blurring_the_edges_37_this_is_not_an_exit birdmad The next day, Marisol gives you the keys to a large black Cadillac. To match the car, you opt to wear the charcoal grey Armani knock-off that Greg's tailor made for you, amazingly enough, the simple style is still current enough to look good. None of the details date it to that period known as the turn of the past decade. You have gained some muscle mass around your shoulders chest and upper back and a bit of fat around your belly from the way you work. Thankfully, you had the thing made deliberately oversized to hide any large gun you might have ever wanted to shoulder holster because a badly cut coat will show holster strap-lines that are worse giveaways than any woman might think of her panty lines. The fit of the coat is still comfortably roomy enough, and in fact it now looks better on you than it did when you wore it to do impress the coke fiends and social climbers. The fit seems less ridiculous and more dignified - enough so that you actually consider the extra weight you're carrying lately to be a blessing at the moment. Tying your hair back, you shave except for the little patch of scraggly hair on your chin. You take your car to a parking structure downtown and leave it there, paying the nine bucks for the overnight parking. The Caddy, a fairly new model, a '90 at the oldest, is waiting on the next floor, the leather seats are incredibly comfortable. and you can tell that they are custom. This is a well kept car. There is no dust, no sun damage, no cracks in the dash or heat cracks in the windshield. Obviously, this thing is garaged, but you remember the car you rolled in with Marisol to seal the deal with MeeKrob and it no longer strikes you as any kind of surprise. You take a $20 that is sitting in the visor and pass it to the attendant at the exit gate as you roll out. Following the directions Marisol gave you, you drive up to a house just off Central north of Bethany, turning into a little private driveway. Marisol steps out into the driveway to meet you and a young man and woman follow after her. They are both blonde and slim with mild tans. The man is about your age, maybe a tiny bit younger and has a slightly androgynous quality about him. The woman is fairly tall and has a vaguely cat-like air about her. She wears the same kind of neatly bobbed haircut that Elena wore last time you saw her. Stepping out, you open the back doors to let them in, introducing yourself. Their names are Gina and Kyle and as they tell you about themselves, they reveal that they are ASU students and that they are a couple who have been together since high-school somewhere near Chicago. They have decided to engage in this strange enterprise both out of some sense of adventure and for the obvious reason... the money is good. You feel a protective twinge for both of them - both because you feel more than a little bit attracted to the two of them (ever since Bryan kissed you that night a few years ago, you haven't been the homophobe your father would have preferred you to be) and because by taking them to see Billy, you are potentially delivering them into the belly of the proverbial beast. You spent the afternoon trying to talk Marisol and MeeKrob out of putting anyone in Billy's grasp, but he's got leverage of some sort or other on MeeKrob and so they can't refuse him. MeeKrob admits that this is why they asked you to ride herd on Billy, but they don't realize that you still harbor a certain fear of him, a fear that whatever place he took you to when you fought him fairly, he could well be capable of going a good deal farther. You wonder what advantage a non-person like Billy could possibly have. Unless it's something he could do anonymously, Billy would never openly get himself enrolled in the system for fear of being deported back to wherever he snuck in from, though god knows he's been here long enough that he has no discernible accent other than that of the ubiquitous Scottsdale brat. If you envy him anything other than the nearly ridiculous size of his cock, it is the degree to which he is invisible, and therefore free. One way or another, you work for everything, Billy doesn't, living with girlfriends and boyfriends he probably intimidated into letting him stay until he gets bored with them and moves onto another. Kyle reveals that you will be taking them to Platte's invisible house to meet Billy because for some perverse, stupid reason (you infer silently to yourself) Henry is in a forgiving mood and cut Billy in on a big score near his birthday. The evening goes well enough. The party is fairly subdued for being a crowd of once notoriously debauched fiends as you all have been known for. Maybe you really have all grown up. There are no clutches of naked people writhing on the living room floor like sea-snakes in mating season, only a few salacious conversations here and there, a game of poker in the kitchen and a couple of people getting mildy