JUST ONCE by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The skull mask was the one he would use next, the killer decided. Because, to him, it emphasized everything he'd been through. The enforced denial. The feeling of being pushed to his limits. He'd often thought of himself as being nothing more than bare bones, without any strength, without any living flesh. Everything stripped away.

The killer stopped his car and parked in a secluded spot. There, on top of the hill, was his next destination. That was where he was headed, and this was a kill that had intense significance for him. He wanted to relish every moment of the experience.

As he stared at his faraway target, he heard the pounding of feet from behind him. He spun around, frowning as a woman in her forties jogged by. She was in the mold he hated. He saw that immediately. She was fit, strong, and focused. She glanced at her fitness watch as she passed him, causing him to tense in anger.

How he hated these women who pursued the goals that he'd been forced into.

They'd been born as athletes, and it showed in the way they moved. It showed in the way they thought. How he hated them for being able to do what he couldn't.

The skull mask was a reminder of how they had made him feel. Seeing their faces, seeing their bodies, hearing their voices, taunting him, and ridiculing him.

It reminded him of the words he'd been made to suffer during those torturous sessions.

"You'll never be an athlete. You'll never even be a man. Look at you. You are puny, weak, and pathetic. Look at this heart rate? Unacceptable! And why can't you chin the bar five times? You should be able to do it ten times!"

The voice had never gone away. That loud, taunting, bullying voice had stuck in his mind for years, as if lodged there immovably.

Every time he looked in the mirror he was reminded of those scathing criticisms. "Look at you. You're so skinny and bony. Your arms are like a rag doll's. That's what you are. You're nothing better than a girl. Only when I look at the girls that work out with you, they are all fitter and stronger than you. Better speed, too. You're eating their dust, that's all you're doing. Just eating their dust!"

And he'd been insulted like that in front of the girls. His tormentor had never shied away from humiliating him in public. Not once had the girls been kind, he remembered. Those women, lifting weights, running on treadmills, seeking to smash their fitness goals, had been nothing but insulting to him. He'd never received sympathy or even help from them.

He had never been able to understand why his tormentor was so cruel to him. He had never been able to understand why he had made him lift weights that were way out of his league in terms of his body's strength, while taunting him when his heart hammered in stress and panic. He knew he didn't have the strength in his arms or his hands.

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