The Invitation

Had I seen her? Heard from her? Did we have a fight?

It was too much. I’d helped them look for her, steering clear of the woods I’d fucked her in. I’d cooperated with the police and lied when I answered all their questions.

When I got closer, I saw what she was tacking to the board—a missing person’s poster for Leah.

My pulse ticked up, forcing beads of sweat across the back of my neck.

Sarah placed the last pin on the piece of paper, then stepped spun around. The moment she saw me, her face crumpled. She was Leah’s best friend, and I was Leah’s “loving” boyfriend—only I wasn’t a person capable of love.

Emotions did not register in my mind. Darkness did, though. It had always called to me, dancing along the periphery of the golden life my surgeon parents had mapped out for me. Captain of the football team, top of the class, prom king—and it all just felt like an act. Like I was pulling the strings on a puppet. Never feeling. Never truly present.

I took one look at the poster and slipped into one of the many masks of emotions I had become so good at wearing. Tears blurred my vision. A sob worked up my throat, and I ducked away before Sarah could utter a word to me, probably leaving her feeling even more sorry for me than before. I played the part of the devoted boyfriend so well. Although, if the police ever gave me a lie detector test, I’m not sure I would pass.

I imagined them asking me questions about her death, and I feared the memory would be enough to show my guilt, because I had never felt so utterly ablaze as I did that night in the woods with her. Her running from me and pretending she didn’t want me to fuck her was only meant to be role play. Leah loved when I wrapped my hands around her neck and choked her as much as I did. We regularly toed the line where she would lose consciousness, but what she didn’t know was that I would imagine it was really her taking her last breath. That night I came so hard at the thought of her actually dying, that I got carried away, not realizing she was, in fact, dead until it was too late.

My dick hardened again at the memory. I was long past feeling any kind of shame over my dark desires.

I’d accepted the monster I was.

Leah dying, Tobias coming in the shower earlier… it was the perfect culmination. One that had me working over my dick when I got home until I came over my bare stomach.

4

Tobias

They say hard work pays off, and I was beginning to see that, although I wouldn’t call the work I did necessarily hard. Smart, not hard…

New York City has eleven coroners, and all I had to do was find the one enduring financial woe—a gambler, a divorced father of four who owed not one, but two women alimony—and hand him over a measly two-hundred thousand dollars. And now dear Leah sits in his office, her murderer to be named by me when I saw fit.

Two-hundred grand, and the man would forge evidence. He would let me play god… I smiled at the thought. So it seemed there really was no stopping a man with the means to barter and bargain for someone’s soul.

I parked my car outside the quad, dusting lint from my shirt as I stepped out into the warm sunlight.

A group of Leah’s sorority sisters stood outside the dorms in a vigil, handing out flyers.

Too bad Preston killed her. She truly was good at playing a part. She’d thrown herself into the role of college student with every bit of gusto I could have imagined—rushing for Lambda Lambda Lambda, attending such trivial things as football games. Worth every penny I’d paid her to date Preston and give into his depraved kinks.

A twinge of regret rose within me knowing I could no longer enjoy watching her and Preston fuck, but alas, to all good things there must come an end.

I maneuvered through the group of sniffling girls, taking the flyer one of them shoved against my chest. Chuckling to myself, I balled the paper and chucked it into a trashcan on my way through the dormitory doors.

The RA glanced up from her book, her cheeks reddening when her gaze landed on me.

I was well aware I had a reputation most girls wanted to be a part of. I’d fucked my way through many of the girls at the university, but none of them came close to satisfying me.

“Who’s the lucky girl?” she said, when I grabbed the pen to sign in.

“Not a girl…” I smirked before walking off, leaving my signature beside Preston Lucas’s name on the clipboard.