Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

1 A.M., July 17, somewhere in Honolulu

Lopaka realizes when he reaches his dark little house that his tank has been emptied of gas, that the bullet fired by the cop must've put a hole through his fuel line or gas pan. It seems a miracle that the old Buick didn't explode with the impact of a. 38 slug striking the gas tank. It must've passed clean through without rattling around in there. As it is, he has no way out later tonight to dispose of Hiilani's body, or tomorrow morning for that matter. He worries that someone at the fort might well have seen his license-plate number, that the authorities could be watching him at this very moment.

He steels himself and walks around the car, ready for death by gunshot if it should come. He opens the door and pulls Hiilani's rigid form from the car. She is catatonic, thanks to the drug he's injected. The drug keeps her eyes open no matter how badly she'd like to close them, and as the drug wears down, she feels more, and the more she feels, the more she suffers, which means the more he enjoys himself, and the more he feels like a person of power, filled with the manhood Kelia and his father before her had thought to strip him of.

He takes her into the killing place.

No one stops him.

No one comes crashing in for Hiilani.

A fractional part of him, deep within his long-forgotten soul, long buried in a place in his heart where no light enters, on some wasted island within him, wishes that there was someone capable of stopping him… but nowadays such thoughts barely mature or fully form, broken shells of thought, wisps of smoke, incapable of surviving to the surface.

He is safe to take out his feelings on Kelia once more, and the only one who has ever seen him for what he truly is now lies dead in the street in Waikiki.

“ Come, my sweet, dear Kelia,” he whispers in her ear as he restrains her with the human-hair coils of rope he has fashioned from the heads of earlier victims, restraints that dangle from large metal hoops nailed fast to the rack against the wall, a rack and wall discolored with the markings of his earlier kills.

He restrains only her arms for now. Her eyes plea for mercy, but he has no mercy, only a plan for immortality.

She screams, but the drug is yet too strong to allow full use of her vocal cords. The silent scream is enough to make his penis harden and his underpants wet.

He nonetheless assures himself that what he does next is for the greater power of Ku, the power which he soon will join, to one day find his essence to be the same as the great god, to have mere mortals feeding sacrifices and offerings like Kelia to him.

By now there is no Hiilani. She no longer exists in his mind or eye. She is Kelia, the all-perfect sacrifice.

He makes his selection of weapons, the ceremonial sword once belonging to his father, the same one that had struck down his brother that night so far from the sight of others, save for Lopaka's curious young eyes, so many years before when he'd followed his embittered and drunken father into the forbidden forest. Later, the body was “discovered” by his father, the very assassin who had the power to cover his every step, and he did so with royal aplomb, taking the small, disfigured lump of flesh to the burning place. The bones were thrown into the sea. Lopaka pleaded for the body to be taken to the burial site. After all, Lopeko was of royal heritage, but his pleas went unheard. The body was diseased, contagious, or so the lie went.

The entire episode was cloaked in secrecy, and only the years had brought back the memories in flashes of insight long denied him by a child's abhorrence of a dread reality. Still, his memories were shrouded over, confused and disjointed. Sometimes his father used a sword, sometimes a club, sometimes a coiled rope. It mattered little, since the result was the same. Nowadays Lopaka's dead brother came to him while he slept, his bruised and torn body pleading for vengeance, telling him that his plan to gain immortality and to wreak vengeance on their father was not only well conceived, but that it would reunite them in a way they had never been united on this plane, for Ku had found Lopeko and embraced his so-called cursed soul.

His father had told the village that the boy had contracted the disease, had wandered into the forests and had died when the demons of the dark had attacked him.

All Lopaka knew for certain was that his father would one day answer to Ku, and thereby answer to him, Lopaka. That his brother would be avenged.

His mother's ghost also came into his brain and blew words of encouragement and praise for his pact with Ku. She had known the truth about his father, too, and she'd been poisoned by the devil man to protect his dirty secret.

All his life, Lopaka had lived with these truths, and the silence he'd had to maintain for so long erupted in violence even at a young age. He saw his enemies all around him, for many in the village where he grew up distrusted him to keep silent and his father watched him like a bird of prey considering its next meal.

He steps now toward Kelia. Her eyes give away her soul-felt fear; moist and gleaming with fright, the eyes widen even as the sword is raised above her. The sword tip eases down gently, and it snaps away button and blouse and bra, and now the tip of the cutting edge plays over her brown, firm, responsive skin, and she begins to squirm, her mouthings like an animal plea, like all the dogs he'd ever killed, and so like the girl in the village he'd killed, and so like Lina Kahala and the others before her. Each replay in his mind heightens his need to cany through with it again. Hiilani is no longer a person, she is a sacrificial offering; she is Kelia reborn, placed in his care for the sole purpose of his and Ku's delight.

“ Only a few more like you,” he hoarsely whispers to her, a giddy, leering smile coming to his pouting lips. “Only a few more like you, and I go to Ku.” He plays out the rhyme, repeating it like a mantra. “Don't be afraid. I will anoint you, Kelia, and give your essence to Him, and you will go before me like my brother, my mother… to prepare my way… and together we will have no enemies greater than ourselves…”

She begins to flail like all those before her, afraid to go over. The drug is wearing down, and her scream escapes in short staccato bursts, further exciting him. His glassy eyes are alight now with a mad pleasure, his Ku taking control of him now, speaking in a voice not his: “There is no need of fear. Accept me… love me… accept your fate, Kelia.”

Just as the god speaks through him, using his tongue and vocal cords, Ku also uses his hands, working quickly now to take Kelia's hair in large, long tufts. She continues to flail and kick out at him as he completes her disrobing and stares at her shivering body.

Now, Ku tells him, we do some serious cutting. Each cut has a purpose, a meaning, signifying the order and power over chaos Ku represents, and each cut fascinates Lopaka as blood rivulets begin to paint the child sacrifice.

Kelia's endless screams are heard only by Ku now as they mingle with the acidic screech of Suicidal Tendencies on the stereo, which Lopaka does not recall having turned on.

Ivers, unable to see and in great pain, was not a good patient. He suddenly pulled out his IV and snatched away at the bandage over his eyes while blindly shouting, “Will some goddamned somebody listen to me!”

The medics couldn't restrain him.

“ God damnit, I said call FBI headquarters! Parry! Get Chief Jim Parry down here now. I know who the fucking Cane Cutter is! Lopaka's the name, and I got a piece of his plate number, and he's going to kill her if you don't let me the hell to a phone for Chrissake!”