Twelve of Roses

Justin had his hands on the other girl’s shoulders, keeping her in place as she struggled to get away. Con completely ignored her, walking back to the buffet table.

I stared down at the lifeless body on the floor. The girl’s green eyes were still wide open.

Her head was tilted at an odd angle, allowing me to see straight into them. I wondered what her name was and where she came from. My vision was blocked when Con came to stand in front of me, pinching my chin and lifting my head so that I was looking up at him.

He looked down as if he were studying me, tracing the pad of his thumb over my lips before pushing it between them. His mouth tilted up at the corners when I flicked my tongue across it. I knew he was a sick, twisted asshole, but his smile never failed to make my heart soar. His next words, however, quickly made it crash and burn.

“I want you to do that one, okay?” He was asking, but it wasn’t really a question.

The last and only time I refused to take a life, he made me deeply regret it.

“Here.” He removed his thumb from my mouth and offered me a hammer with the claw part pointed at the ground.

I kept my eyes locked with his and wrapped my hand around the wooden handle. He stepped to the side, taking hold of my elbow and pulling me to my feet. I didn’t risk glancing over to see Molly’s face. She swore she didn’t hate me for the things I did, but I didn’t want to find out if she was lying or not.

Inhaling a quick, shaky breath, I approached the girl who was still crying and stuck in Justin’s grasp.

I’d done this a total of eight times now, and each time made me a little more numb. Killing them was getting easier, because I knew it was their only way out.

My palms began to sweat, so I adjusted my grip and stopped a few feet away from the girl. Justin nodded at me to let me know he had a tight hold on her. What almost looked like sympathy was always reflected in his hazel eyes.

This girl looked around my age, which meant she could have been anywhere from fifteen to eighteen years old.

Given that Con said he saw me when I was fourteen, and he was already twenty-two by that point, I knew he didn’t care about such trivial things.

I nodded to Justin and then swung the round part of the hammer into her head. An ugly, terrible screech shot from her mouth. My heart jumped into my throat and I swung again, harder than the time before.

This time, there was a satisfying crack on the frontal lobe. When Justin let her go, she fell from her chair, landing motionless beside her dead friend in a growing puddle of blood.

Chapter Sixteen

Past

He took me back to our room and told me to wait inside. I stood watching from the window as he and Justine dragged the girls through the woods until I couldn’t see them anymore.

Running my fingers through my hair, I went and sat down on the bed, eventually lying back so I was staring at the ceiling. If my life had taken a normal course, I wondered what I’d be doing right then. While some people were settling down to watch television, eating a late dinner, or preparing for a good night’s sleep, I was waiting on bodies to be buried.

Out in the middle of nowhere, we were free to commit whatever carnal acts one could imagine.

No one came onto the land to check on us. We had total privacy. When Con went hunting, he never took girls from the same area or with the same look, but, in the end, they always wore a red wig. There were times he’d be gone for days, searching for his next victim.

I had just shut my eyes and began to doze when the soft click of the door had them flying back open. Con was standing over me before I could fully blink, stripping his shirt off and undoing his belt.

I knew what came next. It was always the same. He needed to fuck me after he played out a fantasy of killing me. It was his affliction.

“I missed you, Rosie.” He bent down and kissed my cheek, lifting the hem of my nightgown.

I stretched my arms above my head, assisting him to get the thin piece of silk off.

Goose pimples spread out on my breasts, and my nipples hardened from the slight draft in the room.

“I missed you too,” I mumbled, telling him what he wanted to hear. But I didn’t really mean it. I didn’t want to wrap my arms around him and beg him to stop hurting people.