We All Fall Down - Quills and Daggers Part Two: The Collective - Season 1, Episode 10

by Carver Pike

  By the time I got back on the road, she was way ahead of me. I had to speed to catch up with her and even then, she was already pulling into her parking spot in front of her apartment. When I parked at the curb, I saw that she was taking her now sleeping daughter out of the car. With my mask pulled down over my head, I crept through the shadows of the dark parking lot. Not a soul was in sight. As Valerie turned to walk away from the car, I leapt from the shadows and pointed my knife blade at her stomach. She jumped and nearly dropped her daughter as the blade slit her shirt open and scratched her bare stomach. She squealed but quieted down quickly as she realized how much danger she was in.

  With my free, gloved hand, I covered her mouth while keeping the blade at her side.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  She gasped and couldn’t make out a full word as panic hit her.

  “I…ma…no...plea” she mumbled through my fingers.

  “I have a sharp knife pointed at your stomach,” I said. “If you don’t follow me to my car, I will spill your guts on the ground and will follow that up with your daughter’s. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll remove my hand but if you make a noise, I’ll hurt you both. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. I pulled my hand away but kept my knife wielding one on her.

  “No, please,” she whispered. “Please. Don’t hurt her.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  She walked with me back to my car. I opened the back door.

  “Put her in the back seat,” I said. “Don’t worry. She’s not the one I want.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “What does that mean? What do you want?”

  “Put her in the fucking back seat,” I said again. “And keep your voice down.”

  She laid her daughter down in the car.

  “Here’s what you need to do,” I said. “Go upstairs to your apartment and tell your roommate that a friend is taking you and your daughter to the bus station. Tell her that Melody is asleep in your friend’s car and you wanted to pack up a few things. Do it. Make it look legit. Before you leave with your bags, toss your roommate the keys to James’s car.”

  “James?” she asked.

  “Ivory,” I replied. “You know who I’m talking about. If anything goes wrong, if you try any funny stuff, I’m gonna give your daughter’s neck a permanent grin. Got that?”

  She cupped a hand over her mouth and cried into it.

  “No,” she said. “Please don’t hurt her. I can’t leave her. What if she wakes up and…”

  “You’re going to leave her,” I said. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to hurt her badly. Hurting people is easy for me. Play along and she’ll be fine.”

  She shuffled away from the car and up the stairs. It didn’t take long for her to return.

  “Good,” I told her. “Now go ahead and get in the backseat with your daughter.”

  With her daughter already in the back of the car, it didn’t take any convincing to get her to climb in there with her. She just wanted to be with her little girl again. Maybe I shouldn’t have whistled. That was mean. Up until that point I’m not a hundred percent sure she knew who I was. Little Melody was still asleep and Valerie wasn’t putting up much of a fight because I’d warned her what would happen if she did. I’d planned to drive all the way out to this field near the airport and leave her body there without ever waking her daughter up.

  But then stupid me. I whistled.

  Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies. Ashes…ashes. We all fall down.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re him. You’re the guy on the news.”

  Finally, someone fucking recognizes me.

  “JUST KILL HER ALREADY AND FEED HER DAUGHTER TO SOME DOGS!” Samuel yelled in my ear.

  “Jesus!” I said. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  “Leave us the fuck alone!” Valerie suddenly yelled. “Let us go! Leave us alone. You’re the one doing this. Let us go.”

  She whimpered in the backseat.

  “Mommy?” Melody said sleepily.

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Be quiet for mommy, okay?”

  “Please,” Valerie said. “Let us go. Don’t hurt her. Just let her go.”

  She started punching the back window, trying to break the glass. I pulled the car onto a side street downtown and parked. She knew she’d fucked up because she began telling her daughter how much she loved her as if she’d never see her again. She was right. She never would. I opened the back door and yanked her out of the car.

