Page 58 of Burn For Me

Fuck, I wanted to stroke off to this, but I couldn’t leave my DNA behind, so instead, I panted hard as the doctor’s struggling form stilled. His body fell and leaned up against the glass.

“Pure rapture,” I whispered as his body slid down the glass, leaving streaks of red and flesh behind it. The camera fizzled out and burned up just as the doctor’s house vibrated, and then, with the loudest boom yet, it exploded. Brick, shingles, glass, and wood all sailed into the air, some of it raining down on the small shed.

Peeling my eyes away from the sight that filled me with joy, I stuffed my remaining items into the duffel bag and then slipped out of the shed, leaving the box of folders behind. Except for one folder. Mine was mine, and it was coming with me.

I turned as I reached the entrance to the trees to watch the chaos. People ran screaming, some on fire, others simply consumed by fear. This was my calling. This was what I was good at, and this was what made me happy now. As the sound of sirens got closer, I slipped into the shadows. Darkness was the place I was born. It only made sense that I’d return to the darkened shadows as a man.

I couldn’t go home, not until I knew if what the doctor had said about Adalyn was true or if he was simply feeding me a line. Could she really have been alive all this time that I’d been out? Could we have been together rather than me being holed up in an old farmhouse alone?

The truck rumbled along down the street, and I made sure to leave the windows open to enjoy the sound of the sirens. I sadly couldn’t see the flames from where I was, but I knew they were to my right and over the rise. Multiple sirens of different kinds filled the air, and as I pulled up to a traffic light, a pair of fire trucks, as well as an ambulance and a couple of police cars, flew through the intersection heading in the opposite direction—none of them the wiser that they’d just driven past the man responsible for their early morning call.

“Fuck, this is fun,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror to watch the lights a little longer. I flicked on a local broadcast station to see if anything was being said yet, but so far, it was still just sports highlights and the usual morning talk that the radio hosts did.

Adalyn had never told me where she lived, and I hadn’t paid any attention to her street address when I looked at her registration the night of my escape. However, I did remember that she’d said she loved a particular little market near her home, and the name had stuck in my head. Food Harmony—it sounded like the name of a song when she said it. There was only one in the whole city, which made it easy to track down.

I followed the little GPS on my phone to the location of the market and pulled into the parking lot, but her yellow car was nowhere to be seen. Then again, she could easily have traded it in by now…or she could just not be shopping…heck, she could’ve switched stores or moved for all I knew. In fact, the only thing I did know was that she said she liked to pick up food for the night and the next day around lunchtime.

Adalyn was big into whole foods that were fresh and local. She always complained consistently about the crap they fed us at the hospital. She’d even gone so far as to sneak in the odd healthy snack for me to have. I didn’t have the heart to tell her they tasted worse than the crap they fed us at the asylum because the thought behind it was what had made those nasty snacks taste sweet on my tongue.

This could be a completely fruitless mission, but I had to try. If there was even a chance that my Adalyn was alive, I couldn’t walk away. I left the truck turned off but rolled down the windows for my little surveillance mission. I sat a little straighter as the radio hosts switched to the news. Smacking my hand against the steering wheel in jubilation, I had to stop myself from cheering out loud as they gave a blow-by-blow account of the fire and the actions of those trying to contain it. Apparently, it was spreading to the next street over.

Awe, such a fucking shame…not.

I closed my eyes for a few moments to visualize the blaze as I continued listening to the radio. Doctors, lying lawyers, and judges all lived along that road. It didn’t take much digging to find that not one of them, for all their smiles and laughter around a barbecue, was a very nice person. One was up on charges for tax evasion reaching into the hundreds of thousands. Another, a pediatrician, had charges brought against him for touching girls inappropriately during physical exams. I didn’t really care who lived in the homes, but it sure made it sweeter to know that I’d done a good thing.

I was a monster with a mission. Each one of those men and women had been born of the same sort of evil and then molded from a different clay to become the shining beacons we saw. I’d make those beacons light up a different way.

The bright green of the digital clock in the market’s sign drew my eye as I sighed. The time read that it was well into the afternoon, and if Adalyn were coming, I would have expected her to be here by now. I reached for the ignition before freezing as a yellow bug drove into the parking lot. It pulled down the same aisle I was parked in, leading me to scoot down low into my seat, but I kept my eyes up high enough to see.

It was hard to see over the hood of the truck to see who was getting out of the small car from this angle, but then, like some miracle from the spirit world, she walked directly in front of my line of sight as she headed towards the market. Adalyn. My heart drummed in my chest at an erratic pace. She was a mirage of grace and beauty, she was my Adalyn…and she just disappeared into the store to buy food.

The doctor hadn’t been lying about this. He may have been a fucknut about everything else, but he hadn’t lied about this. I was so tempted to follow her, to find her in the store and wrap my arms around her, but I didn’t want to terrify her. Like everyone else, she probably assumed I was dead.

I banished my nervousness away and allowed my mind to daydream about what our life was going to be like once we were blissfully reunited.

It was one of those rare moments where all the staff was in a meeting and Adalyn was able to slip away. Even though we were fully clothed, just to have her body pressed against mine, to feel her hand on my heart, made my spirits soar. These brief moments were so rare and highly coveted.

“What are you thinking about,” I asked quietly. My hand pressed against her lower back as we lay on the small bed together.

“How I’d love to do this with you outside of this place without the fear of being caught hanging over our heads.” Her voice was soft as she said the sweet words into my chest.

“You mean that?”

Adalyn lifted her head and rested her chin on her hand as she stared at me.

“Of course I mean that. I’d love nothing more than to have a real future with you, which is why I keep bugging you to behave in your sessions with Dr. Wallace.”

I let out a snort.

“That man is never letting me out of here. I’m either going to die inside this place, or I’m going to die in prison, but either way, I’m never getting out of here alive unless I escape.”

“But if you escape, Derek, what kind of life could we have?”

I thought about her question for a moment. It was a good one. What would a future on the run look like?

“I’d have to make it look like I died so no one would be looking for me, and then we could move to a different state, whichever one you want, and settle down. I’d love to live by the mountains, maybe someplace where a stream ran through the property. We could go hiking or fishing and no one would know us. We would be free of all of this.”

The prettiest smile I’d ever seen graced her sweet, angelic features, and my heart swelled.