Don't Fk With a Goth Btch

Havermouth, Present Day

Chris Arren stood, blocking her into the u formation of the kitchen. He held an odd-looking gun in his hand.

“Hello Aislen.”

Aislen threw a bowl at him in a spray of soapy water. It struck him in the center of his forehead, the impact throwing his head back, and he jerked the gun up in response, sending two darts into the ceiling.

Aislen threw herself across the floor, slipping in the soapy water that had splashed on the linoleum, and falling hard onto her hip, the impact sending shocks of pain through her body. She slid out, her foot connecting with Chris Arren’s ankles, kicking them out beneath him, so that suddenly they were face to face on the floor.

His face pulled into a ferocious snarl, and he gripped her upper arms with cruel fingers and nails that dug into her skin. She slammed her forehead into his face, the impact sending sparks through her vision, but his nose exploded into blood, and he roared, releasing her in order to throw his palms up in defence as she tried to repeat the success of the first strike.

She kicked away from him, gripping the edge of the counter and finding her feet. The brief contact between them had been enough, her mind filled will his comparisons between her and his daughter, Heather.

She reached into the double-sided overhead cupboard and threw glasses at him. “You sick f-k,” she accused him. “You were raping your daughter, and when she found a boyfriend and tried to run away, you all but f-king killed her. She wasn’t injured in a suicide attempt, but because you strangled her.”

She grabbed a chair and slammed it over him, the wood shattering under the impact, and Chris Arren grunting in pain. She gripped a broken spear. “I remember her,” she told him through her teeth, her head arcing back. “I remember her. I bumped into her. She was thinking about how her f-king father was f-king her… It was you… You…”

He flipped her and she hit the floor hard, winding her. In the moment that it took her to recover, he was over her, his spittle foaming on his lips as he snarled down at her. “Dirty, f-king whore,” he snarled down at her. “You know how long I had to f-king wait until you were between customers here? Men in, men out, never with an empty bed. Slut.”

“Did you spray paint my house?” She clawed at his eyes and bit at his hand when he planted it on her face, holding her back from him. “Did you firebomb my house and send me a f-king tongue?”

“I have no f-king idea what you are talking about,” he gripped her by the throat, pinching in so that she could breathe and lifted her head by his hold before slamming the back of her skull against the floor. She writhed, trying to buck him off of her, hitting at him with the heels of her hands.

“Did you kill my dad?” She rasped.

“I suspected that he had found out about Heather and I and was keeping the evidence hidden here.” He flipped her onto her stomach and pulled her arms back behind her back, reaching into the back pockets of his jeans and using a zip tie to try to secure her wrists. She fought him, twisting a hand free and shoving it under her so that he could not tie them together. “F-k, you’re spritely for someone reported to have been shot two days ago,” he growled in frustration.

“F-k you.”

Chris was panting from his efforts, his blood dripping from his nose and splashing in mucus-sticky drops onto the linoleum. “I tried to do this the easy way. I asked you nicely to give me what he had on me. I asked you nicely several times, but you are such an arrogant b-tch that you would not give me what I need. So now,” he reached under her skirt and dragged her panties down her legs. “You will give me what I want.”

She threw herself over, bucking him off so that he fell to the side, the hand he tried to catch himself on slipping out in his blood.

She landed a knee to his groin and, when his breath oomphed out of him, curling him into a ball, threw herself over his back, fisting into his thin hair and slamming his temple into the ground. She did it again, screaming out her rage. And again, until he was limp beneath her, and then reached over shakily for the zip ties, and yanked his limp arms up behind his back, securing them together.

She pulled the cord so tight that the skin bulged over them. “Get out of that, f-ker,” she said as she stood on trembling legs, and delivered a kick between his splayed legs for good measure before spitting blood on him. "F-ker."

She picked up the weird looking gun and took it with her as she staggered down the hallway to the front door. Tyler had been bundled just inside of the threshold, felled by one of the strange bullets. She checked his pulse and breathing – both were steading and strong. She pulled a weird looking bullet with a needle on the end out of Tyler’s shoulder.

