* * *
For a few hours after leaving the hospital, Alex thought to look up some vital information that she’d neglected up until now. Afterwards, without thinking to herself, contemplating, taking the time to examine how she might or should have felt, Alexandra Frost went back to her home in Suburnia. The place where it all began; the only place she knew.
For the second time since her parents’ deaths, she crossed past the line of police tape around the perimeter of the house. She stayed in the living room where most of the family pictures hung on walls. As she looked at every piece of memorabilia encased in glass, she recalled the times in her life that each memento represented. One was taken with a towering Westminster Abbey in the background. Standing in the photo were Alex and her mother, smiling as her father took the shot. Right beside the photo was a second, this one shot during a family trip in Ireland. Accompanying Alex in the shot this time was a background of bright green pastures below a cloudless sky, as well as both her mother and father. They all smiled equally wide at the travel guide who took their picture. She recalled it now just as she knew back then, that of the three, only two of them were actually happy to be there. One of them had no real way of understanding happiness.
But how true is that? Alex had to wonder. If she had been born entirely without emotion, why then had she been able to take joy in killing? It didn’t make any sense. What was it about killing that gave her such an ability? And why for such a short period of time?
From behind her came sounds of soles stomping against the marble floors of the Frost residence, echoing in the air. Alex knew who it was without having to turn around and see for herself.
“I’m sorry,” said Lord Henry Combermere.
“You really must drop the formalities,” Alex replied sharply.
“I did what was right for you. You know that your aunt would never be able to find it in her to accept what you really are. And neither would the others you know.”
“Can I ask you something?” Alex turned around, stared straight into Lord Combermere’s blank eyes. “What am I? Really?”
“You’re a wolf lost among sheep. Your place is not with them, but with me.”
“You mean I’m a born killer. Just like you.”
“You are. We both know how it makes you feel when you kill someone. It gives you emotions that you would never be able to have otherwise. Trust me, as the days and months go by you will want to do it again, and again. I understand your hesitation. I’ve tried fighting it several times before. Nothing works. The need builds up inside you. Eventually you will have to let loose. And when you do, your only hope is that you’re trained well enough not to get caught.”
“I saw the picture in your house. The one with you and your family.”
At that, Lord Combermere chose not to respond.
“You never had a wife, and you never had a child.”
“Is that all you learned from it?” he then asked.
“I know why you did it.”
Lord Combermere opened his ears, waiting to hear Alex’s explanation.
“You tricked me into thinking that the people I know would all eventually abandon me. That even if I stayed with them long enough, they would all go away in the end.”
“I used a lie to tell you the truth,” retorted Lord Combermere. “Sometimes fiction is the best instructor for reality. Surely you understand that.”
“I do.”
A momentary silence filled the air as Alex held a contemplative gesture.
“I suppose now you’re going to ask me to go with you,” she said.
“It’s your only option.”
Alex blinked twice, raised her face to meet his. “You’re right.”
“We must leave now.”
Lord Combermere stood perfectly expressionless. He didn’t move a muscle. But solely by the tone on his voice, she knew that there was an emotion coursing inside him. One of satisfaction, of unmentioned joy. Not enough that it showed in his face, but enough that she could sense it was there.
“Should I pack?”
“No time. The flight leaves in only a few hours.”
“Alright,” agreed Alex.
Lord Combermere went to the front door, held it wide open as an invitation to his apprentice. Alex traversed her eyes around the enormous three story house she’d known for sixteen years. She observed every last detail of her home, recalling the many memories that took place in this residence from the time she could remember up until now. Before long, she proceeded towards him on his way out.
Lord Combermere took one step out the doorway. Then, suddenly, he felt a sharp sting emanating from his spine. Unable to feel it, only to know that it was there, Lord Combermere didn’t cry or complain. But he did his hardest to fight it.
Just as he was about to take a second step outside to relinquish himself from danger, he was grabbed by the shoulder, hurled back inside the house.
Immediately after, the front door slammed shut. The vibration from the rapid motion carried around the house. Lord Combermere fell on his back, his clothes damp from where he’d been stung. He saw Alex standing over him, hand grasped onto a kitchen knife that was soaked with his own blood.
“That picture frame wasn’t the only lie you told me.”
“No,” denied Lord Combermere. But it was no use. Alex Frost read straight through his lie.
“I know you’ve been following me. I know about that night you were following me and my friend.”
There was that word again. Friend.
“On my way back from the hospital I did some reading on the man that mugged my aunt. Simon Phelps; he used to be a client of yours. A criminal addict who’s been arrested time and time again because of drug addiction.
“What was it then? You were going to pay him after he beat my aunt to death?”
“I can’t breathe,” wheezed Lord Combermere.
“You killed my parents,” Alex continued. “And in the end, I confided in you. Then you killed my aunt, thinking that it would bring us closer.”
