“I don’t care about your fucking cousin,” he growled. “Untie me and let me go!”
“’Fucking cousin,’” I repeated giving Ethan an amused glance. “That’s exactly what he was.”
“What?” Adam asked, finally stilling his struggle to get out of the chair.
“Bobby had a thing for me when I was a kid. By kid, I mean twelve years old. I didn’t really know what he was doing to me was wrong; I just thought he really loved me, you know?” I paused long enough to pull out my cigarettes from the side pocket, slide one in my mouth, light it, and inhale. “Anyway, it lasted for about a month or so. Every single night, I ended up in Bobby’s room, ‘sitting on his lap’ until he was happy and let me leave. I spent the next ten years avoiding him like the plague, but when Violet bit the big one, guess who showed up at the funeral home? That’s right! None other than Bobby Taylor! Three weeks later, I saw you when I was did the dance of the spilled coffee and almost ran because I thought you were him. I managed to block you out of my head until I saw you again when Thomas, not to be outdone by Violet, took his turn and went to Abandoning Father Hell. Ever since then, I’ve been obsessed with you in a way. See, I know that I’ll never get to do to Bobby what I want to and I know that what I do to you in his place will never stop the painful memories completely, but it will definitely fucking help.”
I crouched down in front of him and blew a small wisp of smoke into his face, a smile starting to curve the corners of my lips.
“But don’t worry Adam. Before this is over, I’ll make sure to give you the ride of your fucking life. I’ll show you what a girl like me is really capable of. I’ll make you moan like a fucking whore. I’ll make you beg for more. And then before you know it, it’ll all be over.”
With a glance and a nod, I told Ethan, “I’ve got it from here, big brother. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
Ten
Adam had finally resigned himself to the fact that the only way out of this would be to let me do what I needed to do to him to become whole again.
Before Ethan left, he told him not to worry. He told him that when it was all over, he’d make it look like he overdosed and dump his body somewhere that he would be found quickly so no animals would have the chance to tear him apart. He said he’d make sure that I controlled myself enough for him to have an open casket funeral. He said that no one would ever know what happened to him before he died; the humiliation, the degradation, the pain, the torture, it would be kept between the three of us a secret forever.
Once left alone with him, I stalked back and forth in front of him like a hungry lioness. I was going to attack and it was going to be with such a ferocious hunger, but I knew that I wouldn’t exactly be able to savor everything if I didn’t control myself. One wrong step and he and he would be dead and this would have all been for nothing.
“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment, Bobby.”
“My name is Adam,” he replied a hint of desperation to his voice. “I’m Adam, Jude.”
I stopped stalking and blinked rapidly a few times. Adam?
“No. No, I told you; your name is Bobby. Until this is all over, you are Bobby Taylor,” I replied in a soft tone.
“Jude, I swear to God if you let me out of this, I’ll leave the fucking country. I’ll disappear and never come back. No one will ever know this even went this far. I ... Jude ... Please,” he begged.
I smiled, slowly, deliberately. He obviously wasn’t aware of the fact that no amount of begging or pleading would convince me to let my revenge go. I was going to shed my skin because of Adam Weaver. I was going to be reborn through him. I was going to become a whole new Jude McIntyre; the one that could finally look in the mirror and not see a worthless, unloved piece of shit.
“I’m sure we’ll love each before this is over,” I predicted as I walked back to the table and hopped onto it. “And because of that, when the end is finally near, I’ll make it quick. But for now, I get to play. I get to hear you scream and I get to hear you beg me to stop.”
I felt my body becoming hot, almost as if though the thoughts I was having were starting to arouse me. Is this what Bobby felt like when he would take me by the hand at night and lead me into his room? Is this what Bobby felt like when he told me that he’d always love me, when he would pull out his thing, pull down my panties, and lift me to sit on his lap?
Was I becoming Bobby Taylor in this moment? Was this what it felt like to be an animal?
I had to stop myself from becoming Bobby. I had to keep my head on as straight as I possibly could without getting any sexual satisfaction out of this. But could I do it? I wondered to myself.
I let out a sigh as I laid flat on my back, letting my legs dangle over the side. I kicked them back and forth like a child probably would and told myself that the purpose of Adam was to cleanse myself of the old Jude and be baptized in an entirely different frame of mind.
“Adam? I know that what happened to me isn’t your fault, but I need you to heal myself. I’ve probably needed you for a long time and might have found you sooner if I wasn’t such a recluse. Promise me something? Tell Violet and Thomas that they’re responsible for what I’ve done to you when you see them in hell.”
I sat up and looked at him, crossing my legs and still kicking them back and forth. Adam wouldn’t even look at me anymore. It almost seemed as if he had given up and that wouldn’t make this fun for me. If anything, it made me angry. I didn’t give up when Bobby did things to me, I went back night after night because I knew that if I didn’t he’d just force me to anyway.
“You realize this kind of makes you a martyr?” I asked him. “Dying for the sins of the father, for the hatred of the mother, for the betterment of your fellow man. Perhaps they’ll canonize you in hell,” I suggested.
