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Authors: Karina Sims

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BOOK: Sinners Circle
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I light my cigarette, shrug and
squint at the road with my good eye.
“One of those
test
things that people do when their in
love.
And
you
my dear...” I
give her a wink. “You
failed
.”

She shakes her head. I laugh.
“Amanda, this isn’t cool with me. I’ll give you till we get to your house but,
I deserve an explanation.”

“True. And all people get what
they deserve, right?”

“What the fuck? You think I
deserve to be fucking
kidnapped
?”

“No, no, no. That’s not what I’m
doing. I’m saving your life, remember?”

She rolls her eyes and says to
the window, “Oh right,
that’s
what
you’re doing.”

“You
betcha
.”

“You know, what’s so great about
you huh? Why do you think you’re such hot
shit
?
You’re not, you’re cold diarrhea. I see people like you
every
goddamn day.”

“No you
don’t
.”

She looks at me, then back out
the window.

Every
goddamn day
.”

“Sophie, look, you’re right.
You’re totally fucking right. I am a total piece of
shit,
I’m not debating that with you. And I know this all looks, sounds totally
fucking crazy, but trust me OK, please just
trust
me. I love you, I’m sorry I hurt you, honey. I’m fucking
scared
right now and I need you to see that and
understand
that and just
trust
me. If there’s one thing you
ever
trust me with, it’s this
one
time. Baby, please?”

She doesn’t say anything, just
bites her nails and stares out the window. We stop at another traffic light and
I unlock the doors. She looks at me, puts her hand on the handle. “Would you
really let me go this
time.

I nod. “But I don’t want you to.”

She pops the door a little,
“Amanda, is it really
that
bad?”

“Yes.”

“Do I really need this in my
life?”

“No. But I
need
you in mine.”

“Are you going to tell me things
I don’t want to hear?”

“Yes.”

“And if I don’t like them, you’ll
let me go without hurting me?”

“Yes.”

“Ok.” The light turns green. She
closes the door. “I’ll go with you tonight.”

I push the car into drive and
roll through the intersection. On the side of the highway a bum is holding a
sign ‘Repent: The End is
Nigh
.’ I close my eyes and
see Marcy, scooped out and cut up. I gag and swallow whatever comes up. I look
over at Sophie, she’s clenching her hands together but her knees are apart. I’m
not sure how to read her body language. I look at the cigarette between my
fingers, my hand is shaking. I toss the butt out the window and feel my
forehead. It’s stopped bleeding but it aches, my whole body aches, inside and
out.

As I pull up to my house and kill
the engine, I know that tomorrow I’ll have to find some way to keep Sophie in
the motel while I come back to burn it down.

“I’ll just be a sec. Wait for me,
please?”

She nods, I’m about to pocket the
keys but she leans in and kisses me. “I’m not going anywhere without you.” I
leave the keys in the ignition and get out of the car. I walk to my door, look
back,
she’s looking at me, scared but smiling. I open the
door and close it behind me.

I’m used to being alone, in all
the years I’ve been here and brought someone back, killed them and kept their
quiet corpse locked up somewhere, I’ve never felt it feel
so
empty as it does now. I don’t have to know Marcy is dead in the cellar to know
that she isn’t here anymore. The vacancy of the building is loud and besetting.
I walk into my
bedroom,
everything is as it should be.
Nothing’s been moved or
misplaced,
it’s all exactly
the way I’ve left it. My clothes are still on the floor, until I pick them
up,
stuff them in a bag from my closet. Under my bed, all
the photographs and Polaroid’s of the women I’ve chopped up are still in their
shoe box.

I carry the bag of clothes into
the kitchen, walk to the couch, lift the cushion, grab my syringe, walk back
into the bedroom and throw some clean underwear in the bag. And then my heart
skips a beat as the sound of footfall descends the stairs connecting Marcy’s
floor to mine.

“You think you’re
so
smart,
dontcha
?” Harry stands in front
of my couch, arms crossed. “
So
fuckin

clever
,
dontcha
?”

I can’t even look at him. He
steps closer in the dark. “You think you’re just
gonna
do whatever you
like
huh? Hurt
whoever you want and it
doesn’t
matter, because you’re so
fuckin
’ smart they’ll never
get
ya
. You think you’re in so much pain and you’re
so
fuckin
’ badass killing women, huh?” He laughs,
“You
ain’t
shit.”

He leans in the doorframe,
chewing another huge wad of gum. “You think everyone else is pretty stupid,
huh? Think you’re putting something over on us?”

