Page 8 of Lethal
“Ring around the shadows, they dance so pretty when she’s alone. A pocket full of heartbeats, I want to keep them for my own. Ashes… ashes…” A sad look crosses Wren’s face, as he stares down at Sonya Flintoft, our latest victim, and his fingers tighten around his blade until his knuckles are white. “Bash... Bash, she’s passed out again, and is ruining my fun. Please, brother, make her scream... I need to hear her scream.” He bangs the wooden handle of the blade against his temple, over and over again, muttering incoherently to himself. I reach behind me and grab the syringe filled with epinephrine, pushing a distraught Wren out of the way, and slamming the needle into her meaty thigh.
I wait a few seconds, as Wren starts to argue with the voices only he can hear, about whether she’s dead or not. He swings the blade, cutting through the air, and then grins viciously as if he’s managed to harm one of his shadows. Jesus fuck, he’s a nut. We both are, but he’s so much worse than I am. My fingersreach for her pulse, watching how her chest barely rises. She can’t die yet, it’s too fucking soon! I haven’t had my fill yet. I grab another syringe and slam it into her other bruised thigh, and within moments, she releases a huge gasp as her body tries to rise off the table, and our restraints hold her in place. Thank fuck.
“There you go, my sweet, back with us in the land of the living. You almost had me worried that you were leaving our company too soon.” I grin down at her, as she stares with unfocused eyes up at me. I lean forward and place a gentle kiss on her forehead, trying to soothe her fright. “It will all be over soon, my sweet, just not yet.”
I’m ripped from my memory as my little toy enters the room, her heels clicking on the floor to a staccato tempo. “My apologies for the delay, gentlemen,” she utters, without looking in either of our directions. The orderlies who manhandled us into her office nod respectfully to her, and with one last menacing glance toward me and my brother, they leave the room, closing her office door behind them. I tighten my fists, hating the fact that I’m tied down like a rabid animal. She moves quietly toward her desk, grabs her notebook from its surface, and then makes her way over to us, sitting primly in her chair, ensuring she tucks her skirt below her thighs. All of it is a farce: her control, this image of primness, her professionalism. I wish I could slice her open, to allow the real woman to escape the confines she places around herself.Soon.Soon, I will get my chance. I just have to be patient.
Her office is small, stale, and in dire need of a renovation. The aged floral wallpaper is depressing enough, without adding the chipping, deep tan wall paint to the mixture, and the furniture that looks like it has been here since before any of us were born. There’s nothing notably personal about her in the space to give away glimpses of her personality. I wonder if it’sdone deliberately, so patients like me can’t get a read on her. A hint of her perfume fills the space, something that smells fruity, like strawberries. I am beginning to crave that smell. It invades my dreams, and I’m not even a fruit person. I wonder what she would taste like if I bathed her in strawberries and blood? Does her pretty cunt taste the way she smells? I’m eager to find out.
The aged tube lights flicker overhead, but my toy barely notices. She’s utterly focused, with her eyes locked on my brother, Wren, sitting across from her. Who, at the moment, is too busy tracking the cockroach that is currently crawling up the wall across from him, to pay her any mind. He licks his lips, as if the bug was a treat just out of his reach, and the doctor’s eyes narrow on him as she makes a quick note in her book. Always watching, and dissecting every move we make. She’s observant and careful, much like I am. It’s why she’s the perfect little toy that I crave to have. My cock hardens at the thought of all the fun we can have together, if she would just release me from these fucking cuffs.
I wonder if she would even bother to scream, if I could get loose and wrap my hands around that sexy, swan-like neck of hers. Would her breath hitch, and her cheeks pink up, as she struggles for air? Somehow, I don’t believe she would react like all the others. She’s different, a whole new species for me to explore. She’s just waiting for me to cut her open, and look deep inside at the parts of her that she hides from the light. The thoughts and actions she keeps secret, perhaps even from herself.I can help you discover all that, my sweet toy, just let me loose.
She clears her throat, trying to get Wren’s attention, but he’s completely distracted. The way he stares intently at the cockroach, climbing up the wall behind our pretty little doctor, tells me he swallowed at least one of the pills the charge nurse forces on us. A part of me wants to be angry at him, because heknows better, but another part of me fully understands the need to escape from our miserable reality, inside these decaying, and oppressive, walls. The voices in his head have been louder lately, and he’s finding it harder and harder to resist them, despite my insistence that he not give in to them. I’m not stupid. I know these sessions with the doctor have something to do with it. She’s triggering him, triggering us both, if I’m honest with myself. I need to amputate her hold on us, before either of us falls under her spell so completely that we will never seek to be free from her, or this place. I have to protect Wren at all costs, since he can’t protect himself.I must save Wren from himself. I’m the stronger twin.
She’s wearing her hair down again today, and the thick, dark chocolate strands, with their copper highlights, catch the light, giving her an almost ethereal soft look. It ruins me a little, causing tightness to appear in my chest that I don’t enjoy one fucking bit. It’s the kind of softness this place was built to devour, and that monsters like Wren and I prey on. The type of detail that shouldn’t matter to me, but does, because it’s human, andher.
Vulnerable. Beautiful. Mine. Ours.She is all of those things and so much more. She is an enigma, apuzzleI need to decipher. I’ve imagined, over and over, what it would be like to wrap that hair around my fist, as she sits across from me with her perfect posture, that silver pen, and her too-careful movements. The ones that are nearing obsession level for me.
