Chapter 29 - Love is Death
Agonized screams tore from Giana's throat. Her body was slick with sweat — decorated with blood as he continued his assault on her. Her pained features pinched up so beautifully as copious amounts of pain speared through her. Her breathing was ragged, her throat coarse from crying out. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to bite through it. Ryder needed to see the gleaming anguish in her ebony depths. He needed to see what was buried behind the tears.
Ryder's posture grew rigid, his muscles twisted and coiled with frustration underneath his black-tee, his eyes gleamed with a fiery anger like that of a ember crackling in the hearth of a fireplace. Gloved fingers bit into her cheeks as he sharp grabbed her delicate features, hissing out a warning as clear as the warning laced behind his demonic eyes,"Open your eyes or lose them."
She seemed hesitant, debating his words, perhaps? If she wanted to test him she certainly was pushing it to the limits. Her eyelids briefly flicked open, almost testing the waters per se. They weren't special, like Layla's, like Creeper's, but they were of an average beauty. He'd never considered himself to have a type, but it seemed brown-eyed girls were his thing. He wanted to train his gaze on the set of eyes that were currently staring at him with this... this undeniable vengeance, with a spark of pain and a crackle of fear. The eyes that haunted him on a whole different level, a deeply anguished and feisty level. Her eyes were seared into the back of his mind. Always watching; always questioning... always taunting.
Ryder smirked as he shot her cold glare, "Good girl. Now, time's wasting. Let's get the ball rolling because the longer I see your face..." Ryder trailed his gloved thumb across her bottom lip, Layla coming to the forefront of his mind, "the more I want to back out of this. And don't draw hope from that. I can't back out. I need to do this. You need to die, Layla. I need to get you out of my system. Out of my mind. Out of my demons grip."
He acquired a far away look as he began to lose focus and get lost in her eyes, the way her lip trembled, the way her skin was silky smooth. Layla drew him in like a Siren to a Sailor out at sea. He was warring with what he truly wanted to do to his Doll. The part of him that wanted to keep her safe... and the part of him that wanted to ravage her and maim her into pieces.
He needed to do it. There could be no going back, and hopefully, killing Giana would put an end to the pernicious ideas his Brother had insidiously suggested. Rein couldn't know he was conflicted — battling so fervently over Layla. If his Brother ever found out of his warring thoughts he would try to poison his mind to get an upper hand on the situation. Ryder couldn't allow that. He wanted Layla. He'd been drawn to her from the start even though he didn't know why. What's so special about her? Why hadn't he considered her one of his Dolls when he first saw her in that alleyway?
Could he rationalize the pull? Had it been because Layla was about to become someone else's victim? Or was it something that just was? She was a Siren calling out to him. Luring him into her trap, bringing him down further and further into the dark oceanic abyss.
He snapped out of his thoughts and brought his glove away from her milky-white flesh. He blinked, trying to clear away the haze, the confusion that was fogging his mind like dense billowing fog that steady rolled across a grassy knoll. His unsettled mental state could be dangerous and he couldn't afford to slip up. Not when they have found his Creeper.
The discovery, and Creeper Doll in general, was something else he couldn't afford to think about. Ryder wound his music box back up, drawing his Demon out to take over once again and pushing down the conflicting thoughts of Layla and Creeper Doll to the darkest levels of his mind. He needed the control. He needed this kill. He needed to refocus his mind on the thrill of hunting, of killing, of being what and who he is. Would she fight him? Would she surrender? Did he even care what she could do? In the back of his mind he thought, "Yes. I want her to fight, and then surrender to me wholly. She is mine to take. To play with. To do with as I wish. Mind. Body. Soul."
The melody drifted around the cellar, his eyes automatically fluttering shut and a grin curling at his blood-stained lips. Ryder opened his dark-eyes and spun on the balls of his feet, heading for his tool kit. As he approached, he couldn't help but feel a need for fire. For heat. To burn away the messy complications so he could revel in the darkness again. To burn away the craving to take Layla and break her. He needed to burn it to nought but ash.
