Page 11 of Sick Bargain

I was. A long time ago. Yet another thing I started and quit.

On first instinct, I’d call him a sadist, but I don’t know enough, or anything, about him. I can’t think about that right now because the numbness that blanketed me when I found this girl is gone, replaced by a panic so strong my bladder feels loose.

“Spit on her,” he says. When I don’t, he rubs his cock against the back of my head, yanks on my hair, and growls, “Spit on her.”

“I can’t!” Because DNA and crime scenes and my lack of helping this poor girl are finally catching up with me. “I can’t! Please!”

“I can lay you down next to her with a twin injury, if you like. The media will eat it up. Lovers Pact: Union in the Afterlife. Moros takes another pair of young lovers. What do you think?”

Ophelia’s body jerks, spasming slightly. My eyes prick with tears, but I restrain them, refusing to let them fall on her. Am I crying for her or for myself? I’m selfish, so probably myself.

“Please. Let me up so I can call 9-1-1.”

He laughs wickedly. “Oh, now you’ve found your morals?” He grinds against my head. “Too bad her six minutes are up, hero. Her brain is gone, and her muscles are relaxing. That’s what the twitching is.”

My exhale is shaky and terrified. “We should call someone to come find her. Direct them to the body.”

A sharp blade presses to my throat, nicking my skin and turning me to ice. Warmth spreads from the crotch of my pants, darkening my jeans to pool around my knees and Ophelia’s body. I don’t even have the dignity to feel embarrassed about it.

“Oh, no.” He clicks his tongue. “Still want to call someone? Your DNA is all over this crime scene, hero.”

I’m crying fully now. Tears fall down my cheeks and urine soaks the ground beneath me, making me sink into the earth with a dead girl’s body. It’s poetic, in a sense. In her time of death, I failed her, and now she’s dragging me down with her. My life is over. Whoever this psycho-sadist is, he’s going to either kill me next or pin this murder on me. But that’d be breaking our deal, right?

I’m in my final six minutes. The clock is ticking.

“It’s regret,” I tell him.

“What is?” he asks, still holding the blade to my throat.

“What’s going through my head right now. In my moment of death.” I swallow, cutting myself on his knife. “It’s regrets.”

“Hmm,” he muses, making my breathing turn into hyperventilating. “And what do you regret?”

“Everything.”

“Be more specific. If you pique my interest, I’ll sweeten the pot.”

I don’t say anything. I keep my eyes on Ophelia’s dead ones, my knees sinking with her body and my neck against his knife. Do I want to die? What if I just lean forward a bit? Turn my head really fast? Could I slit my own throat? Would it be consideredsuicide if his hand was the one holding the knife? Have I always been so morbid?

“Tell me something real, Remiel Sauder, and I’ll let you live till sunrise.”

I hate that it takes me a minute to decide if spilling my regrets is worth my life. When did I get this dark? Until he forced me to my knees, I’d been feeling numb and lost for... years. Now I’m vividly scared, wishing for the situation to end. It scares me more that I don’t have a preference on how.

The honed edge of his knife digs into my skin, and I watch as he removes it from my throat. Holding it above Ophelia’s body, a crimson drop ofmefalls, splattering against the centre of her forehead.

Urine. Tears. Blood. Probably spit, skin cells, and hair. So much of me is already here despite how absent I feel. When I say nothing, I’m shoved from behind. He thrusts his hips against the back of my head so hard that I brace my hands on Ophelia’s hips. Her dead eyes stare straight into mine, pulling secrets and sins from the chamber I locked them in. I can’t look away.

Until I’m forced to. A hand in my hair cranes my neck up, but instead of being behind me, he’s in front of me now. I can’t see his face from the shadows and the mask, but the whites of his eyes glint at me from the depths of the purple.

“Open your mouth, hero.”

“Please, let me go,” I beg without gumption.

His snarl is impatient. “Open.”

My painful scream parts my lips for me. With his hand in my hair, my neck damn near breaks with the force of his tug.

“Do you want the twin injury, or are you going to give me your regrets? Your six minutes are winding down, Remiel.”

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