His eyes grow even wider, and he pales when I hold the bloody knife up and run my finger along the backside of it.
“Please don’t,” he begs, trying and failing to stand up.
He’ll hit me if he gets the chance. I’m not stupid enough to get that close just yet.
I pull the wire from my back pocket, and I watch him as he watches me.
“Don’t recognize me, Ben?” I ask mockingly, cocking my head. Ten surgeries ago, he might have recognized me immediately.
“No. No,” he cries. “I don’t know you. You have the wrong person!”
I squat down, noticing the way his gaze shifts. He’s preparing to attack me now that I’m in this position. He finds it a vulnerable mistake on my part.
If he only knew…
“I was a sixteen-year-old little girl the last time you saw me,” I say with a dark smile. “I’m all grown up now. Want to play?”
The last three words are what triggers recognition. I see it in the way his pupils dilate, his nostrils flare, and a sense of understanding washes over his features.
“You,” he
whispers. “No. No. You look nothing like her. She died,” he adds in the same hushed tone.
“I survived,” I say back, watching as his fear slowly starts to fade, just as I knew it would.
Right now, he’s remembering just how weak I was as that horrified, terrified, sobbing little girl. He’s remembering how easily he overpowered me. His mind is playing tricks on him that he’s still the one in control, despite the precariously deadly situation.
“You took three turns,” I go on, staying poised and ready, but outwardly displaying a weakness I don’t truly have, allowing his mind to continue to revert back to that night ten years ago.
“That means three pounds of flesh over the next three days,” I go on.
I see it happening before he launches himself at me, screaming in pain as he tries to tackle me to the floor. My knife slams into his shoulder, and another bloodcurdling scream erupts through the air as I spin on my knees, sliding in behind him as his face plants into the floor.
My hand is still holding the knife, and I rip it away in less than a blink, almost simultaneously tossing the wire around his neck, winding it tightly. Then I choke him, reveling in the pained sounds, until he grows limp and unconscious, riding the line of life and death. With the blood loss, he’s too weak to fight back. It’d be so easy to kill him right now.
But death won’t come too soon.
I don’t believe in mercy.
Three pounds of flesh will be extracted while he’s awake.
He’ll beg and plead.
He’ll pray to pass out.
But he will feel it all.
Just like we did.
Chapter 2
As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.
—Albert Einstein.
LOGAN
I finish off my croissant while staring at the gory crime scene photos.