His blow-torch was an option. Maybe some acid? Possibly heat his drill-bit up and sear her perfect flesh? Ryder slid his gloved fingers through his hair, slicking it back and regaining his composure. His fingers grasped the blow-torch before laying it down again. He picked up the tools he really desired and placed them on a metal trolley, then he wheeled the surgical trolley across the room until it was beside the gurney. He wanted her to see his tools, for her mind to conjure up her worst nightmare scenarios. He wanted her afraid; to find out what she was made of.
He wanted to make her scream. Beg. Fight. Maybe he could get her to defy him as Creeper had. Or show some sassy spirit, as Layla did at times. Layla was innocent, though. A romantic. He wanted to bring fire out in the look-a-like. He wanted her to burn with anger, with rebellion, in flames, and erase his desire to kill Layla in the process. He wanted to test her, to get to know Giana inside and out to see if her pretty exterior could represent a spirit which also shined with self preservation.
Ryder grabbed the pliers first, deciding to take her apart piece by piece.
He grinned widely, those devilish dimples drawing her eyes to his. He saw the fear light up like a flashlight behind her eyes causing a devilish grin to twitch at his lips. He grabbed her thumbnail first, the metal clamped painfully down onto her perfectly manicured nail and lifted it up just enough to pull a whimper of pain from her lips.
"Love is pain. Love is a weakness. It causes a darkness to develop, to stain your once pure and innocent heart as black as coal. Love brings loneliness and along with loneliness, a certain vulnerability that you'll never rid yourself of; almost like a poisonous parasite that attaches to your vital organs and feeds and multiplies by the millions per second. Love is the parasite that once it gets into the heart... it never goes away. It continues to feed on your emotions until you can't spend a waking second without your significant other. It causes you to doubt all of your decisions, it takes your free will away and makes you throw your moral compass out of the window as if it didn't even exist to begin with.
"Love awakens that icy cold fear that lives deep inside. It slowly begins to take over your thoughts, infecting every single cell and fiber of your being until you're bending to its will. It's a lethal disease — a plague that begins to turn you against your every sane decision you used to make before love leeched onto your heart. It infects your mind, creating this abyssal besmirch that will never be removed. It embeds in your soul until it drains every ounce of what makes you you.
"It buries so deep inside of you that it haunts your mind, slowly breaking you down, drawing you into that dark abyss that it creates a lost prison; one you can never escape. It causes soul crushing — heart wrenching agony, twisting your once sweet dreams into hellish nightmares. It doesn't just consume you... it devours you wholly and spits out your bloody heart - It breaks every single damn part of you. It shatters every scrap of self-worth, every fucking good memory rushes through your skull and leaves you feeling so lost and unworthy as you sit there dwelling on what you fucking did wrong!
"You blame yourself for ruining the relationship. You blame yourself for everything that went wrong. Days and nights become construed. Weeks turn into months and you're still crying over your lost true love. People say it's better to have loved than to never have loved at all. That's a fucking lie. It's better to never found love. Because then you wouldn't have to go through every waking second thinking of the person who gave you everything in one minute and at the same time stripped you of everything you once were and broke your heart. And the worst part is... you will welcome it, you open yourself up to love by giving it a chance. But you should never give love a chance. Never. It's a fucking monster, a ghoul that will steal your soul and rip your still beating heart out from your chest, leaving you empty inside. Leaving you feeling as numb as cocaine and as empty as a puppet husk.
"Love..." He peered down at her with intense dark eyes, "Love is death."
Ryder gripped the cool metal in his hand before slowly lifting her nail up, tearing it away from the nail-bed and dropping it onto the ground. A scream tore from her lips. He grinned a toothy smile as deep red blood spewed over her thumb, pooling onto the gleaming silver of the gurney.
He moved onto her index finger, his eyes never leaving the trickling blood from her thumb. He added, "Love is hopeless. Love is blind. Love stirs up a well of emotions in you that you never thought you could have. But in the end, it will never work out. Love will always drag you down, pulling your soul into the dark, fiery depths of hell where it chains you forever in torment of your own making. People say that love is life, that love is everything good... " He shook his head, biting his lip gently as he whispered, "Love is none of those things. Love is vengeance. Love can't exist here because love will kill me. Love will kill you, Layla."
The pliers tore her nail off and then another and another until her entire right hand was nail-less and bloody. Her screams sung to his soul, penetrating and twisting around in his darkness, feeding it and caressing it ever-so intoxicatingly. Yes, he'd needed that. It would fix him.
