Page 42 of Like An Animal
“Why did you only send me photos and videos of her from over a few days?” I growl.
Hector is the private investigator I tasked with keeping an eye on Bronwyn. He was to report back if anyone messed with her so I could deal with them personally. I paid him good moneyto look after her and clearly he has been cashing those checks without fulfilling his duties.
“It wasn’t my fault!” he screams, but I just yawn in response, tired of listening to him scream like a toddler. “She disappeared out of thin air. It was three days after the arrest. I hadn’t seen her come out all day so I checked the house. She wasn’t there! She left everything behind. She didn’t even take her identification. She was justgone.”
“So, you just kept sending Jeremy the same photos and cashed all the checks? You expect us to believe you have no clue where she is.”
“I really don’t!” he sobs. “I talked to the neighbors and they said a blacked out van showed up. They walked her out of the house and put her in the back. The neighbors said it was weird, but didn’t look like she was leaving against her will. I tried to find her, but it was hopeless. There was zero trace of her.”
“And, you didn’t communicate any of this to Jeremy because…” Xavi trails off, leaving room for Hector to fill in the blanks.
“Isn’t that clear?” I turn my gaze back to Hector before sneering at him. “Money. He wanted the money even though my woman has spent five years unprotected, unaccounted for, and who knows where.”
“No, no, no!” Hector exclaims. “I was looking for her, I swear!”
Like that matters.
“But, you didn’t find her, did you?”
His eyes widen in horror. He knows he’s going to die. He just doesn’t know how I’m going to do it.
“Xavi, get me a jar,” I mutter and the amount of fear I find on Hector’s face is beyond anything I’ve witnessed. Anyone else I have said that around hasn’t reacted like that, but everyone knows what I do to people who betray me.
What is that religious text?
If your eyes cause you to sin, pluck them out.
Something like that.
“No, no, no. Please, Jeremy!”
Xavi walks over to my bag and pulls out a glass mason jar before bringing it over to me. He sets it on the ground as Hector flails like a fish.
“I’ll do anything you want. I swear. Just please don’t take my eyes.”
Why does he care? He’ll be dead anyway.
I pull the knife off of his cheek, but lift my hand before slamming the blade into his shoulder. Blood squirts out the wound around the metal and Hector’s screams are music to my ears.
Such heavenly bliss.
The cut won’t kill him, not instantly anyway.
It gives me the time to make him sit there and feel every second of removing his eyeballs from his sockets.
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a enucleation spoon, a tool specific for removing eyeballs from their socket. I may have swiped it when I first moved to Jersey from an ENT surgeon that was involved in a scandal that my grandfather needed help dealing with. I can’t explain it but the second I saw it, I had to have it. My grandfather thought I was insane for taking it, but this tool is the reason most people fear me and do what I say to avoid my wrath.
I press my finger against his forehead before putting my thumb below his bottom lashes, stretching it so his eye opens no matter how hard he tries to close it. I dig the spoon in, not caring if it cuts or causes damage to the flesh underneath, and the eye makes a soft pop as it drops out of the socket. It’s as if he transforms into a cartoon character from the early nineties because the fucker freezes, blinking his one eye over and overagain before he lets out an ear-curdling scream, thrashing about like that’s going to help him in any capacity.
I do the same to the other side. Warm blood coating my fingers as the first eye detaches, landing in my palm like a rotten grape tomato, squishy and oozing all over my fingers. I open the jar and drop it inside before I move onto the other eye. However, all fighting has ended before I slice through the last layer of flesh on his last remaining eye. I hum a song to myself as I drop it into the jar. I pull my knife out of his shoulder. Blood spurts out as if I hit an artery and the man’s fight dies down, turning into whimpers as I cut through the tissue. I slam down the knife, driving it into his heart before standing to my feet, the mason jar slipping in my grasp. I don’t lose hold of it though. I replace the lid before handing it over to Xavi, who stares at it like he’s going to be sick.
“Ew! I’m not touching that.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not handing them to you. They’re in the jar. Stop acting like such a baby.”
He glares. “I’m not a baby. You’re the baby, Jer, and you’re gross. Seriously, did you have this pension for taking people’s eyes back then? If you did, I don’t know how Bron put up with you.”
I push the jar into his hand before I walk to the attached bathroom and wash the blood from my hands. I can’t do a lot about the blood soaking through my clothes so I’ll probably need to take a shower before I start my own search.
