Reaching down, I picked up my blades and sprinted forward. My poppa rolled over, trying to get up, just as I arrived at his side. Then looking him right in the eyes, the flames roaring from within, I dropped to straddle his waist and sent my blades sinking into his flesh, strike after strike. And I fucking watched him. I fucking watched him like a hawk as he tried to cry out. I sank the sharp steel into his chest, his stomach, twisting and hacking at his flesh. I saw my mama’s face in my head as I cut up his chest. I saw him hitting her, her skin bleeding and bruised. I saw him screaming at Isaiah. Saw him putting him down beside me, in the dirt hole, and fucking leaving us there to die, as I ripped and snapped the tendons in his arms.
I moved lower, my poppa’s body now hemorrhaging blood like a geyser. But I couldn’t fucking stop stabbing, I couldn’t fucking stop screaming out all the years of fucking pain. I reached below his waist, and taking both knives, sent them piercing through his cock. My poppa choked on his blood. But I shut my eyes, still trying to push away the feel of his breath on my neck as a kid, of his fucking sweating chest pressed to my back, as he fucked me against the wall.
And I still couldn’t stop. I hacked down his legs, ripping through bone and muscle. I moved to his stomach and sliced apart the skin, then I got to his face. To those fucking dark eyes that were staring up at me glazed over, and raising both my hands, I slammed both blades down into each of his eyes. And yet I still couldn’t stop. I kept going, ripping through his jaw, his cheeks and his fucking skull.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop, until…
“Flame! Stop… please!” a voice cried.
But lifting the blades, my hands shaking, I drove them through his skull, feeling the bone splinter under my hands.
“Flame! Stop! STOP!!!”
The voice calling my name suddenly broke through into mind, and I dropped my blades, my body slumping back in exertion. I panted, my breathing too hard and too fast, when my eyes finally snapped back into focus.
Blood. All I could see was a fucking shit ton of blood. Blood beneath me, blood covering a fucking corpse in front of me… a fucking corpse so fucking cut up you couldn’t see his face. You couldn’t make him out at all.
Movement beside me made me turn, and I gasped for breath. Maddie… Maddie…
“Flame. God!” Maddie sat on the grass verge behind me, her face pale, hand covering her mouth. Rage built in my chest, rage and a fucking rush of feelings I couldn’t understand, and I screamed.
I screamed and fucking screamed. Scrambling off my poppa’s torn up body, I collapsed on the road, my knees bent and neck muscles tight. Then fisting my hands, I threw my head back and screamed again. I fucking screamed until my fucking voice cut the hell out, my throat raw and sore.
Suddenly, I felt real fucking tired, exhausted, and my head dropped forward. My body shook as tears fell from my fucking eyes. And I couldn’t fucking stop.
I couldn’t fucking stop.
Too lost in the fucking aftermath of the kill, I felt a soft hand on my face. I flinched at the touch, but when I went to knock it the fuck away, Maddie’s face came into view. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her face and lips were deathly white.
“Maddie,” I croaked, unable to fucking move.
Maddie inched further forward on her knees, and my head fell into her chest. Maddie cried out, and wrapped her arms around my head, holding me to her chest. I pushed my weak assed arms around her waist, and said with a hoarse voice, “He’s gone. He’s really fucking gone.” It felt like a fucking ton weight had been lifted from my chest.
Maddie sobbed from above. “Yes,” she whispered, then crushed me harder to her tiny body.
We stayed that way for minutes, until I heard noise coming from behind me. Hearing Maddie gasp, I pulled back, lifted my head. And my heart fucking stopped.
Vike and AK were coming out of the house… walking out of that fucking house, with the kid from the cellar. A kid who looked about sixteen or seventeen.