“Tranq gun,” she said with more authority than she possessed, but it made sense. The gun was weird looking, and Tyler was out, snoring in his sleep. She felt in his pockets and found a phone. It had facial recognition and opened when she held it in front of Tyler. “Talen,” she told it, and heard it begin to ring.

“I’m on my way,” Talen answered, video off.

“Daddy,” she said.

“Morgana,” his tone changed to alarm. “Where is Tyler?”

“He’s out. Chris Arrens… this guy attacked us…” She heard Chris groan from the kitchen. “He’s coming to.”

“I’m ten minutes away,” Talen’s voice was tight. “Kill the intruder if he is a threat.”

“Oh, I will,” she agreed. “See you soon, daddy.”

She walked back down to the kitchen and grabbed Chris Arren’s by the back of his shirt, dragging him down to the bathroom. He cried out in protest and tried kicking. She released him and delivered several good kicks to his midsection which silenced him. His breath was wheezed in as she dragged him into the bathroom and hauled him into the bath, pausing to press the heel of her hand against her gunshot wound, panting and wincing.

“You are a whore,” he spat up at her as she searched his pockets and found his phone.

“Yeah,” Aislen agreed and turned on the shower water. “But it’s always funny that a woman is a whore when she has the same sex life as a man. Let’s talk about your daughter, Heather, hey? I met her once at a football match, pretty girl. Being raped by her dad was a bit of a downer, eh?” She turned the video on.

“She was a f-king slut, just like you.” His nose was broken, and he was breathing heavily through his mouth, his lips pulled back into a snarl.

“Wrong answer,” she replied, pausing the recording. She dropped a towel over his head, letting the shower spray saturate it. He cried out, his breath wet sounding through the saturated cloth. She watched the fabric mold to his face as he sucked seeking air.

His face, covered by the saturated cloth, reminded her of her dreams of corpses floating through water. For a moment she watched in fascination wondering at the origin of her dreams, and then she peeled the towel back from his mouth.

“Please,” he sobbed in a breath. “I don’t want to die.”

“There are worse things than death,” she observed. “Just ask Heather. You f-ked her up well, didn’t you? She’s trapped in her own head, her mind too damaged to let her out. That would be merciful for you. And I’m not feeling very merciful.” She sat on the rim of the bath and used her heels to hold him down as the water rose around him, flipping the wet towel back over his face, so that he could not see, smell, or breathe.

“You were raping your daughter,” she flipped back the towel and selected record. “Let’s start from that. This is your opportunity to repent, Chris Arrens. You should start by how you were raping your daughter, Heather Arrens, and how you framed her boyfriend for her attempted suicide in order to disguise that you strangled her in a fit of jealous rage when she told you that she was leaving.

“And finish,” she zoomed in on his face. “On how you killed my father in order to silence him when he found out.”

“I didn’t,” Chris Arrens sprayed water in an exhale. “I didn’t kill your f-king father.”

“You didn’t?” She was taken aback. “How about spray-painting my house, hiring thugs to throw Molotov cocktails, and sending me a severed tongue.”

“You’re f-king nuts,” he garbled. “You’re a psychopath!”

She flipped the towel back over his face and used her heels to shove him back under the spray. “Maybe,” she agreed, leaning back, her arse on the bath rim, watching as the towel sucked tight to his mouth and nose. “Maybe…”

“Morgana!” Talen appeared in the doorway, his eyes going from her to the man that she held down with her heels. She pulled back her heels guiltily as he reached down and flipped back the towel to let Chris Arren’s breathe. His eyes met hers and he reached through the steam of the water to cup her chin. “Are you unharmed?”

She shrugged, suddenly teary. “I’m alright.’

He nodded, his eyes knowing and sympathetic, before they dropped to where Chris Arrens sucked in air. “How is he dying?”

She smiled slowly, her heart lifting. “Slowly, daddy, slowly.”

He met her eyes. “I have the perfect way.”

“Of course, you do,” she purred. “And that’s ridiculously sexy.”

He chuckled.