high. You go to the bathroom and are almost disappointed not to see anyone fucking in the shower, oblivious to you relieving the nervous pressure that has built up on your bladder contributed to by the last couple of beers you decided to put away while trying to calm down. Walking back downstairs, you go back to the easy chair by the downstairs bedroom where you have been sort of a sentry while Billy, Kyle, and Gina have repaired to the interior of the room to be the only ones doing any naked writhing. You slam the Heineken which you left sitting by the chair and you are aware of a slightly bitter taste and before you can ask anyone what's going on, you pass out, falling back into your chair ***************** When you come to, everyone seems to be gone and you are vaguely aware that you are not inside the house anymore, but in the garage. Henry is lying on the garage floor, his face heavily bruised. Oh shit. Oh Shit.... OH SHIT! You stand up, woozy and disoriented, surprised to still feel the weight of the .357 in your shoulder. Going over to Henry, you see he is knocked out cold, beaten unconscious. You can hear crying and moaning and you realize that Billy must have spiked your drink when you got up to take a piss. Stepping through the side door connecting the garage to the kitchen, you see Kyle, sitting in a fetal position sucking his thumb with a glazed look in his eyes, he is naked and bleeding on the kitchen linoleum, his face is a mask of bruises. Your only fear now is for Gina's life, everything else is a red mask of rage, at yourself for letting your guard down and at Billy for being nothing but a sick animal. That bastard, he waited until everyone was gone, he must have fucking planned this. That sick, psycho bastard. When you walk into the room, he is on top of Gina, pinning her down and forcing himself into her as she screams from the pain of being invaded by anything so large. You want to shoot him, but your vision is still cloudy and your eyes are sore and your hands are shaking. If you shoot, you could hit Gina, and you have already failed her, don't compound your failure by accidentally shooting her. Oh god, Alex, there is no good way out of this. You lunge across the room and smack the butt-end of the Magnum into Billy's head, causing him to go limp. Crying and nearly in shock, Gina doesn't move as you scoop her up and carry her to the bathtub and run some warm water for her to soak in, she is not as broken as Kyle, but Billy has drawn blood from Gina as well, the water begins to run pink as soon as it meets her thighs but mercifully doesn't get any worse. In tears, you brush a little bit of her bangs out of her eyes. Through the sobs, all you can keep saying is that you are sorry. Bad news, Alex... sorry isn't going to make this any better, but you had best secure Billy before he comes to because this ain't over yet. "OhgodOhgodOhgod" you can hear this mantra coming from Gina and yourself and you regain a measure of your resolve. Dragging Billy from under his armpits into the recliner he dragged, with you still in it, into the garage, you leave him sitting, naked in the chair. Seeing the roll of duct-tape that you left there from having to discipline Billy last time, you tape his balls to the chair and tape is head back to the seat as well as his wrists to armrests. As soon as the tape stuck to his pubes pulls and makes him scream you will know when he is awake, but for right now you need to attend to Kyle. You go to the upstairs bathroom and run another bathtub full of lukewarm water. The bleeding isn't massive and he seems to be coming around from whatever place he retreated to in order to try and block out the horror of it. Seeing the knot on his forehead beginning to rise and the blackness of the bruise deepening under his right eye, you realize he didn't abandon Gina without a fight. You carry him upstairs and set him in the bath and he sighs like a stunned, confused child. "Gina? Is she okay?" he manages to ask, as the water runs a slightly deeper shade of pinkish than Gina's tub. You marvel at his toughness and his prevailing concern for the girl. The moment of admiration is interrupted by loud cursing from the direction of the garage. Walking back in, you see a trickle of blood coming from Billy's nose and realize he he never quit the coke and he is trying to break free from your crisscross of ducttape. You are overcome by hate and as he manages to get the tape off of his head you draw the .357 out of your pocket and warn him not to stand up. He starts to stand up. You pull the trigger, thankful for the distance between here and the remaining neighbors. The bullet hits him in groin, just above his cock. His face is a mask of confusion, pain and a hate clearly rival to yours for him, you see blood trickling from the chair and you realize there is no going back now, you shoot him again, smelling the gunpowder, feeling the kick of the magnum in your hand as you send