There’s never enough risk to scare me. There’s never enough reward to satiate me.
Until now.
The drumming of her fingers stops.
“What kind of competition?” Sloane asks.
I flag down the waitress and motion for the bill when she catches my eye. “Just a little game. Let’s go for ice cream and we can talk it through.”
When I face Sloane once more, my smile is conspiratorial.
Wicked and wanting.
…Devious.
“You know what they say, Blackbird. ‘It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,’” I whisper. “And that’s when the real fun begins.”
3
VENTRICULAR
SLOANE
ONE YEAR LATER…
T he need.
It starts like an itch. Irritation beneath my skin. Nothing I do releases the constant whisper of it in my flesh. It crawls into my mind and doesn’t let go.
It becomes pain.
The longer I deny it, the more it drags me into the abyss.
I must stop it. I’ll do anything.
And there’s only one thing that works.
Killing.
“I need to get my shit together,” I mutter as I glare at my burner phone for the fiftieth time today. My thumb slides over the smooth glass as I scroll through my short text exchange with the sole contact.
Butcher, it says beneath the photo I chose for Rowan’s profile—a single, steaming sausage on the end of a barbecue fork.
I decide not to unpack the various reasons I chose that picture and resort to visualizing myself stabbing him in the dick with the fork instead.
I bet it’s such a pretty dick too. Just like the rest of him.
“Jesus Christ. I need help,” I hiss.
The man on my stainless steel table interrupts my busy mind as he fights the restraints that bind his wrists and ankles, his head and torso, his thighs and arms. A tight gag traps his pleas in his gaping, fish-like mouth. Maybe it’s overkill to strap him down so thoroughly. It’s not like he’s going anywhere. But the thrashing of flesh on steel irritates me, stoking the itch into a biting torment like talons that scrape at my gray matter.
I turn away, phone in hand as I scroll back through the handful of messages Rowan and I have exchanged in the last year since the day we met and agreed to this admittedly crazy competition. Maybe there’s something I’ve missed in our limited conversations over the last twelve months? Is there an indication of how this game is supposed to play out? Some way I could be better prepared? I have no fucking clue, but it’s giving me an epic headache.
Wandering to the sink, I take a bottle of ibuprofen from the shelf and set my phone on the counter as I tap two pills into my gloved hand, reviewing our text messages from earlier in the week, even though I could probably recite them from memory.
I’ll text you the details on Saturday.
How do I know you’re not just going to get a head start to win this round?
I guess you’ll have to just trust me…
That sounds dumb.
And fun! Gasp you do know how to have fun, right…？
Shut your face.
My PRETTY face, you mean?
…ugh.
Saturday! Keep your phone handy!
And I have done exactly that. I’ve kept my phone clutched in my grip for most of the day, and it’s now 8:12pm. The tick of the huge wall clock, which is truthfully only mounted on the wall facing the table to further torture my victims, is now torturing me. Every tick vibrates through my skull. Every second scorches my veins with a pulse of need.
I didn’t realize how much I was looking forward to this game until the anticipation took root in my thoughts.
The man on my table startles when I turn on the faucet and the water pelts the stainless steel sink. “Calm your tits,” I toss over my shoulder as I fill a glass. “We’re not even at the fun bit yet.”
Whimpers and whines, muffled pleas. His fear and begging both excite and frustrate me as I swallow the ibuprofen and down the glass of water to place the empty vessel on the counter with a loud thud.
I check my burner phone again. 8:13pm.
“Fucking hell.”
My personal phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out to read the notification. Lark. Her message is just a knife emoji and a question mark. Rather than text her back, I pull my AirPods from my pocket and call her, leaving my hands free for my work.
“Hey, babe,” she says, answering on the first ring. “Anything from the Butcher guy yet?”
I bask in Lark’s summer sunshine voice for a beat before I let the weight of a sigh leave my lungs. Aside from the wicked work of my hands, Lark Montague is the only thing in this world that brings me clarity when my mind descends into another dimension of darkness.