The Goodbye Girl (Red Market Series Book 2) (19 page)

“How long since you were taken?” I ask her, she was taken, this girl is not a street hooker or a gutter slut she is too clean, too sad. Her eyes look away and she holds up two fingers to me. She listens well, trained to listen or a self-preservation lesson, it is a good thing she learned it.

“Months or years?” I speak into her neck where my lips kiss. 

“Years,” she says as loudly as her strangled voice will allow her. 

“You know who I am?” I feel her little head nod and her heart pounds faster under my lips as I kiss her pulse. 

“I asked to come here in place of another.” Her voice coos and she covers her mouth, her eyes go wide. She made a mistake and expects a punishment for it. 

“I am not going to hurt you, I am going love you before you say goodbye. I cannot let you go, I know in your heart you wish I would but I can’t. So I will give you love and a painless goodbye.” A tear escapes and she smiles before kissing me again. This time with a hunger. I let her body take what it needs from me as she heals the trauma of my mind with her movements. The deep sadness in her eyes finds the heartache in mine and our bodies move in time to the dead rhythm surrounding us. I use her to heal the sorrow that fills me. I take her love and give her mine. 

Every time her body moves on mine I am reminded of another, I long for her. I feel her, it is my baby that I kiss, not this girl. My child that I am saying goodbye to. I am healing myself with this act, her body clenches as her orgasms roll through her and all I feel is Svetlana squeezing my cock. I see doe brown eyes and scars on her skin, I see things that are not here, my madness swirls me to another time. The passion and desire are misplaced but the feeling is so good I cannot stop it. I watch her lips close around my dick and my heart turns into a tomb for the love of my child.

I lost my mind last night but found my purpose again, I had lost it. My fingers fiddle with the hair of the sleeping girl beside me and I am ready to say goodbye to her and move forward. My life is going to change and I need to accept what is done and live what will be. I don’t want to be the bitter old person that my mother is, I want this feeling to last. I want to live for loving the lost, to set them free and give them goodbyes so others can have infinite tomorrows. I kiss her cheek and whisper to her before I leave her there to be collected and processed. 

“Goodbye Girl.” The door swings closed on its industrial springs behind me and I step into the future with new purpose. And a deep sadness that I will use to my advantage.

As the days lengthen 

So the storms strengthen

I take the
car into the city in search of something to eat and more smokes. Driving stretches my leg to the point where it feels as if my skin might rip apart. The city is waking in the early morning light, a yellow haze caused by city smog carpets everything in a false beauty. I park a small way from a twenty four hour convenience store. The half broken neon sign a relic from years ago flashes, signaling they are ‘-pen’. The air is still thick with the muggy heat that never seems to leave this place. I think of her lost in these streets alone left for the predators that eye me from everywhere. An obnoxious bell rings above the door and when I heave it open, the shop is cool and refreshing. The low buzz of industrial air conditioning soothes my ears. There is a dirty take out counter in the back and while it looks awful, the smell is amazing. The spicy Mexican flavors have filled the shop and my stomach reacts with an audible growl. It isn’t breakfast food at all but anything will do right now I guess. I order from a young boy, a teenager maybe sixteen, and go to the front to pay and get my cigarettes. I mill around walking down the aisles waiting for him to prepare my food, my eyes stay on him afraid he will spit in it, or drop it on the floor. 

The ache in my chest is worse than the pain of my burnt skin, a dull pain that hangs there throbbing with every heartbeat. There is something missing from me as I leave the small grocer, my heart misses her. There is no static noise in my mind, everything is quiet. I have found a peace that never existed before in me. I have accepted the future and today my demons are silent and my heart is empty. I may be a deplorable human but I have always had a heart. In fact, my heart was always a hindrance in my line of work. My ability to feel love and affection kept me from the depth of depravity where others like Mateo live. He told me that day he didn’t want to be saved, that we deserved to happy the way we are, I finally understand it. I spent my life trying to save him, to fix him and control him; when all he ever wanted was the freedom to be the boy he was, in doing so however he has taken something from me. In fairness to him, I gave her to him. I should have known he would want her dead, his mind cannot deal with the emotions and actions of those who live. A seed of revenge has been sown in my mind, a little voice that whispers to me how much they should pay for taking her. Everybody has its price, the parts or the whole, they cost something. They should pay for hers with theirs.

Some boys have a special bond with their mothers, a tether that ties them to the womb from whence they came. I would cut my mother's heart out in an instant. I never felt that connection, that need for her presence in my life. She was the deliverance of evil in my life, the voice that set my madness free, the sound of pain and torment. Mateo, was a lot like me; he never cared for his mother much either, not because she was a bad mother, but because he simply couldn’t.

Back inside the building that houses the family business, I remember things I had allowed myself to forget.
I am sat on the floor, my fists bloodied and my knuckles aching from the force with which I hit her. It wasn’t my fault she spoke when I was already past the point of no return. I didn’t mean to assault my mother. I didn’t want to hit her - or maybe I did. My back rests against the metal frame of the bed in Hugo’s room and his arms hang loosely around my shoulders where he comforts, calms and silently heals me from the monster inside. The disease that keeps me from human connection and meaningful love. The noise, the fucking deafening noises that never leave me be. He was an anchor.

