“It was an accident, Messiah,” she grumbles from the back seat and I see her cross her arms over her chest in the rearview mirror. I love when she gets all pouty and crosses her arms because she’s never wearing anything more than those little crop top things only covering a little of her chest. It doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. She catches me looking at her in the rearview mirror, but I hold her stare. “You always bring stupid stuff up.”
“It’s kind of hard to accidentally murder someone, Say,” I tell her, laughing before pulling away from the curb and into some light traffic.
“The knife slipped,” she says, still holding on to the fact she accidentally stabbed a man over eighty times.
“Just own it, baby,” I tell her. I can see the smile pulling across her lip, “no one in this car is judging you. We’ve all killed people.”
“A knife doesn’t slip eighty times, Salem. Du bist meine kleine Schwester and you should be proud you saved yourself that day, because no one was coming for you.”
The car is quiet after Nicholai finishes because we all agree. Preston pushed her with what he put her through and he knew what would happen to her if she didn’t fight back. He wouldn’t let us save her but when it was all said and done it turned out she didn’t need saving at all. She just needed some extra encouragement. He’s never put the pressure on her that severely since.
“Did you bring my carry on?” Salem asks Nicholai and he nods, lifting one of the two backpacks from the floorboard.
She takes the bag and I hear the zipper and then the sound of her water bottle popping open. Salem always has water.
“Let me get some,” I say to her, turning my head but keeping my eyes on the road.
“No,” she laughs, “you get no water.”
“Ah, come on Salem, I’ll call you angel like Hollis does.” I grin, and cut my eyes quickly to Nicholai before looking back to the road. “Come on just a sip, angel.”
“Ew, Messiah, stop. You sound like a fucking creep.” She laughs, putting the straw part to my lips as I stop at a red light. I close my lips around her straw and look at her as I pull the water into my mouth and she smirks at me, both of us knowing to her I’m the furthest thing from a creep.
“Stop looking at her with those eyes,” Nicholai grumbles and I pull off of the straw and laugh.
“What eyes?”
“Eyes like you want to get into her tiny ass shorts,” he grinds out. “Leave her alone.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Nicholai, I was just getting water.” I don’t hide my grin as the light turns green and I pull off. He punches me for it. Hard.
“Leave my little sister alone, dickhead.”
I laugh and grab my shoulder where he hit me. “I’m just fucking with you, man.”
“How’s it going for you?” Salem asks from the back seat and I shoot her a look in the mirror.
“Shut up,” I tell her, still grinning. “If you don’t want to go tonight I’ll see if I can get Preston to let you help me with the package in the back. I can make it messy for you.”
“Ha, uh … no I don’t think so. Not wanting to chop bodies tonight,” she tells me, and I grin.
We’ve all been there with Preston, aside from Salem, but it’s only a matter of time before he breaks into her shattered little world too. Nicholai can’t protect her from the disposal side of things forever. He’ll die trying to protect her though, because it’s just how he is. He protects all of us.
It doesn’t take long to get to the airport and no goodbyes are said because they’ll be back by lunch tomorrow and what would I even say to them? Good luck, don’t get killed but also don’t come back empty handed? I feel like silence is better. They’ll be fine.
I get on the highway headed back to our side of town and think about what I’ll have to do to get rid of the body in my trunk. There isn’t much left of the guys face, but after draining him I’ll burn the pieces of him I hack off of his body with my knife and he’ll be gone. Turned into dust and erased from existence. One wrong move got him all of this.
I pull up to one of the dumps Preston owns. It’s just outside town and the bumpy gravel under the tires rocks the car as I pull into the lot and back up to the door of one of the biggest buildings on the property. I put my car in park and look over at the tall piles of trash to my left and wonder why this is the part I love the most.
The disappearing act.
I know it’s fucked up I like the shit I do, but I don’t give a fuck. I’ve never killed or disposed of someone who didn’t actually deserve to die, so I sleep fine at night for the most part. I know I’m fucked up, but we’re all a little fucked up on the inside.
I get out and pop the back of the Tahoe and pull the body out by the thick black plastic it’s wrapped in and throw it over my shoulder. I walk over to the pit and throw it to the tiled floor below. I get my knives from the set of lockers on the other side of the wall and pull on a plastic suit to protect my clothing before heading back into the pit.
After slipping into the latex gloves, I open my bag of knives and pull my favorite out to slice open the body bag. Just from being in the bag, the body already has an even worse smell and no matter how many times I do this, I’ll never be able to appreciate the smell of decaying flesh.
Ready to get rid of the dude, I start with his arm and as I slide the blade against his clammy skin it goes in clean, only forcing resistance when I hit bone. I push hard into it and his forearm is off in one clean cut.
I grab the fingers and lightly toss the piece of his arm to the center of the floor where the drain is. Blood oozes from all of the pieces of him and as I ready myself to cut the top of his arm from his body, I grip his skin making even more blood drain from him.
I’m halfway done with the disposal when my phone buzzes from my back pocket. I look up and I have a horrible urge to itch my brow but the gloves on my hands are covered in blood.
I know only one person would be calling me right now, so I pick up the pace and I drive my knife through bone after bone, my adrenaline pumping hard. I continue to cut through the thief’s flesh and bone and toss his mangled body parts into a pile at the center of the pit. There’s blood everywhere but it’ll be wiped away in no time when I’m done.
Once I’m finished chopping him up I take the man piece by piece to the burner and as I toss the last of his leg into the pit I chuckle to myself because it’s safe to say he’ll never steal from us again.
RUBY — PRESENT
Shuffling the papers on the desk together, I make a pile and do my best to ignore the nagging feeling to go check on the bloody mystery man who rode the elevator to the top floor earlier. His stare had been so deep and dark, but behind it there was something else pulling me in.
It pulled me in deep before I could even realize and I now I can't stop thinking about him no matter how hard I try. He’s still calling to me like a flame to a moth and it’s as if I already know I’m going to get burned, but I want to see why I’m so drawn to him anyway.
He needs something and for some reason I feel like I can give it to him. Or maybe I need something from him, I haven’t figured it out yet. In my head, there are only so many things I could need a person for and with a face and muscles like his, I feel like I can definitely find some things to need him for.