***This chapter contains content that might be upsetting to some readers, including torture, violence, and sexual themes***

"Are you unconscious already? How boring?" His sister's voice carried through the door of the shed, but he was sitting outside smoking a cigarette and pretending he wasn't here.

That's what happened when you tortured someone who could barely fight their own shadow. The women his sister lured were never the kind who could steel themselves as she cut into their flesh, broke their bones, and beat them. The least she could do was pick someone who had a fighting chance. How did she get satisfaction from besting house plants?

The wind whistled outside, shaking the loose wooden door and causing the latch to click like a cackle. They were off the beaten path, so no one would hear the woman's screams, and it gave him ample time to dispose of the body.

How many had it been now? Five?

Hell, he fucking hated women.

They were all psychos.

It didn't help him that Mel looked so much like him. In her face, he could see the lack of emotion and moral conscience in those dark chocolate eyes. They both shared the soft smooth dishwater color to their hair, though Rick's shone darker brown in the light where Mel's brightened. It was better she kept it short cut around her chin or it'd get bloody with all her activities.

The woman she had constrained had only passed out in fear and woke up coughing and sputtering as his sister had likely tossed the bucket of water over her head. Great she'd taken the gag out. That meant she was going to beg. Rick had heard it all, but the women Mel chose didn't have families to miss them, nor children that needed them. No. Mel chose no ones, and made them disappear.

Rick sat outside on the concrete the entire time. If he had any choice of it, he wouldn't be here. The first time Melinda had done this, she hadn't told him, and the girl had almost escaped. Mel had been stupid enough to bring her to their damn house. Thankfully, there had been no association to them, nor any way for the police to track the woman. Ever since then, Rick made sure to be there in case something went wrong. It irked him that his sister was a methodical genius, but also so haughty that she thought she could slaughter a human being in their basement and never get caught. How had she ended up so messed up in the head?

For some reason, she just liked to torture people.

Couldn't she use her intelligence to do something good?

It wasn't like he was any better. All he did was con woman after woman so that he lived virtually free. It wasn't fair to say he conned them all though. Some of them really liked the kinky shit he was into and kept him around like a boy toy. That was until the husband or boyfriend found out and he was off to the next one.

The woman screamed and dragged him out of his thoughts to look over to the rattling door. It was just to make sure Mel was still in control, not because any of this interested him.

Nothing interested him.

They'd diagnosed him with some disorder as a child. Something in his head didn't work, but it didn't bother him. Nothing did. Not his sister's fetish with brutalizing women and defiling them, not cleaning up the bodies and dropping them where no one would ever find them, and not the way he just sat by and let it happen.

Things didn't feel for him like they did to others. Some of the women he ended up leaving told him he was shallow, like he didn't commit to them. What was there to commit to? They were all cheating on another man. Most wanted pleasure and a thrill, and Rick wasn't going to say no to a good ride.

Rick was a dick but not a killer.

Sometimes he wondered if he would feel anything if he did kill someone. There was something wrong in the heads of him and his sister, but he eased his excess aggression in bed, not by beating things. Sometimes those two got a little close though. On occasion, his partner wanted it rough, and those were the best months.

It was harder for them to see his lack of emotion when it was rougher.

In middle school a girl he'd sweet talked into fucking in the back room of the gym had called him soulless. Apparently, she hadn't liked the empty look in his eyes, and from that point on that clique had evaded him like the plague. That had been his first time, though he'd been no stranger to fantasizing. After that, he'd learned to fake it. At least in high school when he'd started banging his math tutor, she'd had no complaints.

Girls liked it when he told them they were special, pretty, smart, or whatever. With practice, he learned just how to kiss them so that they wouldn't see his empty eyes but still feel pleasure with him. That was how he grew up, deceiving people into thinking he was something else so that he could get what he wanted when he wanted it.

It was no surprise that he continued that trend out of school.

