Page 6 of The Reaper
When we first got here, the other soldiers had thought it’d make a good private room, an exclusive experience for the second-floor crowd. But I didn’t want that, and after the local church diocese kicked up a fuss about it being sacred ground and worked tirelessly to restrict our use of the chapel, I took it upon myself to claim it as my own. The church didn’t need to know what I was using it for. As long as the general public weren’t streaming in here every weekend to party or do anything else the diocese deemed inappropriate, it was fair game as far as I was concerned. What I used it for was none of their fucking business.
We made our way over to the guy sitting in the shadows, awaiting his fate. He was the damned, and like the reaper I was, I was creeping closer, bringing with me his impending doom.
“Adam said to start without him,” I announced drily, eager to cut the crap and get to the good part. Tyler nodded grimly in understanding as he continued to scroll through the guy’s phone.
Without looking up, he said, “I think the sooner we put this fucker down and the women he’s tormented out of their misery, the better.”
“Women?” Will asked. “Are we talking about a lot here?”
“Oh, yes.” Tyler held the phone up, giving it a shake. “And it’s all on here. Our guy’s got form. A lot of form. From what I’ve seen on his photos and videos, this isn’t the first time he’s drugged an innocent girl. He’s a fucking pro at it. Only difference is, he didn’t get to finish it tonight, did you, you dirty fucking rapist cunt?” Tyler pocketed his phone and then smacked his fist into the side of the guy’s face. “We’re going to enjoy getting pay back tonight for each and every one of those women. You’re scum,” he sneered, and spat in his now bloody face.
The guy didn’t speak, just wiped the blood from his nose on the back of his hand and glared at us. When Colton removed his hands from the chair, the guy darted up and ran for the door. I laughed.
Did he really think he could escape us?
Without missing a beat, I reached for my throwing knives; cold steel with long blades, no weak kunai shit that’d bounce off the target. I only had the best. Taking up my throwing stance, I aimed at his back. I threw one then the other, just like I’d done to Ray, my stepfather’s friend, all those years ago. This fucker fell to the ground, folding like a pack of cards, and Colton marched over to where he was slumped forward, gasping on his knees. Colton pulled the knives out, twisting them as he did, then he wiped them on the guy’s jacket, smearing his filthy blood onto his sleeve.
“Well, that was fun. Try running again, see what we use next time. I think Devon might have a flame thrower here somewhere.” Colton leaned down near his ear and whisper-yelled, “Go on. I dare you.”
The guy just hung his head, panting out his cowardly breaths.
Tyler, Will, and I stalked over to where he was, and I pulled him up to stand, throwing him against the solid stone walls. I put my hand around his throat, squeezing with everything I had, and I asked him, “Do you think we’re fucking amateurs? That you can run from us?” I leant into him. “There’s no running from the reaper. He’ll find you no matter where you hide, because when your time is up, it’s up. Game over.”
“You don’t scare me.” The guy spoke quietly, trying to keep a defiant look in his eyes, but he wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Oh, we do.” I smiled back at him. “I can tell how fucking scared you are by the way your veins are pulsing, almost bursting through your neck. You’re like an animal baring the whites of your eyes. I can see the fear. I can smell it too. You see, I do this for a living. We all do.” I tilted my head to the side as I smiled and squeezed his throat even tighter. “We’re just your friendly neighbourhood assassins, and you, my friend, have become our next hit.”
“You’re making… a big… mistake,” he spluttered out as he clawed at my hands that constricted around his throat like a mother-fucking boa.
“I don’t think so,” Tyler spat, as he came to stand right next to me and shoved the phone into the guy’s face. “There’s a shit-load of evidence on here that you’ve raped a lot of girls. And I’m betting none of them have had the justice they deserved. They’ll get it tonight though.”
“They will,” I nodded in agreement. “But I think we might do things a little different this time.”
I took my hand off his throat, and like the weak fucker he was, he started coughing and spluttering. I wiped his grimy filth off me onto the legs of my jeans, then I took a throwing knife from Colton and held it against the guy’s throat. If he thought he would get the easy option, he was wrong. Our night was only just beginning.
“See, we could torture you here. Have a little bit of fun making you feel some of the pain you put your victims through, and we will, don’t get me wrong. But I’m thinking… does this fucker really deserve to die in the shadows? Disappear from sight, never to be seen again? I think not.” I shook my head and sighed a disappointed sigh. “Those girls will never get the peace they deserve if we do that. They’ll continue to live a life where they’re always looking over their shoulder, wondering if you’ll come back to haunt them again.” I tutted and pressed the blade into his skin, and his blood trickled down his neck into the collar of his shirt. “They will always live with the fear. We might not be able to take the pain away, but that fear? The dread? That’s something we can sort out.”
