PART 2
What does the Puppetmaster do when his puppets lose their strings?
All I can think to keep saying is how sorry I am, but it's not making me feel any better. Selena is in the passenger seat, and I've never seen a more accurate situation to use the description 'dead to the world'.
I don't even know if she's hearing me. If I couldn't see her chest pushing the seat belt -that I had to put on for her- up and down with the rise and fall of her breathing, I'd think she WAS dead.
Her eyes are impossible to read as she just stares straight ahead, and she's not moving any other part of her body. Her arms are lifeless at her sides, and she's sitting on her of her legs crossed underneath her. It was the position she fell into when I set her down into the seat before we left the House.
The House that I had completely failed her in. The House I'd let her dad get killed in.
I didn't even know what I was going to do from this point on. I'd made the decision to bring her back to my house almost immediately. Maybe in the past I wouldn't have cared to leave the victim still there even after what happened. But she... she was different to me.
The term innocent bystander never applied to someone as much as it did to her. Here was a girl completely oblivious to the mess she was in because of her father, completely uninvolved, but forced to suffer just because of her association.
The contract had sounded pretty routine when Grabenstein first called me in to discuss it. Holding someone captive wasn't something I was new to, but usually said victim was so hard to deal with and so defensive it was easy to dislike them and carry out the job unabated.
Truth be told I'd wanted to get back at Joseph Weiss for what he'd done to my life as well, and this seemed like a good opportunity.
Selena had no idea the kind of father she had, and right now looking at her I wasn't sure she ever needed to fully understand why we did it. I wondered if she'd ever come around and be back to normal again. Sometimes severe traumatic occurrences could ruin someone forever. I'd heard stories of people basically being in a living coma for the rest of their lives from shit like this.
How do you get over seeing your dad shot in the head right in front of you... If she never did I couldn't blame her.
I had a background that exposed me to this kind of violence a lot, and as I said before I HAD wanted him to pay just like Grabenstein did, so I guess that's why I was mostly unaffected by this. I hadn't wanted him to DIE though, mind you.
In fact the main reason I WAS affected was because of her, because of Selena. Because she should have never had to answer for her father's misdeeds. Not like this.
Even before what had just happened, I had decided I was done with the job, at least how Grabenstein wanted. He WAS going to kill Weiss in the end anyway, of course, but it was never supposed to be right in front of his daughter. Selena was never meant to be more than a lure, but that other perverted fuck that signed onto the job turned her into some other kind of release for his lack of sexual conquest.
I'm glad I killed him. I never liked him from the get go. I had no regrets about my decision to stab him to death. I take that back. I regretted I used my favorite knife, and now it was tainted with his blood forever. But other than that, nope. None.
But all of this... it meant nothing now: my reasoning for taking on the job, and my shared interest of payback with Grabenstein.
It was all gone. Now I rather hated Grabenstein for even calling me onto this job. It was all HER fault.
