"And I just—" Adam started.
"I will do anything you want," she interrupted.
"Shut up! I'm the popular one here now, not you. You know what? You're perfect. Little Miss Fucking Perfect who can do no wrong, who gets by in life and do anything and get away with it scot-free because you're rich—"
"—that's not—"
"Shut up! You got everything. I got nothing. You got everything you could ever ask for, and what do you do? You take away from me. You make me feel like shit because I don't fit in, because I'm different, because I ain't a fucking idiot like you. You should be helping me, not tearing me apart and ignoring me."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not! I'm not the least bit sorry for what I'm about to do to you. It's not revenge, it's setting life fair." Adam reached over and took a roll of Duct Tape and three razor blades off the sink. When he turned back to Erica, she screamed.
"
Shut up!"
he yelled.
It didn't work. She screamed so loudly she injured her voice-box. Adam punched her across the jaw, dazing her and finally silencing her. He then opened her mouth, stuck the three razor blades inside, and wrapped the Duct tape around her mouth and head. "We'll see how long you can tolerate the pain of scalding hot water before swallowing the razors. Either way, you lose."
By the time the stars stopped circling around her head, Adam was sitting calmly on the lip of the tub by the faucet.
Erica lost control when she felt the razors in her mouth. She didn't know what they were, but they were so sharp she could barely swallow without cutting her tongue or her cheeks. She even pushed the blade of one of the razors against the Duct tape to try and cut through it, but ended up cutting her lips, instead.
Her hands were bleeding from the tightly-wrapped twine. Sore red rings encircled her wrists. All she could do was cry, yelp, and plead non-verbally for Adam to let her live.
He grabbed the hot water knob. Before he turned it, he said, "I wish things could have been different, but you couldn't change. It's by your own actions that you're here, and it's by my actions that you're about to go."
He turned the knob all the way. The pipes made noise, and Erica's eyes widened. She kicked at the shower head, trying to knock it aside, but it was too high and too far away. Adam watched, enthralled. The water spurted, then flew out. It was extremely cold at first when it slammed against her face, throat, breasts, and stomach. She initially thought she was going to be frozen to death. But as it started heating up, little by little, she knew that this was going to
really
suck.
Erica had been burned once as a child on her aunt's stove. Ever since, she'd made it a priority to never be burned again. She feared fire more than she did Adam. This was the last way she wanted to die.
"Rrrrr! Rrrr!"
she screamed, jarring her body savagely to escape. Adam just sat there with a silly smile on his face, watching as this opponent of his was getting what she deserved. He had never felt so free, except maybe for his brief experience with Erin. And hearing Erica's potent screams was somewhat similar to hearing Erin tell him she loved him.
He just giggled at Erica like a schoolboy.
The temperature of the water continued to rise. Her entire front was quickly reddening to the tone of a tomato, and the skin around her bound wrists was tearing off because she kept pulling at the twine with all her might. Adam giggled louder and louder the more she fought to escape. Blood began to run out from between her chin and where the Duct tape stuck to her flesh. The razors in her mouth cut her cheeks, tongue and teeth. Despite the tape and a destroyed voice-box, she carried on, her cries for help still devouring the room. She did everything she could think of, but nothing was doing any good. She knew she either had to shut off the water or break the twine.
"How's it feel?" Adam raised his voice.
She did not respond. Not only was her skin reddening; it was blistering and peeling as well, flaking off and falling to the rubber mat like translucent snowflakes.
"How's it feel?!" Adam shouted, expecting a reply. He wanted her to beg for mercy, to bow down to him and say he was right.
There were more screams, but no twine broke and no scalding hot water slacked. The pain was unbearable, immeasurable, a slow-burning lava, ensuring death. She knew she was going to die in the worst way possible.
The second layer of skin was thinning, and the lava was closing in on the final layer before it reached her tissue, the underbelly of human construction. Adam watched carefully as she turned into a skinned corpse from the Mutter Museum. Erica was no longer tanned; she was as red as the lipstick she usually wore, as pathetic a design as God could create.
Adam
knew
it when she swallowed one or more of the blades, for her throat turned blood-red from the inside, under that last thin layer of meat. Her throat concluded to rip open vertically. All of the razors fell to the mat below. She continued to flake, tissue continued to boil, but Erica did not continue to fight. Her eyes widened more. She went limp and slouched over.
Adam's smile faded. The deed had been done. Blood immediately burst out of her throat wound. To Adam, this was a work of art, a masterpiece of his own devising. He was happy she had paid but was sad that it had ended so soon. At least for now. This semi-skeletal nude figure was his first and would definitely not be his last.
A portrait frozen in time.
Adam wanted to frame her and mount her on his bedroom wall. Instead, he opened his mouth and laughed louder than he had even laughed before.
"This, I swear to all of you," he said, gazing at Erica's corpse, "you will never fuck me over again. This is Candyland compared to what I'll show you. You take away everything, then you take away more when there's no more to take. Then you take my mother, my girlfriend. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth."
Adam turned off the faucet, whistling the song Fade to Black by Metallica, and stepped back over to the toilet and went to urinate—
His underwear was stained with warm, fresh semen. Adam had involuntarily orgasmed during the exhibition.
He just laughed it off. Peed. Cleaned a few trace amounts of blood off the tub railing and floor. He felt like a true Martyr in every sense. Tonight, he feared no man. In fact, he wanted
them
to
bring it on.