“What’s your plan?” Will asked, and I noticed he’d already chosen a knife from my altar. The same brand of skinning knife I used to scalp Nigel, another one of my stepfather’s fucked-up friends.
I ran the blade of my knife down the guy’s neck, watching the blood trickle and create a path for me to follow.
“We do what we do best,” I announced. “We torture him, have our fun. But then we take him to Granges Park. I know the perfect tree for him to swing from. Once the police find his phone on his body, I’ll make sure they call it in as a suicide. It’ll be all over the papers in hours, how the dirty rapist hung himself. Those girls will get some justice, we get a kill, and him? He goes straight to hell to enjoy an eternity of living the nightmare he put all those women through. I think that sounds like a fair deal.” I stopped my knife from making its trail further down his body, and I pushed the blade into his stomach, grinning as his eyes widened from the pain. “Welcome to justice, soldier style.”
I pulled the knife out and stepped back. Tyler and Colton grabbed him under his arms and dragged him across the chapel to the chair he’d been sitting in before.
“Showtime!” Colton said with a wicked grin, and even though we didn’t have speakers in here, he still had to take his phone out and choose a song from his killer playlist for us to work to.Shinedown’s ‘Enemies’echoed off the walls, letting him know that he was caught, stuck here with the worst fucking enemies he’d ever made, and there was no getting out.
The chapel might’ve housed my weapons store, but usually, we didn’t use it for a hit. We preferred to keep our soldier business away from the club and do our kills in the warehouse we’d always used. But this was a special case. There wasn’t time to mess about and move him to a place where he could be strapped in or strung up. Time was of the essence.
Will decided to commence proceedings as Colton stood behind the chair, restraining the guy and holding a knife to his throat so he wouldn’t move. With steady precision, Will ran the skinning knife down the guy’s left arm, slicing the flesh and exposing the red, bloody muscles beneath. The guy screamed a blood-curdling howl of a scream, but Will didn’t flinch, he just moved to the other side and did the same to his right arm. Blood dripped onto the floor, making the grey flagstone turn crimson. The guy’s face beaded with sweat, and as he panted and drifted into unconsciousness, Colton slapped his face to keep him with us. He would lose a lot of blood tonight, but not enough that he’d pass out and miss the grand finale. We’d make sure of that.
Tyler took over next, firing up a blow torch with gusto and waving it in the guy’s face. The guy’s eyes widened in horror as he mouthed no and vehemently shook his head. But his fear only spurred us on. Will stepped up to hold his wrists in place as Tyler angled the flames so he could scorch the exposed muscles on his arms. The guy writhed and thrashed in the chair, screeching in pain as we turned our noses up at the rancid smell of burnt flesh that filled the air. Colton laughed manically, running his knife over the guy’s neck, making shallow slashes in his skin. Enough to cause pain, but not enough to put him out of his misery. Then Colton lifted the knife and slashed across his cheeks, the left side, then the right. Making him as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside. We were in our element. In the zone. This guy was getting the full soldier experience.
I was getting hungry for my turn. I glanced at the katana sword; the ultimate weapon that could slice through the body of a man like it was cutting through silk. But I decided it was too special to waste on this piece of shit. The katana was unique, revered, reserved only for our top kills. This kill was a dirty one. He was an animal, and I had enough hunting knives to serve this evil fucker the justice he deserved. I picked up my new Bowie hunting knife––the double-edged tip could pierce through anything. Then, I walked over to where he sat, his arms dripping filth onto my floor, his face slashed and hanging off his bones, and I leant close to him to whisper, “This is for all the girls. Every. Single. One.” I plunged the knife into his groin, tearing through the material of his jeans and the muscles of his dick, severing his filthy appendage from the rest of him. Castration of the worst and best kind, because once I’d twisted and gouged, I pulled the knife out then stuck it back in again at a different angle.
The guy was shaking, convulsing in the chair, and when he eventually passed out, Tyler asked if I wanted to try and revive him. That’s if he wasn’t dead already.
“No. Leave him like that. We’ll shove him in the back of the van and drive him to Granges Park. Once he’s strung up, ready to be hung, we’ll wake him up and then watch him die.” I started to grab the things we’d need; rope, gaffer tape, and I turned to Tyler and added, “Don’t forget the phone. We need to plant that on him so the police know why he’s there. They need to know exactly what he’s done.”
