Hell doesn’t want them
Hell doesn’t need them
Hell doesn’t love them
The devil’s rejects
Rob Zombie, The Devil’s Rejects
I grab my bag off the bench and rush out of the locker room. “Come on,” Kitty says, tugging of my hand as we hurry down the narrow hallway. We turn left and head for a black door guarded by two large security officers. They recognize us and let us through. The door opens into a back alley. Angled next to a dumpster is a little red Euro car. She pulls me towards it, finally letting go of my arm as she reaches for the driver’s side door.
“Get in,” she orders, pulling the door open and sliding inside the compact vehicle. I squeeze into the passenger side and look over at her. She is the sort of girl wars are fought over. She is more fit to be a bust in your foyer than she is to be lying in your bed – some sort of Romanesque goddess who leaves your hands warm after you touched her.
Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about killing her.
Not just kill her. I want to brutalize her. I want to beat her to death with the blunt end of an ax. I want to maim her. To make her unidentifiable. And then I want to play with her.
“Let’s go,” she says with a hint of a smile, then shifts the car into reverse and accelerates backwards. The car exits the mouth of the alley and spins into oncoming traffic. She shifts into drive and slams on the gas peddle. The car jerks forward into the right lane, narrowly missed by an oncoming laundry truck.
Neither of us speak as the car speeds out of the city, leaving Paris behind in the back window. She finds an abandoned country road circling up a hill and parks on the side in the dirt. She kills the engine, opens her door and climbs out. I stare at her as she moves around to the front of the car and then follow after, undoing my safety belt and pushing my door open.
She runs her hands through her hair, tossing it lightly about her shoulders and then takes a seat on the hood of the car. I walk around the side to stand next to her and look out over the city in the distance. The lights of the buildings burn in the night sky, an orange glow that spreads up into the atmosphere.
“Time to talk,” I finally say, breaking the silence.
“I need you to do something for me.”
“Do you,” I say, throwing my bag on the hood next to her. I unzip it and reach inside, finding a wadded up tee shirt. I pull it over my head and down to my waist. I’m still damp with sweat and flecks of dried blood cover my skin.
“I need you to kill Jackson.”
“We could have done that an hour ago when he was laid out on the floor.”
“No, you idiot. Not like that. Do you know what would happen if Petrov found out one of us murdered Jackson outside the ring? He’d fucking hunt us both down. And from what I hear, dying would be the least of our concerns with him.”
“Hm,” I grumble, looking over at her. “So your master plan is that I somehow get past Clemmens with enough left in the tank to not only defeat Jackson, but actually kill him. Why would I do that? What do I have to gain?”
She smirks. The dimples in her cheeks make me want to vomit. “You hate Jackson. Don’t deny it. You want him dead and gone as much as I do. If not more.”
I fish a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the bag. “I can beat Clemmens. I know I can beat Jackson. But both in one night?” I strike the lighter, bring the flame to the end of a cigarette, and breathe in a lungful of smoke. “And then somehow manage to fucking kill Jackson? If it’s so easy, why don’t you just go do it yourself? I’m sure you can get the match.”
“Don’t be fucking stupid.” She takes the cigarette from my lips and takes a drag from it. “If I thought it was that simple I would have. I need someone who can get in his head. Rattle him. Get him off his game. You can do that. You’ve done it before.”
“I have,” I say as a calm washes over me. Something is different. Something has changed. My eyes lift to the sky above my head and I see it. The clouds have thinned out, and through their wisps and tendrils a fat, glorious moon lights the night as day, flooding down across the land. It stirs something inside of me, something dark and deep. Something animalistic.
“I’m confident that you’ll be able to get the job done … Hello? Spiral?” She’s still talking. My eyes sweep over her to see she’s staring at me, with her mouth agape, her hand waving at me to get my attention.
“Did you space out? I need you to focus here.”
With a smile, “You’re right. I need to focus. This is serious, serious business here.” The soft, wild voice of the wind roars through the hair on my arms. The grass rustles around my feet. The branches of a nearby tree obediently bend ever-so-slightly.
She huffs. “Listen, if you’re just going to mock me, maybe I should go talk to Clemmens. He probably has a better chance anyway. After all, he did kick your ass.”
She moves from the hood of the car. That thing inside of me stirs, calling me to action. I move, quickly, across the front of the car and grab her arm. She tries to pull it away.
“Spiral, let go of my arm,” she says firmly in the voice of a woman used to getting her way. She tries to twist and wrench it from my grasp. “Let go!” she finally shouts. She gives a final jerk and manages to pry her arm away from me. She moves quickly, hurrying for the driver’s side door. I move behind her and grab her shoulders. She spins around, claws out, and swipes me across the face.
I grab her by the throat, slicing her screams off in an instant, leaving only the pop and click of air trying to escape her closing pharynx. She grabs my arms, drawing blood with her digging nails. I pull her face close to mine and whisper lightly over her choked-off gasps. “Go on. Try to scream. Keep screaming. It’ll do you no good out here.”
Her face goes from a shade of dark red to a light blue before I finally let go, throwing her down to the ground. Coughing and hacking, she sucks in a rattling breath of air. She steals a glance over her shoulder at me before turning ahead and scrambles on her hands and knees. I take a little walk after her, not too quickly, as I want to savor this. Tip-toeing, I move over top of her. My moon-cast shadow stretches over her, enveloping her in pitch darkness. I reach down and grab a fistful of hair and bend her head up until I can look into her eyes. I raise my right hand up, my fingers curling into a thick, heavy fist and I ram it into her face repeatedly.
When I finish she’s limp against her hair in my hand. I finally let her go and she falls face first into the dirt. She’s still conscious, retching and sobbing into the ground. I bend down to find the discarded cigarette smoldering in the grass. I take a hit off it and as I straighten up above her, I feel the beginnings of a drizzle pitter-pattering on my shoulders.
“There’s no need to fight, darlin’. I’m giving you what you want.”
Her face contracts and twitches with pain. Her eyes, dull with horror, close, then open halfway, her life reduced to nightmare. I reach down and grab her by the ankles and drag her back toward the car.
“In hindsight, perhaps you should have rented a car with a bigger trunk.” I pick her up off the ground and roll her into the back of the car. I bend her legs up to her chest to fit her in and slam the lid shut. She must have come to, because I can hear her muffled screams and she begins to beat against the lid. Flicking the cigarette aside, I breathe in the damp night air and start running around, screaming like a banshee.
Spiral’s Journal
It’s true that you can sense some kind of human connection when you look at me. It’s true that I speak like you and that we may even share some of the same interests. We all gravitate towards each other out of our own fear of being alone, but when you gravitate towards me are you thinking that you feel the connection? I am a monster. Can you hear my ragged breathing? I dream of tearing each of you apart with my bare hands.
Yes, I may initiate the greeting, but can you hear my thoughts screaming stab wounds all over your white button-up shirt that you wear every day to the office? When you give me a hug, or even kiss me goodnight, can you feel how bad I want to push you down the stairs?
I dream of watching your body go over the hood of a car. I want to hurt you and I want to watch you hurt. I want the whole world to go to shit and laugh as I watch it burn. Do I hate everything? Absolutely. Do I want to die? Only if I take as many people as possible with me. Am I afraid? Only if it’s possible to cause others fear.
You could call me undecided. You could call me insane. But the truth is I’m just like all of you. Except I see the truth. I get the joke. All of you will, too, in time. I’m just ahead of the curve.