Page 10 of Burn
No. No, I’m not like them. I’m doing good work. I’m ridding the word of its waste.
“Hey man, no harm no foul. Just let me go.” He whines, trying to pull my clenched hand from his front, peeling at my gloved fingers with his bloody ones.
“No harm? No foul? What were you about to do to her?” I scream, flipping open my visor so he can see the hatred in my blue eyes directed at his almost empty gaze. “Look at her!” I yell, flipping him around, slamming his front to the car, making him look in the window at the woman still huddled against her door, with her legs and crossed arms hiding her from the world. “Fucking look at her!”
I slam him again and again into the metal and glass, making his breath blow out on huge puffs with every contact. His legs buckle, but I keep him upright with the hold on his shirt, the collar of it pulling against the front of his neck, choking him. He kicks back at me, but it’s no use. The rage has boiled over, the cool is lost, and now all that remains is the fire inside of me that yearns to take him and make him burn.
I’m not even aware of my hands releasing him, patting myself down looking for something, anything I can use to end his existence. But in my rush to leave the firehouse, and with her license in my pocket taking up space, I didn’t bring my pocket knife with me.
“Gonna have to do this the hard way then huh?” I chuckle as I undo the chin strap on my helmet and slide it off my sweaty head. “Not how I envisioned this evening going you know. All I wanted to do was watch her for a bit, see her for a little while. You and your wandering hands and mouth are forcing me into this.”
Chapter
Six
The scream that erupts from his mouth is glorious as my helmet connects with the back of his skull. His head flies forward, his brows bouncing off the roof of the car with a second cracking sound that could break the night sky. He teeters but doesn’t fall, until I swing again, the carbon fiber spoiler on the back of the gear slicing across his scalp, splitting it open.
Blood sprays from the wound, coming out at me, and without my protection it splatters my face, only enraging me more. His sickness, his evil essence is on my skin, threatening to infect me.
“Fucking hell!” I shout out, bringing the impromptu weapon down on him again and again, the blood flying in wide arcs with each slam of it on his head.
I’m already covered, already tainted, and the panic it causes in me only fans the proverbial flames. The anger, no, rage is uncontainable now, flowing through my body, down my arm, and into the hand that holds my helmet that drips with his dark red blood.
It feels like an eternity, like the earth has ceased rotating and time has stopped as I continue to swing and hit, cracking his head open, forcing his now limp body to slump over the car. Blood and brain matter fall from a crater in his skull, dropping in gelatinous little clumps that slide down the glass of the windshield as his body rolls, then slides down it.
Snail trails of crimson follow him and his escaping pieces, squeaking as they make their way towards his sprawled-out corpse on the hood, disappearing down the cowl before they can be hidden by the matching paint.
He barely fought, a bully by size but nothing more than that. The women I take with my flames try harder than he did, and it’s almost a disappointment as I stand over him, panting from the exertion, looking down at the fucking mess I’ve made. The sounds of the blood dripping from the helmet in my hand onto my shoe and the ground at my feet is the only sound. The woods, and all its critters watch in awe at what I’ve just done, waiting for what I’ll do next.
The calm I feel when I burn trash does not come as I roll him off the car and he falls to the dirt road with a heavy thump. What does come is panic. Not at my actions, he had it coming, but at the gore covering me. My white, ribbed tank is soaked in red liquid, with large spots surrounded by little splatter specks, and my black leather riding pants shimmer with the wetness. It’s disgusting.
Bile rises in my throat, choking me, making my eyes water as I kick the corpse at my feet, cursing from trying to keep the vomit down where it belongs. Leaving fucking evidence with my DNA is a no-go.
“Fuck!”
“What did you do?” A dainty voice whimpers, breaking the silence of everything around me, yet stopping the breath in my chest.
Not only has she witnessed me burning garbage in an alley in the city but now here she stands looking me in the eyes as I drip with the blood of the shit at my feet. There’s no turning back from this now. She knows what I am.
“What I had to.” I say, my voice cold.
I’m cooked; she’s going to run to the cops. There’s no turning back now, I need to just accept my fate. I can already hear the bars of my cell slamming closed behind me, and instead of the clamor making me jump, I sigh, and sag in a resigned relief.
Maybe it’s for the best. Ever think of that?
“You killed him.” She gasps, walking around the car, leaving the car door she opened silently hanging ajar.
Her hand covers her mouth, her body trembling, her hair brushing on her collarbone with each movement. She’s in awe, scared, disgusted, and every other bad emotion I could mention. I can see it on her face, but what surprises me, is that it’s not directed at me as she comes around the front bumper. It’s aimed at the heap on the dirt road leaking out more of its disease onto the dark ground.
“I did. He would have done it to you. There was no other choice.”
Her cat-like eyes shimmer in the low lighting of the evening woods, the only sliver of moonlight seeming to bounce off their glassy surfaces. She stands over him, her sight pointed at the disaster of a mess I made of him, hovering over the destruction for an ungodly length of time before she finally looks back up to me, her gaze softening, changing.
“You…you’re all…” She says, stepping over the body, coming to me, her hand reaching out for me, yet not touching.
I can feel the air change. An electric current buzzes around the dainty fingers that hover just in front of my blood-soaked tank. My breath catches in my chest, and my heart thunders in my chest. Women don’t reach out for me, they don’t touch me willingly, and they don’t look at me with the fire that’s burning in her dark eyes.
“I’m…uhhh…I’m okay. It’s all his.” I stutter, licking my dry lips, trying to quench them, before they crack.
