Redeeming Rhys (4 page)

She hated that she decided to go to the store that night, when she originally planned to hold off until the next evening. Perchance, that is how her story was to end. They say everyone is born with purpose, destiny if you will.

Rhys’ thoughts collided, as he became perplexed with that variation. Destiny, having someone’s fate in his hands. Perhaps that is why he needed to find Wren again, because he let her live. He needed to see what she had become, if she was due to be something great and honorable, someone who was meant to change the world. Or maybe, if he was lucky, she was more like him. Uncontrolled and stuck in the past. Rhys often felt like he was on a running wheel that never stopped. He just kept going, and never went anywhere. He only felt one thing.

Anger.

Until he thought of Wren. The catastrophic disparity of feelings that surged through him was shifted from one extreme to the following from one fleeting second to the next. He felt like, at any moment, he would explode into billion bits of blackness. He was colder than stone. He didn’t think he could hate any more than he did. He wasn’t sure if he was making up for all the wrong that had been done to him, or if it was his calling; who he was born to become.

Someone dark, dangerous, and deadly.

His cuts may have healed with time. His bruises may have faded, but the images from the shadows of that night would never abandon. The calamitous sea swimming in his gut was getting stronger. He needed his release. His deadly, bloody release and he held fate in his hands.

With those thoughts, he smiled, the chapped edges of his lips cracking. The blood from the cracked corner of his lips seeped into his mouth and he lapped it up, drinking in the taste of his life. His purpose.

“Oh, my darling. Didn’t you listen?” Rhys whispered, leaning in to touch her face.

The girl stilled at his words, her skin turning cold beneath his unwanted touch. It didn’t matter what she wished for. She would wear his touch whether she wanted it or not. Rhys loved the smell of fear. That fed his belly more than food. That gave him urgency, purpose. He felt like a righteous king ruling an untouchable demesne.

“Shhh… shhhh,” Rhys cooed.

The girl was understandably confused by his soft-mannerisms as he continued to stroke her face and brush away her tears. Was he playing her? Was this merely the calm before the storm? Rhys bent down until his roughened lips threatened to brush against hers. Her quaking had ceased, but her silent tears remained a steady stream down her mottled, puffy face.

“Oh, my sweet little Wren,” Rhys hummed, stretching over the seat of his beat-up truck.

He pushed his lips against hers, parting her thin lips with his deprived tongue. His hand explored her body, her physique a slave to his trace. His hand cupped the front of her jeans, clasping her sex and he knew he would have to take her sweetly soon, as his mind still played with him, daydreams of Wren sprawled out as he buried his cock deep inside of her.

Yes, delicious daydreams…

Her tiny hands made their way up to his chiseled chest, his white T-shirt misted with sweat. She pushed her hands as hard as her little body could, an appeal for Rhys to let her go. He pulled away, breathy, needy, the face of his once-angel forgotten. The unattractive girl with thin lips and a peculiar face shook her head at him, opening her mouth to speak.
Seconds
. He got seconds to see his beautiful Wren. Instead, this bitch had to destroy that. Perhaps her own destiny was in her hands. She decided it herself. If she would have went along with it, maybe Rhys would have spared her life.

Now, a different set of cards would be dealt.

She would be delivered to evil.

He brought his hand over his head, the threat of hurt and harm wailing high above, and the girl cowered in the corner, reaching for the handle of the truck. Rhys anticipated that, as the same act had occurred many times before. He had the hinge rigged so it couldn’t be opened from the inside. That’s what the devil always does. Thinks before he mystifies an angel with his false-goodness. Stupid girl, to revel in the moments of demureness that were never real. They were only provided to her because his fucked up mind was seeing someone else.

Never fight with the devil because you will always be left to burn.

“Tsk, tsk, little girl. It’s useless to try,” Rhys berated, bringing his arm down.

“Answer me. Do you remember what I said to you earlier?”

The girl bit her bottom lip, wiping her watering eyes. She shook her head no. That disappointed Rhys greatly. What a sign of contempt. He became incensed further. Did she not take him seriously?

“I said if you don’t listen, I will skin you like a dirty fucking kitty.”

The girl’s mouth opened in the perfect ‘O’. Rhys wanted to smile, but refrained. Instead, he grabbed her wrist. He had to allow himself one more release. That is what he always told himself.
Just one more time. A little more money and one more time. One more raven haired lovely, then off to Kentucky to the house of the Lord where my answers await me.

“If you scream, make a loud noise, or cry for help, I will run with you over to that forest,” Rhys paused, tilting his head to a small wooded area to the right of the parking lot. It was dark and unlit, “Then I will tie you to a tree, rip your shirt off your body, stuff it in your mouth until you gag and vomit on yourself,” he stilled again, pulling her closer to him, making her put her hands around his waist. He was disgusted at the look on her face, but realized his choices at such a time were limited.

“Then I will take my knife and stab your cunt. I’ll watch your pussy drip, slowly and beautifully until my cock can’t take it any longer.”

The girl tried to pull away once more, but Rhys caught her wrist, making her hug his waist.

“I’d shove my dick into your knifed-up twat until your eyes stopped crying. Then, I’d take my little play toy and show you God, darling. I’d peel your skin away like a dirty fucking kitty as I watched the life leave you. Painfully. Slowly. Mercilessly. Because right now, I am your God. And you’re my fucking bitch.”

Demise was inevitable for the one who put herself in the midst of the fallen angel, unknowingly seeking pain, punishment, and blood. But the sorrows spilled from her lips would soon send him into a frenzied state that would change the days to come for eternity.

