by E A Owen
A moment later, I poured the wine in our glasses and set them on the table.
Rachel smiled. “Great choice, my love. One of my most favorite wines of all.” She raised her glass to her lips. “Mm-mm! Absolutely phenomenal.” She licked her lips.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked.
“I did. Actually, I’m pretty proud of myself, if I say so myself.”
“Aaaand?”
“Carrie Mitchell, maiden name Carrie Evans, is Dr. Marshall’s half-sister from a different father. Carrie Evans married Chad Mitchell and moved to San Francisco and works for the FBI. I haven’t figured out why Carrie would help Bella in such heinous crimes. Unless … Isabella blackmailed her. Maybe Isabella has some dirt on Carrie from college that Carrie doesn’t want leaked. That’s the only conclusion I have that makes any sense.”
I listened intently to Rachel as I tried to absorb everything she was telling me. “So, what’ll you do with this newfound information?”
“We need to go to the police.”
“I can’t do that to Isabella. She has bad blood. It’s not her fault.”
“What are you talking about? She mutilated and murdered several people. She can’t get away with such heinous crimes. She must pay for what she has done.”
“Putting her in prison won’t bring those people back.”
“No. But it will keep her from killing anyone else.”
“That’s why we should get her the help she needs. Let’s bring her to be mentally evaluated. She shouldn’t be punished. She needs help, Rachel. Have you discussed this with anyone else?”
Rachel looked at her feet and shook her head. “Of course not. I understand your need to protect Isabella. She’s your daughter, but, with the information I know, I can’t just let it slide. The police need to know. The whole state of Virginia deserves to feel safe again. Without a killer behind bars, they’ll live their lives in fear. They shouldn’t have to move to feel safe.”
“But Isabella doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of her life in prison for something that’s not her fault!”
“Trevor, it is her fault. She knows right from wrong. She knows the difference between good and evil. She’s an exceptionally smart woman, and she has killed people.”
“Bad people …”
“It doesn’t matter. And the judge won’t care either. Murder is a crime. She took their lives. They’ll never see their families again. She took that from them. She doesn’t get to make that choice.” Rachel slammed her fists on the table.
My blood boiled. My body’s temperature rose. I felt like I was suffocating. I needed air. I stormed from the room.
“Trevor, where are you going?” Rachel stood from the table, concerned.
She doesn’t understand. I can’t get through to her. She’ll ruin or lives. I can’t let that happen. I must do something about it. I won’t let Isabella spend the rest of her life in prison.
I grabbed a hammer from my toolbox. Gripping it, I felt my veins pulsating. I must protect my daughter.
The anger inside me boiled over, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I returned to the kitchen. Rachel was leaning against the counter with her back to me. I approached her, raising the hammer over my head, and I hit her as hard as I could.
The crack echoed violently. Her body fell to the floor and blood sprayed everywhere.
The Voices
I sat frozen in time, my eyes wild. I rocked back and forth. My breathing increased. My heart hammered in my chest as my blood ran rampant through my bulging veins, desperate for release. I stumbled to my feet as the anxiety built. I shambled to the kitchen in a daze. I stopped in front of a mirror. Haunted by my reflection, I regarded a stranger, confused. I didn’t know this person staring back at me. A tear streaked my cheek. I wiped it and walked away.
I grabbed a knife from the block and cut the brachial artery on my left forearm. I cut deep; the release felt intoxicating. I watched as the blood poured from my vein and dripped onto the hardwood floor. The feeling was euphoric. I had forgotten how good it felt.
After the euphoria had disappeared, I was left with an overwhelming feeling of betrayal. How could have my own father and great-grandmother hid such secrets from me? Mary had been right; I deserved to know the truth, but my father had killed her. Was my father a killer, just like me?
I recollected my very first kill. It had been a baby bunny. I don’t know why I had done it. Actually, I recalled very clearly that a voice in my head had told me to snap its neck. I don’t know why I hadn’t questioned the voice. I had just done it, without hesitation. But I remembered the feeling I had afterward. It felt just like when I used to cut myself. It was intoxicating, and every time I did it, the feeling grew more intense and exhilarating. I relished the feeling, and the only way I could feel it was to cut myself or kill something. I became addicted, obsessed. I needed it; I wanted more.
I knew something was wrong with me at any early age. The voices I heard, if I had told anyone, they would have committed me. They would have thought I was some nut case. I had told one person, and she had betrayed me, had humiliated me. I craved the adrenaline rush I got from killing.
I remembered ripping a frog limb from limb when I was just five years old. I had put it in a shoebox and had hidden it in my treehouse, along with a bird. I had cracked its skull with a rock. But I required something more; animals just weren’t cutting it anymore. I had gotten mad at a kid in first grade and had jammed scissors into her eye. The screams had made my entire body tingle. I had threatened to kill her family if she told anyone what I had done. The school had investigated the incident, and they had declared it a “running-and-tripping-while-carrying-scissors accident.” The family had moved right after the accident.
I wasn’t sure why I had so much pent-up anger. I needed to find a release. I had vandalized businesses around town late at night. I’d sneak from the house while everyone slept and would take out all my aggression, smashing windows and lights and trashing the place. It would make me feel good. The anger would subside for a few days, but then it would return with a fury. I couldn’t control myself. Destroying things hadn’t quenched that thirst. What I really craved was hurting someone. I had wanted that rush I had felt after I had stabbed my classmate in the eye. It was nothing I had ever experienced before, and I had wanted more.
