Page 3 of However You Want Me

I don’t mean to do it so quickly, I wanted to ask him so many haunting questions. The thoughts that keep me up at night… but I suppose they’ll go unanswered.

I strike out with my left hand, blade to his throat, once then twice. With each jab I pull up, slicing the inner cords and making the most of every stab. Wide eyes stare back in shock and then I do it again. His hands reach up, first towards me, but quickly to defense. To try to block another blow. To try to keep the streaming blood from the gashes in his throat.

His knees give out and he falls to his back. Sputtering blood as he tries to scream out for help.

“Let me help you remember, Mr. Jay.” I speak calmly as I lean over his body under the sole light that hangs down the alley. With one foot on either side of him, and the blood spilling from his neck and mouth, I lean closer to make sure he can hear me.

His eyes are full of terror and I think then, maybe he remembers.

“Welcome to hell,” I hiss and stab again and again and again.

It’s over in only minutes. All of it. Including the cleaning of the blade and slipping the jacket inside out after wiping off any evidence from my hands and face. I carry the bundle under my shoulder and the gravel crunches beneath my feet as I head back to my truck around the corner.

After I climb in and turn on the lights I look back to the bar. One person leaves and I watch the car go, none the wiser that there’s a dead body only ten feet from the entrance, hidden only by trash bags.

I nearly leave before I cross his name off, but I remember. Taking the note from my back pocket. I see the one side first, her name and address and then turn it over. A list of names, seven of them, one already crossed off stares back at me. With the pen from the cup holder, I cross off Jay Danning. I’m surprised the mark is so clean compared to the first line I’d drawn through the name above. It’s then I notice my heart pounds harder when I think of her than it does from what just happened.

Soon. It’ll all be over soon.

HALEY

10 years ago

Shame weighs on me, heavy and suffocating, but the fear cuts even deeper, slicing me to the bone.

The reality that weighs me down: I’m fifteen, and I’ve been arrested.

Arrested.

The word echoes in my head, driving the shame even deeper. Anxiety washes through me in waves.

Two men burst into my bedroom while I was sleeping and pulled me out of the bed. They handcuffed me while I stood there in my pajamas. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. My screams didn’t help. My pleas for them to stop. The terror was far too overwhelming.

Arrested? Me?

It was a bad dream. It had to be a bad dream. It couldn’t be real.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to wake up.

But I didn’t wake up.

Not even when they started to take me out of my bedroom. They weren’t cops. Not real cops. They were kidnapping me.

I struggled, and my shoulder hit the poster that's been hanging on the back of the door since I was eleven. The actor’s face tore in half, and the paper crumpled under one of the men’s feet.

“Mom!” I knew she would come for me. I knew she’d stop these men from kidnapping me. That’s what they had to be doing. Not arresting me, kidnapping me. “Mom, help!”

One of them slapped me. Fast. Unthinking. Like he done it a million times before.

Shock betrayed me, making my body still as they gathered me up making my fighting useless.

“Stop. Dad!”

I hadn’t been getting along with my parents. They didn’t like the friends I made at school. They didn’t like the dark clothes I’d been experimenting with.

They didn’t like how I’d stayed out a few times, unable to make myself leave.

But they wouldn’t let this happen. They wouldn’t! My parents were going to stumble out of their bedroom any second and save me.

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