Locke dark captive tale, p.15
Locke : Dark Captive Tale, page 15
Locke could not leave this world without knowing that he at least made one of his abusers suffer. Oh, how he longed to make them suffer. To become the very monster, to inflict upon them the same hurt—it had become his all-consuming desire.
He left Blackwater. He went to a place they could not find him with the sole objective of returning to this black town with its black beating heart. To take them down.
Every last one of them.
Never in his wildest dreams did he see this sort of derailment in his plans. To find his drive for revenge balanced out by his desire to take a fucking girl with the courage of a lion, but the eyes of a doe.
Obsession whispered in his ear, “You’re an animal. Listen to your instincts.”
*
Trenchcoat Man
Thornby
Pearson
Man in the red shirt
Jem looked over the list, frowning. “Pearson would never have talked, that sick fuck was just a customer. Thornby on the other hand…he might lead you to the man in the coat. Who is this man in the red shirt, though?”
Glasses crashed suddenly, and Jem looked up, glaring at the waitress whose tray fell from her hands. The young thing gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry, baby. I’m all over the place today.”
Jem gritted his teeth. “Do I look like a fucking baby to you?”
“N-no—”
“Get that shit cleaned and then get the fuck outta here with your baby talk. I’m your fucking boss, and if you’re gonna coo at me again like some drunk patron you can flirt for a tip, get the fuck out!”
The girl was near tears when she hurried from them.
Locke glanced at Jem, at the thick veins in his neck and tired eyes.
Perhaps the pub was a stupid place to visit him. He was in the middle of work, and he was stressed enough as it was, standing behind the bar barking out orders. Fucker was in a bad mood—had been in a bad mood for weeks. Locke didn’t question it, because it wasn’t his fucking business to pry, but he was aware of the date, knew it was the month of mourning for Jem.
Addison died in November.
Why the fuck had Jem invited him over tonight to run through this list?
Returning his attention to the wrinkled paper, Locke ran the tip of his finger over the fourth line. “He came down, and he was real sick with his fetishes. Not as hurtful as the others, but…I want him dead just the same. He had markings on his arms.”
“Tattoos?”
“Scars. Like burns, even. I don’t remember the way they looked—just how they felt when I ran my fingers along them.” Locke brushed the air, like he was remembering it all over again. The hair, the sweat, the thick, bumpy lines on the man’s flesh.
Jem watched him, the shadows in his eyes worsening as he fought to keep his emotions in check. “I’ll ask around about him, alright? I’ll fucking tear apart the fucking town, but if I find him before you, Locke, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself from his cutting his eyes out and feedin’ them down his throat! HIS BALLS WILL GET CUT OFF NEXT!”
Heads spun in his direction.
Wide eyes and horrified looks.
Jem’s vehemence and rage a dark cloud hanging over the room.
Locke folded the paper back up and slipped it into his suit pocket. “Calm down, Jem.”
“I’m just over it,” Jem retorted, on the verge of a breakdown. “Fucking had it up to here with this fucking town, Locke. When the time’s right, I’m gonna take that boat I have anchored in the bay and put this place behind me. Good fucking riddance, Blackwater, you cunt infested swamp!”
Locke, who looked like a cold-hearted, suited cunt, was now being glared at. Like he was the reason for Jem’s wrath.
“Probably should go,” Jem quietly said, mirroring his thoughts. “You’ve hidden out for a while. I think this is your first appearance around here since…”
Since Kali, he wanted to say.
“I should have been more mindful calling you out,” he added, giving him an apologetic look. “Won’t happen again.”
“I’m not afraid of anyone,” Locke replied, coming to a stand.
“Well, when you threaten to murder people in plain sight by shoving a fucking shovel into the ground…”
Locke smirked.
Jem was recalling what he did to Conor’s front yard the day an angry mob showed up to rid him from town.
“Be seeing you,” Jem said. “I’ll let you know what intel I get about that man…”
Nodding, Locke left.
He drove for what felt like hours, thinking of the list burning a hole in his pocket, of his mother’s killer who was out breathing somewhere, of that fucking girl he wanted so badly, it made him cross-eyed.
If the people who feared him knew of these vulnerabilities, they’d realize beneath the violence and allegations, he was just like them.
Obsession slithered beneath him, whispering, "Focus..."
He drove a little faster, thinking of changing out of these clothes and into something more…ordinary.
Twenty
Locke
That little lioness wouldn’t leave his mind. Fucking hell, he tried to think of something else, tried to find distractions because these urges for her were in the most depraved sense of the word. Oh, the fucking things he wanted to do. The pain he wanted to inflict. He needed to split her wounds wide open again. He wanted to horrify her and make her want it. He wanted her to beg for her destruction.
What a sick monster. What an unapologetic cunt he was. And he…
He did not care.
Not at all.
Not when he had a purpose.
Not when his chest did that tha-thump thing.
What an irregularity this was.
What an interesting development this was.