I had tried so hard not to listen to the voices in my head when Nicole had bullied me. She was my friend, I had liked her. But she had gotten out of control, and the voices haunted my thoughts and had become more aggressive; I had to get rid of them. That was when I had snuck into Nicole’s house while they slept and had set their Christmas tree on fire. I hadn’t realize the fire would spread so quickly. I had only wanted to hurt Nicole, to teach her a lesson, but the fire had accelerated, and the whole house had burned down, with her entire family in it. At first, I had felt horrible, but the feeling had come and gone faster than I could bat an eye. The feeling had been steeped with excitement and pure ecstasy after the voices had told me she had deserved it and that she could never hurt me or humiliate me ever again.
After the fire, I had started to cut myself. It started because I had felt guilty about what I had done. She was my friend. I should have never listened to the voices. I was sick. Something was wrong with me. But, instead of confronting it, I had started to hurt myself instead, punishing myself for what I had done. To my surprise, I had truly enjoyed it. It had felt more like a release than a punishment. If I felt angry, I’d cut myself. If I felt sad, I’d cut myself. If I thought about all the bad things I had done, I’d cut myself. I had become addicted, and I had all the scars to prove it. But no one had known, because I’d wear long sleeves, even in the summer, and I would never go swimming. But, eventually, I had run out of fresh skin. The scars reminded me of all the bad thing I had done.
That’s when I had found my new hobby—investigating court cases where the victims were shown no mercy. It was a real tragedy. Tragic mercy killings was
what I called them. The criminals walked away with just a slap on the hand. They committed heinous crimes and never paid the full price. They needed to suffer. I had the urge to help the poor victims. They deserved justice, and the court system had failed them miserably.
I had become addicted. I couldn’t stop. It felt right this time; not just the feeling I got afterward but that I was some sort of vigilante, cleansing the world of evil and giving the victims peace of mind. I had a real purpose in life. It made me feel exonerated for all the shitty stuff I had done, like killed innocent animals and stabbed a six-year-old in the eye just because she had made me mad or killed my friend’s entire family in a fire because she had bullied and humiliated me. As good as it felt, somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt a tingle of guilt. And doing society this justice by killing these psychopaths gave me a purpose. They deserved to die.
I never meant to get Carrie involved. She was my best friend, but she had abandoned me. She had moved far away, and I was angry at her for it. The only way I could unseal those cases was from assistance from an inside source—and that was Carrie. She worked for the FBI. But she would never agree to help me kill people, even if they deserved it, so I had to blackmail her.
I knew that her daughter, Chloe, was not Chad’s daughter. If I told Chad, it would destroy their perfect little family. Carrie agreed to my request, as long as I never mentioned anything to Chad about what I knew. All I had to do was keep my part of the bargain, keep my mouth shut and my distance from them. She hated me for it. But I didn’t care. My need to kill had grown more important than a friend who had abandoned me.
I had promised her the only contact we’d have would be through post mail. And she had made me promise that when I got the information I needed, I had to destroy it immediately, as to have absolutely no evidence to tie her to the murders.
I had agreed.
***
White flashes of light illuminated the dark skies every few seconds. Thunder echoed through town then slowly faded into the distance. As the thunder grew more consistent, the once-scattered raindrops now violently ripped through the night in a downpour and flooded the streets. The constant loudening roar of thunder along with the lightning bolts that ripped through the once-silent night kept me wide awake. I sat at the end of my bed in a hypnotic trance as my tears fell like the rain out my window.
The betrayal ate me alive. I couldn’t bear it any longer. The voices in my head became insufferable, telling me to kill him—my own father. I couldn’t do it. I loved him. The echo of several voices in my skull drove me insane.
Kill him!
I couldn’t take it anymore. The only way to silence them was to comply and kill Dad. I got on my hands and knees next to the loose floorboards and used a prybar to work them free then threw them across the room in a rampage. I reached my arm into the hole and grabbed the machete.
Kill him!
I bolted from the house and into the dark abyss. The downpour drenched my clothes as I walked to Dad’s house, anger raging through every vein.
Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!
"Stop it!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as a lightning bolt ripped across the sky. I ran. The house was only a few more blocks ahead. A thunder clap startled me as it echoed, the sound ricocheting off anything in its path. My breathing became heavy, my heart hammering in my chest. and my legs felt heavy.
Only a little bit farther …
I approached Dad’s gated property and stopped.
Kill him! Kill him!
I pressed the code on the number keypad, and the gates opened. All the lights were off in the house. They must be asleep. I ran to the door and rummaged through my jacket pocket for the keys, and they fell to the ground.
“Pull yourself together,” I demanded.
I unlocked the door and pushed through. I was soaking wet but didn’t care.
Kill him!
I covered my ears. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”
I ran down the hallway to Dad’s bedroom.
Kill him!
I slowly opened the door and flinched as it creaked. I couldn’t see a thing, so I flipped on the switch.
Dad bolted upright in bed, rubbing his eyes. “Isabella? What are you doing here?”
I raised the machete. With outstretched arms and all my strength, I swung the machete across his neck. My eyes went wild as I shrieked.
The voices stopped.
I dropped to my knees, covered my face and bawled my eyes out. “He’s dead! I killed him!”
I grabbed the machete with both hands, cupped the end as tight as I could and drove the machete straight through my heart.