“We don’t have time and even if we did, I don’t want to be saved.” He formed his lips into a wicked grin. “Ever since I saw the first woman die by my father’s hands I yearned to go, too. I was done with this reality we call Earth. Done. If this world allows an innocent woman to be destroyed for the simple fact that she was unlucky enough to be caught by my dad, then I didn’t want any part here. I want to go somewhere else. I’ve just been a mummy the whole time.”

“Mummy?”

“A walking dead person. Unlike my friends, I was never bold enough to try to kill myself, but I prayed for it just the same. No one ever grabbed me. I never drowned when I swam, got kidnapped or mugged, hit by a car, slain in a boating or plane accident, poisoned, electrocuted. Why was I so lucky? I figured the gods had a duty for me to say something important to the world and then once I did it, I could go off with them. I would be taken. So I painted. I created things. My work became famous, and then I waited to die. Surely, my art pieces were enough to earn my death. But it wasn’t.”

“Hex, this is insane.” Tears fell from my eyes. “Okay. Wait. You don’t have to do this. I think we could make you throw the sleeping pills up. That’s what you took, right? It would be easy to make you vomit—”

“Sierra.”

“What?”

“Sierra.”

“Who is Sierra?”

“Sierra was the first girl my father killed. Sierra. She was beautiful.” He formed his lips into a huge smile. “The first thing I saw was her eye through the tiny hole in the back of the shed. I knew she would be enchanting just from spotting one eye, and I was right. Once I finally saw Sierra’s face I was captivated.”

“Hex, listen to me. We need to focus on—”

“I fell in love with Sierra based on one eye. My grandpa says we have two hearts.”

“I know about the two hearts thing.” I tried to get him back on the topic of saving himself, but he ignored me.

“I gave Sierra my heart when I saw that one eye peek out of the shed. I tried to save her and the other women. Not only because it was the right thing to do, but because I longed to see Sierra’s face. The whole time I sawed that opening in the back of the shed and thought of how appealing that eye was and how I had to make sure everyone else could see it. It was the bluest eye I’d ever seen. Blue like cold diamonds floating on a Caribbean sea. Blue like the skies over heaven.”

“Enough about the eye! W-what did you take? Don’t tell me there isn’t—”

“I loved Sierra. There had been no one else in my life. I would dream about her late at night in my house and think about her in school, counting the moments until I could rush home and free her and all the rest. I was going to save them. I was going to keep them alive, and then one day after I figured out a way to stop my father for good, I would find Sierra with the bluest eyes.”

He’s not going to stop this. He’s really going to kill himself.

Tears continued to spill from my eyes. My vision blurred. I turned to the television screen. Alvarez walked in and spotted the dead women. Something clicked in the room that Hex and I sat in. It had to be the door, which meant the phones probably worked too. I could call the cops and get Hex some help. I ran to the phone.

“My dad killed Sierra first.” Hex grabbed my attention. “He stood her in front of him, but let her face me. She was naked and crying in front of me. I got an erection. Of all the things that could have happened. I got a damn erection, and then he killed her. One cut to the neck. One stab to her heart. One slice to her lower abdomen where her insides spilled out onto the bloody ground before her. He destroyed her, dropped her body like it was nothing more than a sack of potatoes, picked up the next girl, and did the same with the enthusiasm of a bored factory worker executing a menial task he’d done hundreds of times before. Why would I want to walk in a reality where something like that happens?”

I picked up the phone, heard a dial tone, and dialed what I hoped to be Alvarez’s number. When I was preparing to leave earlier that day, I’d put his number into my cell phone and stared at it like a love-lost teenager, hoping the pattern of numbers held some clue about what to do when it came to us.

Tags: Kenya Wright Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net