After a taste of what they shared together, she must have wanted it, too. By now, their time together had dulled, the taste had faded until it was in the faintest form of a memory on her tongue.
But he needed to break her first. He needed the decline to be swift and quick. He needed to see the walls of her life close in on her. He wanted his prey helpless, dependent, needy. He wanted her crazy as he felt. He wanted her monster brought to the surface, and like before, he would not tame it. He wanted to exploit it, play with it, watch what it did when it was no longer contained.
His prey needed to be free by being caged, and he knew just how to do it.
*
Her street was a rotting wasteland. Garbage, filth, vandalism and junkies. Locke walked past whores as they cooed at him, not realizing how fucking close they were to a murderous villain. “Five bucks for a blow,” one offered.
“With those lips, another time,” he responded casually, and they laughed and whistled at him.
This place still had nothing on the disabled man his little lion had to care for. It put his mind at ease that she no longer had to walk those streets to get to that derelict building. Unless she had a car of her own, he wouldn’t let her anywhere near that place again. Too rife with violence and drugs, her building was directly across from machete wielding fucks that seemed to constantly elude him when the sun went down. Like cockroaches, they scattered from sight, and he had yet to figure out just where exactly they went.
He would need to station a Raven crew in Blackwater at some point soon in order to drive those slimy bastards out. It was just another problem atop a mountain of others.
Keeping his hands fisted in his pocket, his fingers were coiled around the knuckleduster as he walked past more strays. They looked him over, assessing him, wondering if they could jump him for his wallet, but they promptly determined he was too much work, and what the fuck could he possibly be carrying of any value looking the way he was? He was a big guy, this fucking body tested to its limits every morning he got up to work out every fucking muscle. He wasn’t dressed in his suit, either. Wearing dirty joggers and a dark grey sweater with the hood pulled up, Locke seamlessly blended in.
Just like he had seamlessly blended in when his little prey slammed straight into him. She was so fucking small, she nearly fell over had he not gripped her arms momentarily to steady her. Did he come close enough to smell her hair? Fuck yes, he did. Did he momentarily relish the softness of her bare skin under his palms? That simple touch went straight to his centre before it went to his cock, and he knew straightaway this was getting out of hand, but he didn’t give a single fuck.
Did Obsession smile?
He did: a Cheshire smile, in fact.
Locke stopped in front of her building now and crossed his arms, waiting by the door. He pretended to nod off, like his fellow addicts on the ground beside him. He kept his eyes shut, waiting patiently.
“I’ll talk to her, alright?” a feminine voice spoke nearby. Clouds of smoke wafted to him. “She’s being a little bitch about it, I get it, but I told her it wasn’t your fault, Eric. Why are you even bothering anyway? How many times did I offer to blow you? Kali barely touches a guy’s cock—you really think she’d have sucked yours?”
Locke’s ears perked up. He tilted his head in the direction of the girl standing out front of the laundromat next door. She was puffing on a smoke, her blonde hair tied up in a messy bun, a basket of clothes pressed against her hip.
He recognized her straight away.
Kali’s friend—shitty friend.
What the fuck was his girl doing with the likes of her?
And who the fuck was this Eric fuck that this bitch was offering to blow? Was he interested in his little lioness? Fucker was going to be looking down the end of his gun barrel—
“She’s losing her shit. I think she’s actually on something, which I’m not surprised about. She told me her family has a long history of drug addiction, which she only admitted when she was drunk. She’s probably going down the same road as them. She sleeps half-drunk most nights lately, and she’s probably mixing it up with other shit.”
She went quiet, and Locke could faintly hear a man’s voice on the other end of the line. Fucker had an ugly voice. Kali wouldn’t want that voice in her ear while she was being fucked.
“I’m not being unreasonable, though,” she continued, sounding defensive. “She was all spooked her phone was in the bag, Eric! Like, what the fuck? Oh—you know what she asked me about today? She asked me what I knew about Max Locke.” After she said his name, she realized her mistake. Her body stilled and she tossed a look up and down the street before stopping to look over Locke and the limp bodies still riding through their high. Deeming them no threat, she resumed, whispering quietly, “She says she applied for a job at one of his stores, but she’s a shit liar. I think she’s buying drugs off Locke’s dealers or something. She always passes them when she looks after that crippled dude. Why else would she ask about him?”
Locke’s lips curved up, a satisfied smile stretching across his lips.
That vexing witch was just as curious.
At the same fucking time, he needed to know more about this vicious friend that was talking so much shit about her.
It should have disturbed him how much it bothered him that Kali was surrounded by cunts like this bitch, but he was beyond the point of reason now.
He waited for her to get off the phone. She moved along to other topics. Something about using cock rings on Eric’s petite princess dick before she got off the phone and lit up another smoke. She sucked it dry and then tossed it on the ground.
Walking past him, she strutted to the doors, stuck her key in, and then swung it open. She walked into the building like she was walking down a fucking runway.
Bitch needed to relax.
