Chapter Fifteen: The Blonde
When his hand tugged back the door handle, the girl's head fell limp to the other shoulder away from the window and he couldn't help but think that if he wasn't who he was maybe his mind could've processed she was pretty. The girl looked around, bewildered and obviously inebriated.
"Jimmy?"
No, Michael replied in thought.
Worse.
He grabbed the girl by the scruff of her neck and pulled her out of her seat. As she stumbled onto the roadway on wobbly heeled feet he seized the base of her collar and slammed her flush against his front so quickly that she jerked in surprise.
"Jimmy what… the fuck?" The girl swung her arms outward, alert as much as her daze could allow. One arm elbowed his ribs. Didn't she know that struggling only made it worse?
"Getttt your hands off of me, you perrrvert psycho." Her outcry was a half slur.
He studied her and told himself it was not the dirty blonde hair over her breasts that reminded him of his older sister. Nor the dark tint of makeup garnishing the ring of her brown eyes. Not the bare legs that seemed to extend forever under her dress.
None of that.
Michael committed few victims to memory. But, even their faces were strained images at most. The only face with the honor to be remembered with every detail so strictly cherished, was the one that got away…
Laurie.
But, with his black eyes on the blonde's face he'd admit she looked akin to Judith because in those mere seconds before her death Judy had the same look. A look that says she can't expect what's coming for her.
He concluded this girl would bring him some gratification of reliving the night he had killed his sister. Maybe, doing this would also quell the voices.
"Michael!"
Ill silence befell them as the girl stiffened in his hand, her screams faltered. Misguided hope must've given her the idea that someone had come to her rescue. For that, Michael would've pitied her if he knew what pity was.
Finally, he turned his eyes frontward.
"D-don't hurt her! I'll… I'll shoot," Carmen said.
He stared at the end of the barrel leveled below her eyes. Why wasn't he surprised that she'd taken the liberty to free her hands?
When the colorless glaciers of Carmen's eyes sharpened into a glare, Michael's breath hitched and he decided he would be amused.
Slowly, his fingers dug into the muscles of the blonde's neck which yielded to his grip like dough. Her pert mouth, opening and gasping, provoked an enraged cry to stumble from Carmen's lips.
"No!"
He heard the bullet whistle past his ear, puncturing the trunk of a dead tree. The shot missed, but he'd stilled his hands.
That's to say, he didn't stop because he feared she'd see through with her threats. In any given situation, he perpetrated fear and he'd have it no other way.
He stopped because he wanted to give her the illusion that he did.
Carmen visibly gulped. With her jaw clenched, he could see the angles of her face as she tried to collect herself from the recoil. Her grip was unsteady. All good signs. For a second, he thought he was losing his game.
Now, it nagged at him that she missed because she was probably a lousy shot. Is a lousy shot. He would like to guess how many times she's ever even touched a gun.
"I'll do it! I'll...I will kill you. But...But, if you let her go, I'll lower the gun." She steeled herself which allayed the quiver in her voice. "You can't kill her."
His thoughts gave a brief pause.
'Can't'?
'Can't' implied he didn't have a choice.
Now, his life hinged on proving her wrong.
With the knife intimate in his hand, he released the pendulum of his fist in one swift downward motion. Metal plunged through skin and cracked through the enclosure of her ribs. He felt the resistance of an organ being punctured, gushing out blood around steel.
The fading of her heartbeat faintly traveled to the handle.
This was intimacy.
Oh, Judy…
The hallucination of his older sister floated over his vision then faded away with the ghost of her scream.
MICHAEL!
The blonde's brown eyes stared wider and wider in agony like her painted mouth. Her voice, first shrill, had thinned to a high animalistic creening of sputters and gasps. But, it wasn't enough.
It's never enough.
Flipping the position of his hand, he dragged the path of the knife down towards her navel and came across the bone of her rib before jerking past it.
When he withdrew the knife, her flesh was parted from breast to hip. Blood worked its way down the front of her dress, down the slope of her sun-kissed legs. As the last gleam of light left her eyes, her body hung in Michael's hand by the neck.
He hated it when they died too soon.
Releasing his grip, the blonde sank to the puddle of her blood. He angled his mask towards Carmen again.
Would it be too much to say he was pleased by what he saw?
Pleased by the barrel of the revolver dipping in hesitation. Pleased with the tears rolling down her porcelain expression— an expression frosted with loss.
He couldn't quite say why this pleased him — it simply did.
Her whimper was a single word — Michael wished he could hear it again.
"No…"
Yes.
Besides, after all she'd done, Carmen can't be ungrateful to him. It could have been her in the girl's place.
AN: Thank you for all the positive feedback on Michael's POV so far. If future chapters in his POV are below your expectations let me know in a review, and I'll straighten up my act pronto- I don't wanna tarnish his gracefully murderous character and the best way I can gauge that is through the audience.
Also, I know a reviewer brought this up, but as a forewarning, we won't be seeing semi-romantic interactions yet. Carmen is gonna need to reconcile Michael's situation first. However for Michael...