Empathy (5 page)

Fuck. Clive the asshole in his cashmere golf club sweater is right. I am a freak and a self-harmer; accept I’m not the one doing the cutting. I let others cut into me instead.

I LEAVE CLASS AND NOTICE that Clive and his
close
friend, Jacob, follow me. A sick part of me revels in the fact they’ll try to hurt me but only give me pleasure. I push through the main doors, squinting from the change in light. Blake is across the green, propped up against a tree, his demeanour unapproachable. It makes me smirk how girls still stare and smile coyly in his direction. Fucking whores. I raise my hand slightly by my side to signal him to stay where he is. His eyes dart to Clive who shoves me from behind.

“Got nothing to say now your freak lover isn’t here to hear you acting the big man?” Clive spits.

I turn to face him as he raises his arm and hits me with a closed fist right to my jaw. My tooth pierces the soft tissue and begins to bleed; the taste firing off all the dark places in my mind. I smile at him and laugh in my mind at his confusion.

“Come on, pussy. Are you not going to hit me back?” He hits me again, catching my eye, the pain exploding and giving me chills.

“Mmm, I’m going to fuck Melody in the ass and think of you when she squeals,” I retort. My smile grows when he shakes his head as if he just imagined those words leaving my lips. I said it quietly enough that only he would hear them.

My pleasure doesn’t last. Blake’s fist comes from the right, quick as a flash, landing hard on Clive’s face. He goes limp, collapsing to the floor like someone cut the strings from a puppet.

“I don’t have time for you to get off, Ry. I need to be somewhere,” Blake says, looking down at the guy he just knocked out.

I swipe the blood from my lip, sucking it from my thumb as I follow Blake to my car.

“Drop me at the airport. It’s just a quick stop over. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I don’t like having to come here to give you a simple message, Ry. I hate you spending the night in those clubs and I’ve told you to come home to crash, and keep your phone on so I can contact you.”

I know not to ask questions when he needs to go out of town and it’s meant to be kept between us if anyone asks, not that we have anyone who will ask. I know he worries if I don’t come home but I don’t care. I was busy feeding my urges last night.

I don’t answer him, my mind on the fact he’s leaving. I blew my stash of cash last night. He always leaves me extra when he goes out of town, like a guilty bribe which pays for my night of pain. My mind is already in the club, tied to the rack, enjoying the bite of Mistress Dawn’s Whip.

I drive on auto pilot and before I can blink I’m waving Blake off. I text Melody, establishing some form of relationship so she won’t be shocked if I push for a little something from her on Sunday. I want to watch her unravel in every way, despite my first thoughts to stay away from her. I’m too fascinated by her now, and the coincidence of circumstance tells me it is meant to be, and anyway, she pushed the issue by making contact with me to provoke a reaction. What she doesn’t realise is she got my attention weeks ago, and again when she giggled at one of those texts from her dad. Her laugh is so light and breathy, easy like the flapping of a bird’s wings taking flight, effortless and graceful. Hmm, she has my attention and today played out perfectly.

I go home to shower and then make my way to the club.

I’VE NEVER HESITATED BEFORE. I kill without remorse. The girl who loves me, Abby, the one I fuck and leave because I don’t have feelings for her, she’s a psych major and says I have psychopathic tendencies. She says I have a deficiency in empathy and she cried one night, telling me I lack the emotions to care about anyone. But if that’s true why do I care about my brother?

And why, when the single tear that dropped from the green eye, and the
Live
tattoo with the flower on the wrist of the little spitfire girl that nearly knocked herself out running into me earlier, did I hesitate? Why did seeing her in the mirror, stunning me when I recognised her, make me not want to squeeze my fist tighter around her neck, ending the inconvenience of this cluster fuck of a job? Of all the coincidences, this one blew my mind. The aroma of her body flared the life of the man in me. She was scared and shaking, the sweat carrying her scent to me, making me human at a time I needed to be the evil I was born to be.

“You fucking coward. At least face me if you’re going to kill me,”
she murmured.

Hell I was proud of her in that moment and that was a new feeling for me. She wasn’t as weak as I first thought.

My anger grew. I didn’t want to feel anything. I needed to kill her. This job had turned bad so fast. It was a shit storm that might have me tracking the client who hired me and killing him for fun. No one was supposed to be here except the parents, and it was supposed to be a quick, clean kill while they were asleep. A living girl and two dead people in a mass of blood and gore in the dining room was not how I wanted to leave the house. I had no choice. I spun her around and forced her head back into the mirror, knocking her unconscious. It shattered and splintered around her like confetti. She was beautiful; I’m cold hearted not blind. She lay there with her hair fanned out around her. She would never have felt it if I’d just ended her life, but I couldn’t.

I stalked back into the shadows and waited and watched as she roused from her temporary slumber.

I will question why I stayed for my entire life.

When I broke I didn’t see it. I felt it, though. The warmth left me, something inside disintegrated.

When I kill, I don’t think about the person I kill, the family they might have or the person who has to find the bodies. So, to watch first hand as a girl awoke from a dream to be forced into a nightmare and see her break right in front of me was a surreal moment. It was an uncomfortable experience for me.

It’s visible, a person’s soul fracturing. You see their world collapse, their beliefs leave them. You see raw grief switch to anger and back again to inconsolable pain. Questions flitter through their soul.
“Why has this happened to me?”
The unanswered ache transforms their features. The shutters close over their eyes, dimming their light, shedding them of who they once were and altering them forever. The slouch of the shoulders, the drop of the mouth. Their skin turns pale. You see anger, grief and disbelief. Rage in their eyes like a storm at sea before it calms to an empty ocean. You don’t just kill the mark when you do a job, you kill the spirit in the people who loved them. How will she let this change her? What will she become when she re-surfaces from the depraved actions of a soulless killer?

She cries like a small child, calling out to her dead parents and it dislodges something inside me. I don’t like seeing her shatter. I want to pick up her pieces and reassemble her, and I dislike that even more. I don’t like the stained blood on her knees or the gash I created on her head. I don’t like the hollow look in her eyes as she stares at the women she called Mommy. I don’t like that I’m feeling. This isn’t who I am. I can’t be here

I dial 911 on their house phone and leave.

I get home by seven o’clock the next morning. The house smells of sweat and sex. The blonde on our sofa is half-dressed, her make up melted from her face making her resemble a wax model too close to a flame.

I kick the sofa, making her grumble and look up at me. Her hair is a mess and she narrows her eyes at me. “You’re not Russell,” she mumbles, standing up, her tits on display. They’re marked with teeth marks.

“It’s Ryan, not Russell. Here,” Ryan says, walking down the hall and slinging a hundred dollar bill at her.

“What the fuck is this?” She holds up the cash. “I’m not a fucking prostitute!” She scoops her top up from the floor and pulls it over her head. It barely covers her tits. “And if I was, I’d charge more than that for the shit I let you do to me. I won’t be walking right for weeks, asshole.” She glares at my brother.

I rub my hand over my tired eyes.

“Great, a freebie then.” Ryan swipes the money from her hand. “See yourself out.”

This chick doesn’t even know his name then gets offended at being treated like a whore? I watch her retreat, slamming our front door behind her, the walls vibrating from the force.

A sigh leaves my body. “Leave that trash in the clubs, Ry. We’ve spoken about you bringing those types here. Put the video recorder away. I do not ever want to see what’s on that.”

I need a shower then sleep, and pray the green eyes that won’t leave my mind will let me shut off.