Page 26 of The Devil and I
He startles awake, his body trembling from the trauma. Although I've burned away some nerve endings, the charred edges of the wound must feel like fresh agony with every shuddering breath. Mark begins to emit a repetitive moan, a low sound from deep in his gut. His breathing is shallow, but the burn itself won't kill him. We've got plenty of time.
“Rayna,” I say, her name falling reverently from my lips. “She is the reason you've found yourself in my chair, Mark.”
“F-f-f-fuck,” he moans, his speech fucked up just a little more than before. “I'm sorry.”
“Oh, you fucking will be,” I tell him, turning my back on him to observe the array of torture devices situated on my table. “The pain you put my future wife through, Mark. I can't let that shit go. Nothing soothes the black rage inside of me.” Turning back around, I show Mark the serrated knife in my hand. “Nothing but your suffering can calm me now.”
Mark jerks in his chair, but I ignore it. I walk over to him and press my blade against his sternum, making one agonizingly slow, long cut straight down his torso. He screams as the pain blooms across his skin. The serrated edge does not provide a clean cut, so it pulls and tears the skin unevenly as it goes.
“Fuck you and fuck her!” he shouts in the middle of the wet scream that pours out of him. I cock my arm back and throw my shoulder forward, my closed fist hitting the side of his face, sending his head snapping back so hard his neck cracks along with it. A sickening crunch echoes in the room, and his nose is left crooked and fractured. Once his head rolls back forward, his blood-shot eyes look down at the sea of red pouring from his chest. Blood rushes from his nose and drips on to his lap, and I laugh at the sight of it.
“The only man allowed to fuck that beautiful pussy of hers is me, Mark. That's the whole goddamn point here.” I shake out my aching fist. A few drops of blood splattering across his body from the act. My knuckles will be bruised for days, but I really don't give a shit. I reach out to snatch a handful of his hair and pull his head back, getting right up in his nearly destroyed face.
“You fucked with something that belongs to the devil himself, and now you're going to pay for it. I don't care if you had no idea who she belonged to when you raped her. That's why you don't go sticking your dick in people without their permission, Mark,” I snarl, angling his neck painfully so I can observe the ruination I've caused all over his face. “You touched what is mine, and now you're going to fucking die for it.”
“You're sick,” Mark manages to bark out, blood and spit making his mouth sound full of cotton. The sound is satisfying. Every word is laced heavily with pain, so much so that I wonder if he is going to pass out on me soon.
“Yes, I am,” I admit, taking the blade in my hand and continuing to make more slices in his skin. He thrashes in the chair and cries out with every cut, begging for me to stop. Once his torso is coated entirely in thick, sticky red, I turn around and dump the used blade on my table. It clatters against the surface, abandoned in favour of a set of rusted garden sheers.
When I turn around to face him again, he looks utterly broken. His face is a disaster, and his chest is ruined. He is still firmly planted in the chair, though his head hangs heavy from his shoulders. A patch of burned skin with a small hole in the side of his face, a broken nose, a busted lip, one eye swollen shut, and a chest torn to shreds. It paints a satisfying picture for me. It soothes the monster within. Seeing the man that hurt Rayna, suffering for all he's done to her. Nothing makes me feel like an avenging death God quite like becoming a demon of vengeance for the woman I love.
Love. Fuck, I am already so deeply in love with her. Irrevocably so.
“I've killed a lot of men,” I start, leaning back against the table to admire my handiwork while I speak. I toss the garden sheers back and forth between my bloodied hands before pointing them at him. “None will be as gratifying as you.”
Mark coughs and sputters in response, staring at me through his remaining good eye. He eyes me wearily, exhausted from enduring so much pain in such a short window of time. I don't feel bad for him, of course. I'm a psychopath with a revenge kink. This shit is satisfying.
“The most important part of the night is coming up, Mark. Pay attention,” I tell him, crouching down in front of him. I use my hand to pop the button of his pants, tugging him so hard the chair creaks in protest. He moans, struggling weakly in his binds. I tug down his zipper and lean over him to pull his pants free. That's when the scent of urine hits me, and I grimace. I pull down until his pants settle around his ankles, lifting a brow at his yellowed briefs. His head drops again, broken sobs filling the cabin. I can tell he is equal parts afraid and exhausted.
