I was never quite sure how he managed it. Not only did he have a fantastic job as a blood splatter analyst, but he managed to get married and convince the chick he loved her. A man with no feelings or dreams managed to live normally. Breathe normally. Be normal. It infuriated me to no end, and I closed Dexter in the Dark without bothering to see what page I had been on. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail and shoved inside a baseball cap, and a white silk mask covered my features. Dexter had some good ideas. I stole the rest from Sweeney Todd.
"Doesn't it get you mad?" I asked the man in front of me. He was probably in his late forties or early fifties. I hadn't bothered to care about that factor. What I did care about was that he had molested two students last semester, and gotten away with murder in San Francisco fourteen years ago. He hadn't been punished, and Dexter was just a character in a novel. And I was bored.
Mr. Carrus, the history teacher at a local university, turned his panicked and dulling eyes towards the sound of my muffled voice. Unfortunately for him he couldn't do anything else. Not even slip out of the noose securing his head to the metallic table top. The rest of his body was tied down with belts, wire and duct tape. I tended to go a little overboard at times. He struggled again and I giggled before shaking my head. "Now, now, that just hurts. I would know. I tried it on myself."
I watched listlessly as his struggling eased into nothing and his chest stopped moving. His fingers gave one last desperate twitch, an afterthought perhaps, before I was the only thing moving in the room. And moving I was. Kristy was as much of an Avenger as Dexter was, even if she didn't have as many resources. Poor Kristy.
As soon as I was quite certain that he was dead I untied him, un gagged him, and gently wiped the blood from his throat. I was almost humming to myself as I pulled his body from the table and let it drop with a thud onto the body bag awaiting it. Now it was off and into the furnace. Or fire. Or giant billowing smoky hole in the floor. Whichever you preferred. As I dragged him towards it I heard a twiddle and my pocket shook. I carefully removed a glove and pulled out the phone.
"Hello?" I asked, pushing the door to the inferno open. A wave of heat assaulted me and I hurried to shove the body in. Then I shut the door and trotted back to the table to get my book.
"Kristy? It's Byron. Where are you? I called your house and your mom said you were out. Weren't we supposed to hang out tonight?" He sounded slightly annoyed, as if we really had made plans. I glanced at the calendar on my phone and chuckled.
"Nope. No plans tonight. Sorry. Actually, I'm kind of busy. I got a new book." Two truths blended together well to form one that would please him. I smiled.
"Liar. Where are you? What are you doing?" Now he sounded angry and…quieter. For some reason there was an echo, and I instantly realized why. He had me on speaker. There was someone else there.
"I honestly don't know why you're so upset. Chill out, okay? I'm reading my new book and listening to quiet." I let an inch of my annoyance creep into my voice, and I knew he would try a different approach. He didn't disappoint me.
"You did it again, didn't you?" The direct approach. For once, Byron wasn't beating around the bush.
"Did what again?" Like the clueless dolt I pretended to be, I flipped open my book and began to thumb through the pages.
"You killed someone else." If time stood still, it didn't register with me. If I was supposed to feel a sense of panic, I didn't. Instead I just turned to a random page in the story and began to read.
"Oh come on, what are you talking about? I'm reading." Honestly I was a little peeved with him. Who did he think he was? He had no right to judge me. Just because he had found out about one little mishap, he never let me take the easy way out of something.
Suddenly, I heard something. Not something in the air or in my little Queasy Bake-Him Oven, but something in my mind. A flutter of dark wings and muffled laughter; my own little Passenger. I smiled and closed the book, then opened my mouth to speak again. This time I got the words from somewhere else.
"Byron, I can understand why you're mad but there isn't any reason to attack me like this. Just calm down, okay? Go hang out with some friends. Do you want u-," I almost slipped. "me to stop by?" I didn't, but I knew it would shut him up. After a few seconds of hushed mumbling on the other line I heard a click and his voice was louder.
"No, don't. I'll come get you. Where are you?"
"I don't like speaker phone, Byron. If you do that again, you won't know anything new." And then I hung up.