Page 120 of The Ripper

He had pawned everything he owned and even tried to sell his wife just to get rid of them, since his roulette addiction was stronger than his respect for the mother of his two children, whose college funds were long drained.

I wanted to kill him just for that, and if we added the fact that he might have been an accomplice to Arella’s disappearance, he was in for a world of pain before getting acquainted with death.

He had been rendered unconscious by Midnight, and as a result, he found himself naked on the floor of the crematorium, directly above the grate where his blood would soon be flowing down the drain.

I threw the ice filled bucket in his face.

“Wake up, Jamesy,” I grabbed his hair and lifted his head, waiting for him to open his eyes.

Rotten eyes…

He mumbled something unintelligible and seemed quite at peace before his vision cleared and he could see the sick grin on my face.

He flinched violently, ripping himself out of my hands. Panic could be read in his eyes as he crawled backwards until his back bumped into Midnight’s legs, who looked down at him with boredom.

He shivered, trying to get away from her, but she caught his right hand and plunged the meat hook into his palm.

The echo of the howl that ripped out of his throat brought me morbid fascination.

“Scream louder,” I laughed as I grabbed his left hand, using the second hook to break through his palm.

I screamed in sync with him.

“We can scream until we spit out our lungs, James. Nobody’s going to hear us.”

I threw the thick chain over the beam above us, then pulled on it until the director stood up on his toes and tied it to the grate on the floor.

He hung there like a piece of meat ready to meet his end, thrashing as though he had a chance of escaping.

“Stop struggling so much. We don’t want you to lose your hands,” Midnight said sweetly.

“At least, not yet,” I added.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

He started crying.

I started laughing.

Midnight looked at her nails, a bored expression on her face.

“Oh, come on, James, you know who I am. You watched me on those cameras like a fucking porno, you sick fuck.” I grabbed his cheeks between my fingers and forced him to look at me. “Take a closer look,” I encouraged, and he narrowed his eyes.

He recognized me, and his body began to shiver more violently than it would have had it been dropped in Arctic waters.

“I don’t know anything,” he frantically shook his head.

Midnight started laughing behind him.

“How do you know I want information, James? Maybe I’m just a psycho who wants to torture you until you don’t know your own name.” I shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he continued.

“Who told you to fire her?”

“Fire who?”

I grinned and nodded to Midnight, who took a thick, long spike and hammered it to his right shoulder. His howl sent shivers down my spine, and I grinned as his blood poured thickly out of his wound, falling down his chest and onto the grate.

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