Talking a girl out of her pants in high school worked just about the same as it did with talking an older woman out of her money. It was so easy to pick out the discontent wives of men who made money, give them the attention they craved, and then pleasure them so that they couldn't resist him.

While god may have left out a few pieces, at least looks wasn't one of them. Rick's blue eyes sparked in the mirror, his cheekbones were defined and even, his features smooth and attractive, and a good hair cut was easy. While he was certainly a lady killer, he didn't literally kill women.

That was his sister's thing.

The last gasp of the woman under his sister's control had him putting out his cigarette on the concrete. He didn't normally smoke, just to ease off the stress of having to do body cleanup for his sister. If he wasn't here for her all the time, she'd get caught, and he couldn't have that. Family was family, and though he protected and looked out for her, he didn't have the associated feeling for her.

It was his duty to do it.

They wrapped the body and went about disposing of it. Sometimes they diced them and spread them in the bogs, sometimes they buried them, and on occasion they'd weight them into the ocean. Really, they did whatever struck Mel as fun, as long as it also was untraceable and a safe disposal zone. Thanks to this crap, they had to move more often than Rick cared for.

If Mel killed all these people in one area, the cops would catch on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If Rick had known this was how his morning was going to go, he'd have fucked Clarice a few more times last night. The officers at his door didn't ask to come in, they slapped a warrant in his face, and he stepped back. Ushering them in, he gave his kindest smile followed by a look of confusion and concern when they spoke.

They didn't look conned by his act, and he sat on the chair and waited while they conducted their search. All the while, he thought about Clarice, and Faith. When he was in between conning women, he lived at home and frequented whatever strip club was in town. It was easy for him to pick out which ones offered extra service on the side for more money.

Last night, he'd had Faith on all fours while Clarice covered his body in caresses and kisses. It was necessary for him to get two. It took him a few rounds, and he tired them out if he only got one. Faith had been sore after the first, so he and Clarice had fucked right next to her twice. His appetite was insatiable, but he'd cut it short last night because Mel needed a ride home from her job.

Her car had stalled, likely because it was piece of trash. They couldn't bring the same one home that they took the women to the torture sites with. That would be stupid. Rick asked to use the bathroom, and both officers checked it first for windows that he could crawl out of before they left him alone.

Shit, they were going to arrest him.

Taking his time in the bathroom, he sat back on the toilet and rubbed one out. There would be no sanctity to do so in prison, and all that thinking about the strippers had him tighter than a speedo in his pants. Panting, he was still hard even after the release and he groaned as the police banged on the door.

Fuck.

They dragged him off to the jail with his sister, and she gave him fearful, doe-eyed looks. On occasion, she cried while they had them in holding, and Rick could tell that the female cop who was watching them pitied her.

What an idiot.

Like Mel could feel something like fear. Nope. She was just as good as him at conning people. This had been bound to catch up with her though, and being the methodical people they were, they'd already discussed it. If shit hit the fan, Mel played the victim, said nothing, and insisted on her innocence.

If Rick was convicted, she had to stop, or they'd know they got the wrong one.

It didn't matter to him if he went to prison. It would be the same as any other place, except all the men. Rick wasn't a fag, and he didn't want to fuck a man. Prison was going to suck, but not any more than the rest of his life.

If they had them in custody then they'd connected that women had died in the cities they'd lived, and with how many times they'd moved, even without physical evidence, it would be piled against them. They had to have found someone if they'd jumped on them so fast, but Rick had made sure to clean the bodies. Mel was good at that too.

They'd never pin it on his sister. After all, all serial killers were men, right?

Mel didn't have the strength needed to subdue women, to haul bodies away, and she certainly didn't look to be the cold operator. Right now, she looked like a frightened school girl. She was only twenty two though. They'd been doing this since she got out of high school.

Little did they know how good Mel was at getting women alone and into her car. Rick certainly didn't get them for her, only got rid of them. While he made sure she didn't get into any trouble, he didn't help her do anything.

