Ever After (15 page)

Chapter 18

Nick

The gun went off when I tackled the asshole on the ground, as I had startled him and he pulled the trigger. However, I was able to get it out of his hand, just like Ryan had said that I would.

He laid on the ground, in shock, and I pointed his gun at him.

“Get up,” I said.

“What the fuck? Who the fuck are you?”

I wondered if he didn’t recognize me because he was having some kind of nervous breakdown, or he didn’t recognize me because he forgot what I looked like.

I didn’t have the same issue. His face was seared in my brain, and it forever would be. He had such a cruel look to him, and it gave me the creeps. There was just something about his eyes. They were evil, yet dead at the same time. There was just nothing in those eyes that was not dark and menacing.

“I’m your worst fucking nightmare,” I said. “Get up.”

He didn’t quite look like he understood that I was real. “Listen, I told you to leave me alone. Now I mean it. Get out of here.”

“Not on your life. Now, I’m going to tell you one more time. Get up.”

He finally got on his feet.

I pointed at the chair with his gun. “Sit down,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“Sit down or I will pull this trigger,” I said, pointing the gun right at his head.

He sat down.

I sat down across from him, and stared at him for a few minutes. He stared back, but his eyes were lifeless. I couldn’t tell if he was still at least partially in the throes of his apparent psychotic break, or he just had no emotions. He didn’t look fearful. He just looked…void.

“Okay,” I said, wishing that I had some of Ryan’s ability to read people. He would know just what words to say. I was flying by the seat of my pants, and I prayed to god that I didn’t fuck it up. “Listen up. Here’s how it’s going to go. For the good of society, you’re going to off your fucking ass, and you’re going to do it today.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You are going to write a suicide note. And then you’re going to put your hand on the trigger of this gun, you’re going to point it at your head, and you’re going to pull that trigger.”

He looked mystified, but then he looked at me and started laughing. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you’re talking to, but you’ve got to be fucking crazy.”

I didn’t crack even a hint of a smile. He saw my expression and his laughter ceased. “You’re serious. Why would I do that?”

“Because the world would be a much better place without you in it. And, if you don’t, you will go to prison for the rest of your life. And everybody knows what happens to scum like you behind prison bars. You’re going to live every minute of every day wishing that you would have killed yourself when you had the chance.”

And then, with the gun still at his head, I pulled up a video on my phone. It was not the video that Ryan had sent to me that featured a stream of the bastard’s confession. Rather, it was a video that I managed to find that showed a violent altercation behind prison walls. There were three inmates who
were kicking a fourth inmate who was lying on the floor. They were shouting obscenities and screaming that he was going to pay for being a pervert.

At one point, one of the inmates got a broom, and, while the other inmates held down the child molester, that inmate stripped off the child molester’s clothes and he plunged the broom up the child molester’s ass, while the man screamed in agony.

I didn’t tell him, of course, that this was a scene from a movie. I made him think that this was actually a scene from a real prison, taken with a security camera.

He looked at the scene with a horrified look on his face. “What the fuck? Why are you showing me this?”

“You see that man on the floor?” I asked, pointing to the writhing and screaming man on the floor who was getting sodomized with a broom. “That’s going to be you. You’re going to be that guy. Child molesters are considered to be the scum of the earth, even by other prisoners. They’re the lowest of the low, and nobody wants to protect them. So, they get raped with a broom. Make them feel just a fraction of the pain that they inflicted on their victims. And this is going to be your daily routine.”

He looked at the video, unable to look away, horror written all over his face.

“And, you know what?” I continued. “You’re not just a pervert, but you’re a wealthy pervert. They’re really going to have it out for you. Because if there’s one thing that’s almost as bad as a child molester, according to these prisoners, is a rich bastard. So, when you’re a rich child molester…” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “You figure it out.”

“You’re crazy. I’m not going to prison. They dropped those charges.”

“Oh, yeah? Listen, I don’t know how you managed to get those charges dropped, but, trust, when I give them the evidence I have, those charges are going to be re-filed and they’re going to stick this time.”

