Bryan Smith - The Killing Kind

Please, please don’t answer.

Then the cell phone buzzed and Roxie flipped it open again. She read the message on the screen and smiled at Rob. “Let’s go.”

They got out of the car and set off down the road on foot. Rob’s stomach twisted. He’d seen a lot of people die this last week. Many of them horribly. But this was personal and would be about a thousand times worse.

After a walk of some fifty yards, they arrived at the driveway of a three-story beach house. Roxie moved quickly down the driveway, not quite running but advancing with the long strides of someone anxious to get somewhere fast. Julie hurried to catch up to her. Though it pained him to do so, Rob picked up his own pace. That urge to turn and run was still there, a mental voice growing more frantic by the moment, but he knew he wouldn’t heed it. It was too late.

They circled the house and then continued around a tall fence surrounding a swimming pool. They entered through an open gate. Rob moved carefully over the cement deck. It was dark out here and the last thing he wanted was to fall into the pool. Though the lights were off, he could make out the shapes of inflatable rafts and beach balls floating in the water, bobbing in the lazy currents like little corpses.

They stepped off the deck onto a wooden patio, where a set of sliding glass doors stood open. A beautiful woman who looked a little like Roxie before the bleach job stepped through the opening and stood on the patio with them.

Roxie smiled. “Hi, Emily.”

The woman looked at Roxie. “Hello, Missy. So glad you could make it. You have no idea how ready I am for this.”

Rob frowned.

Missy?

“Uh…Roxie? What did she just call you?”

“It’s my real name.”

Rob’s frown deepened. “But…how did she know it? And…”

Roxie-Missy-laughed. “Why didn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged. “I call myself different things all the time. It’s not real important. Let’s get this party started.”

She clasped hands with Emily and they went on into the house.

Julie started after them, but glanced back at Rob. “You coming?”

Rob felt dizzy. He felt like the whole world was coming undone around him. Roxie wasn’t who she said she was. At least not completely. And if she’d lied to him about her name, what else had she lied about? He laughed. Did it really matter? None of it changed the essential core truth about her.

She was a killer.

She lived for it. Thrived on it.

Julie went on into the house, leaving him alone on the patio for a moment. And this was it. Finally. His very last chance to turn and run. To maybe turn himself in or summon the cops.

But that was another lie.

That chance was gone forever.

He drew in a deep breath and followed the rest of them inside.

March 22

Missy’s breath came in quick, shuddery gasps. Her face felt hot. Sweat was beading on her brow. The thump of her heart seemed as loud as a drum. Her hands were shaking. Anger bloomed within her again as she watched the tremors. It had been so long since anyone had gotten to her like this. So long since anyone had made her feel so small. So stupid and insignificant.

Four years, to be exact.

Daddy used to make her feel like this. He’d call her stupid and ugly all the time. And though she knew she was neither, it felt true when her daddy called her those things. That feeling was worse even than the other things. The beatings. The bad touches. Those things were bad. Horrible. They made her want to kill her daddy. She didn’t because a part of her clung to the need for her daddy’s love and approval. He was a bad man. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that. But she kept loving him anyway, hoping that somehow, just maybe, he would change and become the kind of daddy other girls had. But it never happened. He called her a “mistake,” telling her how one of his biggest regrets was failing to raise the money to have her aborted. And he told her the reason she was so fucked in the head was a result of all the times he’d punched her mother in the stomach in an effort to make her miscarry.

“I scrambled your brains but good, kid,” he liked to say.

She killed him the night she turned sixteen. He came into her room stinking of beer a little before midnight, stumbling around and cursing in the dark. Then he fell into her bed and reached for her, as usual. But this time she was ready for him and gave him a great big surprise.

The big carving knife penetrated his flabby belly with shocking ease.

He opened his mouth to scream and she slashed his throat, a deep gash that severed his vocal cords and brought forth a great geyser of arterial gore. Then she was on him and attacking him with a savagery worthy of the most ferocious and predatory segments of the animal kingdom. He struggled to no avail as she clung to him and slammed the knife into his body over and over. Dozens upon dozens of times. She kept stabbing him after he was dead. His whole torso was a sticky mass of coagulated blood and exposed organs. She would later guess she’d stabbed him as many as a hundred times, perhaps more. But she didn’t stop there. Next she went to the room Daddy shared with Mom. Then she went to her brother’s room. And then to the “guest” bedroom long inhabited by her deadbeat uncle. She killed them all. Brutally. Then she took a shower to wash away all the blood, gathered a few things, and burned that fucking house to the ground. She left her hometown that night feeling powerful for the first time in her life. She emerged from that nightmare a changed girl and since then not one single person had ever made her feel the way her daddy used to make her feel…

Until now.

She stared at her shaking hands and redoubled the mental effort to still the trembling. Her breathing became more regular. The trembling began to slow.

She reached into her bag and her hand dipped to the bottom, finding the grip of the gun by instinct. No. She was smarter than that. She couldn’t walk into a coffee shop in broad daylight and blow a man’s brains out.

She relaxed her grip on the gun’s handle and groped around the bottom of the bag until her fingers closed around a cellophane-wrapped pack of cigarettes. She kept groping until she found a lighter. A cigarette would help her think. They always did. She tapped a Marlboro menthol out of the pack, popped it in her mouth, and lit up. As she exhaled smoke, she began to feel more centered, more like herself. And as she grew calmer, she realized something. She could just let this go. Yeah, the guy had upset her, but she’d lived in a state of near normality for months. It was sort of nice. She rented a room on the other side of town and the city’s bus system took her wherever she needed to go, like this funky little strip mall with its pseudo-bohemian vibe. It wasn’t a glamorous life. Nor was it one she could likely maintain for long. But it was a nice break in the madness of life on the run, and she hoped she could hold on to it a little while longer.

“Hello, Missy.”

She jumped at the voice and whirled around. Her eyes got big and her breath caught in her throat. It was one of them. “Wh-what?”

The girl was roughly her age. She was gorgeous and looked like a model in her chic clothes and expensive haircut. Everything about her screamed money and privilege. She looked the way Missy often wished she could. Regal and poised. Above it all. As she stared at the goddess, Missy’s feelings were a stormy mix of envy, hatred, and desire.

The girl smiled and looked her over. “You know, you’re way cuter than you were at sixteen. You’re a real stunner now, Missy.”

Missy dropped her cigarette and ground it out beneath her heel. “That’s not my name.”