***
A couple hours before dawn, Adam put the body in the wagon and wheeled it back through the sewer to the main pipeline, where he let it float out into the current of the river. "I dare you all to try and hurt me or those like me again. Lay a finger on any of us outcasts, and your bodies will look like this."
Erica's melted carcass floated out into the calm waters of the Ohio River, a sign of warning for all those who opposed him. The silver reflection of the moon made her damaged body look eerily more gruesome. But Adam's grin was tenfold more gruesome.
He tried to stay up the rest of the night, watching the news to see if anybody had yet stumbled upon the late Erica Janson, but he was too tired. He passed out at 4:12 A.M. into one of the deepest sleeps of his entire life.
Dreams did not invade.
***
Chris did—"Adam, Adam, get the hell up. I got to show you something. C'mon, man!" Chris shook him.
Adam opened his eyes. "What, dammit?” For a whole three minutes, he did not even remember what he’d done last night.
Chris took a pack of Camels out of his pocket, popped one, and lit it with a Bic. "You know what happened—"
Adam remembered now.
"—to that girl we go to school with? Erica??"
"What's that?" Adam said, playing stupid.
Chris took a big hit and blew the smoke up into the air. Afterward, he grabbed the remote control and took Adam's television off mute. "The girl you like a lot—that preppy girl—she was found dead! Somebody walking their dog down by the river found her mutilated corpse floating in the water."
Chris upped the volume. A young Italian newswoman with hair three millimeters short of an Afro spoke into a microphone: "Somebody apparently murdered her and dumped her body in the river—"
Sewer,
Adam giggled inside his head.
"—Where it floated to shore at about ten, here down by the Wharf. Here to comment about it is Sheriff MeCreek:"
The camera cut to a Jabba-the-Hut man almost bursting out of a police uniform. "It's—the crime is unthinkable, really. I have been on the force for a long time and I've never seen anything like it. Not even close. Looks like the poor girl was tortured, on top of that."
The woman asked him, "Do you have any leads on who could have committed such a terrible crime?"
He couldn't answer. Adam grinned.
"We don't know yet. We're hoping forensics can shed some light on this, maybe find a hair or fiber to catch whatever animal did this." Jabba-the-Cop even wiped away a tear from his eye.
The cameraman panned back to the reporter. "If you're just joining us, Erica Janson has been found murdered early this morning in Blake County." She went on. A photo of a smiling Erica popped up onto screen for a quick moment.
"Fucked the hell up, huh?" Chris said.
I did it! I did it!
“
Yeah, I wonder
who
could've done such a thing!" He almost laughed.
Chris finished his smoke. "Sucks for you. Now you don't have a chance with her. Well, actually, now that I think about it, yes, you do."
"I wonder how football boy feels about it," Adam said.
"He's probably getting drunk or lifting weights."
"Or crying."
"Y'know, I've never seen that idiot cry before."
Oh, you will.
Chris stood and dropped his cigarette into an empty can. "This has got to be the craziest thing that's ever happened in this little town. Nobody dies here unless they're old, let alone murdered—tortured—they said."
Adam sat still. His eyes were no longer stained with hurt but were filled with madness.
Chris said, "They showed one really quick shot of the sheet covering her body on TV, and the thing was just soaked in blood."
"For real?"
"I'd like to know what they did to her. It probably couldn't have been one person. It was probably a couple dumb Negros high on drugs."
"I don't know."
"Hey, I'm out of smokes. You want to run to the store with me to get some?"
"Sure."
***
They walked the length of the abandoned railroad tracks instead of the typical sidewalk. Indeed a less scenic route, stretching behind old warehouses and uninhabited houses like a forgotten path to the bowels of damnation. Adam just liked going this way because there were no people. Chris was used to going this way because of Adam.
"Cold as fuck," Chris commented.
"Not as cold as Erica right now," Adam accidentally said.
"Oh my God, I can't believe you said that. You've never spoken a bad word about that bitch since you became infatuated with her."
"She's dead now. She won't care."
Chris giggled. "You say bad shit about me when I die, I'm coming back to haunt you."
Adam smiled.
They turned left at a crosswalk and hiked up the hill toward Ashland Gas Station. A harsh winter air brushed against Adam's windbreaker and ruffled Chris' long hair.
The pumps were cluttered with cars. A small mob of people—four teenagers, two cops, and a couple of parents—were standing around inside the station, exchanging stories about the late Erica.
"Big news, I told you," Chris said to Adam.
Adam could scarcely believe it. He finally had his recognition.
He and Chris walked up to the counter, where they both listened closely to the conversation….
"You know that I heard that the guy she's dating might have done this. Do you think?"
"My nephew knows that boy; I don't think he would have done it. No way."
"I really don't think anybody from the high school did it. Really, how many mutilations have you heard that a teenager's committed? They might shoot up a school, but to burn a seventeen-year-old girl to death? Leaving her to float in the river? Not hardly."
“
It was probably just some vagabond. Some doped-up nutjob."
"Then again, it could have been someone very close to her. You never know about these things. If they did burn her like they say, it has got to be personal. Don't you think?"
The cop said, "Nobody is going to get away with it. That's for sure. I know about fifty people who wouldn't mind breaking the law just to put this S.O.B. to sleep." He looked right at Adam. Adam stared back and played a game of mental telepathy.
It was me. Meee! I burned the bitch in my tub. I made her swallow razors and watched her die! I did it!
The officer looked away, none the wiser.
Chris flashed his fake I.D. at the clerk, paid, and got his Camels. Then they went back to Adam's house.
***
"Where's your momma at?" Chris joked.