“You wore your hair down today,” my voice comes out nonchalantly, without any emotion. She tries to hide her surprise when I mention it, her dark eyes briefly widening, before she regains control of herself and hides behind her professional mask. She’s used to being in control. But I see it, that flicker behind her dark eyes. Like prey pretending it isn’tcornered.You’re mine, little toy, and you’ll always be mine. I’m going to make sure you understand that real soon.
“Does that matter?” she asks.
I could tell her the truth: that I’ve memorized the way she breathes when she reads my file. The way her nose wrinkles when she finds something distasteful, or that I know the exact number of freckles across her collarbone and cheeks. In this instance, I can tell that her heart is racing, despite her appearing as though nothing is affecting her. But I don’t. I keep all of that to myself, preferring to see how far she wants to take this game of hers. “It suits you,” I say instead. “Looks… softer.”
She stiffens, her lips tightening into a straight line.Good.She’s afraid of the razor edge she’s standing on, even if she won’t name it. She opens her notebook, jotting down words I can’t read from my position. That damn book acts like her shield. Does she really think that it can protect her from me? “Let’s focus, shall we? Wren, can you look at me, please?”Ah, the games we play are beginning once more.
Wren ignores her and begins humming a tune under his breath, as he shifts restlessly in the stiff, metal chair. “A pocket full of poison, we all fall down...” She raises an eyebrow in his direction, but seems to collect herself before speaking her next words. Her eyes turn my way, and I’m pinned by their intensity.Ah, this should be good; it looks like my little toy has grown a backbone today.“Your crimes...”
“You mean the meals,” Wren interrupts, his eyes moving across the room, as if he can see something that the rest of us can’t. His lip curls into a sneer, as he growls low in his throat at an empty corner of the room.
The doctor’s eyes snap up, and a look of horror briefly crosses her face. “Excuse me?”
“You mean the meals,” I repeat my brother’s words, giving her a real smile, one that pulls on my cheek muscles.When wasthe last time I smiled like this?I’m almost giddy from the way her pulse is rapidly beating in her neck now. Her pen halts mid-word. She doesn’t like it when we call it that, but that’s what they were to us. People taste different when they die slowly and painfully. The fear seasons them. The shame. The apologies. The secrets they cling to, until the very last second, before they take their last breath, all add flavors you can’t find anywhere else.
“You and your brother kidnapped fourteen people. You tortured them for days, raped them, and dismembered them.Ate them,“ she says clinically, almost detached, but her voice trembles at the end, just enough for me to feel it, and it lights a fire inside of me.
That’s it, pretty girl, show me how angry that makes you. Let me see that fire burning within you.
I don’t bother to correct her on the body count, as that’s something neither I nor Wren will ever admit to, but it’s much higher than anyone thinks. I lean in slightly, not too much, just as far as the stupid cuffs will allow me, to taint the air between us. “You say it like it wasn’t intimate, a connection between us and them.”
“Bash, I’m hungry, so veryhungry,“ Wren groans, as he rattles his cuffs against the metal frame of the chair. His eyes narrow on her as he allows his tongue to lick across his lips, before baring his teeth in a feral grin. She pretends not to react, and even her breath goes still, but her pupils betray her.Dilated. Hypnotized. Horrified.
I wonder if she dreams of blood now, of us alone with her, in a place she can’t escape from. If she wakes up wet and afraid, and doesn’t know which came first. “You’re shaking,” I say gently, biting the inside of my cheek to contain my smile.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispers, just loud enough for us to hear. No, that’s not the word for what this is.Fearis not what I’m craving from her, at least not in this moment. No, right now,I want so much more, I want everything she has to give, and even then, it might not be enough. Only her soul might suffice.
“I can feel it when you walk in the room,” I tell her. “I can sense your mood, whether it’s been a good day or a shit one. You tell yourself you’re here to fix us, to study us... but some part of you wants Wren and me unchained. You’re curious if you would survive us, if you would be the exception to theCarnevil Brothers’curse.”
She blinks once, twice, her lips opening and closing without a sound. She doesn’t deny it, and that fills me with satisfaction. “You’ve started dreaming about us, haven’t you, Doctor?” I whisper. The silence stretches between the three of us.Delicious.Wren is now completely focused on her, his cockroach forgotten. She’s about to run, hide, or fall. Her walls are crumbling. I can sense it. It’s a beautiful sight to see her disarmed.
“What pretty lips you have, Doctor. I dream of them nightly too.” Wren licks his lips as her eyes ping pong between us. We are so close, I can feel the strain against her defensive walls. She wants to be ours, I know it. Just one more strong push and she’ll fall right into my trap. I wonder if she’ll crawl for me?
Halstead’s sharp voice cuts in, through the intercom in her office, like a blade, rupturing the moment, with no regard for the progress that we have made here today. “Miss Vaughan, I believe your time is up, and you are required elsewhere within the facility, urgently.” Of course, it is; that motherfucker needs a knife to his throat. One, I would gladly give him, if only I were let loose. Halstead just moved to the top of my kill list, and if he’s not careful, he’ll never step foot outside of Wellard Asylum again, which might not be a bad thing for the world.
“No, I was having fun! I don’t want to go back to our room!” Wren whines like a petulant child, before turning and snarling at nothing.“She’s mine, you can’t have her, and I won’t share with you, just with Bash! Only Bash gets to have her too!”
She rises too fast, trying to pretend none of this touched her, but I see the flush creeping up her throat, and the trembling of her fingers, as she clutches tightly to her notebook. She moves instantly to the door and opens it wide, beckoning the orderlies to come and take us away.No!Just a few more moments, I was so close, I can feel it. I will not be deprived of my chance to have what I desire most.
