In that instant of an opening she swept the knife up between their faces and severed his tongue.
Owen fell back from the sudden release of tension, gasping in shock and confusion. Being as drunk as he was and the blade as sharp as it was, he didn’t feel it immediately. She could see by his expression that his intoxicated brain was scrambling to process what had just happened. Angela spit out his bloody, detached tongue.
As the pain began to register, Owen screamed, but it came out as more of a gurgling cry than a scream. One hand came up to cover his mouth as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. Blood seeped out between his fat fingers to run down his chin.
As he grasped what she’d done, anger flashed to the forefront of his mind. He grabbed her by the throat with his free hand. Angela stabbed the blade into his arm between the humerus and his bulging biceps, then pulled forcefully, severing the muscle in half. By the volume of blood spurting out, she knew she’d cut the brachial artery. The warm, wet blood flooded across her chest and bare midriff.
Despite the severity of the injury, his big hand managed to clamp her throat in a death grip. Angela gritted her teeth against the pressure of him trying to crush her windpipe and slashed the straining tendons on the inside of his wrist. As the muscles drew back up into his forearm, his fingers went slack. His arm finally flopped down onto the bed of the truck.
When he made the mistake of taking his other hand from his bloody mouth and again reaching for her throat, she slashed the inside of that wrist, then cut the bundle of tendons at the inside of his elbow before he had time to flinch back.
Just that quick, both his arms were largely put out of commission.
Angela leaned in. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t wait any longer?”
His eyes wide, he stared at her, confused by the question. He didn’t know what she meant.
She grabbed his shriveled penis hanging from his open pants. “Aren’t you glad that was your tongue in my mouth, and not your dick?” She showed him a grim smile. “See? Things could always be worse. And believe me, they are going to get worse.”
Finally realizing the full magnitude of the danger he was in, Owen raged and managed to prop himself up on one elbow as he banged his heels on the truck bed, trying to gain traction to scramble to his feet so he could at least stomp her to death. Before he could get his drunken balance, Angela turned the knife in her hand, holding it like an ice pick, reached around, and drove the blade into his left kidney from behind.
Owen stiffened from the shock of pain. It locked his breath in his lungs. It stiffened his legs out straight. Eyes wide, he couldn’t even scream.
Everything had happened so blindingly fast that he was not only bewildered, but now in the grip of immobilizing pain.
“Just when you thought things were going so good, here they are suddenly going oh so wrong. Right, Owen?”
Angela yanked the knife out and held the double-edged blade up before his eyes. She didn’t ever want to have to worry in an emergency if she had the knife turned the right way. With a double-edged blade, that was never a problem. There was always a cutting edge ready to serve her wishes.
“The secret to a good flesh knife is not using it for anything else,” she explained to him. “I never so much as open an envelope with my flesh knives. I save them for men like you. That way they effortlessly slice through flesh. I think you can tell that I take exceptionally good care of my blades. Right, Owen?”
As she was talking, at the same time she was gripping the handle of the knife, she reached around him. Using two fingers on his lower spine, she felt for the gap below the L3 vertebra. It was somewhat difficult with the way his legs were beginning to flail.
“What you’re thinking right now is ‘This is it. It’s either me or her.’ Right, Owen?” She leaned closer and whispered into his ear. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Owen? Well, I’ve got to tell you, ever since you came into the bar, I’ve known all along that one way or another it was going to be you.”
Once she found the area of the disk between the L3 and L4 vertebrae, she swept her left arm around his thick neck and pulled his head toward her as she pushed a knee into his gut. Bending him forward arched his back, opening the space between the vertebrae. She plunged the knife between them.
With all the fibrous sinew around that area of the spine it took committed force, but such a sharp, double-edged blade punched right through. She levered the knife handle from side to side. With each sweep, the blade scraped against the bone of vertebrae as it sliced apart the disk and severed his spinal cord.
Owen’s legs flopped down, at last motionless.
Each huffing breath as he gasped in pain and shock expelled droplets of blood all over her. She could see in his eyes that he was stunned by how fast it had all happened.
“Do you know what my name means, Owen?”
He looked at her, dumbfounded, unable to answer.
“Do you!” she screamed. “Do you know what it means?”
Terrified, he shook his head, never taking his gaze from her. Owen was not at all used to being on the wrong end of terror. She knew he was trying to assess the damage, trying to figure out if he could still make it out of this alive.
“I told you that my name means ‘angel’ in Italian? Remember?”
He nodded, panic-stricken at what she might do next.
“Good.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “But do you know what ‘angel’ means?”
Eyes wide, he quivered as he shook his head, unable to give any answer without his tongue except a groaning moan she couldn’t understand.
Angela abruptly pushed the knife in just below his rib cage until it found his liver.
Owen gasped, his eyes watering and going even wider as the pain of it reached his brain. He let out a high-pitched, falsetto squeal.
“Angela—Angel—means ‘messenger from God,’ ” she patiently explained to him. “So you see, Owen, you can’t really blame me for this, now can you? After all, I’m just the messenger. Right?”
As he struggled, twisting his torso, he only succeeded in slicing up his own liver on the double-edged blade, increasing his level of pain. Blood ran over her fist holding the knife and down her arm. She could feel it dripping off her elbow.
