Darkly, Madly Duet

by Trisha Wolfe

After seven years of intense study into the mind of the criminally insane, I have formed only one conclusion: serial offenders cannot be rehabilitated.

I’ve learned how to control my impulses and direct them toward the wicked. I’ve even learned how to manage my desires, choosing to self mutilate rather than losing myself in the liberation of taking from others.

When the pieces snap together, it’s an intoxicating satisfaction like nothing else in this world.

Once you’ve sampled that perfection, that utterly seductive gratification, you cannot live without it. She’s becoming a necessity, part of my addiction, and just as I can’t quiet the compulsions, the absence of her stirs a restlessness, the fear of not having her a madness squirming inside my mind.

That man only knew one way to survive: alone. Isolation is a survival instinct. But I no longer crave solitude to suffer my penance—I’ve found the one thing that can set me free, and I’ll kill for it.

My own design of love may be a twisted creature, but that creature is hungry and demands to be fed.

Be wary of people who compliment too soon, before they even know you—they’re lowering your defenses in preparation for the strike.

You want romance, go find yourself a nice little do-boy. But you don’t want that—I tasted what you crave. I can feel it in you now. That dark obsession that twists you, makes you mine.

“You’re a monster.” “I’m your monster. Tell me, and you’ll own me. Completely.”

I straddle the man who threatens everything. My freedom. My morality. My sanity.

“We don’t get to do anything we want. There has to be boundaries, rules.” He touches his forehead to mine. “We can make our own.”

It’s intoxicating, the way he seduces my pain away, as if we really do command our own world.

I’m here with him, and it would be so simple to fall all the way. Just let go. No hiding, no shame. He found

“We were designed for each other. Don’t you feel the pain when we’re apart? Don’t you want it to stop?”

“You’re mine, London. We can dance this violent dance until we bleed each other dry, or we can surrender. Your choice. But I will have you.”

“That monster born of sin and death died in a car wreck. She’s gone.”

Some to be doctors and save, others to be lawyers and advocate. So what’s wrong with our calling? The world is overpopulated and full of filth that needs picking off.

In this day and time, it’s a calling only fit for the torrid pit of hell. And yet it can be beautiful. An art form.

His righteous anger brings a smile to my face. He was built for killing, too, but he’s denied himself that indulgence. Instead, choosing a profession that teases him, his trigger finger always at the ready. What a painful existence.

“I do, Your Honor. I proclaim that Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

“It’s strange what impacts us. What defines us. People don’t remember the good. They remember what guts them.”