Now he is my betrayer. I am unable to communicate with people without becoming sick, I wish for a world without sound. I want to press mute. I have wanted that all my life. My cigarette dangles from my lip as I push open the office door with a new purpose, a new plan and an agenda of my own. My mother will be dead in three weeks, in fact I have no idea why I never killed her before now. I should have ended her hold on my life years ago. I dial the hotel number and ask for her room number.

“Madre.” 

“Caesar, my son.” Nails on a chalkboard, dangling a steak in front of a lion. The silence is over.

“We need to have dinner and discuss the plans for when I get home. I cannot live with you, Ma. Things need to be in place.” Lies spill from my lips with no effort at all, in fact I smile at the prospect of watching her suffer as she has watched me. 

“That sounds perfect. Bring Mateo with you, tomorrow?” The sound of insanity.

“He is too busy, just us, Madre. Tomorrow is fine. I will have someone fetch you.” I don’t wait for more of the amplified chaos to scream back at me. I hang up. I am buzzing with the excitement of finally putting my insanity to death. I am going to exorcise my own demons. A doctor knocks at the door, looking for approval to enter my space. I nod for him to sit, the list of bodies coming in and parts going out with their tissue matches and blood types is on the clipboard. He holds in a shaky hand and passes it over for me to run through. I need to check that the spares are paid for and that the parts are available. I detach from the humanity of this process, this is a business, like a body shop where you get your car fixed; we just fix people. 

“These are fine.” I look up so I can see his face, he came to us from Korea and is one of my most loyal employees. “Can you manage without Mateo and Hugo?” Neither of whom have arrived today. 

“We can manage just fine. I will call the delivery teams now.” His accent is mixed and he stutters slightly.

“Good, get started. I am coming to see them now.” Eight goodbyes. Eight less tortured souls. Over a hundred lives saved or changed forever. A fair trade. He takes back the clipboard and leaves the office. His white coat no longer quite white and his shoulders slightly slumped with the weight of this job. No doctor studies all those years wanting to become a murderer. Most of them have high hopes of saving hundreds of lives and he does, but he has to kill some to do it. I feel like I am a gun with the safety off, I am an accident about to happen as I walk out of the office and get ready to do what I have always done - say goodbye. I realize that all I long for is hello at the end of the day, a person. A someone who will be there when the goodbyes are over. 

Blood pools on
the floor at the end of a long day, neither of my wayward family members returned today. I think the Lord may be protecting them from me, because had I seen Hugo I would have killed him without thinking about if for a second. He took what was mine and I will never forgive him for that, I shouldn’t have to. As I cover the last body of the day, I wheel it through the doors, no longer able to lift them over my shoulder with ease. The service elevator is dark, dirty and unreliable in this building. I hear the grinding, shuddering as it halts behind the closed doors. My whole body is hot and the stuffy space makes it worse, my stomach flips as we descend down towards the incinerators. The metallic smell of blood coating my sinuses with every breath, but I need them because the heat is so stifling. The desolate passage opens in front of me as the falling lift jams to a harsh stop. There are only a few medical staff and security that stay this late; it’s eerie and still down here just the roar of the fire and the machines fills the space. The place feels gloomy tonight, but I fear that despair is following me and doesn't come from here but from within me.

I lift the lifeless waste that is left after everything that can be sold was taken onto a conveyor and hit the switch. The wretched smell of burning blood and flesh, and the crackle as it pops with the heat fill the room and I turn away. My job is done for today. 

When I eventually reach my living quarters, I cannot call it home or my room because it is neither to me. It is simply a place to pass time; and time will pass much faster after tomorrow. The water of a hot shower helps to keep my mind in check as I run through the things I will need to get ready in the morning before I meet with my mother. Strangely I have no anxiety, no fear and no noise at the thought of what is to come tomorrow. Instead, I collapse on my bed still wet from the shower and sleep with my sweet girl in my dreams.

Haunting brown eyes look into mine and there is love in them. She blinks them closed, her long lashes keeping them hidden from me as she rests her head on my chest. I feel her heart beating against mine, but they are in time, one beat. Her fingers trace my skin up and down my spine where her arms are wrapped around me. This tender moment where all we both feel is love, love and a burning desire to make her mine again. I kiss the top of her head and her soft hard hair smells of soap as I inhale. She lifts her head slowly so that I can see her again and now I kiss her sweet lips. Silver scars mark her pretty face and I wish this kiss could erase them all. As her tongue dances with mine I have never felt more at home in all my life. I stop kissing so I can look at her in all her broken beauty, she opens her mouth and whisper escapes. “Give me your heart. I will keep it safe, Caesar.” The soft sounds are a gunshot in my mind turning me from lover to monster in a breathy word. My body betrays my tender thoughts with lust so violent I cannot stop it. Shoving my child away so that she stumbles and falls onto all fours, my belt is unbuckled before she can even push herself up. “Stay there.” I put a hand on her back as I slide my pants down to my knees, her bare ass facing me. Years of beatings seen on the surface of her skin. I am salivating at the picture before me. “Love me, Papi.” A soft moan and my senses are lost.

I wake in a pool of sweat and cum, the night still dark outside. My sleep eludes me as I toss restlessly in the grief of what has been lost.