  I’d planned to kill Valerie all along, but I hadn’t expected to do it so hastily. It wasn’t safe for me out there at this hour, on this street. It was too close to the main throughway. Anyone could look down from an apartment above or peek around the corner or decide to take that alley as a shortcut to get to a bar.

  “Please don’t hurt my daughter,” she said. “She’s a good girl. She’s a really good girl. And she needs her mom.”

  Hearing Valerie talk about being a mom reminded me of Mrs. Rebecca and how I’d accidentally killed her. Yes, I’d meant to kill her in the long run, but how it had happened…that was a mistake.

  I pushed Valerie up against the wall.

  “Do her,” Hag said. “Fuck her up against the wall.”

  “From behind,” Putrid said.

  “I’m a mom,” Valerie said. “My little girl needs her mom. Please let us go.”

  My life flashed before my eyes. I saw my childhood. I saw the kids disappearing into my mom’s room and I saw so many days and nights where I wished my mom would hug me and tell me I was her special boy. I wanted so badly to feel like I was the important one, like I was her one and only, but she always told me about all the other kids she needed to help who were less fortunate than I was. I saw the cops crashing through our doors and taking all the kids away.

  “A little boy needs his mom too,” I told her.

  My jaw locked and my teeth clenched. When I thought I couldn’t get any angrier, she said the last words she’d ever speak.

  “Do you know who my boyfriend is?” she said. “His name’s Ivory and he’s a total badass. He’s gonna find you and he’s gonna fucking kill you. He’s twice the man you are.”

  Twice the man I am? Twice the man I am?! You were fucking leaving him!

  My whole life I’d been compared to James and to Kevin and to Nikki and to all the other kids who’d passed through my home. Rage overcame me and my body reacted.

  “You hear me?” she said. “He’s twice…”

  I slid my knife blade violently across her neck, ripping at her flesh and tearing through her throat. Her head fell forward and her forehead landed on my shoulder, as if she was looking to me to console her, as her life drained down the front of her shirt and all down her body.

  “Get the fuck off me,” I said. “He’s better than me?”

  I pushed her against the wall again and shoved the knife into her stomach, stabbing her over and over and over and over again. I grabbed her hair when she started to fall and held her up so I could keep stabbing her. I stabbed her for the way my mother looked at me with disappointment. I stabbed her for the way Nikki always chose James and Kevin over me. I stabbed her for the way Ava turned me down in the coffee shop and for the way Sally laughed at me over sushi. I stabbed her for the way Kevin fucked my mother the night I killed her. When I finally stopped stabbing her, Valerie was a fucking mess.

  “YES!” Samuel cheered.

  I’d never heard him so excited. The rest of the demons cheered. But I’d forgotten my eggs in the car. When I went to get them out of the front passenger seat, the sweetest voice called out to me.

  “Mommy?” she said.

  Melody was an angel, now a motherless one.

  “Shh,” I told her as I reached my blood-free hand into the backseat to give her little paw a squeeze, making sure my face stayed hidden behind the seat. “Everything’s gonna be okay. My name’s Ja
cob, and you don’t have to be afraid anymore. Your daddy is gonna find you soon.”

  “I want my mommy,” she said.

  “Shh,” I told her. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be back in a second.”

  The name Jacob seemed to fit well with the situation. Ava was on my mind and that had been her dead husband’s name. Melody didn’t budge as I went back to Valerie’s body. I cracked an egg into my blood-stained hand and pushed it into one of the knife wounds. Then I cracked another and another. When I finally walked back to the car, Valerie was a dead, bloody, lifeless piece of meat…with fresh cracked eggs dripping from her wounds.

  Inside the car, I drove on to the one place I knew I could leave the little girl. It was the one place I knew would cause quite the stir. Ava needed to know what her new man was capable of. She needed to know she should have chosen me in the first place. I would have never gotten another girl pregnant. I would have never done anything to mess up her life. But this time I needed to. She needed to understand the error of her ways.

