Beautiful Nightmare Part 4

I really should have known better. But she had been so complacent, finally behaving after nearly 24 hours of torture, so I had let her down from the ceiling hook without bothering to knock her out first, intending to position her for my employer's imminent arrival. No sooner had her feet touched the floor did the bitch sock me right in the throat before bolting out of the bedroom.

Admittedly, I had been stunned stupid by how much power had been behind her punch let alone her speed. For someone as injured as her and shackled, she moved like she had gotten the best rest in ages versus someone who had been tortured as badly as she had been. It was impressive. Annoying, but impressive.

I sigh and lean back in the armchair, looking over the damage that our fight had caused, my left knee bouncing up and down as I rubbed a hand over my mouth.

The couch had been tipped over from where I'd thrown her into it and she'd flipped over the back of it, hands clawing at the top to keep herself from going over. Not that that had helped her any, all she'd done was knock it over in her wake, barely managing to scramble out of range before it had fallen onto her.

The kitchen table was in splinters, only one table leg having survived us both crashing into it and only that leg because she had gotten ahold of it and swung it at me before I could reach it. Pots and pans littered the kitchen floor, trailing like discarded clothes preceding a movie's sex scene into the living room. Plates and bowls and cups shattered against walls, cabinet doors hanging half off their hinges. Silverware scattered about like rose petals.

The television had been knocked off the wall, its screen in shards that mixed with the glass of what had once been the coffee table but was now just a pile of debris. It'd fallen when I'd slammed her against the wall it had been bolted to with enough force that it had shaken the entire cabin. She'd repaid me by kicking me in the groin. Not that it had mattered in the long run. I'd still gotten the upper hand.

The entire cabin—including the bedroom—looked like a cat 5 hurricane had parked itself inside and spun for hours before meandering on.

It was a sheer wonder that none of the windows were broken, that she hadn't been focused on escaping to freedom so much as she had on getting far enough away from me to get something to kill me with.

Which she'd said at one point and taken great exception to me laughing in her face. You can't kill a monster, whore. And that was exactly what I was: a monster, a nightmare given flesh and blood and a purpose. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here and she would be home with her four brats and the Bible fucker she'd somehow gotten to fall for her bullshit. I scrub a hand across my mouth with a bit more force this time, smearing the blood from my split lip across my jaw as I do so but I don't care. I'm covered in worse than my own blood, more won't matter.

Pushing up out of the chair, I walk over to where Mariah is laying on the floor near the destroyed coffee table, knocked out cold and looking far worse for the wear. I'm glad that my contract didn't require that I leave her even the slightest bit unmarked because I would have negated it hours ago. I ache everywhere and not in ways I tend to enjoy, all because she couldn't just accept her fate with grace.

I nudge her side with my foot none-too-gently, grinning when she groans and tries to roll away from me only to hiss when her naked body comes into contact with the shards of glass.

"Wakey wakey."

I giggle when her eyes fly open and she tries to scramble away from me, slip-sliding across the blood-soaked carpet and the glass that litters it. If the television and table shards cut her any more than she already is she doesn't show any signs of it. But considering she was reminded, and rather rudely at that, that the monster she'd tried to kill was still very much alive, I didn't blame her for ignoring everything else but the danger with a capital D that stood in front of her.

I take a step towards her when a heavy knock on the front door catches my attention. Mariah and I stare at each other for a long minute before she lets out a strangled scream, a halfhearted attempt to call for help as the knocking comes again, more insistent this time.

Mariah thinks that it's some random person come searching for help in the blizzard that could save her. Little does she know they're here for something entirely different. I don't punish her for the noise, knowing it's not going to get her anything as what waits on the other side of the front door isn't her salvation, it's her death.

"Yeah, yeah. Calm your damn tits," I call out, full snark and cranky with it because my play time with the whore was over as another knock thunks against the door.

But I can't be too angry. After all, the newcomer is the reason I'm even here, so if anything I should be thanking them instead of fighting the urge to tell them off for their absolutely shitty timing.

"Behave, whore, and I may let our guest play with you." I wink at her sultrily before meandering out of the living room towards the front door, leaving her wide-eyed and full of confusion at the lack of punishment on the floor.

I throw the door open mid-knock and snort when my guest backpedals and yelps. I give her a lopsided grin, leaning my shoulder against the door jam, unbothered by the vicious cold wind that howls across the screened in porch and brushes my bare chest. "Was wondering if you'd gotten lost."

She rolls her eyes and pushes past me roughly, eyes scanning the absolute disaster of the kitchen and what little she can see of the living room and the bedroom before she looks back at me, eyes sparkling with amusement at the chance to banter with me.

"Shut up. I took forever cuz there is a literal blizzard outside in case you were too busy to notice."

"Oh, I noticed. Just had more fun shit to do than complain about it," I retort, jerking my head to indicate the state of the cabin."

"Where is she?"

"Damn, skipping the foreplay. My kind of woman." I wink and am rewarded with another eye roll. "She's on the living room floor. Mind the glass," I gesture widely with one arm in a clear after you gesture.

I watch her hesitate, face a riot of anticipation and fear. Part of me knows that I shouldn't be getting off on that discomfort, on her fear, but I can't help it. I'm too wired, still hard and unsatisfied, and now that Victim is here? I know it's time for the big finish; a finish that doesn't belong to me. And that knowledge does nothing to pull me from the knife's edge. If anything, it only pushes me closer to it.

