He was becoming angry. I could sense it, both in the way his eyes shined with tears and the way he placed himself: Five feet away from me, as opposed to his usual two-and-three-quarters position. His feet were firmly planted, but his crossed arms were not in as tight of a knot as they could have been, which meant that he was determined to shout at me and be angry, but he wasn't even sure if he could. He knew what he wanted to do, but was conflicted as to how he would do it.
"And what, exactly, do you think you're doing here? I told you not to come back, do you realize I could call the police and have you locked away in a cell before you can even say 'Look here, Mull?'" I opened my mouth to reply, but he pointed at me and gave me what he must have thought was his best glare.
"No, don't say anything to me, Zarria! If you do, you'll probably say something that'll make me change my mind about you, and that is something that I am not willing to do! So just shut up!" He ranted a bit more about how volatile and unstable I was, how completely and utterly disgusting I was to him, but finally, he calmed down. I waited until he had taken a few steps back and sank into his favorite armchair before speaking.
"Are you finished or should I come back later when you're not screeching profanities into my gorgeous ears?"
He shot me a dark look. "Not funny, Zarria." I shrugged. So maybe it wasn't the best thing for me to say, but at least he knew that I had more to tell him. If I had come straight out with it, he most likely would have cut me off again, as he was prone to do in these types of situations. I ignored his glares and muttering, and forged ahead.
"There's nothing wrong with me, y'know. Nothing at all. I don't need therapy sessions, and I most certainly am not a psychopathic killer who gets off on the screams and pain of my victims. That particular type of horseshit only happens in books, I'm afraid, and not the nonfiction ones. So, you can stop pretending that I'm dangerous. I may be a killer, but dangerous is something I have never been and will never be." He gave me a puzzled look.
"But how can you be a murderer and not be dangerous? The two go hand-in-hand!" I shook my head, and he gave me a disbelieving look.
"Not quite so, dear friend. Just because I know how to mangle a body doesn't mean I am necessarily dangerous. I could be the least dangerous person in the world and still know where to cut and punch to make things look bad. And as I said before, there's nothing wrong with me, I just know more than most people do about the body."
"Nothing wrong...nothing wrong?" He was practically spluttering. "What the hell do you mean 'nothing wrong'? There is everything wrong with you Zarria! You enjoy killing people, you use it like a drug, and you'd do it for free if you weren't so in need of money! You go to these therapy sessions because you've got a problem, and it needs to be fixed! I don't know how long you've been away, but most people don't go around fantasizing about murder!"
"I don't fantasize about it," I muttered, looking away from him. I should've seen this whole thing coming, but my own foolishness got in my way. Maybe if I had told him the truth, he wouldn't be screaming at me. Or maybe he still would, I didn't particularly know. I could pick apart Einstein's brain and know exactly what I was doing, but when it came to Mull and his feelings, I was completely in the dark. It was maddening.
"Yes you bloody well do! I've heard you, when you're walking down the street, muttering about money and jobs and methods, I do have ears you know! You love it, this little game you play with people's lives on the line! You are so sick and twisted that I don't even know if I can help you anymore!"
"Mull, that's not true and you know it. I'm perfectly normal."
"The average person's definition of normal doesn't include a knowledge of how to make someone die slowly and painfully. A damn butcher is what you are."