Alex knelt beside the man too weak, too deprived of blood to defend himself. She gently ran her hand along his wrinkled cheeks, cold and frail. She removed the monocle on his left eye so that she had a better look at him, and he, her.
“You taught me things about myself nobody would have ever known. For that, I thank you. But that doesn’t mean that you and I are one and the same. All that you see in me is someone to make you less alone. Humans call it love. It’s something they understand more than I ever will. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from them, it’s that some will go as far as it takes to be with someone they love. Even if it destroys them both.”
Lord Combermere fought hard against his own dying body to open his lips.
“You are the closest,” he wheezed. “The closest thing I hav-”
Alex forced the blade into Lord Combermere’s heart. He jolted, struggled to breathe. Streams of blood poured out his front and back and stained the floor in red.
“I can’t let you take away everything I have left.”
She squeezed the knife, twisted and turned the silver tip inside him. Her mentor’s chest ceased to move, his gasping lips retreated. It wasn’t until Alex was sure he was gone that she let go of the knife.
The handle stood protruding from his torso, warm with her own body heat and her mentor’s blood. And just as an array of emotions occupied her senses after each kill, so too did Lord Combermere’s death. However, unlike her previous victims, Lord Combermere didn’t leave her smiling. Alex didn’t bask in joy over what she’d done, nor did she feel remotely alive. Instead she leaned her head against his chest, and she cried.
The emotion that filled her was that of tear jerking, lip scrunching sorrow. For the first time, Alex Frost knew what it was like to feel sadness, to mourn the death of someone she admired, to mourn the loss of a friend. Her gut wrenched against itself, her vision blurred with tears. And in that very moment, she
wept for her mentor, her Aunt Melanie, and most of all, her parents.
* * *
In the ensuing week that followed, a few important events occurred in the rich man’s town that we all know as Suburnia. Amy Lawson was sent to a juvenile facility fifty miles from town, where she would spend six of her years recuperating. The police issued a statement telling a mob of vicious journalists that Lord Combermere had died, and that they believe he had been responsible for the deaths of Jason and Dana Frost, as well as Tommy Hargrave, and more recently, Melanie Joyce. News hit like thunder that it was Alexandra Frost who killed him in self-defense just as he was about to kill her. That she defended herself from the clutches of the ever-frightening Lord Combermere, and that in an act of utmost heroism, she slew the beast.
This led the townsfolk to ceaselessly praise her as nothing short of a brave soul, a virtuous hand of justice. Rather than tell them the truth, Alex Frost let them have their happy lie. But deep down in the depths of her soulless heart, she knew that it wasn’t fair. Lord Combermere, who might have been a monster to them, was a mentor to her. Without him, she would never have discovered the capacity to feel alive.
When the day came of the funeral, a crowd of people dressed in black came together and mourned the deaths of Tommy Hargrave, as well as those of Jason and Dana Frost, and her sister, Melanie Joyce.
“We know they are all up in heaven,” said a priest, who really had no way of knowing for sure because he hadn’t been to heaven himself. “May the good Lord take care of them forever and ever. We will pray for their souls as we go about our daily lives. And as we do so, we will all know that they are with us in our hearts. Blessed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Amen.”
As the priest finished and the family eulogies began, Alex peered behind her, to Lord Combermere’s grave. No one mourned his death. There was not so much as a single flower next to or near his tombstone. Anyone that visited either spat on his grave, or they defaced the letters that spelt his name. The rest of the town didn’t seem to mind. In fact, from what she saw, some even encouraged it.
The Combermere estate in the hills no longer overlooked the town. It had been demolished by decree of the town’s legislators, and was now nothing more than a pile of rubble. The tower that watched over Suburnia was no longer.
As Alex sat on the first row, staring at the four expensive coffins of her parents, Aunt Melanie, and Tommy Hargrave, she came away with one important understanding. Whatever her life was going to be from this point on, it would be entirely her own. If Alex Frost decided that she wanted to become a writer, or a talented musician on top of becoming a writer, it would be because she decided it so, not because her parents willed it.
For Alex Frost, things were going to be different. Her journey, once so crystal clear, was now on the verge of an altogether different path. One with bumps and potholes, the occasional thunderstorms. In order to make it through, she would have to embrace the changes. Make do with what she could and what she had. Life was going to change. What better way to accept it than to change herself?
Once most of the eulogies were done and it came her turn to speak to the men and women of Suburnia, Alex Frost got up from her seat, stood in front of the gathering, and told them all a story. A story of a girl without a soul.
About The Author:
Mortimer Jackson is a student at SFSU currently studying political science. In between school and life, he writes in the hopes of one day becoming an overrated author. Alex Frost Meets The Killer is Mortimer Jackson’s first book.
For more of Mortimer Jackson’s works, visit his website:
www.themorningdread.weebly.com
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