  Melody seemed scared so I whistled to her. When that didn’t work, I even sang. I chose to sing Amazing Grace, the song that played at Jacob’s funeral. If Ava didn’t understand the handwritten message I’d be sending with this darling child, she’d get it after she heard the little girl’s story. The drive to Ava’s house was quiet. Melody cried from the backseat so I whistled some more. It didn’t help.

  By the time we’d arrived at Ava’s street, the poor thing had cried herself to sleep. I carefully placed a blindfold over her eyes and carried her through the darkness to Ava’s house. There I left her, at the front door, barefoot and with a piece of paper tucked into the back of the girl’s pants. It read:

  HERE THIS BELONGS TO YOU

  WE ALL FALL DOWN

  To see their faces when they opened the door would have been a perfect end to the night, but I didn’t dare. I wanted to be far away. High from stabbing the shit out of Valerie, I drove to Nikki’s house. Now that Melody, my little pawn, had been delivered and received, time was running out. It had to happen tonight.

  I nearly ran smack dab into James as I got out of my car and walked toward her apartment. He was playing with his phone and didn’t see me so I ducked behind some bushes and hid. After an hour of waiting, it was clear he wasn’t coming out. He was in there with her, probably fucking her.

  That motherfucker! That weasel! That weak-minded piece of shit!

  “Ivory’s more of a man than you are,” Valerie’s words echoed through my mind.

  I needed to teach him a lesson too. Violence wouldn’t be smart. He was too strong to attack. No, I needed to hit him where it would truly piss him off. The Motor Quill.

  It was late and the place was closed when I arrived. The fool hadn’t even invested in a roll down gate of any kind. The big glass window loomed before me, practically begging to be smashed. I was happy to oblige. Near the dumpster at the back of the building, I found a busted parking meter. Probably the leftovers from some drunk driver who’d plowed into it. So there I stood, in a baseball batter’s stance.

  “You’re gonna love this, brother,” I said as I swung as hard as I could and let go, throwing the heavy metal meter through the window.

  My original intention was to break the window and when the alarm went off and James had to rush over to stop it, that’s when I’d return to Nikki’s and grab her. It was the perfect plan. Yet, as the glass shattered and rained down all over the sidewalk, there wasn’t a peep. No alarm. Not even a barking dog. All was silent.

  Well, fuck me. Seriously?

  “Hmm,” I said to myself as I kicked some of the stuck glass away from the window frame and climbed up and into the shop.

  Inside, I went ahead and turned on the light since nobody was around to see me. There wasn’t even a bum on the street. Once inside, I wasn’t even sure where to begin. I’d never planned to step foot inside the building. Yet, there I stood, trying to figure out how to be more evil.

  “Trash the place,” Rotten said.

  “Masturbate in all four corners,” Hag said.

  “Take a shit on the floor,” Putrid advised.

  What’s wrong with these demons? They’re fucking disgusting.

  “Steal all their shit,” Samuel whispered. “Steal it all.”

  Now that idea…that one I like.

  Searching through the shop, I found all kinds of worthless shit. In the back there was an office of sorts with shelves filled with dusty items. An old Atari machine, two stereos, a bread maker, a microwave…all shit I wanted nothing to do with. It was like I’d stumbled upon a hoard of redneck wedding gifts. All useless shit. But I did find a big camping style backpack.

  Bingo.

  I reached over and picked up a tattoo machine from the back room and tossed it into the bag. Then I went into the main room and raced from station to station, scooping up all the tattooing machines and paints and any other supplies I could easily pick up and shove into my bag. I kicked shit over that I didn’t need to. I wanted the place to look like a tornado had hit it when James arrived.

  On my way out of the shop, I looked at the blank space above the shattered window and remembered Sally’s office and what I’d written on the wall in Bruce’s blood. I had no blood this time, but I did have red paint. So I wrote my message to James, one that I knew he’d remember forever, especially after I took his precious Nikki from him.

  WE ALL FALL DOWN!

