“She was a young girl, Elias. She thought she was in love. Young girls, they make mistakes.”
“She was a slut!” he yelled and looked at me like a man at the end of his emotional tether, his eyes wide, his face flushed. “She let them do things to her that no girl should ever let a man do to her.”
“. . . she made a mistake, Elias. She didn’t deserve to die. She deserved your empathy, not your judgment.”
He looked at me coldly.
“She let three men fuck her, Indy,” he said my name with spite. “She let them defile her. Showed them what white trash she was.” He stood up abruptly. “And who do you think would have paid for that mistake?”
Goosebumps rippled across my skin as I looked at him in disbelief.
“You pushed her off the water tower,” I whispered.
His head jerked toward me. “Of course, I pushed her off the water tower! What else was I going to do? Let her live so she could keep doing this? Let her ruin my life . . . over and over and over again?”
“She didn’t deserve to die!”
“She would have kept doing it, don’t you see? Everywhere we went she would’ve dropped her panties for the next guy with a motorbike and a cut on his back. And I would’ve been the brother of the town whore, again and again.” He was still for a moment. Then he straightened. “You know what I felt when I watched her go over the edge and plummet to the ground?”
When I looked away in disgust, he answered, “Relief. I felt an overwhelming sense of goddamn relief. It was finally over. I wasn’t the brother of the town bike anymore. I was the brother of the dead girl.” He gave me a pointed look. “And I’ll tell you what, that gets you laid more times than being the brother of the town slut, that’s for sure. Thank God for sympathy fucking!” He grinned like a madman. “Because God knows it got me laid a ridiculous amount of times.”
“You’re crazy,” I breathed.
He laughed evilly. “No. I’m not crazy, Indy. Just fed up with her behavior and having to pack up and start over because my sister couldn’t keep her legs closed.”
His maniacal smile faded and he scoffed, shaking his head.
“It’s ironic, really, seeing that we moved away anyway. My mama had difficulty getting over her death, so we moved back to Sweetwater, Alabama. Straight from one hellhole and right into another. You see, my mama got a boyfriend and he was brutal. Strong. Overpowering.” Elias’s eyes glazed over as he recalled the dark memories. He was still for a moment. Trapped in the past. The muscle in his jaw ticking as his mind took him back to the terrible times he had endured. “He did things to me that just ain’t right. And you know what got me through the nights when he decided to brutalize me? While he was ramming his cock into me I would think about setting fire to that stinking mobile trailer we called a home with him inside it.” He inhaled deeply to push the memories back. “And that’s exactly what I did when he came home drunk one night and decided he wanted to rape me again. I was waiting. Anticipating his every move. So, I set that trailer ablaze with him passed out on the floor. And it felt so freeing. Making him pay. Making him die. The relief was a rush.” He looked up, pleased with what he had done. “In that moment, I knew I had to make the Kings of Mayhem pay. I had to exact my revenge on everyone who had fucked up my life.”
He turned away and began to flip the knife in his hand. Bile rose in my throat. His revelations were drawing to an end, meaning any minute now, he would try to kill me.
“They didn’t fuck up your life,” I said, delirious with fear and dehydration. Sweat trickled from my temple to my jaw. “You left town because she died. And she died because of you.”
He swung back to me. “And I killed her because of them.”
There was no point trying to rationalize with him. He was insane. His thoughts and motives were all twisted up into a giant knot in this brain.
“And now?” I was afraid to ask.
“Now?” Elias grinned evilly. “Now, I finish with you.”
Fear tore up my spine.
“They will kill you.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that they’ll come after me.” His eyes hit mine. “But by the time they find you, I’ll be long gone.”
“You’re a fucking coward,” I said as he walked toward me. The knife in his hand glinted in the morning light. “You say this is payback for what they did, yet you couldn’t even confront them man to man. You crept about like a little church mouse only making your move when you knew no one was watching. You’re not a man, you’re a weakling.”