SEVEN
Even though it seemed like it had gone on forever, it had actually all happened very quickly. But it was getting late. Angela realized that she needed to get on with it. Still, she didn’t want it to end.
She drove the knife into his other kidney because she knew how much it would hurt. The excruciating pain made it through the fog of blood loss to widen his eyes so much it almost looked as if his eyeballs might pop right out of his head. He trembled uncontrollably. Just like Carrie and the other women he murdered had trembled.
Owen was no longer capable of posing a threat to Angela or anyone else. No other woman would die to satisfy his twisted desires. No other family would grieve and go through hell because of Owen.
There would always be others like him—there had always been murderers and there always would be—but this was at least the end of Owen bringing pain, terror, and agonizing sorrow into the world.
Angela finally got up and pulled his shredded, blood-soaked shirt off him. He was no longer able to offer any resistance. She went to the toolbox at the head of the truck bed and lifted the diamond-plate lid to retrieve a stout length of nylon rope. She’d found it by the side of the road and knew that one day it would come in handy. Today was that day.
Going to one knee, she rolled Owen over onto his stomach. He flopped down into the blood filling the channels of the truck bed like a half-dead carp. Blood dripped off the frayed legs of her shorts and ran down her legs. It dripped from the tips of her hair.
“Kind of the way you like to do things to women, right Owen? Rough and brutal? Knifing them as you fuck them so they’ll scream and thrash? That’s what you like, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”
Although he seemed to show some response, she couldn’t be sure if he was capable of hearing her anymore or if it was simply the involuntary reaction of the nervous system. She hoped that somewhere in the dim recesses of his fading consciousness he could still grasp what she was saying. She hoped that her words would escort him into death. She hoped that her words would be with him for an eternity in hell.
Despite how fast it had all happened, with the way he was losing blood from the severed artery in his arm, to say nothing of the other knife wounds bleeding both externally and internally, she didn’t think he was going to be conscious much longer. His skin was cold and pallid, so she was sure he was already going into shock.
Angela didn’t think there was a trauma center on earth that could save his sorry ass, now.
“Owen, you dumb fuck, you’re getting blood all over my truck.” She kicked him in the ribs where she’d stabbed him. “But go ahead and bleed all you want. I like it.”
As she stood over him, a boot to either side of his head, she used a finger and a thumb to wiggle a black marker pen from her back pocket. She squatted down, sitting on his head to keep him still. He coughed up blood as he tried to breathe with his one functioning lung.
Leaning over, Angela started at the bottom of his rib cage and wrote I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON. The words were intentionally upside down from the way they would be if he were standing. I LEFT HER BODY 320 YARDS UP THE TURNOFF BEFORE THE BRIDGE. The last words ended up across the backs of his shoulders.
Angela leaned back to inspect her work. It looked to her like it would be perfectly legible from a distance. Since it was a permanent marker, the blood running out of him wouldn’t wash away the words. Neither would the rain if it started in again.
She leaned in once more and rummaged around in his back right pocket. She knew from the visions that was where he kept the knife he used on the women he murdered. Once she fished it out she saw that it was a rather cheap Chinese knockoff of a large Buck folding hunting knife. She opened the blade and felt the edge. Owen didn’t take good care of his knife. The blade was dull and chipped.
She used the bent point of the blade to cut deeply into his flesh, tracing over the letters of I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON. He moaned with each dragging stroke she cut. Those words were the important part. She left the black marker lettering for the rest of the words. She wanted to make sure Carrie’s remains were found. It wouldn’t bring any joy to her family, but at least they would be able to bury her properly. It would bring closure.
Angela climbed off Owen, leaned down, and put her mouth close to his ear. “Well, Owen, all done. Sorry I had to get to the end so quickly. Ordinarily I would have taken you home to let the fun go on and on for a few days until I turned your brain to mush, but since we’re out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night I’m going to have to wrap it up.
“See, like I told you, things could always be worse. You’re getting off easy. Easier than Carrie did. Easier than the other women you killed. I just need to put a period to it.”
Angela picked up his shirt and wiped the handle of his knife to get rid of her fingerprints just in case. Holding his knife with his shirt to avoid adding back any prints, she put the blade on the period after I KILLED CARRIE STRATTON. She leaned over, putting her weight on the handle to work the dull blade down between his ribs and finally into his heart.