Giant tears poured over Giana's cheeks and her lip began to quiver. The air conditioning chilled her porcelain flesh causing prickles of goosebumps to erupt over her skin. It wasn't the chilly air alone that made her react that way - it was fear and pain. It was the unknown of what he was going to do to her. It was... when will death come. He knew it. He needed more. What he'd done wasn't enough for him. Her blood needed to coat every inch of her body.
Ryder's eyes slid over to his scalpel. He cocked his head with an ominous and foreboding grin as he picked the instrument up and then slowly turned back over to her with an evil glint in his coal black eyes. She was a blank canvas to him. A blank canvas he would paint with scarlet. Crimson was such a marvelous color. Blood spreads so gently across skin and when he gets the chance, he uses his fingers as paint brushes, swirling red strokes over sleek skin. It set his body on fire.
He chuckled as she caught sight of the scalpel, crying out, pleading, "Please! Stop! I can't handle the pain anymore. I haven't done anything to you to deserve this kind of treatment! Please, just stop."
Ryder pretended to consider her plea, rubbing his thumb along his bottom lip as he peered down at her. Giving her a hope he would soon break. He repeated the words of a song, ignoring her pleas, "It's so pitiful what you are, as beautiful as you are, you should have seen this coming all along. You're everything that's so typical, Maybe you're alone, for a reason, you're the reason."
He leaned down, pressing the tip of the scalpel on her abdomen just above her belly button. Blood welled, gliding down to her navel pooling around the rim to the inside. Giana gasped in pain and all she could do was lie there. Lie there and take it with no way to escape. Just as he had said from the beginning. Cries rang out as Ryder took the small blade, cutting fine slithers of her flesh out in a fine cursive font that spelled out 'Love.'
When he laid his blade down he could hear her ragged breathing, her pathetic whimpers. She was so weak. So pathetic. She wouldn't even fight him. He could see it in her eyes, she knew she was dead and she wouldn't even try to put up a fight.
Why wouldn't she fight back? Why wouldn't she at least bloody try!?
Did he want her to fight him? And if he did, why? He controlled his Dolls. He used and discarded them. Why would he want her to fight? That question bounced around inside his skull for minutes, eating at him, urging him to find the answer. He didn't want to know the answer. He needed to finish what he started.
He shook his head, clearing his mind of that unnerving question, and carried on. Next he selected his torch, flicking it to life. The flame seemed to dance for him, the dance of temptation, the dance of seduction. It whispered, urging him on with each hiss... "Keep going."
Paralyzing fear consumed her. He could tell by the way her body stiffened and her eyes held some unforetold fear of fire. Interesting. But this time, he didn't care what had happened to her. All he knew, all he felt, all he could think of was taking the fire to her flesh. Marking her.
He struck like a viper, bringing the flame on the word 'Love' on her abdomen, searing the wound and burning the exposed muscle and tissue, searing love into her skin permanently as he hissed out in disgust, "See what love brings you? Pain. Searing into your soul, burning into you and causing the worst possible pain you could ever imagine. That undeniable need for love, that burning in your heart, that's what love brings. Hurt. Pain. Want. Want of something you will never have."
Ryder moved to the heart that lay just beneath her hip. He took the torch to the inked brand and watched as it bubbled, disfiguring and melting. Giana had screamed so much that her screams were hoarse. Breaking. Cracking. Her throat raw and bleeding.
She couldn't see her abdomen but she would feel what he did. The pain unbearable. It was written in her expression, in her eyes, but so was something else. She thought he was crazy. He wondered if she even believed him to be The Ghost. After all, his reputation said he was elusive, smart, calculated, and cautious. She thought he was mental. Irrational. Insane. But would she say anything? Hell no. She was too afraid to speak. She lacked the courage to tell him what she saw, what she thought, not like his Defiant Doll. Instead, she cried in sorrow as he continued to cut slivers of her skin and then burn the wounds with the torch. The flames licked at her insides, and as much as she wanted to she didn't even have the strength to scream anymore.
How disappointing. How infuriating.
