Chapter Text
Too long. It's been too long since he's been able to do this.
His encounter with Offenderman left him in pain for almost two weeks. During that time, he rarely ventured out of his room, only exiting in order to grab another stockpile of food. The fewer chances people had to interrogate him about the turtleneck, the better.
The woman– Violet, 27, lives alone– sleeps peacefully in her bed.
For now.
He had been stalking her for weeks before the incident with Offender. Learning her schedule, her place of work, where she goes for fun. Watching her most intimate moments. Relearning it all when she moved here about a month ago, all her friends and family in a different state. Few people will notice when she goes missing.
In the two weeks he hasn't been around, she's grown complacent, believing the strange occurances have gone away. Nothing too obvious, of course. An unlocked window here, a missing pair of panties there. Nobody would automatically suspect foul play.
He can tell she's complacent because she sleeps deeper now, unlike the way she would awaken at the slightest noise while he was actively keeping an eye on her. Her paranoia has subsided, and somehow that makes it all the more delightful.
It's a rainy night. Thunder roils nearby, the perfect cover. He stands in the shadowy corner of her room with his knife in hand, watching. Waiting. He breathes deep, heart beating hard in his chest, impatient, the anticipation almost too much to bear.
It's been too long.
She stirs, the rain through her open window finally causing her to wake. She blinks at her window in confusion, then in worry.
And then, perfectly, just perfectly, lightning strikes and breifly illuminates the room in short bursts. She gasps and her head snaps towards him. Unsure of what she saw, she fumbles for the chain on her bedside lamp.
With a click, the room is cast in a warm glow, and she gasps again, deeper and more fearful.
She stutters. "What the– Who– Why–"
He doesn't say anything, staring with lidless eyes and tilting his head to the side. She takes in the state of his face, the weapon in his hand, and she pales.
She vaults out of bed and makes a break for her door. As her palm touches the handle, Jeff slams into her back hard, forcing her against the door. She cries out once in shock and pain, then starts to panic.
"Please–! Please, oh God, no–"
He wraps his free hand around her throat from behind, pressing her back into his chest and cutting off her air, and puts his other arm around her waist, dragging her backwards.
"Shh– shh– shh–" he shushes in her ear. She struggles for air, hand trying to pull his hand away from her neck, but appears to attempt to quiet down after a moment.
"That's it," he says in a low, coarse voice. He slowly lessens the pressure on her throat, returning her oxygen bit by bit. She hyperventilates, eyes wide, and continues to quietly plead like a mantra.
He can't help himself. He presses his nose into the side of her hair and breathes deep, inhaling her honey-lavendar scented shampoo. This sends her into another round of hysterics and renewed struggling. He tightens his grip on her throat again and wrestles her to the ground, straddling her hips and then capturing her wrists to pin them to the sides of her head. The cold flat of the knife presses into the palm of one of her hands.
By now she's in tears, sobbing and wailing and begging. He joins both her wrists in one hand and secures them above her head, then presses the blade of the knife into her jugular.
"Shut up, shut up," he hisses. She quiets again, pressing her lips together and breathing heavily, and the absolute power and control sends a little thrill down his spine.
"Please," she whimpers, then speaks fast. "Don't kill me, do whatever you want I'll do whatever you want just please don't kill me, I won't tell anyone I promise please, please–"
Jeff removes the knife and sets it on the floor, inches from her face. Her eyes follow the movement. She flinches back and squeezes her eyes shut when he cups her face in his hand, swiping a thumb through her tear tracks. A strangled sound comes from her throat as she grimaces.
"Look at me," he commands.
She slowly blinks open her eyes, and he gives his lopsided smile that looks more like a sneer and says, "You know I can't do that."
Her face crumples and she dissolves into tears again, chest heaving with new sobs. He strokes her face a few more times before moving up to run a hand through long, brown hair, and she shakes her head violently in an attempt to shake him off.
"Please! I don't want to die, I can't– I can't– Please–"
He grips her hair at the roots to hold her head still and leans in close, pressing the side of his face into hers. She shudders from the texture of his bloody scars on her cheek.
He mutters low in her ear, "I don't care. You've been my mark for two months, you think I'm going to stop now?"
"Why–? Why are–? Why–?" she can't get the question out, but it's one they all ask.
He mocks her stuttering. "Because– Because– Because–" Pulling back to watch her as he answers, he says, "Can't you tell? Because I get off on it."
She's shocked into silence. He relishes in the pure terror and disgust displayed on her face, sending a warmth through him. Laughing breathlessly, he picks his knife back up and grips it in his fist, angling it so the point of it is touching the middle of her sternum.
"You're going to scream." It's a statement, said in the same tone of voice someone might say "You're going to cough," to a first-time smoker.
"Please," she whispers, trying one last time to appeal to a nonexistent sense of mercy.
He gives her a wicked grin as he raises the knife up with both hands.
"No! No! Wait–!" is all she has time to get out before he brings it back down, slashing across her hands as she tries to block it. The knife slips between two of her ribs with a squelch and she lets out a shrill, piercing scream that raises the hair on the back of his neck in all the right ways. She twists her whole body, trying to escape. In response, he shifts his weight to press his hips down into hers, both keeping her pinned down and giving him some friction.
He pauses, listening to her shrieks and enjoying the sensation of her trembling hands on his as she tries to pry them off the knife. He grinds it in deeper, and her heaving breaths and moans of pain are just exquisite.
All at once, he withdraws the knife, letting blood bubble up in the wound. He pushes two fingers inside and wiggles them around, causing her to screech and grip his wrist to try to lift his hand away. He pulls out and runs his hand down the side of her face, smearing the blood from her temple to her chin.
She doesn't seem to know what to do with her hands. One second she's holding the wound, the next she's trying to remove his hand from her face, and then she starts pushing at his chest and stomach, trying to shimmy out from under him.
He grabs one of her hands in his and taunts her. "You're so handsy, you could've just said you want me." Punctuating the sentence by rolling his hips down into hers. She nearly dry heaves at that, and he just laughs.
He brings the knife down again, and again, and again, the symphony of her screams mixed with warm blood splattering across the two of them and fleshy tearing sounds creates a euphoric haze in his mind. He lifts himself off her, allowing her to turn over and slowly start crawling towards her door, stopping to heave and lose the contents of her gory stomach partway there.
He breathes hard as he watches her struggle to move. As she reaches the door, Jeff steps in front of her and crouches down, one knee on the ground. She looks up at him with pleading eyes and the sight of her scared, sweat, blood, tear, and vomit stained face makes him throb in his pants.
Letting out a shaky breath, he reaches out to brush the hair out of her face. She winces away and says weakly, through gurgled breaths, "Please kill me before you– Please let me die first."
It tips him over the edge. He roughly pushes her onto her back and straddles her chest, grinding down as he does so. She sobs once, and then his knife is slashing through her jugular in a single, practiced motion. She coughs blood once, twice, and finally goes limp.
He wastes no time. Undoing the button and zipper on his pants, he pulls himself out and strokes himself a few times before beginning to push into a wound on her stomach, and then–
A new urge arises in him. Not foreign, but not one he's experienced for a long, long time, and it's–
It's not right. He stops, tries to steady himself. Shakes the thoughts away and starts pushing in again.
But it's still there. The urge to hurt, not just anyone, but himself.
Twin desires spring up inside him. One, to give in and do it. See where it leads him. The other, stronger one, to get the fuck out. This isn't right. This isn't normal. Something has broken in him, gotten his wires crossed, and he wishes he could say he doesn't know what it is.
He can't. He zips himself back up and leaves the way he came, heart beating hard for all the wrong reasons.