With a sigh, I laid down on the left side of my body, elongating myself like an uncoiling snake. Maybe I was a snake. After all, I did have enough venom inside of me to kill a man.
“You know what the really fucked thing about this is, Bobby?” I asked quietly.
“My name isn’t Bobby!” he insisted urgently. I smiled feeling a strange sadness come over me. If he couldn’t accept who he was, then he wouldn’t accept what was going to happen to him either.
“The fucked up thing is, that the only man that has ever put his hands on me, has been you,” I confessed. “See, after what you did to me, I found sex to be absolutely repulsive. I couldn’t stand the touch of anyone for a long time. Any time one of my brothers tried to hug me, I’d burst into tears and run away from them. Having a mother that hated my existence didn’t help either. She assumed that I was pulling away from them because they had ‘done things’ to me, but I never told her it was you. I never told anyone. Ethan found out though. Three days ago he found my childhood diary in Violet’s home and he read what you did to me. That’s why he helped me bring you here.”
I closed my eyes for a moment as he began to struggle in his chair again. I knew the only way to make this fair would be to cut the ropes and give him some sort of chance at surviving. My eyes fluttered open slowly as I slid off of the table. Underneath it was a duffle bag full of things Ethan said I would probably need to accomplish what I wanted to do. Dropping to my knees, I reached underneath and pulled it out from beneath the table. I hoisted it up onto the old metal, a little winded at how heavy it was.
Slowly, I pulled the zipper back and pulled the opening apart so I could see what gifts my brother had given me. At first glance, it looked like every day tools; a nail gun, a common saw, some more duct tape, a hammer, things of that nature. But the more I stood there and stared at the things in the bag, I knew why Ethan had given me these things.
He wanted me to be able to get a piece of myself back and the only way to do it would be through the most vicious violence I could muster.
Reaching in, I picked up the claw hammer and held it up to the light. The wood was old and the handle seemed to be marked. I peered at it
closely to see what words were etched into it and a chuckle escaped my lips.
Thomas.
It belonged to our father. The only gift he had seemingly given Ethan would be the one I would use to get my revenge on Bobby Taylor.
Eleven
It wasn’t the first blow that made him scream. I didn’t connect with that one. I purposely swung the hammer back over my head and brought it down with a crushing force, but stopped just before I hit him.
It wasn’t the second blow either. I decided the best way to unnerve him would be a little self-punishment, so with as much force as I could, I swung the hammer and landed such a devastating blow to my own thigh that I dropped to the floor and cried in pain.
No, it was the third blow; the one when I turned the hammer around and the claw end caught the faint light that lit the room we were in. The one where I started to bring the hammer down toward my knee that caused him to throw himself at me, chair and all, and try to catch the hammer before I crippled myself. The one that caught him right behind the ear; that was the one that made him scream.
I broke into a fit of giggling that came from deep within. The pain I felt was still blinding and the weight of Bobby on me was damn near suffocating, but his gesture told me that he still “loved” me. I only hoped I could keep my promise of returning that love before this was over.
“Fuck! You’ve got to stop Jude. You’ve got to help me. Fuck this hurts so bad,” he sobbed almost unintelligibly.
“You didn’t stop when I asked you to,” I said, angrily shoving him off. The adrenaline was pumping through me now at such a breakneck speed that I felt like the hero I so desperately needed as a child. “I cried, I begged, and when I tried to scream, you would cover my mouth with your hand. Don’t you remember?”
Bobby had his forehead on the ground and he was crying. Probably because he was finally remembering everything he had done to me.
I threw the hammer across the room and used my hands to drag myself back toward the table. It was quite probable that I wouldn’t be able to stand firmly on my two feet again, but it wasn’t going to stop me either. With a rage I hadn’t felt since childhood, I gripped the edge of the table and pulled myself to a somewhat standing position. The pain in my thigh was throbbing, so I gingerly stood on the tips of my toes while I rummaged through the bag.
I wasn’t sure when I had started to cry, but the veil of tears were becoming as blinding as the pain in my leg. God the rage... It took ahold of me in that moment and I began to angrily beat the metal table with my fists over and over until I heard him telling me that I was going to hurt myself again.
“Jude! Jude, would Bobby have cared if you hurt yourself? Would he?” he pleaded desperately behind me.
Something beneath my enraged surface heard his words. I was confused with what was happening all of a sudden. No, Bobby wouldn’t care. If Bobby cared, he never would have hurt me to begin with. If he loved me, this wouldn’t be happening now.
A gut wrenching sob escaped my throat. I reached into my shorts pocket and pulled out my phone. I quickly found Ethan’s number and sank to the floor as it rang, waiting, hoping that my big brother would answer the phone before I did something that would make me feel worse than I should.
“Is it over?” he asked as soon as he answered.
Another sob was my response.
“Jude? Do you need me to come get the body now?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know if I can do this. He’s not Bobby, is he? I wanted to believe his is, but he isn’t!” I cried into the phone.
“I’m on my way,” he said hurriedly disconnecting the phone.
I let the phone drop from my hands and put my hands over my face while I sobbed uncontrollably. A few moments later is when the world began to spin out of control. Something hit me in the side of the head with such force, that I saw an explosion of lights before the darkness took me.