  It wasn’t until the next morning, when the two lovebirds went out for coffee that I was finally able to sneak into Nikki’s apartment. The bed was a mess and the smell of sex was thick and heavy. They’d definitely fucked. I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling as I imagined James having his way with her. I hadn’t expected him to return with her. I thought she’d come back alone, so I hid in her closet and waited.

  But he did return with her. And there, through the small crack in the closet door, I watched as James lubed up and put his cock in her ass. Her moans and sighs and sex faces were the things I’d dreamed about for so many years. I’d masturbated with these exact thoughts. See, I knew her secret. I’d overheard Mrs. Rebecca and Nikki talking about it once. She didn’t have a normal vagina. Her pussy was incomplete or something like that. So it didn’t surprise me that she had to be fucked in her ass.

  As disgusted as I was by them, my cock didn’t feel the same. My dick got hard as I watched him spoon her and thrust his hips. The way her ass rippled. The way her back arched with each thrust as she took him all the way inside. Yes, my cock throbbed, and before I knew it, I’d pulled myself out of my zipper and was fist fucking myself quietly in the closet.

  I mimicked his movements. As he drove into her, I pulled my fist down, and as he backed out, I did the same, over and over. Her cries of pleasure echoed through the apartment, masking any slight noise I might’ve made. I was free to jack myself off without worry. They were so fucking loud they’d never hear me.

  “Oh babe,” he said. “You feel so fucking good.”

  Yes, you do feel so fucking good.

  “Fuck me,” she begged.

  I’m fucking you. Don’t worry. I…am…fuck…ing…you…

  I was going to come already. Seeing Nikki like that was beyond my wildest dreams and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. In the darkness, I groped around until I found something to spill my seed in. I found one of Nikki’s shoes and that turned me on even more. Carefully, I lowered myself to my knees and with my cock pointed at her shoe, I unloaded. Nikki sighed, James grunted, and I came like a motherfucker.

  I wiped my cock off with one of her dresses and put the shoe back in line with the others. Nikki was extremely organized when it came to her shoes. The thought of her putting on the shoe, her toes sliding through my cum, turned me on. Everything about Nikki turned me on.

  Then the phone rang and shortly after, James was gone. Nikki showered. I waited. She’d have to come to the closet to get clothes and that’s when I’d take her. But then it sounded like she was wat
ching TV. When it seemed she might never come to the closet, I called her phone, making sure to keep my voice down so she wouldn’t realize I was in the house.

  “James?” she asked.

  “Not quite,” I said. “B…b…but you l…like him d…don’t you?”

  “I know it’s you! Leave me the fuck alone!” she yelled.

  Calm down, kitten. Don’t be so catty.

  “But I l…l…like you, N…N…Nikki,” I said.

  Then I whistled.

  Ring around the Rosy…pocket full of posies…ashes…ashes…

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Only to cha…cha…chat,” I said. “I tr…tr…tried to chat wa…with V…V…Valerie.”

  “Valerie?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “BUT SHE WOULDN’T GIVE ME THE FUCKING TIME OF DAY!”

  I hadn’t meant to shout, and for a second I worried she might’ve realized I was in the house, freaked out, and ran away. But she didn’t.

  “So, I t…t…turned her insides into a f…fucking omelet,” I added.

  She hung up and I knew she was headed my way. Her feet slapped the floor on their way to the closet. All I had to do was remain quiet and wait. No need to chase her. She was headed toward her own demise. To add a special creep factor, I sat my fedora, the one I’d worn for so long just to make people think I might be Kevin, on top of the clothes hangers I was hiding behind. She’d be sure to see it and it would freak her the fuck out.

  I watched her beautiful, towel covered body come into the closet. I could see her clearly from between a green dress and a pink top. She looked magnificent and she was staring right at me. No, she was staring at the fedora. She’d noticed it. A second longer and she’d be screaming her head off. I couldn’t let that happen.

  She froze when the metal hangers slid open for my appearance. Then I hit her with a rubber mallet and she went out like a light.

  Chapter 20 – Kevin