“Your fear is extra sweet, Mark, knowing how badly you hurt my Rayna.” I tell him, using the garden sheers to cut through his underwear. His disgusting, flaccid dick is revealed and I can't help but laugh. The thing looks pathetic.
“P-p-plea-se,” he groans out, more blood dripping from his busted mouth. I look up at him and smile, shaking my head.
“I'm sure she begged you to stop, didn't she?” I ask quietly, but he doesn't answer me. I take the garden sheers to his dick, wrapping both blades around the dangling meat. His one good eye widens, and he begins to tremble and babble. I leave the blades hugging his dick long enough for him to realize what he's about to lose.
“She won't stop begging, Mark. Only now, she begs for me. She begs me to fuck her. Begs me to make her come,” I tell him, my voice louder than it needs to be. He recoils, his eyes starting to roll up into his head. I reach up and slap him across the face. Just enough pain to bring him back down to Earth. “This is my gift to her, you know. Your suffering. Your death.”
His eyes shift in and out of focus a few times before he locks his only functional eye with mine. I nod, holding his gaze as I close the blades. The scream that erupts from him is piercing and gargled, but it sounds like a beautiful fucking symphony. I watch his face closely as pain moves over it in waves until his head drops and hangs seemingly lifelessly against his bloodied chest.
I sigh deeply, standing up and wiping the sheers on my pant leg. I toss it on the table and grab a clean rag from a box. His blood has sprayed all over my face and neck, so I use the rag to clean up. Once I've done enough to wipe the majority away, I toss it in the bin below.
Unwilling to let him ride out our time together in lala land, I dump some more cold water over his head and slap him around until he comes to. The blood loss is incredible, pooling beneath him like I've never seen before. His skin is sickly pale, and I can tell I've done too much damage for him to hold on much longer. It's a shame, really. I don't feel like I've done enough.
I watch him in silence, his ragged breathing labored from the blood seeping into his lungs. The macabre sight laid out before my eyes pleases the devil in me, but part of me looks forward to driving away from this place and putting the monster I've become back to rest. Putting this man's torture and murder behind me means getting back to building a life with the woman I love.
Some time passes before Mark lifts his head, his dazed gaze seeking me out. “Pl-ease. Kill me,” he begs on a cry, his head rolling weakly on his shoulders.
“I'm no angel of mercy. Begging me for it won't do you any good,” I tell him, turning around and picking up a clean, sharp blade from my table. “Lucky for you, I'm sick of listening to your death rattle and I've got somewhere better to be,” I tell him, slowly walking back to stand in front of him. My boots are coated in his blood from standing at the center of the pool beneath him.
I take the blade and press it against his throat, my free hand lifting to grip his hair and hold his head up. His one eye watches me, unable to really focus.
“You're suffering because you made Rayna suffer.” My voice is loud and firm, intent on being heard through the fog of death settling over the man in my chair. “You're going to die because you touched her and I kill those who touch what's mine,” I tell him, shaking his head a little to keep what little of his focus I can on me. I lean in a little closer and catch his one-eyed gaze, intent on delivering my next message clearly.
“I'll see you in hell,” I tell him finally, drawing the blade along his throat. His skin splits wide from ear to ear. A sickening sight. I hold his head up as blood sprays across my chest, watching the life drain from his eyes. Finally, after days of planning, the man that hurt the woman I love is dying at my hands. All this blackness I drew up from the depths of my dark soul in order to give this piece of shit what he deserves, drains from my body as quickly as the life drains from his eyes.
I exhale long and slow as he dies, his head completely limp in my grasp. Once the life is gone from him, I release his head. I begin to move on auto-pilot, removing the ties that bind him to the chair. I haul his lifeless body up over my shoulder and walk him to the door, moving around the wrap-around porch until I reach the small opening out back. I step down carefully and walk the corpse formerly known as Mark to the tree line. I dump him there unceremoniously, immediately turning around to head back inside.
Eventually, someone will file a missing person’s report. The only information they will have is that he disappeared from the night club. The file will go cold, and remain open for as long as possible. By the time anyone thinks to start searching for a body, the family of wild pigs that have lived on my property for decades will have turned him to fertilizer. Any pieces left over will be scavenged by bears, wolves, and other smaller predators.
