Page 95 of A Forgotten Mistake

I watch him for a bit to see if there’s any movement from the neighbor’s house and end up waiting until it starts to get dark, which is thankfully earlier than normal as rain starts to roll in.

And once it’s dark enough, I drive into the alley and pull my car into the driveway of a house with a for sale sign out front. The lights are out and the fence surrounding the property is high. Then I head over to Caleb’s car and knock on the window. He’s so busy watching the house like a dog fixated on a rabbit that he doesn’t even see me walk up, which is his next mistake. I have my hood up, working as the perfect cover for me while the rain strikes his windshield.

“Hey, buddy, you have a flat tire,” I shout when he finally looks at me. He hesitates before rolling the window down just a hair, not wanting to look suspicious. “I was just pulling into my driveway and saw your front right tire was flat. Do you need help changing it? I live right over there, and I have a jack. Are you waiting for a tow truck?”

“What?” he asks, brain apparently not catching up to what’s happening. “What do you mean?”

“Did you not know? I thought that’s why you were sitting here. Sorry, bud. Your tire’s flat. Did you hit something on your way out here? Must have been something pretty big to blow it so quickly. I got a small flat the other day, nail in my tire. I tried one of those can foam things to fix it. Wild shit. Got me through the day to take it in to get fixed, at least!”

Caleb looks a bit panicked that someone has now seen him in the vicinity of Leanne’s house, so I lay into it. I’ve found that when you ramble like an idiot, people are less defensive and quicker to make mistakes because they really do think you’re just a mumbling fool without a care in the world.

“You visiting someone? I don’t recognize your car. We’ve all been on edge after poor Elena lost her daughter. Did you hear about that? Some fucking psycho went in and slaughtered her and her husband. Good lord. Can you imagine? Elena, that’s my neighbor who lives right there, is an absolute wreck… bless her soul. Poor woman. Her granddaughter is so distraught. Sweet girl,” I say.

I don’t want him to run. I want him to get out of his car and come to me. I want him to realize that I’ve seen his face and could go to the police. I want him to panic. I want him to think that the only way out of this is with me in the ground.

Caleb’s hand twitches. He’s torn between leaving the scene and makingmeleave the scene… and this life.

“You said you have a jack?” he finally settles on.

“Yeah. In my garage. Wife won’t be home until eight, so I have some time to help out before I need to get dinner started. Since she had to work on Thanksgiving, I promised her a special dinner. Got some steaks, that’s where I just got back from… good lord, the grocery store is busy. Anyway, she warned me not to burn them. Only did that once, but boy she won’t let me forget,” I say as I head toward the garage. I keep my back to him. I’m well aware he could stab me or shoot me in the back, but he’s not going to. He knows the risk is too high. He knows that the best place to take me down is behind those tall fence walls.

I hear his car door slam. He’s so fixated on keeping track of me that he doesn’t even go around to see the tire I’m claiming is flat.

“You have a spare in the trunk?” I ask.

“I do,” he says.

“Good. It’d be a bitch to get someone out here on Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and I slip past the fence. It cuts off his view of me, and the moment I’m out of sight, I press my back against the fence and wait for him to step into my playground.

I see the glint of a knife… how messy. Does he really think he’d be able to hide the blood? Or did he plan to leave my body, not caring in the slightest what happened to me?

That’s not very nice of him.

Caleb hesitates, not seeing where I might have gone until I slide up behind him.

“Are you looking for me?” I ask as I twist the knife free and press it against his throat with my gloved hand. He tries to jerk back, but I press the knife harder as I shove my knees into the back of his, driving him down. He flails, struggling to regain the ground he’s lost, but there’s nothing left for him here. The only place he has to go is in the trunk of my car.

“What the fuck?”

“It’s okay, I’ll take good care of you, just like you took good care of her parents.”

He really is quite weak as I drive him to the ground. He doesn’t know what to do when the person he’s hunting isn’t cowering on the ground, begging for their daughter’s life. It almost makes me laugh at how simple it all is. Caleb finds his way into the trunk of my car, bound and gagged, before I find my way into his car. I’ve taken his phone as well as another phone that I guess is what he’s using to keep an eye on her.

I simply drive it to the shitty end of town and leave the car running with the door open and phone sitting on the seat. The car will be gone by morning, likely torn apart for parts or scrapped for a few bucks. Even if the police do find it, there’s nothing incriminating toward me in it.

Using an account that is in no way connected to me, I get a rideshare to the nearby mall before walking the rest of the way back to my car. None of it takes very long, maybe fifteen minutes, and my new obsession is well on his way to the end of his life.

Exhilaration settles in me as I drive. At least with Gabriel around, my obsessions haven’t held me as tightly as they once did, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to escape the inexplicable thrill I get every time a new one finds their way into my path. My hunts create fleeting euphoria… but Gabriel offers me happiness even when that euphoria dissipates.

A part of me thinks about going somewhere else with my prize. Somewhere that I can kill him before Gabriel even has time to realize it.

But his trust in me has me pulling up to the silo as the euphoria I feel gets cut off far too early. Gabriel is already there, waiting. I can’t help but wonder how long he waited and what made him stay. What makes him do anything when it comes tome? What makes him love me enough that he’s willing to look the other way?

I get out of my car as the rain beats down harder and walk over to his. The window rolls down and he looks over at me.

Now that I’m facing Gabriel, I have even less idea what to do than I did before. Of course, when I have no idea what to do, I resort to trying to humor him into leaving.

---