The gun jumped from the force of the shot and knocked me back a step. I heard him scream in pain and watched his body fall to the ground, letting go of his gun as he grabbed at his foot with both hands.

Jaxon quickly kicked the gun away and clutched the man’s hair. He dragged him to the bed in one smooth stride.

“Keep the gun at him,” he demanded me.

I nodded, aiming it with less ease than before. I didn’t trust myself. I mean… I hadn’t even been aiming at his foot!

Jaxon looked down at the dead bald man sprawled on the floor, staining the hardwood with his blood. He bent down and unfastened the belt that he’d worn. When it was off, he turned to the quivering, pained blonde man and wrapped it around his neck. He tied the belt against the bar of the bed, tightening it until the man wheezed for air.

“Wh-Wh-What are you doing?” It was coming back to me fast. What the hell had I just done? Did I just… Did I just kill a man?

No.

No.

I let him violate me first. Let him being the operative word so that I could kill him.

Jaxon watched as my sanity declined. “Don’t think right now, Sara. Think later. Right now we act. Okay?”

I nodded, but I was thinking still.

He pulled a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around me as best he could without letting the blood at the end of it touch me. As the man behind us writhed, Jaxon took the gun off of me.

“I need you out of this room,” he told me. His face had changed. The darkness in him peeked out at me; a cold mask that chilled me to the bone and yet… comforted me too.

“Wh-What are you g-going to d-do?”

“I’m going to get some answers. Now get out, and wait for me.”

I moved my legs, astounded I could even move at all! I stared at the blonde: one hand wrapped around the belt tugging at his neck and the other around his foot. His eyes flickered to mine; he was no longer the coolheaded killer bent on waiting for his turn to fuck me. Fear had absorbed into his every feature and his lips quivered.

I knew… I knew this was the last time I would see him alive.

*****

I jumped at the first scream. I wrapped the covers tighter around me, but my body wound up like a string, waiting with restrained breath for the next.

He tortured him for hours… and hours. I thought the screams were bad at first, but then I really heard them – the terrified shrill that could scare away a grizzly bear. He’d scream “I don’t know” over and over again, until his voice became raspy and hoarse from overuse.

Never during those hours did I hear Jaxon’s voice. He must have been speaking quietly, and I didn’t know if that disturbed me more than if he’d screamed back demanding whatever it was he was wanting answers to.

I hated myself for feeling my chest ache at the sobs that now emitted from the closed bedroom door. He sounded desperate and helpless. I didn’t know if I wanted him to die. Did he really deserve it? Yes, my mind screamed. It was still too difficult to listen to. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes. This man would have raped and killed me otherwise. He would have enjoyed it, too. That’s not human.

But what is human? What defined right and wrong if not for the social morals implemented in every one of us since birth? Are monsters born or are they made? And if they are made, is that really their fault or is it the product of their upbringing?

I hurt Jaxon. I learned young what hatred and anger was. I was at its receiving end. And it crept on me when I least expected it because although I knew that it was wrong to hurt and hate, I’d always thought that was the last thing that would ever happen to me. Yet it did. Those who least expect the worst are those at most risk. I became a poison to my surroundings and hadn’t even realized it until it was too late.

This man would have killed you. If it was his upbringing that made him, that is no excuse. Just as it was no excuse for you to treat the one you loved like shit.

I dropped my hands from my ears and listened. I listened painfully hard at every little thing. No longer uncertain, I was now… reassured by it.

“Just kill me!” he begged. “Just kill me.” And then he screamed long and hard as if something was being done to him. I heard the faint sounds of an object falling to the floor, and then the man was vomiting.

“Please… please just kill me.”

Jaxon

“Kill you?” Jaxon’s brows shot up as he stared at the mess of a man before him. He kneeled down until he was face to face with the piece of shit and said, “Why would I do you a favour and kill you so early in our game? I’m having so much fun. Aren’t you?”

The bloodied men, black and blue already from their playtime, watched Jaxon lean over and grab the switch blade off the floor. He casually wiped the bloody blade against his jeans as he waited for the man to respond.

“Not going to answer me?” Jaxon pierced him with a deadly look. “Should I pull out your fingernails on your other hand now? Was five not enough?”

The man trembled and wept. “I don’t know who sent us. I told you already. Please don’t…”

“Please what? Please don’t kill you?” Jaxon shot him a sweet smile. “You were going to kill my woman. No, wait, you were going to fucking rape her first and then kill her. In front of me, too. Right?”

The man shook his head vehemently. “No! No, that was him! Not me. I wouldn’t-wouldn’t have done-done anything, I fucking swear!”

Jaxon nodded. “Right. So you telling him that you wanted your go with my woman –”

“I didn’t mean it!”

“Right, right. Wow, how fucking stupid of me to think you meant it!” Jaxon shook his head with a look of false shock on his face. “So what would you have done then? You’d have…?”

“I would have-have stopped him!”

“Really?”

“Yes, I fucking swear! I’d never-never have touched her. Never!”

Jaxon nodded in mock understanding again. “Hmm. Yeah, and you pointing the gun at me–”

“I was going to drop it! I was never going to actually fucking use-use it, I swear, man! I swear!” Yeah, he swears – Jaxon got that already.

He continued to watch the man flounder in his bullshit. Really, the shit they fucking said when they were desperate! It was outrageous. They played the part of a victim to perfection.