Page 109 of Killing Me Softly

She trailed a hand along the gramophone’s wooden surface, fingers lingering over it like it was an old lover.

“But me? I understand theartof it.” She tapped her nails on the gramophone, a rhythmic taunting. “There’snothingworse than silence. It’s thedeathof a moment. The death of a performance. Of power. Without sound, without the right backdrop, it’s all just… violence. That’s what mummy used to say. Silence is abhorrent.”

Kenny watched her, unmoving. Then, finally, with the quiet precision of a man turning the blade inward, “Is that because when it’s quiet, you don’t like your own thoughts?”

The tapping stopped.

And for the first time in this entire, drawn-out nightmare, Mable’s smile didn’t just falter. Itfroze.

“That’s what your mother told me, once.” Kenny tried to catch her gaze. “When the music stopped, or she didn’t sing, her thoughts were too loud. She said, ‘silence makes the dark things sharper’. Is that what it’s like for you, Mable? When it’s quiet?”

Aaron’s stomach dropped as Mable pulled a thick shellac record from a worn sleeve. She blew dust from its surface, then placed it onto the turntable. The needle dropped.A cracklingsilence filling the warehouse, the faint hiss of static slithering through the horn, before the music played.

“You’re very good, Dr Lyons.” Mable swayed in place, moving in lazy, hypnotic circles, eyes drifting shut as if lost in the syrupy melody ofBe My Baby. “But do you know what Mummy told me? That you’ve been obsessed with her for years. And now that obsession has bled into her son. That you fucking my brother is the pinnacle of your perversion. The thrill. The danger. That he’s just your little game. A walking, talking case study.”

“As with all things your mother says, she’s trying to manipulate you. Aaron isn’t just some thrill to me. He iseverythingto me. Because of whom hechoseto be.”

Aaron could have cried. But the sweetness of the song seeped into the coldness of the warehouse like a fog, thick and sickly, ripping away Kenny’s words and replacing them with a twisted, static-laced melody. Aaron’s chest tightened. That song was a blade between his ribs and it dragged him back. To the kitchen. To soft morning light. To Roisin humming as she danced between cabinets, stirring pancake batter, pressing absentminded kisses into his hair. That song was safety. Love.Home.

And Mable was gutting it. Turning it against him.

Like she was doing now. With Kenny. Withthem.

She opened her eyes. Eyes that mirrored his own. And then that smile. Crooked. Knowing. Cruel. “Tell me,” she purred. “Does he call you baby, too?”

Aaron shut his eyes, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a reaction.

“Oh, no, no.” Mable danced toward Kenny, her tattered dress billowing, sultry, theatrical. “We can’t have that. We need to experiment. Find out if what he says is true. That he doesn’t get off on the danger of it all.”

She twirled, arms floating gracefully above her head like some grotesque ballerina, then let herself fall forward, landing on Kenny’s lap with unsettling ease. She straddled him, rolling her hips in teasing motions, curling her fingers over his shoulders as she swayed, eyes fluttering closed again and mouthing the lyrics, singing along.

“Open your eyes, Aaron.”

He curled his hands into fists.

“I said,open your eyes! Or your boyfriend gets a lobotomy.”

Aaron obeyed. But immediately wished he hadn’t.

Legs locked around Kenny’s waist, she pointed the tip of the knife at his head, then ghosted her fingers along Kenny’s chest, dragging her nails over the fabric of his shirt. Kenny turned his head away, a grimace smeared across his face as Mable licked a wet trail up the column of his throat.

Aaron’s stomachroiled.

Mable grinned, catching Kenny’s earlobe between her teeth, biting down just enough to make him flinch. Then she pulled back, tilting her head. “Kiss me.”

Kenny didn’t move.

Her smile dropped.

“I said,kiss me.” She lifted the knife, threatening the blade at the vulnerable dip of Kenny’s throat, teasing, playful,lethal. She leaned in, ghosting her lips to his, breath mingling in the suffocating space between them.

Aaron’s muscles coiled in silent agony.

“Kiss me like you kiss my brother, or I’ll slice you open and let him watch you bleed out all over the floor. What willthatdo to his already fragile state of mind?”

Kenny’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t flinch.

He looked her dead in the eye.

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