“Fuck you,” he said with a sneer. “You don’t have any proof of nothing.”

As I still pointed his gun at him, I clicked on the video that Ryan had sent to me.

His eyes got huge as he looked at the little phone screen. And then he got as white as a sheet. He didn’t say a word as he watched the video of himself confessing all that he did not just to Scotty but to hundreds of other young girls. Not to mention the fact that he threatened to kill his own brother several different times during the course of the video.

Finally, he had enough. “Turn that fucking thing off,” he said. “Turn it off right now.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, still pointing the gun at him. “You’re going to watch it all. It’s time for you to feel the pain that you put Scotty through, if only for a few more minutes. Now, put those sick eyes of yours on this video right now. Do it, or I blow your brains out.”

He continued to watch, the horror in his eyes growing ever more while he stared at the video of him incriminating himself time and again. He was still white as a sheet.

Finally, the video was over, and I sat there staring at him, his gun in my hand. I cocked my head a little bit at him and raised my eyebrow coolly. “Now, Mr. Lucas,” I said, “as I said, you’re going to put yourself out of your misery tonight, as I stand here, and if you don’t, then you will be sodomized daily in prison. Not to mention the fact that this entire city will turn its back on you, because this video is going live tonight. And it’s going to go viral. I’ll make sure of that.”

His mouth was now gaping open. It was if he was just now realizing the enormity and seriousness of the situation. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he stared at my phone, even though the video was no longer streaming.

I gave him a half-smile. “Yeah, so, you’re going to prison. And, even if you never saw the inside of a prison cell, which you will, you can count on that…but, even if you didn’t, you’re finished in this town. Finished. You’re going to be a total pariah. You’re going to have people protesting you outside this apartment, and you’re going to be hounded, daily, by the press and millions of outraged people. Because, you know what? The citizens of New York hate child molesters almost as much as prison inmates. And you’re going to be offed by one of them, I can guarantee it. You will never be able to get a job, anywhere, and you can move to Paducah, Kentucky, and it still won’t be far enough. This video is going to be seen by
everybody.
And I do mean everybody.”

I was proud of my extemporaneous speech. I was speaking completely off the cuff, and the words were just flowing.

His eyes got huge, and I started to see that he was understanding that there wasn’t any way out of it.

“I’m going to sue you,” he said weakly, knowing that it was fruitless.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I got the money. But you. You don’t have a life anymore. You.are.ruined.”

I got up, his gun still in my hand, even though I really didn’t need it at that time, and got a piece of paper and a pen. I put the paper in front of him and handed him the pen.

He looked at me, knowing what it was that he was going to have to do. He put his head in his hand, as he covered his forehead. He rubbed his face with both of his hands, and put his hands behind his neck. “Crap,” he said, softly.

“There’s no way out,” I said. “Put yourself out of our misery, and do it right now. I want you to write out your ‘goodbye cruel world’ note, and then I’m going to give you back your gun, and you’re going to use it to kill yourself.”

So, as I sat next to him, his gun trained on his body the entire time, he wrote. He wrote and wrote and wrote some more. The clock ticked by slowly as he filled up three pages, front and back, and then asked for more pieces of paper. I had no idea what it was that he was writing, but it seemed like he was really into it. I got behind him as he wrote, and I read some of what it was that he was putting out there.

I was a little bit stunned at what I was reading. He basically was writing out a full confession of all that he did in his life. He wrote about what he did to Scotty, both when she was 13 and when she was trapped on the island. He wrote about all the other girls that he had raped as well. He described them and he named them. He went into some detail on them – what they looked like, how old they were, what they were wearing. He wrote about how he couldn’t stop himself, as much as he had tried, and that he had to kill himself for the good of society. His pen was flowing through the papers, and it was as if it was something that actually was eating away at him after all.

He wrote twelve pages, front and back, and he finally looked up. I had been sitting there, his gun in my hand, the entire time he was writing. He looked up at me, and he looked completely drained. His hands were shaking as he reached out for the gun. I was a little bit apprehensive, because I still didn’t trust the bastard. It would be just like him to actually take the gun and shoot me, and this was something that I should have been more prepared for.

