Page 120 of Cruel Love

“Are you talking to yourself?”

“Yes!” I shout as I lay the tarp over three of the men.

“Well, hurry up. I’m hungry, too.”

She disappears inside, drifting around the corner toward the kitchen.

I drop my head, eying the dead bodies at my feet. Food is possibly the last thing on my mind. I’ll take the shower sex if I had to choose one.

But there’s something I have to do first.

I lay the rest of the sheets down, obscuring the bodies completely, before heading back inside. Boxcar looks up as I lock the door behind me, giving me a nod as passive and casual as Lilah’s wave.

“So, this is our lives now,” I say.

“Hey, we could be those guys out there,” he says with a shrug.

I nod. He’s not wrong.

“Aw, hell yeah!”

Lilah sidles in from the kitchen and holds up a small pint of Rocky Road ice cream. “Myra’s a bitch but she’s got good taste.” She holds up two spoons and clinks them together. “Meet me upstairs, big guy?” she hints at me as she walks backward into the hallway.

“All right, then,” I say with a sigh.

She purses her lips and kisses the air as she leaves the room.

I look down into Boxcar’s uncomfortable face. “You good?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’ll, uh...” His nose curls. “I’ll find a couch on the ground floor to crash on... where all the people died. That seems… safer.”

I pat his shoulder as I pass toward the basement door. “Try and get some sleep. You did a great job today.”

“Oh, hey, you going down there first?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

He hands me a pen. “There’s a reset button on the cameras. Right on the bottom, you can’t miss it. There should be at least one in that room.”

I tap the pen against my palm. “I can do that.”

“That should give us eyes on her until morning. I’ll get the rest of the cameras down there back online then, but...” he peeks at the door, “I think we’ll all feel better if we can see that one overnight.”

I nod in agreement and open the basement door.

I continue down the stairs. Lights dim behind me as I walk through the shadowed hallways, going all the way back to the unfinished room on the left. The only unfinished room in the house, from what I’ve seen. Though, I don’t blame them.

There’s no sense in finishing a room solely meant for making people bleed.

I stop in the doorframe and look at her. Myra Black. Hair as black as her eyes. Skin as pale as freshly fallen snow. A regular Snow White... if there’s some alternate universe version where the Evil Queen raises her as her own and the two of them stab the woodsman to death, cackling all the while.

I bound her here in the same way I bound Lilah in my trailer just two weeks ago. Resting forward on the table, hands and legs fastened with every chain or cuff I could find. The chain is wrapped tightly around the table legs, which are bolted to the floor. She’s not going anywhere, just like Lilah didn’t.

I step in and pass the table with the pen Boxcar gave me. I spot a camera in the corner, just like he said there would be, and reach up to feel for the tiny reset button on the bottom.

“I knew it.”

A little red light turns on in the camera’s right corner. Should be good to go, Sparky.

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