Chapter 13

The problem people have with committing violence is hesitation.

I had made a decision and there was no pause as I climbed onto the addition to the frat house. The president of the frat probably thought an egress with barely a story drop to safety made his room cherry. Our early flirtation with summer had him keeping his window wide open. I dove cleanly into the room, rolled quietly coming up crouched in the closest spot that was untouched by the light from the window.

A couple of seconds were a worthwhile risk to let my senses adjust.

I did not smell a woman, which made the situation easier to manage. There was no reason for him to be brave. I opened my eyes and looked at his bed using my peripheral vision. It was the darkest part of the room and looking at it directly would have been a mistake.

I would have slept lighter with an open window that a man could jump through in my room. The president of the frat struck me as the type not to have discovered his mortality yet.

I moved towards the bed.

Professor Ryan acquired everything I needed but I only brought a couple of the pieces with me. I pulled the metal glasses case from my sleeve and opened it. The rag inside was almost moist; it was folded to perfectly cup his mouth and nose. I placed my hand carefully above his head and moved the rag towards him slowly. He tried to move his face away as his nostrils picked up the scent. I let him get used to it and he relaxed.

I moved it closer. His breathing changed as his body recognized the replacement of oxygen with something else. I pressed the rag against his nose and mouth. He reached up to grab my hand and tried to sit up. My other hand was ready to grab his hair and push his face into the rag from behind. His reaction was to breathe deeply, preparing to fight. It was the worst thing he could have done. I felt his hands weaken on my wrist. He fell into unconsciousness easily after that.

I placed the rag back in its case. I walked to the window and let the light reflect off the case. A minute later, Michael and Professor Ryan entered the room through the window moving nearly as quietly as I had.

Michael carried the bindings. He moved efficiently to the bed and proceeded to expertly gag, and tie our victim's arms to the bed frame. He moved to the bottom of the bed and spread-eagled the president by tying his feet to the bedposts.

Michael walked to me with his hand extended. I pulled the knife out and handed it over. He returned to the bed and cut off the president's sleeping clothes. Michael returned to hand me the knife and then stood post at the foot of the bed. He had his instructions and was willing. Professor Ryan handed me the ketchup squeeze bottles and walked to stand on the opposite side of the bed. He was only an interested observer, or so he said.

I looked at the president and sighed. I closed my eyes and whispered my brother's name. There was no blood between us but before the Brotherhood there was Jason.

I pulled the tiny vial out of my pocket and opened it. I sat down on the bed and studied president's sleeping face. I placed the open vial underneath the his nose. He snapped his head away from it. I followed him and he moved as far as the bonds let him.

He gained consciousness and tried to move. Michael was good with bindings so the frat's president only had a range of movement that allowed a good view of everything that was going to happen to him.

Professor Ryan turned on the bedside lamp at his side. I closed my eyes as light penetrated the room. I opened them a minute later and let them adjust while staring at Gerald. He was unfocused but trying to make out who I was. His eyes flashed with recognition of the situation he was in. He struggled to escape Michael's bonds and looked at me angrily.

I waited for it to pass. He seemed hardheaded in his struggle; it was a waste of energy from my perspective. A couple of seconds should have told him it would take a concerted effort to escape; not something he could do with his captor sitting on the same bed.

I sighed patiently.

His eyes focused on the important aspect of his immediate future. He recognized me and tried to smirk around the gag.

"You're not afraid yet," I said with a nod. "It makes this a lot easier, as long as you're not stupidly brave, Gerald."

His brow furrowed at his name. I shook my head; he knew who I was but did not think I would know him.

"Three of your brothers have placed you in a dangerous predicament, Gerald."

He smirked around the gag again.

"I could go after them but they strike me as the dumbest of your brothers," I said. "Not to mention that it would still leave the rest of you to deal with. I find my time is spent more productively if I skip cleaning up the bottom layer of filth. I think you have some influence over your frat brothers. Convincing you that your continued well-being is directly tied to how little I have to think about any of you is more efficient."

He tried to speak around the gag but I was fairly certain he was only cursing me.

"So as not to have a misunderstanding, you do know what three of your brothers did to my..."

I thought about how to best phrase it for Gerald.

"Toy, Doris Alex."

He smirked again.

I shook my head slowly; it would probably have been a better idea to take him outside his frat house.

"You're not taking me seriously, Gerald," I said standing up from the bed. "I knew you wouldn't, but I hoped you were at least somewhat willing to listen."

I turned the top of one of the ketchup bottles. I picked up the smell immediately. I remembered it from my high school chemistry class and the time Jason used it to convince a high school bully I was off-limits.

I pointed the bottle at Gerald's torso and squeezed. The clear liquid sprayed onto him. I coated his upper body lightly. I thought about not doing his face but Jason taught me halfway was a dangerous luxury.

"Close your eyes, darling," I whispered. "I'm not sure what will happen if this gets in your eyes."

Jason spoke those exact words to my tormentor years before. I could not quite say it with the scary concern that he had.

Gerald looked nervous. The smell of the liquid assaulted his senses, especially as it evaporated. I put the bottle down on the bedside stand and reached into my pocket.

A Zippo has a more impressive look and feel in these type of situations.

I snapped it open and a second snap lit it. I looked at Gerald seriously before nodding to Professor Ryan. He turned off the lamp and the Zippo's flame seemed brighter in the darkness.

"Gerald, I want you to know that I am not sorry."

I moved the fire to his waist. I had started the coating there. My hand approached the highest point that the liquid turned gas reached and blue flame sparked.

It was slow burning so instead of an explosion the fire flowed like water from the point of origin. It spread left and right to either side of his body, moved up his body like blue lava.

I stepped back and watched with the azure lighting my curious face.

