AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s true. Truth be told, I hope you made me pregnant with your baby so we can run away and be a family. I want it all with you, everything.”
The idea of putting my baby inside her makes me hard.
But it’s getting late, and we have to leave before her parents get home from their church meeting and find her missing.
“I don’t want to let you go,” she says after we dress, and it’s time to leave.
“It’s only for a short while. When we finish school, we’ll leave this all behind. It will be just you and me.”
“Promise?”
She looks so innocent and sweet I have to kiss her again. “I promise.”
Walking side by side, we push our bikes through the night and reluctantly head for home.
It begins to rain but instead of racing for cover beneath the bus stop, Belle lays down her bike and holds out her arms and begins to twirl in the rain shower.
I don’t know it now, but later this will be the last thing I remember—her twirling in the rain with a beautiful smile on her face.
I don’t remember what happens next because before I realize it, I’m waking up with the rain splattering against my face and a violent pounding in the back of my skull.
I’m lying on my back, and everything hurts.
Dazed, I blink against the raindrops hitting my face and try to remember what the hell happened. My head throbs, and when I reach up to touch it, blood coats my fingers.
I sit up, and pain shoots through my head and pounds at my temples. Blood mixes with rainwater in my mouth, and I roll onto my palms to vomit.
That’s when I see her.
My beautiful Belle.
Lying skewed on the wet concrete, her dress is hitched up around her waist. Her head is turned and her half-open eyes stare lifelessly at me.
It takes a moment to register.
The roar that leaves me is desperate and violent, rushing out of me and dying on the tail of a flash of lightning through the stormy clouds.
Long nails of rain pelt from the night sky, drenching me as I kneel on the wet road with Belle in my arms, her body limp, her arms swinging lifelessly. I hold her to me. Blood mixes with the rain on her skin and swirls down her throat before disappearing onto the road.
I don’t know how long I lay there with her because time has stopped. All I know is that the rain keeps coming down hard, but I won’t leave her. I cry and scream, a part of me dying on the roadside with her.
Finally, a pair of headlights cut into the darkness and come to a stop only a few yards away. The door opens, and my uncle gets out. Rushing over to me, he looks down at Belle in my arms.
“Dammit, son,” he cries. “What have you done?”
The court is at full capacity.
The trial is a media sensation, and outside the crowd is hungry for blood.
My blood.
The press is having a field day with clickbait headlines like The Beautiful Teenager Brutally Murdered by The Weirdo Next Door and Beautiful Belle and the Brutal Beast.
Before I even step inside this courtroom, I’ve already been found guilty by the court of public opinion.
Now, I’m in the witness box wearing a suit that is too tight and shoes that are too small.
After days of witness testimony and forensic demonstrations, the court has heard how I am a manic depressive with violent tendencies who raped and murdered the girl next door. They’ve heard about my obsession with Belle, how I kidnapped her when she rejected my advances, and took her to the abandoned theater, where I violated her before beating her to death.
