The Boy - part 2 (weekend freewrite)

This is the second part of the story, If you'd like to read the first part go here.

He was anxious for everyone to go to bed. He washed his hands and cleaned his knife.

The voice in the dark began speaking almost at once. And the boy stood perfectly still, on the creaky staircase, for fear of disturbing the story.

There was little blood on the knife, he'd cleaned it three times already, but he couldn't be too sure. He kept envisioning his wife picking up the knife to cut meat, like she sometimes did, and finding the blood stains – dark red rust on his favorite hunting knife. She'd know immediately what he'd done and the man could not bear that. She was his light, among everything, despite everything. She gave him hope that he could be a better man, that he wasn't just the ruthless killer he'd witnessed again tonight.
Every time the man killed, it was like he was stepping out of his body. Only just for a second, but enough to tell himself later that he hadn't known it was happening.
He'd stand to the side – sometimes, he'd even scream – as the man who was not him would sink his cold, trusted blade into backs and necks. And he would hear, every time, the sinking sound. The soft crunch as the knife pierced the bones of his victim.
This time, it had been the head. He'd stood behind his victim – a man, he didn't know him well, just knew he couldn't be trusted – and he'd beaten him until the man fell to the ground. And then, the man pulled him up by his shirt, unto his knees and sunk his knife into the man's skull.

And he felt horrible, because he felt so sure it hadn't been him and yet, at the same time, he'd watched himself do it.
It wouldn't matter. In the morning, it would all be okay. If only his wife and daughter would go to sleep sooner, forgetting about him. He'd stay awhile in the kitchen and he'd watch the fire and then, when he washed the demons from his head, he would go up the stairs and hold her tight against him, he would breathe her in and all would be alright again. He knew all would be alright if only he could smell his wife's hair. Her skin. Her scent, that felt so much like home.
And in the morning, they would wake, their legs entwined and it would all be new again. A fresh start, a clean slate, like the night hadn't happened at all. And he could live on as if his neighbor wasn't dead.
But the man never got to smell her.

'I was unsure of her motivation for changing that pattern,' he kept telling himself.

The eyes glimmered in the dark and then the boy heard a sharp breath. The creature was smoking, he realized.

The man, you see, was a man of patterns and he couldn't stop wondering about his neighbor's wife, who'd almost died in his stead. The man had watched the house for many days before making his attack and he'd learned when to strike. People are wildly predictable, I'm afraid, and he'd noticed that every night, straight after dinner, his victim's wife would wash the dishes, putting them away to dry and then, she would go up to her room, kissing her husband as she went. And the husband would stay awhile, on the unlit porch, staring out at the forest.
He would sit and think of days gone by and God knew what else for about an hour. And only then, would he go back up to join his wife in bed. It was a pattern. People exist in patterns.
Only that night, they did not.
The man – the killer – had stepped out into the house through the back door. He'd decided it would be easier for him to surprise his victim. But going through the house, he'd almost stumbled upon the victim's wife, standing barefoot in the kitchen, crying with her head bent down low – a vision of what was soon to come, perhaps.
The man almost killed her then too, but it was not his way. He did not kill inoccents. He did not kill those he was not supposed to. So, the man stood still, hidden in the shadows, until the wife wiped away her tears and walked back up to bed. Then, he walked out unto the porch and killed the man he was meant to kill.
He left the body on the porch, just like he'd been instructed, so that the wife would find it in the morning, or perhaps later when she came down to see what kept her husband from her bed. And maybe then she would stop crying.

'Are you sick?' the killer's wife asked him when he walked through the door and he only shook his head.
He couldn't speak. He could never speak after a hunt, because no matter how well he knew that it had to be done...He still wondered.
Killing takes a toll on a man's heart. Do you hunt, boy?

The boy shook his head, still standing on the stairs, not daring to go closer to the smoking figure.
'My father doesn't let me touch his knives,' he whispered, afraid, although he didn't know what he was more afraid of – his father hearing him or this creature.
The speaker shook his head and the boy saw a trail of sparkling ashes fall from its mouth.

Maybe it's better that he does not. You see, the man in my story was not a good man at all. He'd killed too much, too many people and the price had been too great. He'd lost something essential in him, some ingredient that made him human.
I suppose it was only a matter of time until he would have to pay.

'Pay?' the boy stuttered, intrigued despite his better judgment.

There's always a price to pay. The man had been so distracted, by his thoughts and by washing clean his dirty knife that he hadn't paid attention. He hadn't heard his wife walking out the door, he hadn't heard her tell him they were going for a walk, because the little one wasn't feeling all that well. Or rather, it had been one of those moments when he wasn't really there. He'd just nodded and turned his back to them and that was it.

The boy listened to the silence. The only sound was the creature in the dark smoking his cigarette.
'And then what happened?'

They never came back. Everyone has patterns, even the man. And someone had noticed them – someone had noticed that after each kill, the man would come and stay in the kitchen, barely speaking to his family and that they would go out for a walk, to give him some space to breathe, to be himself again.

'But why didn't they kill him?' the boy asked, finally stepping off the staircase. Standing on the cold basement ground, he was struck by how much taller the creature was. It peered down at him, with the most sorrowful eyes.

Because he had to pay for what he'd done. He had to see what it felt like to have the one you love most so brutally taken from you in the dark.

The boy couldn't be sure, but he had the odd feeling that the creature was crying in the dark.
'And what did he do? Did he go after the killers? Did he make it?'

'I suppose I did.'

To be Continued

This has been a weekend freewrite inspired my the prompts put forth by @mariannewest, our fearless leader (check her out!). If you'd like to join the freewriting community, head on over to her blog! Also, I'm tagging @galenkp because he didn't want to miss the second part :)

Thank you for reading,

Photos are mine.