Angela had been tempted to let him bleed out, to suffer in a nightmare dream state between life and death until the end came. She knew it wouldn’t be long until he crossed over into death. Truth be told, she was a bit surprised that he was still alive. But she didn’t want the remote risk of him using his dying breath to utter her name to someone.
As the knife irreparably damaged his heart, one last gurgled breath rattled out of his remaining good lung.
Angela left his knife, the one he used to murder Carrie, sticking in his back as she stuffed most of the bloody shirt in his back pocket. She tied the rope securely around one of Owen’s ankles before hopping down out of the truck.
She swiped her hair back off her face, then jerked on the rope, checking the knot. She was drenched in blood. It dripped from her hair, looking in real life like the way she had dyed it that morning.
She didn’t want to get in the cab of her pickup and get blood smeared all over the inside, so after retrieving her knife off the floor of the truck, she walked back up the path to a spot where the stream was close.
After the violence of unleashing her rage on Owen, it was a wonderful, peaceful walk in the faintly moonlit woods. Owen was dead. The world was rid of a killer.
Angela sat on a rounded rock in the small stream and cleaned her knife in the running water before slipping it back into the sheath in her boot. She splashed water over the laces, rinsing blood out of the crevices in the leather. The suede boots would never be the same after getting drenched this way, but she didn’t care.
Angela lay down on her back in the stream, letting the cold water wash over her hot flesh. Despite how cold the water was, she lay in the running stream for a time, staring up at the glow of the moon through the fog.
It was a wonder the way she couldn’t see very far ahead when driving through the fog, but when she looked straight up through the blanketing layer of it, she could see all the way to the moon.
She rolled over several times to wash off the blood as best she could. It was dripping from the tips of her hair, so she washed her hair in the running water and scrubbed blood from her face.
It took a while in the cold water but she did a pretty good job of getting the blood off her. Most of it even washed out of her shorts and top. She regretted that. Having his hot blood all over her had been an intoxicating rush.
Being covered in the blood of a monster like Owen was the only time Angela truly felt alive.
Once she was washed as clean as she was going to get in a stream, she returned to her truck and backed out of the turnoff. She spun the steering wheel as she reached the road and backed onto the bridge, parking at an angle in the middle with the tailgate protruding over one of the steel girders.
When she went around to the back of the truck, Owen was, of course, no more than a fresh corpse. Even though it was over, she was still filled with rage. She would need that anger for the final effort.
She tied the rope to the steel guardrail and then hopped up in the bed of the truck. Thick blood sloshed out the end of the bed when her movement rocked the truck. She stood over the slain monster, still seeing visions of the things he had done to Carrie and the other women, and reveled in his agonizing death. She only wished she could have made his end last a lot longer.
Angela let the thoughts of him enjoying torturing and killing innocent women fill her with rage. That rage powered her muscles to help with the last bit of it.
Owen was a big man, making him a lot of dead weight. Freshly dead people were heavy and extremely difficult to handle. She wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to lift their weight. Even dragging them for more than a very short distance was almost impossible. She had learned that she needed to kill people where she meant to leave their body, because she wasn’t going to be able to move them very far once they were dead.
All the slippery blood in the bed of the truck made it somewhat easier to slide Owen to the end of the bed. She tugged until she was able to spin him around so that his head stuck off the tailgate.
She put her boot against his ass and with one mighty, final push, slid him off the tailgate. Owen nosedived out over the bridge.
Angela stood on the tailgate, holding a steel girder for support, as she leaned out and watched him tumble through the murky, moonlit darkness. The rope snapped taut, but held. Owen flopped and bungeed up and down a bit on the end of that rope, arms flailing outward like a brawny ballerina’s as he spun and twisted, until he finally settled down to dangle by one ankle at the end of the rope.
His body swung back and forth slightly over the highway below. The rope wasn’t long enough that a car could hit him, but there would be no missing him hanging there, one leg flopped awkwardly out to the side, his genitals dangling through his open zipper, his arms dangling out and down, his knife stuck in his back, a human sign confessing his guilt and telling people where he had dumped Carrie’s body.
Angela had gotten blood all over her hands pushing Owen around and on her boots from walking around in his blood, so she went to a puddle at the side of the road and stood in it to wash her boots clean as she squatted down and cleaned the blood off her hands.
She shook her hands dry as best she could before getting up into the cab of her truck. Her shorts and top were soaking wet, but at least it was only water and not Owen’s blood she was getting all over the upholstery.
When she turned the key the powerful engine roared to life.
She felt powerful, too.