He stuck his foot in before the door closed. He stood still for a few more moments, waiting for her to take the elevator up. The second she was gone, he slipped inside and took the stairs to the third floor. Pulling out his phone, he took a seat by the door to the hallway leading to her apartment and waited.
Sliding off the knuckleduster, he retrieved his lockpick set from his back pocket and waited. Patience was his forte. It was what he excelled at. He took his time with all things. Strategizing was a comfortable pastime, especially when he used it to hunt the monsters that hid in the light, that smiled into a camera as the world celebrated their virtues.
But tonight—
His back stiffened with discomfort.
Tonight, she was so close, and it took a lot for him not to break the door down, plant a bullet in her dim-witted friend’s forehead and abduct her.
“Too soon,” Obsession murmured. “And that bimbo doesn’t deserve to die for talking shit about our little lion.”
But the sooner he had her again, the sooner he could work on hunting the last few of the monsters down.
Three left, he reminded himself.
And the first on the list hadn’t been seen in fucking years.
That trench coat wearing fuck that Conor and Dominic had bumped into the day Locke went missing was still at large. The two boys had been searching for Locke, and when they happened across the man that was on the same trail as them, Conor had explained that he knew instantly he had something to do with Locke’s disappearance.
“He was abnormal,” Conor had admitted to him when he implored him for more information. “There was something…inhuman about him, Max. It’s why I told Dominic to go back, to alert the police and let them know we found the culprit. I wound up following him, but he knew, and when he caught me, I ran. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, Max…I wound up flying over a cliff and into the rapids. It’s…why I failed you. When I got rescued, they booked me into the hospital for hyperthermia and a broken bone and fucking nobody would listen to me about the trench coat wearing man. But when you find him, take a good look at his hand. You’ll find a scar I put there when I drove my blade into it when he caught me right before I ran. And you’ll know, Max, that I didn’t give up. That I tried so fucking hard to find you.”
Locke knew about the wound because when the man ventured down the hole, he smelled of rain and blood and he was cursing up a storm. He had beaten Locke good, blaming him for the pain inflicted on him by those “rat kids.”
But even at his worst, that trench coat wearing man never actually touched Locke.
As the ringleader, he simply watched.
And for some sick fucking reason, that man enraged Locke most of all.
Do not lose sight of the greater goal.
He would not.
He had made a promise to his former self. He had to make it up to that little boy in that Hole. He had to heal him by snuffing out the last of them. Only then would Max be okay.
Shutting his eyes, he breathed deeply, concentrating on the darkness as he twisted his watchband around his wrist, determined not to go back there again.
Minutes later, Locke checked the time on his phone. He had scheduled another drive-by to Kali’s place. He had noticed her paranoia. She seemed to think he was always behind the wheel of that black Mercedes. Sometimes he was. Other times he dressed like this and tailed her closely, his obsession a never-ending reel of need. He watched her stare at the cars, and he’d see her eyes widen when she saw that black car, the fear mixed with intrigue. His little prey fucking loved the thought of him stalking her. She gets high off the chase. She would never know that he was always going to be one step ahead of her.
His phone buzzed. A text from a recruiter for the Raven Brotherhood alerting him to the last safety check on Conor’s house. After everything that had gone down, he had made sure Conor and his family were safe, and that there were no other hidden threats he did not know of.
His heart slowed as he thought of Conor, of him searching for Locke when he had been trapped in that Hole. Lured like a fucking fish in water, Locke had taken a nibble of that hanging bait, and bam—he had forever fucked myself.
Locke could still hear Conor’s screams as he wept in that Hole. He called out for him, and he—
I’m here!
I’m here, Conor!
Tears streamed down his face as a hand pressed over his mouth, gripping it shut, forcing him quiet and immobile. A voice slithered into his ears.
“I’ll kill that boy if you open your mouth. I’ll gut him right in front of you. Silence, pet, or I will not be easy on you.”
Twenty-One
Locke
He smelled the wine in the room as he silently slipped inside. He thought of that bitch’s words from earlier. How his little prey was drinking herself to sleep. This should have alarmed him, but he’d gone through Kali’s journal where she had detailed in depth how hard it was for her to sleep, how sleeping pills made her groggy the next morning, and that a glass of wine unwound her enough that she could pass out without thinking of Locke haunting her.
What made his cock stiffen was that she wanted him to haunt her, too.
And she was terrified it was all in her head.
That he had forgotten her.
That he had discarded her.
That their time was over, and she should be glad, but a part of her missed those moments she had lost complete control.
This was part of turning her crazy, and it was so hard not to engage in her as she lay there, to give her what she silently wanted.
Instead, he wanted to fuck with her, turn her inside out, make her wonder when she woke up if he was truly there or not.
The fan was rotating, the perfect white noise to drown out his faint steps.
The blinds were half open, the streetlamp outside faintly casting the room in a light blue glow. He looked her over, his chest tightening at the tiny white shorts she was wearing that made the contrast of her black skin all the more alluring. She had a cropped shirt, and it ended just below the swell of her bare tits. Fuck, this was a form of torture unto itself.