“Harry—”

“No, fuck you Amanda Troy. Fuck
you and your little miss serial killer
bullshit
.
You know why bitches always get busted when they start
killing
people? Because they start fucking up, they start coming to
work with blood under their fingernails and all over their shoes. They come to
work reeking of death. You think you’re a
monster
?”
He shoves a thumb into the fat in his chest, “You’re among the wolves now. We
can sniff that shit out. People who don’t know that smell, they just chalk it
up to bad hygiene. But you
ain’t
shit, you’re just
one sad little piece of fucked up virgin pussy that needs a good
ol

pumpin
’” He thumbs his chest
again. “I’m the big bad wolf, baby; I can smell a rat like you a
mile
away.”

I back up, he doesn’t move. “
Ya
know, at first I thought, gee maybe she’s just nuts. But
your buddy there... Carl, he came over one night when you were out
bangin
’ that hooker bitch in your car.” He shrugs, “Yeah, I
got that on camera, made some good coin from it. Anyway, your buddy, we got to
talking, told me some interesting stuff he’s found around your place while
you’re all doped up on smack nodding out...” He points to my bed. “...like a
fuckin
’ junkie. Yup, found some video tapes. Did you know
we’re pulling in fifteen grand each little episode of yours? We sell ‘
em
to the Koreans in town here. Lord knows what
they
do with them.”

“Harry...”

“No, no, let me finish please.
See, we got to thinking, if there’s a market for
that
, well, what about the bodies? There’s no sense in wasting
them. So we got those too. We sold them in parts, skeletons and junk, human
body parts will go for quite a bit of dough, so we didn’t mind if you ate one
or two, because the cash would come in anyways. So we waited, we waited and
waited and kept getting more and more money from your little shenanigans. Thing
is though, Amanda, when Carl told me about your little girlfriend...” He backs
into the kitchen, looks out the window, “...is that her? Gee, she’s pretty.”

I slam my elbow into the window,
grab a shard of glass and run at him. But he’s faster and punches me in the
face, stomps on my chest and slices my hand open wide as he pulls the glass
from my fist. “Carl told me about that little bitch of yours, how you started
acting. We couldn’t lose our little investment because
you
think you’re in love.” He laughs so hard he starts coughing,
“Seriously, Amanda, look at
yourself
. You’re not a
person, you’re a
monster
. Look what
you did to all those people. Look what
you
took away from
them
. They were happy
and in love, and you
took
that from
them. And now you want me to let you
live
because you have it? You did this to
yourself
.
You
did this. So you tell me little
girl,
you
fucking tell me why
you
deserve to live after all the lives
you’ve ruined and stolen and the hearts you’ve broken, what makes
you
so goddamn special, huh?”

He kicks me in the ribs hard
enough for me to hear them crack. “So, what we’re
gonna
do is we’re
gonna
sell those tapes. We’re
gonna
sell those weird
fuckin

pictures under your bed and we’re
gonna
cut you up.
You and
lesbo
lady over there in the car, and we’re
gonna
see you in parts. How’s that sound?”

He steps on my wrist, dips a
finger in my blood and licks it off. “But
you
,
I think I’m
gonna
sell that little pussy of yours
first. I mean, once you’re dead.”

Carl walks down the stairs,
shotgun swinging at his side.
“Oh hi, Amanda.”

Harry looks at Carl, “How about
it? You want a go when she’s gone?”

He smiles, brushes some of that
fag hair of his out of his face.
“Hells yeah.”

He opens the door walks outside.

Heya
Sophie!”

All I can hear is her screaming,
even when Harry pulls me by my hair out the door onto the lawn and up against
the house. Even when Carl bends over, waves at Sophie and blasts straight
through the window, firing twice, all I hear is her screaming and it blends
into the echoes of the children burning in their beds, the choir of women roped
to the chair in the cellar, my mother weeping at the hands of her murderers. I
don’t see Harry take a revolver out of the back of his pants, but my hands go
up like I don’t want him to shoot. And when I do see and he does shoot, I
really don’t hear or feel the bullet pass through my ring and middle fingers. I
just see them in a motion slow enough that they just float away from the others
and it doesn’t hurt when my cheek burns hot, or when my teeth slip down the
back of my throat or explode in my sinuses.

I don’t feel any of that. I don’t
see any of that. But what I do see is the thunder storm forming in the
summertime. And what I do feel is the breeze of the weeds blowing on the back
of my knees. And what I do
hear
is my mother’s heart
pounding as we rush through the wheat before we’re captured as thieves.

 

 

About the author:

 

Karina Sims is from Beaver Falls, British
Columbia, Canada. She attended Selkirk College, skipping most of her classes to
play guitar with the music students. She was never in a school play and she
likes cats more than dogs. Her greatest weakness is women. Karina has been
published in several online magazines, this is her first novel.

BOOK: Sinners Circle
13.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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