Rick had never been interested in that shit. Rick doubted murder would bother him, but he just never wanted to kill people. It also wasn't really in him to rape anyone. It was easy enough for him to find a woman who would warm his bed. His looks and charm saw to that. Sometimes he got a kick out of a little kink, but he wasn't violent like his sister.

The trial wasn't difficult for him. All he had to do was tell the truth, mostly.

They'd found almost all of the bodies.

Damn it to hell.

The only one they'd missed was the one weighted out in the ocean. Good luck with that. It looked like the police stations employed people with intellect too. Thankfully, they did have no physical evidence, only circumstantial, but a whole hell of a lot of it.

The murders only happened when they were in town and they moved out days after each time, they always bought cars that were never found, in his name of course. Rick made sure not to put anything in Mel's. They'd never find those, unless they went through cubed cars. They had him on camera buying a saw in one of the cities where a corpse had been found dismembered, which was just great.

It's not like he'd signed his name for that one, nor had they found it, nor would they. It was in the cubed car, but it all looked pretty damning. Facial recognition was a bitch. Why were there so many cameras? How did they even find him en route to one of the dump sites? Someone at the god damn police station had no life.

Did you kill those women?

Uh, no, dude.

Admit it, you like feeling power over women.

Yeah? That wasn't one of his good points, he was told.

You lured them out, tortured, and raped them.

Definitely not, and that wasn't a question.

What did you buy the saw for?

Working on a project with his sister.

What type of project?

Hell if I know. I just cut stuff up for her.

Where were you heading that night on the freeway?

Did the guy really expect him to remember where he was going on one night a year ago? Where were you going last year on that day? You don't remember? That's what I thought.

It was tedium, but too long. No matter how he could play the part of the confused and wrongly accused, his lack of genuine emotion was something people could see if they stared for prolonged periods of time. And he wasn't good at keeping his cool under interrogation.

The frustration got to him and damned him.

Eventually he snapped, like he always did. Told the guy to go fuck himself, and that he'd never killed anyone. Not a woman, not a man, but he was reconsidering the more he sat and stared at the man's ugly face. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if there had been any other verdict.

The death penalty.

Had he played innocent, would his sentence have been lighter? Or had he been damned from the start? People like him, who didn't think the way that rest of society did always got flack for some shit. It was why he chose to con people instead of holding a job. His soulless eyes were going to haunt him to the grave.

It wasn't like he didn't occasionally try to feel something, but it just wasn't there. Holding interest in a woman was difficult. With how he didn't feel for them, his mind set was methodical. He always saw through the things they did and over analyzed until he didn't like them. Not that he showed it... intentionally anyway.

The death penalty was not something he'd ever considered. They'd convicted him for abduction, imprisonment, torture, rape, and murder, and four counts of it. There was some degree or something, but he hadn't been listening. Instead he'd been clenching his fist in anger.

Fucking idiots.

It wasn't like he was innocent, but he also wasn't guilty of all that. Accessory to all of that, sure. That was probably the death penalty too, he imagined, so he just took the verdict in silence. It wasn't in him to point the finger at his sister. There was no evidence against her anyway, and she was already fucked up without needing this on her.

His appeal process wasn't going too well when they approached him about an alternate sentence. At that point, anything was better than a needle, so he'd taken it, and some goons had loaded him up into a truck and driven him to the airport. Being dragged through security in cuffs was fun, but he wasn't some psycho.

All throughout his jailing he'd been his normal con self, with excellent behavior and every time some weirdo wanting his story came to him, he maintained his innocence. Maybe that was why they chose him, or maybe they were wack jobs like he was. Either way, he was amiable the entire trip and went willingly when they marched him down several flights of stairs into some dungeon basement cell.

There, he awaited the people who ran his new home.

Maybe if he was nice and controlled himself, he could live out his days peacefully in some corner. That was the best he could hope for at this point. At least in prison, Mel couldn't ask him for anything. That was a relief.

Word count: 2762 -- Edited March July 15th, 2020