, sending him tumbling back to the floor.