***
Adam
I should have fucking known better than to get mixed up with these goddamn McIntyres, I thought as I picked up Jude’s limp body and dropped her onto the table.
I went along with what Ethan said. I let Jude think I was the reincarnation of the bastard that diddled her as a kid. I let her get out some aggression by telling me what happened and screaming at me like a maniac, but I wasn’t going to die at her hands for some shit I didn’t do.
No matter how much money Ethan paid me for it. If this had been three years ago, I wouldn’t have needed the money. I wouldn’t have risked my life for something this crazy, but ever since my parents had found out that I had been blowing through my trust on traveling to exotic locations for the exotic drugs, they cut me off.
The obvious thing was to get straight. Check myself into rehab, come down from the permanent high I felt like I was always in, and get back into the good graces of my parents. Which I did at first, but that last trip to Bali fucked me up all over again and now I was doing this stupid shit for money.
Maybe I should’ve just accepted Jeremy’s offer first and I wouldn’t be stuck in this shit hole with a crazy bitch.
I shook the thought away of what Jeremy wanted me to do. At the time it seemed so wrong that I didn’t even consider it. I mean this was his sister. How could he want me to do what he offered me fifty grand for? I grabbed the ropes that Ethan had used to tie me to the chair, what was left of them anyway, and quickly bound her to the table. I used duct tape to finish the rest of the job, then I slapped a piece across her mouth like they had done to me.
I wasn’t sure how far away Ethan was so I’d have to move as quickly as I could to make sure there would be no way he could get in or Jude could get out.
I ran past every broken window and every unlocked, sliding door to make sure that they were either all locked or barricaded. It hurt like hell to even breathe right now and I almost tripped a few times because of the blow to the head, but I pushed through to make sure Ethan couldn’t get in.
Halfway back to Jude, I had to stop and lean on the wall to keep from passing out. I reached up behind my ear and gingerly touched where the hammer had landed and winced. Fucking bitch, I thought angrily. I shook my head a few times, much like a dog who had just been given a bath, to get the cobwebs out. With as much effort as I could muster, I pushed myself off the wall again and walked back to where she was.
I noticed when I got to her side that her eyes were open and she was staring vacantly at the old lights hanging on the steel beams above us.
“Not so much fun when the tables are turned are they?” I snapped as I stopped beside her.
Jude blinked her eyes once; slowly, deliberately and never moved them off of the light. I felt myself instantly feel a small amount of pity for her. After what she had told me her own cousin had done to her she probably was terrified right now.
Against my better judgment, I pulled the strip of duct tape away from her mouth, leaving it still pressed to the side in case I needed to shut her up again.
“Nothing to say for yourself now?” I asked.
She blinked her slow, deliberate blink again before she answered me in a soft tone.
“You can’t break something that’s already broken. There’s nothing left inside of me to kill.”
I raised an eyebrow at her and wondered what ran through her mind every minute of every day since it had happened to her. Why Jeremy would pay me to do one thing and why Ethan would pay me to do another made me realize that they didn’t know who Jude was anymore either.
Ethan obviously suckered me with fifty thousand to let Jude pummel me into a pulp then kill me. Jeremy offered me fifty thousand to “make it look like an accident.” Both brothers loved her more than anything; that much was obvious. But because they both thought she needed two things so different, to torture and kill someone that looked like Bobby or to be put down, made me wonder if they truly knew her. It also made me wonder if she would believe me if I told her.
I took a deep breath and looked down at her. She was still star
ing vacantly at the ceiling so I pulled myself up on the table and sat on the ledge.
“Jude. I need to tell you something,” I started with a tired sigh. “I need you to believe me too because it’s the truth.”
She didn’t blink this time, but the vacant stare seemed to be losing its light and I could tell she was waiting for another heartbreak.
“I forgive you,” I said softly.
I couldn’t do it. For some reason I couldn’t tell that one of her brothers thought that the best way to help her would be to kill her. In my moment of mercy, I told her something she needed to hear instead and undid the ropes. I went and found the hammer that she had tossed across the room and made my way slowly back to her. She was still lying down on the table when I put the hammer on her belly and dropped to my knees to wait for the blow that would kill me.
I closed my eyes tightly as she started to shift on the table and felt the gentle breeze as she swung her legs down. I could almost swear I heard her grip the hammer in her hand and I braced myself when I heard it come crashing through the air.
Twelve
Jude
The hammer hit the metal sliding door with a loud thud. I hated being lied too and I knew that Adam didn’t forgive me. I knew he was still angry and I knew he loathed my existence just like Violet did.
“Tell me what you were really going to say. I don’t like being lied too. I don’t want you to treat me like a child. I’m a big girl now and I can handle myself,” I said to him.
He turned his head slightly to the left and his shoulders sagged. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear and I yelled at him to speak louder.
“Jeremy wants you dead,” he repeated louder.
I stared at the top of his head for a moment wishing I still had the hammer in my hand. I would’ve killed him right then and there but something told me that he might have been speaking the truth.
“Why?” I asked quietly.
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