Page 22 of Burn With Me

She was waiting at the elevator, but I turned and headed to the stairs. Keeping my hands in my pockets, hood up, and face down, I walked through the open door I’d propped open earlier. I could hear the elevator moving downward, and I raced to the fourth floor to burst out of the urine-stinking stairwell. Her car was parked at the far end, and I walked casually behind the concrete barrier that was out of sight of the lone camera on this level.

The lightning flashed as the storm raged on, and excitement that felt like little electrical currents raced all over my skin. The ding of the elevator arriving was loud as it announced the appearance of the guest of honor.

Pressing myself against the concrete, I held my breath as that sound drew closer. Her foot came into view before her body did, and my muscles coiled and got ready to spring. Reaching out like a snake snatching its prey, I wrapped my hand around her neck and yanked hard to pull her behind the concrete with me.

I was so quick that she didn’t even try to scream until I had an arm around her throat and the other wrapped like a vice around her body. My arm tightened and cut off her air supply.

“Don’t fucking scream,” I growled in her ear. “Do you understand me?” She nodded and he loosened the hold around her throat enough that she could speak.

“Please, please don’t hurt me. You can have my purse. I-I have a fifty in the-the wallet,” she stammered.

“No, Sarah, that’s not what I want from you,” I whispered in her ear.

Her body shivered against me, and another thrill shot through my body. The anticipation of what was to come was making me hard.

“How do you know my name,” she whimpered.

“I know a great many things about you, Sarah. I know that you leave your daughter Kim home alone all the time to look after herself.”

“I have to. I need to work,” she cried. “Or we wouldn’t have food or a place to live.”

“Kim just turned eight. Do you really think she should be in charge of cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry for the home? How about the fact that she walks to the store alone to get items to make food for dinner in the dead of the night because you don’t come home until two or three in the morning. Do you think that is fair?”

Her body shook as she cried. “Who are you?”

“Who I am is not important. Why I’m here is,” I growled.

“I’m not a bad mom. I just have to work a lot, but I do it all for Kim,” she said, and if I didn’t already know better, I would’ve believed her crocodile tears. The thing was, I’d been following Sarah for far too long for her to pull that card on me.

“Don’t lie to me, Sarah. You think I don’t know what you’re doing at two in the morning? You don’t think I don’t know the fear that shines in your daughter’s eyes when you are home? How you broke her arm the last time you got angry,” I whispered, but Sarah’s reaction was like I’d yelled in her ear. Her body jerked as if a physical blow had hit her. The demon that lived in my heart began to rise and demand her flesh. “I know all about you. I know that you never wanted your daughter.”

“That’s not true,” she said.

“Do you deny hurting her,” I asked and could feel her throat working at swallowing behind the hard press of my forearm. “Do you?”

The anger that burned inside of me was making my body quake as I waited for her response.

“No, I…I have hurt her, but I didn’t mean to do it. I just get so angry with her sometimes when she doesn’t listen, but I’ll do better. I promise that I will be a better mother. Please just let me go,” she begged.

So pathetic.

I suddenly felt like I was in the movie, The Crow. Maybe just like the movie if I let her live, she would change her ways, but she wasn’t going to live long enough for me to find out. Cause I honestly didn’t give a fuck.

“Sarah…do you think it was a fluke that your apartment went up in flames when your daughter wasn’t home?” She shook against my body, the tears real now.

Of course the tears were real now.

For all that Sarah was, she wasn’t stupid. Her instinct alone would be screaming that this wasn’t going to end with me letting her go free. I imagined that Sarah’s mind was not piecing together what I’d said and was trying her best to come up with a way to prove how changed she would be after this moment like we were in a Scrooge movie. I was no fucking ghost of Christmas past, present or future, but I was the kiss of death that planned on making her pay for her sins. The same sins my father had paid for with his life.

“No, Sarah, that most certainly wasn’t a coincidence. Neither was the fact that your kitchen chairs were missing or that your window wouldn’t open. I watched you sleep, and I planned your death with great care. Only fluke circumstance alone is what saved you, but that wouldn’t happen twice. I’ve made sure of it.”

“Please don’t do this, I’m begging you. I will do whatever you want. Just don’t kill me,” she blubbered. “Please.”

“Mommy, please don’t. You’re hurting me,” I said, my voice rising until I sounded like a child. “I didn’t mean it. Ouch! Mommy, please.” My arms tightened like a python, and she gasped, trying to pull air into her lungs as she thrashed helplessly against me. “Did you stop?”She didn’t answer. Only more of the same whimpering tumbled from her mouth. It didn’t matter. I knew what had happened, and I could’ve told her what had happened even if I hadn’t been watching. It always ended the same way.

“You want to run and prove that you’re a changed woman?” She nodded as much as she could. “Alright, lets play a game. I’m going to give you a ten second head start. If you can get to your car, get in and start to drive away before I grab you again, then you can consider it your second chance. Does that sound fair?”

“Yes, please…I’ll do anything for a second chance.”