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“-I’d be first in line to congratulate you, buddy, but I’m just being honest, you two would be like Beauty and the Beast.”
Phantom actually snapped his teeth at Ash. He could bite him, could rip his windpipe out with his teeth, could fucking end him, he seethed. But mainly he seethed because he knew it was true. He felt it, too, his inner voice told him the exact same. She’s too good for you. She’s not for you. You can sit and watch her from the shadows, you fucking demon of darkness, but you can’t break out and actually touch her. You can’t speak to her, she will never smile at you. She isn’t for you. Phantom felt it and knew it and Ash voicing it out loud only made him hate himself more.
The next morning, he tried to arrive before she did. He sat back on his bike. He did a cursory sweep of the pharmacy, the street, but he focused his gaze on the ice cream parlor. He didn’t have to wait long, she walked down the street, looking perfect. Her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Fuck. Her legs encased in leggings, black ones today, with a little panel of black mesh offering a cheeky glimpse of her calf skin. Fuck. A white T-shirt. Even her arms looked enticing to him this morning. Fuck. He was fucked.
She had that little calm smile on her lips that she always seemed to have. As she approached the door, she turned suddenly, and looked across the street. Directly to him. His heart stopped as their gazes locked. He felt the connection. But then she smiled wider and waved. She waved at him. He couldn’t believe it. She paused, almost as if she was wondering whether to come over to him. His hand weighed a ton, he could not lift his arm for the life of him to return that wave. She smiled wider now, revealing white teeth. But she continued into the shop, obviously thinking better than going to speak to him. He didn’t deserve anything more from her. That was for sure.
Fucking ice cream. He loved ice cream. That was before. His mom would buy it for him, he suddenly remembered sunny days in the park, laughter, joy. The creamy, cool taste of his favorite, chocolate ice cream. That was all before. Before his parents died and he never had ice cream again. Hell, he’d never thought about ice cream afterwards.
Until her ice cream had hit his tongue and he’d tasted life again.
It jolted him, he physically lurched forward, as he sat straddling his bike, his pulse pounding in his veins, the breath whooshing out of his lungs. He felt dizzy, but realized it wasn’t a bad thing. It was actually… nice. To suddenly remember something from before. He hadn’t thought of anything from before for a long time. He hadn’t thought of anything, except revenge. Killing them all. His vendetta. His mission, to wipe them from the face of the earth. He was getting close. Only one more to go.
His life had three parts to it. Before, during and after. Before, he had known the taste of ice cream. Of bike rides, playdates, school, a usual, happy upbringing. The world had color and it tasted sweet. But then it happened, and all of that had been taken away from him. Then he was no longer a child, no longer a boy. He was taken. Everything in his old life had ended. He no longer knew the taste of ice cream. During that time of darkness there was waking at night, learning to shoot, to stab, to fight. Learning to kill. He had known the taste of blood. And he had grown to like it. There were no more bike rides and school, but there was a family, of sorts. He wasn’t unhappy. But the world was black and it had tasted sour. Then, after, that had all ended, too. He was to blame, he knew it. He had ruined that, too. Then the world was empty. There was no color, there was no taste. He had wanted the end but he’d already passed his end and was in the afterlife. A sea of nothingness.
The last six months had been… gray and red. A gray blur, with smatters of red blood. He’d survived it, thanks to his family. The MC who had physically fed him and forced him to drink water, then encouraged him to shower and get dressed. Then got him moving around in the clubhouse and on the grounds. April, the Prez’s ol’ lady, coaxing him to help her plant some flowers and trees in the garden. That’s when he decided he’d track them all down and end them all. All the others that he’d missed the first time. Because they all deserved to meet their end. And he would give it to them. Yeah, things had taken on some color then. He knew it hadn’t been easy for the MC. He had wanted them to give up on him at first. He had given up on himself. He wanted them to just fucking let him go. But they didn’t, they kept fighting, so Phantom clung on and crawled back. They didn’t know he was moonlighting as a serial killer. They didn’t know he was killing others, following the beat of his own drum. Sure, they knew he killed, he picked up all of the contract kills the MC had on their books. And he did it with diligence and professionalism. But they didn’t know he went out at night and did it as an extracurricular activity, too.