But as much as I'm getting off on watching her struggle, I'm torturing Mariah not Victim, so I take pity on her. If only a little.

"I can bring her to you, if you wish."

Victim blinks owlishly at me, clearly not seeing me and I sigh, snapping my fingers in front of her face, making her jerk at the sound and movement. When her gaze clears I raise an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

I snort, loudly, utterly unable to help it. "She's on the living room floor," I repeat and roll my shoulders, feeling the tension in the room rise a few notches and gods but it is difficult to keep myself in check because the one thing I love more than torturing someone is doing so in front of an audience. "I can bring her to you, if you wish," I add when I'm sure that I can speak with a steady voice.

Victim shakes her head, shifting to walk around me clearly refusing to allow that bitch to make her afraid to face her one second more. I admire her gusto even if I don't understand the why behind it.

"It—it's you?" Mariah splutters, voice full of righteous anger and indignation when Victim walks within sight of her. "You're the reason I'm here? God, you're still so pathetic you couldn't come for me yourself?"

I'm across the room in three strides, moving around Victim like she isn't even there. Before Mariah can even register that I'm once more within reach of her, I break her right knee with a kick the wet sound of the joint tearing and the snap-snap of the bone breaking nearly drowned out by her scream, her body shaking with tremors as she dry heaves, stomach too empty to even vomit bile. I suppress a moan as my cock twitches.

"Now now, whore, did I not tell you to behave?" I shake my head with a long-suffering sigh. "But of course you are just incapable of fuckin' listening, aren't you?" I reach down, take a fistful of her matted hair and pull her up by it. "And bad girls get punished don't they?"

"Please... please, I'm s-sorry," she begs as I drag her by her hair around the edge of the flipped couch to kneel as much as she can with a broken knee before Victim, who looks like she's fighting the urge to run and smile sadistically simultaneously.

"You're here," I interrupt, silencing her with a sharp jerk on her hair, baring her neck to Victim whose face breaks into a wide grin at the mewl the whore emits at the action, "because of yourself, no one else. You are here because of the crimes you chose to commit. You are here to pay for those crimes. And she," I tap her cheek before pointing at Victim, "is here to ensure that your punishment is befitting of your crimes."

I lean down and speak right into her ear, my voice sharp and vicious. "So apologize and then beg properly like a good whore or I promise you that what you've suffered so far will be a cakewalk compared to what I'll do next."

Releasing her, I watch as she falls forward, shackled hands catching herself before she faceplants into Victim's shoes. Sharing a look with Victim who nods, I retreat into the bedroom to retrieve the 9mm with hollow points that I packed specifically for this moment. Walking back into the living room, I hear Mariah speaking, voice filled with tears, real tears, the kind you only cry when you know there's no retribution, there's no going back. It's hard not to feel cheated hearing her give Victim those tears, but I'm not too bothered, not really. After all, those tears aren't meant for me, her screams were and I had gotten those in spades.

I pass Victim the gun and move to lean against the wall near the entrance to the kitchen, hands in my pockets, lips twisted in a smile that doesn't reach my eyes. Mariah falls silent while Victim racks the slide back to check that there's one in the chamber and releases it with a loud shink. She holds it down at her side, eyes dark and face set in a hard mask of pure fury that is like fine whiskey, the scent of it heady and intoxicating as it swirls around in the tension-filled air.

"Wha-what are you doing?" the whore stutters, leaning unconsciously back away from Victim who just smiles at her.

"I never forgot, just like you said I wouldn't," she answers, taking a step closer, free hand whipping out to grab a fistful of Mariah's hair and hold her steady, those clear eyes filled with something more primal than the fear most humans know, something that no words can describe. "Only this time? There is a bullet in the chamber."

Before Mariah can even react, Victim lifts the gun, presses it to her temple and fires.

I shudder hard, eyes rolling back as blood and brain matter mists in the air, as the hollow point bullet hits Mariah's skull and expands, leaving a hole the size of my fist on the other side, her blood painting the wall in an arc that no horror movie could ever hope to replicate. I let out a shaky breath when Mariah's body thumps against the floor.

When Victim doesn't move, I push off the wall and reach out to wrap my hand over the one white-knuckling the pistol, lower it slowly. When her attention jumps to me clearly having forgotten I was even there, I give her what I hope is a soothing smile, though judging by the way she flinches it missed its mark.

"Go, love, I've got it from here."

She frowns as I take the gun and tuck it in the back waistband of my jeans.

"But... don't we have to dispose of..." she doesn't finish, just looks at the corpse laying in an ever-widening pool of blood.

"That's not your concern." I gently steer her towards the door. "I've got it from here."

She nods dazedly, opening the door and stepping out only to stop and turn around.

"How can I ever thank you?" she asks and I chuckle.

"No need for that quite yet, hon," I answer and shake my head, making a shooing gesture. "Off with you now. I have work to do."

Victim nods once after one last glance over my shoulder at the body on the floor. She squares her shoulders, turns, and walks across the porch, the screen door banging against the frame behind her. I wait until she's gotten in the car that's idling in front of the cabin, wait until it drives off before I turn around and head back inside to collect my things.

I'm not concerned with cleaning up the mess on the floor or that's all over the cabin. There's no way any of the authorities will tie me or Victim to what happened here.

Plus I'm on a time crunch. I have another play date to get to, after all, with yet another liar that needs to be taught a valuable, and painful, lesson.