He stood straight, turning the blow-torch off and tilting his head to the side, his brows pulled down in irritation. He sat the tool down beside the scalpel on the metal trolley and turned back to face her with his arms folded firmly across his chest, his biceps tightening like a coiled spring about to snap as his anger simmered just underneath. Couldn't even scream for him? Or show some defiance?
She was pathetic. She wasn't like Layla or Creeper at all, and that irked him more than anything. He grabbed his knife and climbed onto the gurney, gripping it tightly in his palms, the leather of his gloves creaking as he did.
He grabbed her chin roughly, anger rolling off him in waves. "I said, scream for me. Beg me. And I'm not hearing any of it anymore, Doll. And that... well, that pisses me off. You're weak. Disgusting. You're nothing like Layla or Creeper. You may look like Layla but that's it. You aren't fighting me like Creeper either. Where's the defiance? Where's the snarky comments? Where's the..." He tilted his head, tense jaw muscles twitching..."darkness?"
Confusion hit him hard. He cocked his head like a dog, his eyes darkening to coal-black.
"Fuck!" he ground out between clenched jaws, rage rippling through him so hard that his hand tightened around his knife causing his knuckles to push against the leather of his gloves.
Without thinking about it — and before realizing he was doing it — he stabbed the blade deep into her gut. She screamed louder than he thought she would. Then he slicked the glistening silver upwards from her abdomen to the valley of her chest, gutting her like a fish. Her intestines spilled out and onto the silver and blood coated gurney, blood sprayed in an arc and misted across his face and drenched his clothes. He would have to burn them after clean up, but he was too enraged over his constant thoughts of Creeper and Layla to care.
Ryder ripped the knife from her chest and stabbed it into his Doll's heart. She instantly went limp, the light fading from her dark eyes. Eyes that looked so much like his Layla. Eyes he could get lost in. So innocent.
"Fuck. Damn it!"
He wasn't supposed to kill her yet. He'd wanted to savor having the look-alike on his table. He'd needed to get his cravings out of his system, but he'd accomplished nothing. His conflicting thoughts were still there. Creeper continued to haunt his chaotic mind, as did images of his girlfriend, bloody and crying out in agony.
He tore the knife out of Giana's corpse with a heavy sigh and crawled off her cool body. He stood and rubbed his bloody gloves over his face in annoyance, smearing blood over his features. He sat down heavily onto the stool, wound up his music box and got lost in his baffling thoughts as his lullaby reverberated through his cellar.
How was he supposed to fix this?
***
Lucas Morton walked into the police station hand in hand with his two little ones. He hated having to return and wished more than anything that he hadn't had to bring his children on his grim return visit. There'd been no one to sit with them, though. No one to turn to. He would have to manage alone now. Now that she was gone.
Leaving the children in a private waiting area where a kind older officer was keeping an eye on them, he headed for the detective's office. He had been there the previous morning identifying his wife, or what they would show him of her.
They hadn't let him see her actual remains. They said that because of the condition of her body they wouldn't advise viewing it. They'd described what had been done to her though. Teeth removed. Eyes removed. Cut up and bled out. Dismembered. It didn't offer any comfort to him that she'd most likely been dead for the dismembering.
She'd been tortured, mutilated, sacrificed by some psychopath. And it was Lucas's fault. He hadn't once asked her to stop wandering, to stay in. To stay safe. He hadn't known how to cope with whatever battle she was going through. He hadn't known how to help when she was struggling, especially as he'd caused so much of her pain. He'd driven her out into the night and now she was dead. Their children would grow up without their mother, and he would have to live with that for the rest of his life.
Deep in his gut, right from that first night when she hadn't returned from her nightly exploits, he'd known something was very wrong. It wasn't like her to run off and not come back before dawn. She always came back from whatever she did in the early morning hours she spent away from their bed. Always. She would never leave her monkeys behind and he knew it. So when that first day became a second, then a third, then a fourth, and even more days passed, his anxiety had increased tenfold. His instincts had told him she'd become a victim of The Ghost, yet he'd prayed to the gods that wasn't the case.
Lucas would've preferred she'd run away to that. She didn't deserve such a fate and he'd hoped... hoped she'd gotten a bus to anywhere. Somewhere far from the madman who was on the prowl.
Such foolish hope.
