I take a few steps down the hall before the fear slides down my spine again and I hesitate, looking back at the door. I can almost picture Lakyn busting out of it with that challenging smirk on his face, ready to make me pay for everything I've done. A part of me wants it to happen, because at least then it would be over. It's the waiting that always drives me insane.
When there's nothing except more silence, I follow through on the threat, walking out front and slamming the door behind me so that I'm sure he heard it. Every door in the fucking house shakes when the front door slams—I've felt it enough from the inside—but Lakyn doesn't come outside. There's no movement of the blinds or a flick of the curtains to tell me that he cared enough to look… and I feel lost.
The decision to start walking is about as conscious as slapping the cigarette out of his mouth. I'm on auto-pilot. Or maybe this is a self-destruct sequence counting down and I'm just waiting for the timer to get to zero, so I'll finally be done.
It's the middle of the night, but I've never been afraid of being on the streets. It's the only thing I knew before Bea started helping me out, and the streets of suburban Mesa, Arizona aren't exactly dangerous even after midnight. No, the danger is back inside the house, and I know it will be waiting for me when I return. Whenever Lakyn snaps out of whatever strange mood he's in. I almost lost my life for Beatrix tonight, and I still might, but that’s okay because I know she’d give her life for me if it came down to it.
Seeing her again is the only thing that's kept me going all these years, and as long as there's still a chance I don't really have a choice except to keep breathing.
At least until Lakyn decides he's done with me.
Those thoughts keep spinning around in my head, bouncing back and forth as I meander down random sidewalks, losing myself under the night sky. These two ideas are really all I have left in life. The hope that I still have a chance of seeing Bea, and the absolute certainty that one of these days Lakyn will decide I'm not useful enough to keep around anymore.
Honestly, I've been waiting for that for a while now, but I keep going to sleep beside him and waking up next to him. I keep breathing, keep living, keep surviving, because for some reason he wants me to.
I could just leave.
The empty streets and open sky are like an invitation. As if the universe is giving me the chance to get away from Lakyn Meyer, to escape, but as quickly as the thought enters my mind, it leaves just as fast. It's a stupid idea. I know there's nowhere for me to go. I don't have any money, any skills, any life experience beyond the worst shit the world has to offer.
And Lakyn would find me anyway.
He's always been able to track down the people he wanted to, and he's a lot smarter than people give him credit for when they see that charming smile and those killer looks. I fell for it too when I first saw him—and that's how I know there's no hope for me. I could run, but it would be pointless, and the only person I'd want to see is Bea and there's no way in hell Lakyn will tell me where she is.
There’s nowhere I even want to go.
I don't have a future that doesn't involve Lakyn Meyer, and I shouldn't expect anything different. I need to stop hoping. I need to stop trying to believe in the possibility of anything good.
The sooner I can let go of all of that, the more tolerable everything will be.
I'm not sure how long I've walked, but I'm sure it's been hours, and when I can finally see the house again I'm fully expecting Lakyn to throw the front door open and lean against the frame with that grin on his face that tells me everything I need to know about how bad it's going to hurt once I'm inside.
But I get all the way onto the driveway and there's not a hint of movement from inside. Not a peep from the house. All I've got is the chorus of cicadas and the distant sound of cars.
I don't know if this is a good sign, or a really fucking bad one, but I figure that the least I can do to get back in his good graces—or Lakyn Meyer's version anyway—is to unload the car. I'm not surprised when the back is unlocked, but the huge pile of fabric leaves me confused for a second. It's a cheap pattern, nothing that Lakyn would ever want in his house, but when I pull it back and see the stain of blood on the white sheet underneath I know that he went shopping for something other than new bedding.
"Don't look," I whisper under my breath, but I can't resist peeling the sheet back enough to see the long black hair and the hint of too-pale skin before I catch sight of her face. She's young, pretty, and I wonder if this is what kept him busy. If this girl is why he didn't bring Bea back to me. Did he want to keep her? Did he accidentally kill her out of habit? Was his reaction earlier just disappointment at only having me left?
Is that why he didn't fuck me?
I feel sick to my stomach as I bundle her back up and shimmy my arms under the wad of bedding until I manage to lift her. It takes some juggling to get the front door open, but it's the middle of the night and I'm not worried. If anyone were to try and break in here, it would be their funeral.
Well, not a funeral. No one who enters Lakyn's house actually gets a funeral.
They get dissolved in a tub just like Willa did, just like this girl will be. I carry the latest of Lakyn's conquests into his workshop and drop her to the floor to finish unwrapping the mess. Burning the sheets will be easier than anything else, but my stomach clenches when I finally get a look at what he did.
She's cut open from breasts to cunt, and there's a bunch of other stab wounds around the gaping wound. The bloody mess between her legs looks more like one hole instead of two now, and I kick her legs back together just so I don't have to see it.
It only takes me a few minutes to get her situated, pouring the bottles over her in the way Lakyn taught me, and I make a mental note to remind him that we need more—whenever he starts talking to me again anyway.
With the dark-haired girl disappearing off the face of the earth, I head back out to the SUV and grab one of the bags from the back, barely catching the plastic container that almost tumbles onto the pavement. In the dim light of the driveway I can't tell what it is, but I crack the lid on it as I get back to the porch and it takes a minute for my brain to process what the fuck I'm looking at.
It's a heart. A human heart sitting in a plastic container like the leftovers from some fucked-up meal. God dammit.
I drop the duffel bag in the living room and head back to the workshop to add the heart to the mess in the tub. It's probably the girl's heart anyway, and Lakyn might be pissed that I destroyed his keepsake—if that's what it is—but someone has to clean up after his shit.
A few more trips and I've got the rest of the bags inside, and I'm pretty sure that several of them belonged to Aftyn and Willa. As I'm putting Lakyn's favorite hatchet back where it belongs, right next to Bea's hatchet, I sink into the chair in the corner and stare at it.
Did he kill Aftyn? Is the kid out there somewhere in a dumpster, or on the side of the road, chopped into pieces because I reached out to him and lured him into his father's web? Just more questions that I want to ask Lakyn, more answers I probably won't get, but I feel the weight of the guilt anyway.
There aren't really a lot of reasons why Lakyn would have the kid's bags unless Aftyn didn't need them anymore, and that's just one more thing that's my fault.