Page 2 of What I've Tasted of Desire

Barbara let her head flop to the side, graying hair sticking to the side of her face.

“Not speaking to me now? That’s fine. I don’t mind doing all the talking.” I squatted down, letting my ass come to rest on the edge of the small coffee table before folding my hands together in my lap.

“You know, I wasn’t going to kill you until Alex turned 18 and left, but it seems like you took it upon yourself to speed up that timeline. A little over-eager, are we?”

“I guess it’s for the best, really. He’s in much better care with the Millers.” I tilted my head. “I guess I should be thanking you for getting him away from Tom.”

Barbara’s face was scrunched up like she was trying to put the dots together. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I’m well aware you lack the brain power to figure it out. So, I’ll break it down for you. You are a vile, horrendous, snatch of a woman, and you deserve to have your death drawn out fordays-s-s.”

I clicked my tongue and shook my head in disappointment. “Unfortunately, I just simply don’t have time for that.” I looked down at her again, “As it is, I’m going to have to chop you up to get you out of here. There’s just so…” I paused, gesturing towards her with my hand. “Somuch of you.”

“I can’t really say much. I’ve just started my fitness journey recently.” I stood up straight and put my hands on my hips to present myself to her. “I’m down 14 pounds, though,” I preened. “I’ve seen the way Alex looks at that stupid fuck every time he takes his shirt off, which by the way isa lot.”

I rolled my eyes, “Maybe, one day, I’ll get to kill him too. I know Alex is in love with him. I can see it in the way he looks at him.” I bit my bottom lip as a surge of anger rolled down my spine. Flashes of Tom penetrating Alex in the woods behind this very house, memories I wish I didn’t have. Alex always looked broken—defeated, even!—after that stupid fuck was finished having his way with him.

“Alex deserves tenderness and sensuality. Candles and massages… not to be used like a goddamned Fleshlight with his beautiful face pushed into the mud!” My emotions overtook me momentarily. “And you, you fucking fat pig, treating him like a discarded piece of trash you had been burdened with!” I finished with a swift kick to the side of Barbara's ribs.

Her body contorted, and she began to heave as her body instinctively tried to double over, her restraints and excess weight prohibiting her from doing so.

I ran a frustrated hand through my hair. “I apologize for losing my temper, but it just makes me physicallyillto look at you. I saw you slap Alex across the face. How fucking dare you? That’s the sweetest boy God ever put on this earth. Then you come along, thinking you’re worthy of walking on the planet at the same time as him. And to strike him…”

I kicked her again just to hear her scream. Once she had devolved into sobs and incoherent pleas for her life, I glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall. 11:28 PM.

“Well, as much fun as our little chat has been, it’s about time to get rolling here,” I announced briskly as I picked my hand-axe up by the handle from behind the sofa, “I gotta get you disassembled and up to the pig farm before daylight, and it’s a bit of a drive.” I tapped a finger against my chin. “I sure hope the tarp in my truck bed is big enough. You couldn’t have eaten a salad just, like… once?”

Barbara thrashed again as I approached her, the axe blade glistening in the pale light.

“I'm gonna start with your feet… do you think I’ll get them both off before you lose consciousness?”

The old woman began to kick her legs back and forth, trying to scream around the piss-soaked sock in her mouth. “Oh, what fun,” I exclaimed exuberantly. “A moving target!”

***

I wound my way down the two-lane county road, rain tapping lightly on the windshield. The storm had finally broken, and all that remained was a light sprinkling as the outer bands moved westward.

I shifted in the driver’s seat, trying to alleviate some of the tension on my sore muscles. Miss Barbara had to have weighed a cool 350 pounds, every one of which I felt as I was hacking her up piece by piece. I arched my back and rolled my shoulders. I needed to start lifting more weights. I’d only just recently started trying to get into shape. Genetics and poor eating habits inherited from my parents had kept me overweight since puberty. My mom was out of the picture by then, and my father had his head so far up his company's asshole that I was basically just left to do whatever I wanted. Mom called every three or four months, and I only saw my dad about three times a week, despite sharing a home with him. Food became a comfort. A lifeline, if you will.

I never cared much about my appearance growing up. Most people were absolute fuck-wits and didn’t hold my attention long enough to make me self-conscious about the clothes I was wearing, or my pudgy belly. Honestly, the general public bored me to tears. Going about their meaningless lives with more main character energy than a fucking Avengers movie, when in reality, they’d ultimately add nothing more to the world than their carbon footprint.

Except for Alex.

I passed the small turn-off for Culken Creek, despite my previous plans for the evening. I had intended to stop there on the way back from McNally's Farm to rinse the remnants of the old woman off my body, but with the constant barrage of rain I’d fought as I jammed pieces of Miss Barbara through the slats in the pig pens, I figured there was nothing left on me to find. I’d already stripped naked in the field where I’d left the car and stuffed the clothes I’d been wearing into a plastic grocery bag. I had braced myself against the side of my truck and scrubbed myself down as the rainwater washed over me. That was one thing I’d always appreciated about a good rainstorm: everything was socleanafterwards.

I reached over, tapped a couple of buttons on my phone screen, and turned the volume knob on the stereo. The Taylor Swift playlist Alex had created started to play on the surrounding speakers

Now that Alex had escaped Barbara's, he seemed to be doing well. The Millers were a nice older couple, giving Alex the privacy and peace of mind he needed to start branching out and learning to discover the kinds of things thatheliked. I'd been watching him listen to a lot of music lately. Alex liked to prop his phone up against the history text on his nightstand and let his YouTube playlist go as he studied. If I was lucky enough to get the third parking spot down on the left from the Miller’s driveway, I could angle the binoculars just right and be able to see what was playing on his phone screen through his window. It took me a few weeks, but I was finally able to find his username and see the full lists of the songs he listened to. When I was watching him in the evenings, I liked to queue it up and try to match up the songs so we were listening to the same track at the same time.

I can tell you that Taylor Swift would not have been my first, second, or evenfifteenthchoice, but, if Alex enjoyed listening to her songs so much, therehadto be something there. I was growing to like her, or, at least, some of her songs more than others. I wasn’t heavy into pop music, but, I had to admit, the woman was a poet. A soft chime interrupted the track, announcing an automated reminder from my calendar. I glanced over at the small screen affixed to its charging mount in the center of the dash.

DAD’S 76TH BIRTHDAY

“Happy Birthday, Pops,” I said aloud, before letting the soft melody take over my thoughts as I made my way back home, memories of the past floating in and out of my mind.

Chapter Two

I pulled into the Safeway parking lot and found a spot under a large pine tree that afforded some shade from the bright mid-morning sun. The scraggly branches and their sparse needles didn’t do much to block out the rays, but it was better than nothing, I figured as I killed the car’s engine.

Picking up my phone, I checked the time: 11:46 AM. I ducked my head under the sun visor to get as much of a view of the surrounding parking lot as I could, trying to orient myself to which direction I was facing.

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