Caution Tape (Mutual Monsters Duet Book 1)

by Molly Doyle

I wonder vaguely if I’ve ever felt that strongly about anything, to compare it to the collapse of a season.

“Touch me like that again and I’ll peel your face off to use as my next Halloween mask. Capiche?”

There’s a sense of relief in knowing that someone else is caught in this chaotic in-between of knowing you’re disconnected and a borderline psychopath, but also being aware enough that you are not normal. That you are an aberration. That an entire society is built around these ideas of attachment and empathy that you simply do not possess.

The thrill of stalking my prey combines with the joy of potential self-destruction. All of it for the sake of that dark-haired, gorgeous nightmare.

It amuses me that, a few short hours ago, I was gleefully stabbing a man in the chest, his screams echoing off the harsh steel of the container, and now it looks pristine.

But with Cora, I want her. I want to play the game. I want things to escalate. I want them to get better, get worse, descend into chaos.

Cora confuses me. Excites me. Interests me. But that falls apart the moment one of us stops playing the game.

I wonder if she has any idea of the danger she is in. I’m certain that if I see blood in this moment, I will lose control and the game will end in stunning, glorious violence.

“Are you going to stab me or fuck me, Nolan?”

And now, here I am, keeping my mouth shut and doing exactly as Nolan has instructed, bound in plastic and breathing through a small hole in the bag that’s secured over my head.

He’s a psychopath, in every sense of the word, yet he doesn’t scare me one bit. In a world full of pitch-black-nothingness, he makes me feel alive. Like I am capable of anything.

No man has ever seen me. He’s the first, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

What part of the house of corpses is this, Nolan? Why, it’s the weird sex part. Every serial killer has one. I need to fill out the Wikipedia page; the tawdry, sickening details that makes the people squeal and shudder.

Something touches my hand beside me on the bed. The knife. Nolan is serving Ryan to me. My last boyfriend didn’t even get me flowers.

I wonder vaguely what it would be like to fuck Cora on top of Ryan’s dead body, but I let that fantasy go the moment she starts doing snow angels on the floor in the bloody aftermath. We have too much to do. First, we must celebrate.

“We gotta get your boyfriend’s body out of here. We have to clean up the house. We have a ton to do.” Hearing these words coming out of my mouth is dizzying. I sound like I’m fucking married. Next, I’ll be telling her we need to get milk. Look at a brand-new washer and dryer. Bake a casserole for the neighbors.

Cora needs someone to tell her that the murder and blood fantasies are fine. Sweetheart, of course they are.

I liked Natalie a little bit that day. Even if it was just the pleasant afterglow of hating something together. She wouldn’t understand the urge to tear my own face off and scream in the middle of Aisle 9, but relationships were built on compromise, right?

I resist the urge to blow her a kiss. Natalie just makes you want to be awful to her, doesn’t she?

He’s not running in the other direction. He’s not stabbing me. That must be a good sign.

I nod. Okay. I hallucinate now.