the next bullet into his crotch. For some reason, he doesn't scream, but opens his mouth in disbelief. Taking your jacket off and wrapping it tightly around the barrel to muzzle anymore noise, you shoot him once in the chest, missing the heart and causing him to cough up blood where you likely interrupted a bronchial tube. Still jacked from whatever is in his system, he spits a mouthful of blood with whatever strength he has at you. Through the haze of your anger and your tears of regret for failing to protect Gina and Kyle dry up. Your contempt takes over and you put the wrapped gun-barrel a few inches from his head, feeling a perverse satisfaction when you fire the next round into his forehead, the exit wound transferring a good portion of his brain matter into the cushion of the recliner. You are suddenly just as inhuman as Billy was and you stand back marveling at what you have just done, part of your soul is screaming as though it has just died, but another part of you is wishing he was still alive so you could kill him again. Acting on that part, you ignore the fact that Billy is now as hollow and dead as a cockroach carcass behind the dryer in the washroom and empty the last three rounds of the Mag into him. One more to the head, through the left eye. One to the heart, dead aim this time, and one through his sack just to make sure. In the adrenaline rush, you have completely ignored Henry who must have come to while you were attending to Kyle and Gina, he sits in the corner cowering, more terrified of you than you have ever seen him terrified of anything. "Alex! What the fuck are we going to do with this fucking mess now?" Still in your mind's dead-place and still buzzing from the adrenaline rush, you look at him coldly and say: "Well, we're going to have to get rid of him, that's what we have to do. Call Platte and tell him to go to that new 24 hour home improvement joint over on east Thomas and pick up some kind of power-saw as well as some wood and a few other cutting tools. and trashbags, two rolls of heavy-duty lawn bags. Don't tell him what happened over the phone, he uses one of those goddamn cells and i don't want to take any chances, just tell him shit got ugly and we need a hand." Looking at your watch, you realize that it is almost four in the morning and you have less than two hours until sunrise. You are thankful that you are wearing dark clothes, but there is no way you will ever get the blood-stink from Kyles wrecked anus out of them now and it occurs to you that this is only going to get messier as it goes along. The gravity of what you have done isn't quite sinking into you yet. You peel off your clothes down to your underwear and lay Billy out onto the floor. You realize now why Billy and Henry tried to dispose of you in the middle of nowhere, but it's spring now and there is more traffic between here and the lakes up north for you to try anything like that now. Creativity. Think fast Alex or you are fucked. JesusJesusJesus. You are actually inured to the grossness of Billy's carcass from your Crime Scene Photography class and all of the pictures you have been shown of worse crimes in all of your forensics classes. You are aware of how much Billy stinks from having voided after you shot him through the head In forty-five minutes, Platte shows up and literally pisses himself at the sight of what has happened here. Thankfully, he brought everything you asked for. You proceed to do everything you can to get rid of any evidence of what has happened here, including leaving a free meal of Billy-bits for a pack of coyotes in a wild section of desert just beyond the fringes of the incomplete suburb You cut up the recliner as well, burning the pieces a little further away and out of sight a little after sunrise. Platte and Henry attend to Gina and Kyle, paying him their cuts as well as Billy's to never speak of any of this again. They call Rich from down in Tucson who comes up and treats their injuries as best as he can without the use of a hospital. You strip naked in the secluded backyard and hose the blood off of yourself before going into the third bathroom and taking a proper shower. When you step out, you realize that the only clothes left that might fit you are Billy's, still piled in heap near the bed where he brutalized Gina and Kyle. When the adrenaline finally wears off, you are possessed by the nearly overwhelming urge to die yourself. You broke Nietzche's rule. "When destroying a monster, one must be careful not to become a monster." Remember, Alex, nobody's really going to miss him. He had no family, he had no conscience and he went to great pains to be as non-existent as possible. Besides, after what he did, maybe your turn as a monster was the only choice left. Maybe it's a cheap rationalization, but if you hadn't done it, someone else would have. He was a rapist and he enjoyed it. You did the right thing, didn't you? 030514 what's it to you? who go blather from