She waved to him again as she left that evening. And in the night Phantom woke up to stickiness and heat all over himself. A wet dream. He’d come. Fuck, he thought, as he cleaned himself up. It was 2 a.m. and here he was changing the bed sheets because a woman had waved at him. He was an animal. But to get himself to sleep again he took himself in his fist and roughly satiated himself. He took a long time to come, it kept eluding him this second time around, he rolled onto his front and whimpered silently into the sheets as he pumped relentlessly. In his head he screamed her name. Sophie. Sophie. Sophie. And after he had finally found relief, sleep had finally taken him and it was the morning, he touched himself again, fucking himself raw again when he woke up, hard as steel for her.
A week went by. She waved and smiled. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t do anything, other than stare back with fear and longing and desperation in his eyes. He wanted her to see him. For the first time in forever, he wanted to be seen. To be heard. To be acknowledged. Every morning, he challenged himself, but he never could. He came often and hard as soon as the darkness of night engulfed him. By himself. Dreaming of her. He felt like he was bursting, about to explode. His cock had taken on a life of its own, begging, needy, erect whenever he thought of her. Which was often. Weeping pre-cum like a leaky faucet, his balls constantly aching.
And now, he wanted her. He wanted to be a man who deserved her. Not the monster who didn’t. He wanted her laugh, her smile, her warm breath. He wanted her wet cunt. He wanted her to come all over him, for them to come together. He wanted her to want him. This was all huge progress. He hadn’t wanted anything for a long time. He had wanted to please his Prez, sure, he had wanted to earn his place amongst his brothers. Before that, he hadn’t wanted to live. And before that… he hadn’t wanted, he wasn’t allowed to want, he was a tool, a machine, something that had been used for one thing and one thing only. Well, two things. He was an animal. He may be a brute, a beast, a fucking monster of nightmares, but now he wanted something. Someone. He wanted something more than to just survive, or serve, or please. He wanted to be pleased himself. By her.
And that want grew and grew with each minute that passed. He touched himself that evening and that morning thinking about her. Taking himself in his fist, last night, letting time tick away as he held out as long as he could. He had squeezed himself, and barely moved. Enjoying holding himself on that edge so that it was painful. He had an apadravya piercing, a barbell from front to back vertically through the head of his dick. He’d been made to get it, for his secondary use. But he’d liked it, the pleasure that came from the extra stimulation. He moved his hand over it, let it tug slightly, and thought of her. His little sugar plum fairy. Then again, this morning, fast, frenzied, roughly. He needed release, it was eating him up from the inside. He needed her. He sat across the road on his bike, simmering. He almost felt the steam coming out of his ears. He ground his jaw, and clenched his fist. His hard-on crept back, mocking him. Hours passed. He wished she’d come outside, talk to him, make that first move.
* * *
He sat,simmering on his bike, watching, when the call from Colt came through. Nobody ever called him, because they knew he wouldn’t respond by saying anything.
Phantom pressed the button to accept the call, put the phone to his ear, and listened.
“Phantom, buddy?”
Phantom let his breath crackle down the line lightly. “Hmm.”
“It’s Colt.”
Again, a little pause, Colt waiting just out of habit probably more than anything else. Phantom waited.
“Carmelo just rang me, just had new information surface… the forensic team in the tunnel, the ones investigating the Demonios-”
He gulped. This was turning into a long day for him.
“Forensics have confirmed, no signs of trauma, no knife marks, no incised bone wounds-”
Well, shit. Phantom swallowed, absorbing the news. They weren’t stabbed. That must mean… he didn’t stab them. He didn’t kill them.
Colt carried on, “They aren’t sure yet how they died. Said it was the weirdest thing they’ve seen…”
Phantom felt as if he was outside of his body looking at himself, too. No stab marks. Meant he didn’t stab them.
Phantom felt a ray of sunshine pierce his black sky. He had killed, and he would kill again, but he hadn’t stabbed them. He hadn’t killed them, his former family, his former gang. Fuckers who probably didn’t deserve to live, yes, the Demonios were a bloodthirsty cartel. But Phantom knew now, he hadn’t taken their lives from them.
Unlike the time before that, with his real family. He shivered. He pushed that away, he never thought about that.
He could hear Colt smiling in the way his voice sounded down the phone. “So you didn’t kill them after all, hey?” Phantom felt his lips curl, too, in an unfamiliar stretching way. Almost a smile, too. “Maybe there is a happily ever after waiting for you and your little miss sugar after all, hey buddy?”
Five minutes before closing time the next day, and the bell tinkled above the door. She looked up, hoping it would be him. Hoping it would be Phantom. He’d never come in but her imagination ran wild, maybe he was popping by to ask her out on a date... His bike had been in the parking space opposite when she had arrived that morning, but unusually, he wasn’t on it. So when the door of her shop opened, her heart skipped a beat and she hoped it was him.