But there was something in his eyes that looked ready. Rea
dy to do what it was that I came here to make him do. He was ready to leave this life. He had confessed all that he could possibly confess, I gathered, just by reading a few pages of what he had written, and I think that he was absolutely correct. He really couldn’t stop. It never occurred to me that he had ever wanted to stop, but now I knew that I was probably wrong about that.

I gave him the gun, and he took it and stared at it for a few moments.

It was so strange, looking into the eyes of a condemned man, knowing that his demise was impending. And that I was going to have to witness it. I had never done something like that in my life. I had never imagined that I would ever be in this position. And, to tell the truth, even though I had dreamed about the day that this bastard killed himself, and even though I had many dark fantasies about doing the deed myself, I wasn’t looking forward to it. It was going to be messy, of course, and risky, because I was going to have to get the hell out of the apartment before anybody saw me.

One thing was playing in my favor, though – the apartment was soundproof. Ryan’s security team confirmed this for me. So, nobody was going to hear his gun go off. In fact, nobody was even going to know that he had died until he failed to show up to work the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. At some point, people at his job would suspect that perhaps something had happened to him, and then, and only then, would he be found.

Another thing was solid, too. Any trace of me on the video that was made would be erased. That was another thing that would be done by Ryan’s security team the moment that I left. They were going to come to the apartment when it was done and destroy all the evidence that I was ever there, which included editing my presence in the apartment out of the video completely.

I took a deep breath as he looked at me, the gun in his mouth.

Then he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and pulled the trigger.

I closed my eyes before I could see the brains and blood splatter against the wall. The blast was deafening, and my ears started ringing.

When I opened my eyes, the man who haunted the woman I loved was nothing but a corpse on the floor. Whose head was halfway blown off.

Then I quietly opened the door and made my way onto the elevator and into the unseasonably cool night.

Scotty could finally be free.

Chapter 19

As Charlie drove down the street, towards the hospital where my Scotty was still staying, I was feeling out of sorts. I didn’t feel the way that I thought that I would. I thought that I would take immense pleasure out of seeing the life force slip away from that scumbag, but I really didn’t. I didn’t because I wasn’t like him. I was human, and I had a heart, and, as much of a perverted bastard that man was, he was still just a man. He wasn’t Satan. He wasn’t even evil, because I really didn’t believe in the concept of evil.

Rather, he was sick. Extremely sick. He could not live any longer, and I knew that. After all, he had told his own brother that he had raped hundreds of other girls. And he didn’t even care. So, I knew that I had done the right thing. If I didn’t, there would have been hundreds of other victims, no doubt, because there was just no way that the man would ever see the inside of a prison cell.

I knew that.

But that knowledge, that he was a sick man who caused so much grief and heartache to my Scotty, along with countless other girls, didn’t make seeing him kill himself any easier. I never thought that it could be like that, seeing death happening right before my eyes. I had prepared myself, and Ryan had prepared me as well. But, as I sat there in the limo, looking out the window, I realized that I never could have really prepared myself for the reality of what I saw in that apartment.

I wished that I could have been happier about what I did. My role in liberating Scotty from that pond scum. But I wasn’t happier, and I didn’t think that I could be. What was done was done. There was nothing that could be changed.

I closed my eyes, and I saw his lifeless body. I heard the loud crack of the gun. And I thought that I probably would never get the sounds or images out of my mind. Ever.

I finally got to the hospital, and I went to the front desk. “I need to see Scotty James, please,” I said to the lady at the front desk.

She looked at me like I had grown another head. “Sir, it’s two A.M. I’m very sorry, but you’re going to have to come back tomorrow.”

I said nothing, just nodded my head. I wasn’t in any mood to fight. I felt completely drained. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

I called Charlie to come back and get me, and saw his car pull up within a few minutes. I got in and silently went home. I finally arrived, and I laid face down on the bed. I had never felt so exhausted in my entire life.

Before I knew it, I was sound asleep.