“You asked me before if the tattoo across my throat was some kind of joke. Remember? I told you that maybe one day you could answer that question yourself. I think that you ought to understand the meaning, now. Right, Owen? The meaning of my tattoo? The meaning of ‘Dark Angel’?
“So, you see, maybe I really am a messenger from God. An angel. But now you know that some angels are dark angels. Get it, now, Owen?”
“Peege opt.” Tears streamed from his eyes. “Peege opt.”
Without his tongue, that was the best he could do to form the words he so desperately wanted to get out.
“Please stop?” She cocked her head as she looked at him from under her brow. “Is that what you’re saying, Owen? Please stop? You are asking a dark angel for mercy, then?”
He nodded, relieved that she had understood the words.
Angela glared at him a moment before speaking in a soft voice. “That was what Carrie said when you were using your knife on her, isn’t it, Owen? When you were raping her? Isn’t that what she said to you? Please stop?”
He cried out in agony at understanding.
He may have thought it was revenge for Carrie.
Angela considered it more than that. A great deal more.
Angela considered it justice. Not justice in some abstract legal sense, but human justice.
Clear, cold, unflinching justice.
“There is no leeway for mercy in this, Owen. None.”
She slipped the blade in between two ribs, into his left lung. When she withdrew the knife, air hissed out, bubbling blood from the wound as his lung collapsed.
“You’re an aberration, Owen. A fucking monster living among normal people. You shouldn’t be allowed to live so you can hur
t innocent people, like Carrie, or the other three women you murdered. It was their terrible misfortune to have crossed paths with you.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m an anomaly, too. A freak of nature. Maybe I really am a messenger from God sent to eliminate fucking aberrations like you. What do you think, Owen?
“I can’t seem to have a normal life, a happy life, like other people. Maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe I’m only meant to kill lunatics like you before they can hurt anyone else. What do you think?
“I mean, I do seem to have a knack for attracting psychos. Seems like I’m a lunatic magnet.” She grinned at him. “Maybe that’s my reason to exist.
“Then again, maybe I’m just a freak of nature. Know what I mean, Owen? After all, I do so fucking enjoy the hell out of this. I live for it. Kind of like you, Owen. I think only a guy like you could truly understand the pleasure I get from inflicting this kind of suffering and terror, from the blood, from the act of killing another human being.”
Owen gasped for air. He had lost a lot of blood. Those gasps hissed and wheezed through the knife wound in his collapsed lung.
By the icy dread in his eyes, she could tell that Owen understood he had run across that rare someone just as twisted as him.
He had encountered the flip side of his own coin.
Angela smiled as she pushed the blade into his gut, slicing through muscle and intestines. Owen stiffened, holding his breath, immobilized by the agony. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
His warm, slippery blood was still running all over the front of her. It felt good. It felt glorious. It made her feel alive.
Angela was in her element. She had this monster right where she wanted him and she was tripping on it the way her mother tripped on drugs. She didn’t want it to ever end.
Her mother often told her—Angela thought as a way of somehow justifying what she did—that when you do a line you live forever. That’s what Angela was feeling—like she was living forever in that moment.
Every synapse in her brain was firing to pull it all in so she could savor it, remember it. She wanted the feeling to last forever. Just like her mother when she was rolling.
Angela slammed the full length of the double-edged blade into another spot. It went in effortlessly, deliciously. Her head tipped back as her eyes rolled up in ecstasy at the feeling. She could sense the tip of the blade finding a vital, tender spot inside him.
The pleasure of it ran a shiver up her spine.
Her head came back down. “I have some bad news for you, Owen,” she murmured as she pushed the blade in again, just for the exquisite pleasure of feeling it slide through his flesh, muscle, and viscera. “I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to be an organ donor. You’re not going to have anything left worth donating.”
Owen wept in utter agony. For the first time in his life he was experiencing the helpless suffering he visited on others.
Using a knife to kill someone was hard, messy, tiring work. It was also dangerous. A great many people cut themselves badly when using a knife either to defend themselves or to attack someone. A lot of force was required and blood was slippery. More often than not, their hand would slip down off the handle, cutting their palm and fingers on the blade. Because they were using such force, such injuries were usually quite serious.
Angela knew better. Her knife had a cross guard to prevent her hand from slipping up onto the blade. The cross guard wasn’t large, but it was big enough to provide a stable place to brace her right knuckle and thumb for leverage. She was always conscious of being careful not to accidentally cut herself whenever she did knife work, and the cross guard helped protect her hands.
Angela knew what she was doing and did it well. She’d never cut herself.
Owen groaned incoherently. Tears streamed from his eyes as he trembled.
“Carrie cried just like you’re crying now, didn’t she Owen? She didn’t want to suffer, to be hurt, to die, just like you don’t want those things to happen to you. Right, Owen? The only fucking difference is that she didn’t deserve it.”
Angela gritted her teeth as she twisted the blade inside him. “You do.”
He let out another wet cry.
“Right now, Owen, all you know is pain.” Angela peered into his eyes. “But through pain comes knowledge, realization, understanding. Now, in your pain, maybe you can see yourself for what an evil monster you truly are.” Her brow drew down. “An evil fucking monster who shouldn’t be allowed to live among decent people. Right, Owen? Are you beginning to understand?”
Owen nodded as he wept. She wasn’t sure he understood any of it.
Angela didn’t really care.
She did.
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. S
ince 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.