When the police had turned up on his doorstep he'd prayed to any gods that would listen that it wasn't her they'd found, but when he'd gone to the Police Department and had been handed the photos, it had been impossible to deny the truth. They might not have allowed him to see her remains but they'd shown him close up images which had allowed him to identify her. The doll tattoo had been enough, even without seeing the raven tattoo on her wrist. It was Angela. She'd designed those tattoos herself and they were unique. Just as she was. The love of his life.
The Detective on the case had admitted that parts of her were still missing. Her torso. The other wrist. Her eyes...
That thought made him queasy. Parts of his beautiful wife were still out there, in trash bags, like she was nothing but garbage. That was bad enough, but that her eyes had been removed... that unsettled him more than anything.
Had the twisted monster who'd killed her taken them as trophies? What had he seen as he'd stared into her soul during those final moments. What had caused him to take them? Had she wept and he'd needed the reminder of his 'victory' over a cornered woman? Had she fought, defied, and had her murderer kept her eyes to be reminded of the moment he extinguished her fire? That notion would haunt Lucas until he died.
Gods, he would never again get to see her beautiful eyes light with mirth, or shine with love and warmth as she watched their children play. She was gone.
His wife was gone.
Tears stung his eyes and he struggled not to break down. When he went back out to his children he would need to be strong for them, but the ache in his chest was unrelenting. Despite his efforts, he couldn't stop the tears from spilling. He cried heavily, sobbing his broken heart out. He couldn't believe she was gone - that her life had been erased as it were unimportant. Not his beautiful wife. Not the love of his life.
Sure, he hadn't always been the greatest to her, but that didn't mean he didn't love her. He would always love her. She was his. His one and only. She was supposed to be his forever.
The pain that gripped him had been so poignant the previous day that it had prevented him from discussing the case with Detective Nick. After identifying his wife he hadn't been in a stable frame of mind to discuss how the police would proceed. He'd needed to go home, hold his children; hold the daughter who'd inherited her mother's determination and the son who shared her love of stories, of books, and of worlds which only lived in imagination.
Lucas had needed to come back, though. He couldn't bury his head in the sand. She wasn't there to help him, and so he had to help her in the only way there was left, by assisting the police in any way he could. So he listened intently as Detective Nick explained his plan; a ploy to lure a serial killer.
Detective Nick wanted to make it sound (to the press at least) as if forensics had found more evidence on his wife than they actually had. The aim was to unsettle The Ghost, to make him nervous. Maybe he'd slip up then if they could rile him up. Maybe he'd make a mistake. A mistake that would ensure his capture.
The plan itself was a simple one. The Detective had already mentioned Angela's doll tattoo during his previous press conference speech. Lucas had given permission for that before leaving the station in the morning, but now the Detective wanted to include other information. He wanted to claim Angela had been identified not only by the doll, but by the dragon tattoo on her back as well.
It wasn't true. They hadn't found her torso. The police only knew about the dragon because of his description of his wife, but if the police mentioned it maybe The Ghost would think they had all of her. If they claimed evidence had been found on her body, maybe they could unnerve him. Make him angry. Maybe it would break the calm of the allusive Ghost and lead to his arrest. Maybe... just maybe, he could get justice for his wife and the others that this man has killed.
Detective Nick was confident that it could work.
For the sake of his wife, his children, and all those that this sick sadistic bastard has murdered, Lucas hoped that the Detective was right. He agreed to the plan because he had to do something for her. He needed his children to grow up knowing he'd fought for justice for the mother they'd lost. She deserved that much. He owed her that much. He should've protected her.
That decided, Lucas shook Detective Nick's hand and thanked him then made his way out of the Police Department again. He walked out to his car, children in tow, and strapped them in their car seats. He headed back home unsure of how he was going to live without the love of his life.
How would his children go on without her? They would miss so much. She would miss so much. But he would be strong for them. He would care for them just as she had done. He would show them that everything would be okay, and he'd make sure they remembered her. They would know she'd loved them, lived for them... They would know that they'd been the most important things in the world to her. He would remind them of the games she'd played with them, of Christmas cards they'd made together and of stories she'd read. He would read the same stories to them she had in hopes of soothing their worries away. She'd stay with them. Always in their hearts. Just as she'd always be in his.