Vicious Minds: Part 2 (Children of Vice 5)

He didn’t always like to get his hands dirty. But when he did, it was masterful. In a very twisted way. The smoke in the garage faded as I turned on the air vents for a few minutes, and my arms were already tired from all the baking I did this morning. So, I sat on the hood of the car, watching as Ethan took care of those who were unlucky enough to survive the hail of bullets.

I’m sure they would have preferred that to Ethan hacking off their hands, their feet, taking a blow torch to their eyes….and their tongues. He’d taken all but two of their senses at this point. He didn’t make them deaf because he wanted them to hear him, and each other as they screamed. He left them like finless sharks at the bottom of the sea. When they tried to move, he stabbed them in the back. He was covered in blood and his hand trembled with the weight of the blade. I knew he was pissed, but I didn’t understand the depth of it until now, as he spoke to the only man left conscious.

“Today was the first day my daughter and my wife spent in my house—their house. It was our first day as a family…of all the days you could have chosen. You chose our first day and you filled it with violence.” He stabbed his knife into the man’s shoulder blade. The man cried out, but it sounded odd because his tongue was burnt. “So now I will meet violence with greater violence. There will not be a 15th left by nightfall. There will be no one left in your families. I do not care where they are on this earth. I will have them found and I will kill every last one…except you all. You all get to stay here, eating and shitting through a bag for the rest of your miserable lives!”

Yanking the knife from the man’s shoulder then stabbing it into his eardrum and twisting, he hollered like dying dog. Ethan yanked it back out, cleaning the blade on the guy’s shirt. It was only then that he finally turned back to me.

Smiling, I tossed him the duffle bag with a change of clothes. Without a word, he began to strip.

“I need your phone,” I replied, hopping off the hood and checking outside through the closed blinds beside the garage doors. There were other cars already waiting along the street as I had directed Greyson. There were eight cars in total. They looked normal, some of the cars’ conditions even worse than normal. But I knew from the type of tint in their windows…it matched the one on the Jaguar.

“What’s wrong with yours?” he questioned but tossed it to me.

“They don’t know mine yet,” I said, catching it and dialing. It rang only once before Greyson answered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Hi Greyson, can you do me a favor and patch me into everyone else?” I asked kindly.

He was silent for a moment before he spoke again. “Boss?”

“Yes,” I answered before snickering, looking at Ethan. “I think he needs to hear you grunt or something.”

He gave me a stern look, but I just smiled.

“Patch her though.”

I waited patiently, though it only took a few seconds. Greyson said, “Yes. Sir.”

No one spoke but I was sure he was there.

“Hello gentlemen, we have not yet met in person, but hopefully we shall. I have a small request. You see, I do not like the look of this neighborhood. It’s too…calm. I know you are all busy, so you don’t even need to step out of your cars, just help me paint it red a little. Can you do that? Can you go down every road and paint every house, business, person, dog, even the fucking trees if you see any. I want them all in a beautiful mosaic of red.”

Hanging up, I looked at Ethan. “How bright are your people? Do you think they understood?”

BANG

BANG

BANG

BANG

BANG

BANG

BANG

BANG

“Never mind—I think they get it,” I said. The sound of gunshots echoed behind the steel garage wall as I reached him, wiping the blood off his face. “Don’t worry, we’ll have better first days.”

“I’m not worried. I know.”

I smirked.

Ethan’s humor…Ethan’s love. I understood them all so clearly, it made me wonder how other people didn’t see it.