Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t form the words. All she could think about was that big knife and the human being it had been used to kill, and the dreadful knowledge that she was moments away from suffering a similar fate.

Milo grabbed her right wrist, pulling it roughly toward him and plunking it onto his lap. Cait struggled and bucked and yanked her arm away and without warning her brother clubbed her in the side of the head with the knife handle. “Knock it off,” he rasped, veins sticking out on his forehead, his lips pressed in a bloodless line across his teeth. “If you struggle, I’ll make this much, much worse for you. And that’s something you don’t want, believe me.”

Cait believed him.

He returned her wrist to its previous location on his lap, staring into her eyes as he did so. Then he reached down and slashed it quickly across her skin and she screamed and he clamped his hand over her mouth and she looked down at her arm expecting to see blood gushing from the gash and there was nothing there and he laughed, long and loud.

“I used the dull end of the knife,” he said, still chuckling. “This time.”

And at that moment Cait realized she hated him. He was inhuman. Any sympathy she might have had for his horrible upbringing, any consideration she might have given him for being her brother, was gone. She saw him for what he was, a playground bully, a little boy burning ants in a field with a magnifying glass, a psychopathic monster without any shred of humanity.

Milo’s forehead wrinkled in concentration as he placed her arm in his lap one more time and Cait knew this time there would be no sick jokes, no fake cutting of skin. This time he was really going to slice her.

She whimpered, sounding pathetic, knowing it and hating herself for it but unable to stop. Almost as if on cue, across the room Kevin moaned, the first sound he had made since before the cop’s murder. As one, Cait and Milo glanced over at the interruption, Cait thankful not just for the few extra seconds it afforded her before the butchering began but also for the first real evidence in quite some time that Kevin was alive.

She watched as his head lolled, moving from his right shoulder to his left, his eyes still closed. Blood bubbled in a thick wad out of the knife wound in his chest, squeezing out around Cait’s makeshift bandage. His eyelids fluttered open and he seemed to take a look around the room. They passed over Cait unseeingly and then closed again and all movement stopped.

“That was interesting,” Milo said with a ghastly smile, and then he reached down and instead of slicing her arm as Cait had been expecting, he turned the knife blade sideways and peeled the skin of her arm back like he was peeling an apple. The shock was so great she gave no reaction at all. Not a scream, not a cry of pain, nothing.

And then Victoria’s telephone rang.

Milo was annoyed but unsurprised when the phone jangled, the old broad’s ringtone set to sound just like the ancient black rotary phone his psycho parents had had in their kitchen in Amesbury.

It figured. This was just his luck. No sooner did he finally get down to business with the cute little bitch than the cops would pick the worst possible moment to stick their fucking pig noses into his business. He had no doubt it was the police calling. The old bitty who owned the house obviously didn’t have many friends, who else would it be?

The phone rang again and he ignored it. The little bitch’s eyes widened, then filled with water, and as her brain finally deciphered the distress signals being sent to it by the nerve endings in her injured arm, she let loose a jagged, panicked scream and Milo clapped his hand once more over her mouth.

He had not gagged her because he wanted to fully enjoy her reactions, but that had been a mistake on his part. The police were taking things slowly for now, but if they heard screaming coming from inside the house, they would undoubtedly be prompted to act more swiftly than he wanted them to.

The strip of skin he had peeled hung back from her arm, red and raw, flapping against her elbow as a surprisingly small amount of blood flowed. Milo had been doing this a long time and he was very skilled with a knife. In another life he thought he may have been a surgeon, not that he had any desire whatsoever to save lives. The knife-play every day would have been a real charge, though.

He sighed. In the kitchen the phone rang and rang and he knew that in order to buy himself the time he would need to finish up here he would have to answer it. An unanswered call would prompt too many questions in the heads of the pigs and they would be tempted to storm the house. They would launch concussion grenades through the windows and smash down the door and overpower him and everything would be over.

Goddamn it! Why couldn’t they just have left him alone?

Milo swore under his breath. He eased the strip of skin gently back onto the lucky little bitch’s arm and she instantly covered it up with her left hand, whimpering and panting like the sweet little victim he wanted. Unfortunately he had no time to enjoy it.

Yet.

He leaned over and grabbed his roll of duct tape off the floor. He peeled off a generous strip and slapped it over the bitch’s mouth, taking the time to ensure it was tightly sealed in place. He didn’t need her working it off and then screaming while he was on the phone with the pigs.

The telephone continued to ring.

Once he was satisfied with his handiwork, he ripped off more tape and used it to secure her arms to her bare belly, allowing her to keep her left hand covered over her damaged right arm. He wasn’t an unreasonable man, after all.

Then he stood and took one step toward the phone just as it stopped ringing. He turned back to the girl and said, “Doesn’t that just figure? The minute you make the dentist appointment, the damned tooth stops aching, you know what I mean?”

She stared back at him uncomprehendingly. The tears that had filled her eyes were now leaking out of them, rolling down her pretty cheeks in twin tracks. She continued whimpering and panting into her duct-tape gag and Milo knew she was going to be even more fun to torture than he had anticipated.

First things first, though. He would have to deal with the pigs. He needed to buy himself enough time to enjoy his adventure with the nearly naked girl on the couch. He still hoped to do Dear Old Mom, too, but only time would tell on that one. At the very least, he wanted to make sure the girl suffered long and hard before he snuffed the life out of her. He had come here to do his thing with the young woman and he was going to make damned sure he did it before he left. Whether he was in handcuffs or in a body bag when that happened didn’t really make much difference to Milo Cain. He had always possessed a single-minded sense of purpose, and it was coming in mighty handy right now.

In the kitchen the phone began to ring again, the bell shrill and harsh and penetrating. Milo smiled. He had known they would call again immediately and he was right, as always. He was filled with confidence. He knew he could pull this off. He was smarter than the police and more motivated, to boot.

He strolled into the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “Yellow.” The key was to sound as in-control and carefree as possible. The closer the cops felt he was to snapping, the more likely they would be to do something counterproductive, like storm the building before he had a chance to do what he needed to do.

“Hey there,” came the response. “You’re a tough guy to get ahold of.”

Milo was silent. He hadn’t heard a question, so volunteering information was pointless.