Gerald screamed but someone would have had to be right outside his door to hear. He struggled mightily and the flame spotlighted the desperate fear on his face as he looked at the spreading fire. His mind did not bother with the nicety of noticing there was no searing heat or that the fire danced at least a half-inch above his skin.

He screamed again as the blue wave licked up his chest to his neck. The fear would not let him close his eyes as the flame passed onto his face. He shook his head hard trying to pacify the fire above his eyes.

Like in my chemistry class, the fire burned a lot longer than would have seemed possible without a visible fuel source. It took almost a minute for all of the blue flame to dissipate.

Professor Ryan turned the lamp on.

Gerald was gasping and tried to cringe away from me as I sat on the bed. His body had a fine sheen of sweat on it. I waited for him to catch his breath and for his heartbeat to get down to a pace more normal to the amount of danger he was in.

He looked at me with fear but the lack of pain registered. He had only felt some of the heat from his baptism.

"I find it disturbing that I always have to convince someone of the gravity of their situation," I said conversationally. "I would think that waking up groggy, tied naked to your bed, without remembering how you got there would be cause for concern. To get you in that position proves that I'm competent enough to be dangerous and yet I always have to set people on fire."

The fear was joined by the wariness of a cornered animal.

I nodded at him. I was right; Gerald had more brains than his brothers, or at least a larger survival instinct.

"You're probably wondering why you're not hurting right now," I said.

He was not but I needed to focus his mental process down the path I wanted it to go.

"I only needed to get your undivided attention, Gerald," I told him. "The hurting part is still minutes away."

His eyes widened.

"Now that I have you," I said. "Let's get back to where this all started. You know Doris Alex?"

He nodded slowly, reluctant to admit anything. I smiled in amusement; it was to be expected.

"I'm not going to ask why your brothers did that to her. You would say something stupid like she deserved it and I'd have to kill you," I told him in a monotone voice. "It's too late to undo it anyway, but Gerald, I need to believe; truly... faithfully believe that you understand the consequences of my thinking it might happen again."

He shook his head in automatic denial; it was to be expected also.

"Gerald, you don't even want a pout on Doris Alex's wonderful mouth to be caused by someone you know in the future."

He nodded vigorously.

"For me to be convinced you understand, YOU have to believe I am willing to hurt you. Not only that I am willing to hurt you, but that I have accepted any price I have to pay for doing it."

His brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to get the convincing part started so that I would leave.

"I hate to lecture at this time," I said pedantically. "But the problem you and the boys have is that none of you thought hurting her would have consequences. I'm sure those three thought that maybe I would get in their face and they'd get to kick my ass. Of course, no one bothered to find out if my ass was kickable."

Gerald looked worried.

"In Cancun, I gutted a woman in the middle of a nightclub," I said it slowly, accentuating each word. "Left to right, then down; her hipbone is what stopped the knife. I left it inside her. I regret that now, it was my favorite knife. There were one hundred and fifty to two hundred people around us when I did it, some of them danced in her blood."

I looked into his eyes and let him see the truth if he could recognize it.

"That's not something you would have been able to find out, but even a little investigation would have told you how bad I hurt those boys on the bus last semester over a girl I didn't even know."

I sat up straight and looked around the room.

"Do you read science fiction, Gerald?" I asked him curiously.

He shook his head carefully.

"Too bad, you won't really understand," I said with some disappointment slipping into my voice.

"I'm going to give you a choice Gerald: pain or death," I said. "Not over what happens between your fraternity and my toys in the future. You won't have a choice there. I won't have a choice if something like this happens again."

I stood up and pulled one of the 9mm Berettas holstered at the small of my back with my right hand. My left drew the knife Michael had used to cut Gerald's clothing off. I showed the instruments to Gerald and he pulled his bindings tight, trying to move away from me. I sat on the bed again and turned the gun in my hand to bring his attention to it.

"This is what I'm going to use on any brother between me and the front door should you choose death. You shouldn't think about them though. They're not the ones who have to suffer the choosing."

I turned the knife.

"This is the sword by which you'll make your choice."

I put the knife a couple of inches above his left eye. He tried to move away from it until I tapped his temple with the barrel of the gun.

"Here's what's going to happen, Gerald," I said in a near whisper. "You're going to hurt. Your instinct will be to sit up, if you do that, the knife takes your eye. If that happens, there's no point in not killing you. If the knife sinks deep enough, the attempt to sit up will probably kill you anyway. My fingerprints are all over this place now, so if you die I should just kill those three dickheads too and like I said, any brother between the front door and me has to go too. What're thirty life-sentences versus one when I only have one life?"

I leaned closer to him.

"Now, if I'm going to get a life sentence, why not get the dying part over with now, right? Cops are like soldiers on a battlefield, extremely pragmatic. I'm sure I'll only have to put a bullet in one of them before they do me the favor of foregoing the sitting in jail until I die part."

I took a deep breath and placed the end of the 9mm at his temple.

"People sometimes think I'll pull the knife away before they kill themselves. That's why I close my eyes," I whispered. "I won't be able to tell that you sat up until your eye hits the knife. You might believe I'm bullshitting but it's not fun and games when the least of the bad things is you losing an eye. Is it?"

I tapped his head with the 9mm again.

"I would keep your head against the gun. It will help your focus by reminding you of the stakes. Plus I might think you're trying to get out from under the knife and pull the trigger anyway."

Gerald shook his head frantically until I tapped him again.

He froze with his eyes widening painfully.

I smiled at him and nodded my head.

Michael climbed onto the bed and moved upwards until he was by Gerald's hips.

"Steel yourself, Gerald," I said. "Pain is not death."

I closed my eyes.

I felt the impact as Michael punched Gerald in the groin. Michael was pissed at the brothers for what happened to Doris Alex. I knew he would not be able to hold back even if it would save my life.