Page 67 of What I've Tasted of Desire

NO! No, no, no, nonononononono…

I pulled a switchblade out of my pocket and hurried after him, flicking the blade open. Just as he rounded the corner and laid his hand on the banister, I came around the other side and buried the blade at an angle, deep into the meat of his shoulder. He groaned and jerked away, but I pulled the blade out and slammed it down into the middle of his back. The knife wasn’t very long, nor was it as sharp as I would have preferred, had I woken up that morning and knew I’d be killing a man that day. I resigned myself to just making do.

Mike hollered and fell to his knees on the staircase before pulling himself up and knocking me off balance with his shoulder. He pulled himself to his feet and made it three more steps before I gained on him enough to drive the knife into his back again, this time with my full body weight atop it. He collapsed on the staircase and stared back at me over his shoulder. Blood was trickling out of the side of his mouth.

“Who the f-f-fuck are you?”

I smiled, still tasting Alex on my tongue.

“Gabriel Vasquez, Emberford Fire Department.”

We were halfway to the second floor. I grabbed fistfuls of Mike’s clothing and flung him backwards down the stairs. He hollered and rolled twice as his body thumped on each step before hitting the floor, blood trailing over the risers in his wake.

Mike gagged and spit a bunch of blood out of his mouth as I made my way down the last few remaining stairs. The blood was everywhere, pooling under his body as he lay in a heap.

“I d-don’t understand,” he choked out.

“That’s fine; I don’t expect you to. I know it's difficult to hear, but you’re not a main character in Alex's story.” I leaned over, grabbed a fistful of his short hair to tip his head back, and then dug the switchblade into the side of his neck. He gargled and spit for another 10 seconds or so as his hands clawed at his throat and his legs twitched out to his sides, and then his body stopped moving.

“I knew it was gonna come to this sooner or later, Lover Boy. I appreciated your little crush on Alex, but when it was time to accept that you’d clearly been beaten… you just couldn’t bow out gracefully.”

I sighed and looked around the room. There was bloodeverywhere. This had not been in my plans.

“And the problem is,” I groaned aloud, “people are actually going to come looking for this one. Rob especially.”

Hysterical alarm suffused my thinking. All I could see was the blood. All over the stairs, all over the floor. Mike’s big body, which needed to be dealt with. And Alex was asleep upstairs!

I might have been stupid with overstimulation and dumb animal panic, but the voice in my head was calm. Resolute.

Burn the house down. Burn Mike’s body to a crisp and get Alex out of there. They’ll think Tom burned it down as revenge…

I hurried outside and grabbed the gas mask and the two cans of gasoline from the back of the car. Once I was back inside, I went into the kitchen and doused the kitchen table in gas, along with the outer edges of the room and the drapes. I walked through the kitchen into Alex’s office and emptied the rest of the first can across his desk and the floor.

My eyes began to burn from the fumes and being in the enclosed space, so I pulled the mask on over my head.

I walked down the hallway and into the living room, leaving a thin trail of gasoline behind me. It splattered the refinished floors. I soaked the fussy antique furniture and the moth-eaten curtains and saved a little to cover Mike with. I’d start the fire in the center of the house and then take Alex down the back stairs, I reasoned. The thick walls would contain the fire long enough for me to get him out with plenty of time to spare.

I grabbed the Zippo out of my back pocket and tossed it into the kitchen. I turned away as a massive ball of flames erupted throughout the room, and I ran down the hallway. The blast immediately tripped the alarm, and high-pitched wails from the detectors began to ring out all through the house.

Shit. Fuck. Shitfuckshitfuck. I didn’t have enoughtime.

I grabbed Mike’s arms and lifted him up enough to pull my knife out of his neck. Just then, I heard a thump overhead. I looked up to see Alex staring down at me. He had a terrified look on his face and grabbed at the broken banister for support.

“Oh baby, no! You're supposed to be asleep!”

I let go of Mike’s arms and let his body crash against the hardwood as I stepped over him. Alex used the carpet to try and pull himself down the hallway. I tried to imagine what I looked like to him, drugged as he was. A nightmare of a killer in a gas mark, flames rising behind him like a vision ripped straight from hell.

“Sweetheart, I know you’re scared, but you aren’t going to remember any of this. I promise.”

Once I got to the top of the steps, Alex flipped himself over, staring up at me. He trembled and scooted himself backwards against the carpet. His eyes were huge, his mouth moving in silent entreaty.

“It’s okay, my love. It’s just a bad dream. You’re just having one of your nightmares,” I assured him.

He shook his head. I pulled one of the syringes out of my pocket and got down on my knee next to him. He began to sob, and thick tears streamed down his cheeks as I wrapped an arm around his chest.

“It’s okay, my love,” I repeated. “It's all just a bad dream.”

I pushed half the liquid out into the air, being overly-cautious to not administer too much. At this dose, it would be nothing more than the light anesthesia you’d get for a dental procedure.

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