RHYS REMEMBERED HOW
to tie Bowline knots in Boy Scouts, though it had been years since he had enjoyed, or rather loathed, a meeting with good ole step-daddy. He tuned out the incessant cries from the trembling girl, the humming of the aged air-conditioning unit in the background of the shit motel making him more nervous than usual. He was always looking over his shoulder, but something settled deep in his gut; a sensation of unease. He had kept an eye on the girl since he took her, and he was sure she hadn’t reached for her purse. It was tightly stashed between his left side and the door on the way back to the motel. He played the scene over and over again in his mind like a broken record on repeat; their trek from ATM to ATM. He knew he had to work on her fast, and though he had threated her with her life, he still hadn’t made his mind up if he would take it. The thought alone that he could is what made him hard. The sheer idea of control made him want to explode from the inside out into an oblivion, and he was sure he couldn’t allow that. Not tonight. He had to save that fiery energy for the night he discovered the information he needed.

His eyes twirled over the three rows of twine rope. He respected his work and wanted to smile, but didn’t allow it. Times like those were not joyous. They were proof of an abomination that was birthed years ago as he took the horrendous abuse from his step-father while his mother sat back and watched, sipping on her church-smelling wine with a 120 cigarette in tow, simply shaking her head at him, because she, too, was repulsed by him. Rhys became angry, even more so, when recollections of his dead mother overshadowed his fucked up skull. He kept telling himself, over and over again, that he could hold it together. That he would be able to let this girl go after he took what he needed from her, but as the seconds passed when phantasmagorias of his mother wouldn’t leave his messed up mind, he knew the beating beneath her wrist would terminate as soon he stole what he desired.

Stole.

That is what he did.

Is it really stealing when the damage is cyclic? Was it really his fault, with how fucked up he had become? Was it the result of the things he sustained, or was it who he was destined to become, a man capable of ghastly, unthinkable things? He shook his head, all while his eyes stayed on the girl’s tied-up wrist; the sputtering air-conditioner made him realize the hell he was existing in. He swallowed hard, feeling trapped inside of the fourteen-year-old’s head who was bathed in blood ten years ago. He was stunted. Rhys knew that, he was not able to move forward, but how could he when all he did was commit one act of corruption after another?

The shaking of the girl’s hands concluded, the dull pallor of her hands turning a faint shade of blue. Rhys knew he had done it right this time; tied the rope perfectly, while remembering the girl a few months back who snaked her way out of his restraints. Again, he wanted to smile at the reminiscences as he thought back to chasing her across the black asphalt of a dirty, abandoned tire shop off Rural Route 530. He killed her all due to her defiance.

“You are going to hell for this,” the girl whispered to Rhys, her voice shaking as if she was speaking a truth that no one else would admit.

Rhys laughed a little, then made himself stop, taking his hard-skinned fingers and touching the warmth of her arm. He was always curious about the touch of a woman, how it would feel if it were ever reciprocated, because he hadn’t gotten that before. He was never in such a situation to keep any girl he took as a pet, though the thought had crossed his mind many times. Rhys knew he didn’t have the patience to train them to want him. He simply had to take what he needed, cut them free, or murder them, and find the next one that reminded him of
her.

Clearly, that was not enough. He was needing more and more with each passing situation, the gore, the pain he inflicted, the dripping blood was never sufficient because they were not
her
. He dreamt of better encounters and warm kisses from a girl that cared for him. He wasn’t so sure they were dreams, though. He was convinced they were more like glimpses into the heaven he tried to convince himself didn’t exist, one that he would never see.

He sighed with impatience, unsure what route the night would take. His eyes traveled up her skinny neck while he admired the pulsating under her snow-white skin, proof of life that he so desperately wanted to siphon away from the world, all because he had been fucked his whole life. He wondered if he was the product of crazy and cruelty, or perchance he was just one of the weak ones. Certainly there were others that endured far worse than him, and they didn’t go about their realities such as he did.

He gulped hard, his look making its way down to the girl’s heaving chest. Her breasts were small, pert little mounds and his mouth watered. A normal man would want to be gentle, taking his hand and gliding it over her bare breasts while the woman whimpered out in pleasure. Rhys was not a normal kind of mind. In his mind, he daydreamt of ripping her sweaty shirt away from her body as her cries for mercy tormented the monster pleading to be unleashed. Wishing for its own dysfunctional release.

Tonight, he would bask in it, every bloody second, Rhys would get what he needed, but the sorrows spilled from her lips spoke truths, not lies. He knew that. He was not a decent man, and never wanted to be. Were the acts that he partook in merely a way at getting back at the God he was made to confess to every Sunday as a boy? Maybe. He was tired of trying to answer that question, instead he existed and accepted it, everything, except Wren. He would find her because she mattered to him. It wasn’t love, it was something else. He attempted to figure it out for ten years, and couldn’t. He only knew that his time was running out.

“Oh, darling,” Rhys paused, looking at the fretful girl in the eyes, “hell is what I wish for.”

Her eyes, which were a little too close together, started watering once again. Rhys reached in his back pocket and felt relief when he touched the hard edges of his serrated flip-knife. Rhys’ mind wandered to all the macabre things he wanted to do to her, but mostly, he was confused about how much he craved the soft touch from the woman who he let go. He always knew he balanced along the edge of lunacy, but at that inkling, he was being pushed over for reasons unbeknownst to him.

“Now, let me show you what hell can feel like, little girl. Let me demonstrate, so that when you get to heaven, you can tell God that I am not a stronger man for what I endured. You tell your God that I am merely a man who wears the scars from his past in his mind. I, my darling, am the result from the God that you pray to. The very one that you plead to, for another chance that will you will never get; Him, he doesn’t care, because I am the consequence of your faulty God.”