Cute But Psycho: Paranormal Asylum Reverse Harem, page 1
Copyright © 2021 by Beatrix Hollow
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Afterword
Also by Beatrix Hollow
Chapter One
I was staring at four dead bodies suspended upside down by meat hooks. There were gory lines across their throats and drying blood staining slack but terrified faces. It was a weird expression—emotions etched in but no life in the eyes. Almost like looking at those creepy wax statues in macabre museums.
Deep down inside me, I should have felt repelled by the scene in front of me. I knew that. Except I just didn’t, no matter how long I stared at them. They were lifeless things hanging in a refrigerated basement room and that’s it. It could have been someone’s dry cleaning for all I felt inside.
Maybe later I’d get it. I’d think back on this and tremble and cry. Not today though. Today I was just one big scoop of what the fuck.
This was not how I imagined this situation going. Stalkers weren’t supposed to accidentally stalk serial killers and they definitely weren’t supposed to abruptly realize they weren’t the craziest one in their obsessive relationship.
Guess this was yet another thing I didn’t do quite right.
My eyes swept over this small underground room I’d snuck into. Three messy buckets of blood were in a line against a wall—like kindergartners lined up to go to lunch. How cute.
I swallowed, trying to bury my shock so I could understand what exactly was going on. Understand that maybe the man whose house I’d broken into, wasn’t exactly who he pretended to be. That his good guy persona was just a mask thinly stretched over his very attractive face in order to hide the monster underneath.
Right now, it really seemed my therapist was a murderer.
A very experienced one if this room was anything to go on. It was quite clearly a murder cooler. That was the official name I was giving it. A big walk-in basement intended for killing and other things apparently because other than the suspended bodies there were neatly labelled brown glass jars and plastic tubs of chemicals arranged politely on stainless shelves against one wall. There were stainless steel tables, 5 gallon buckets, and tools. Things that looked like they belonged in a butcher shop, a hardware store, or perhaps a 15th century monastic torture room.
I’d considered murder as much as the next not quite sane person but I’d never really thought about things like bone saws and whatever the hell else everything here might be.
Honestly, when I envisioned playing Peeping Tom for Doctor Orson, I never imagined this to be the result. That for the last few years, when the news came out to talk about the Bloodless Butcher, that they were whispering the secrets of my Orson. Of course, I was jumping to conclusions to think he was the at-large serial killer but it wasn't as if we lived in a thriving city of pleasure killers.
Right now in here, I felt like I was peering into his soul, seeing his secrets he kept shut deep inside. They were precious, they were personal. It felt wrong to be so invasive and that settled into a thrilling sensation on my skin.
I wanted to be invasive. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to see right into his brain—all the convolutions and deep crevices. Everything there was to know about Orson, I needed to know and I honestly didn’t care if that was invasive and wrong. I simply couldn’t exist without him living in my mind constantly.
My ears picked up the dripping of blood over the loud hum of the cooler. My hearing was exceptional, almost supernatural. My aunt and uncle often liked to say I was either lying or hallucinating about everything I could hear and smell. Got to love family.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The blood went. It burrowed in my head like a bunny desperate to escape a hungry fox. Deeper and deeper until it was caressing my hypothalamus alive for one of the four Fs. Not fucking, fighting, or fleeing—I meant feeding, however fucked up that was.
My stomach pinched in on itself as that messed up reaction swirled in my head whispering: try it, try the dead men’s blood. Yeah, that’s a very sane reaction to being in a serial killer’s murder cooler.
“Don’t be weird,” I grit out to myself, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my thumbs’ fingernails into the pad of each finger like brutal little kisses. Orson said I had to resist this morbid craving. Fight it because once I took that first little taste I was crossing a line I could never come back from.
Seems like he spoke from experience.
I teetered there in the middle of the oddly clean room, fighting against the compulsion to walk over to one of those buckets, dip my finger in, and lick it off greedily as if tasting the last of the frosting in the mixing bowl.
Why was I like this? A blood obsession really put a damper on feeling normal. It also made friendships rather hard. I was always one personal conversation away from spilling my bloody secret for a bunch of wide-eyed normal people. I wondered if there was a Facebook group full of blood-obsessed people I could join. There had to be. There was a Facebook group for everything.
My breath was shaky as I took a steadying gulp of air, burying the strange hunger. My eyes popped open, taking in the horror scene again. I felt like I was in a dream. This was too extreme to be real, right? Suddenly I felt like some character on a stage and the director was telling me to walk around in shock but I just wasn’t feeling it. I couldn’t even feel the cold on my arms despite frigid air being constantly barfed at me. Doctor Orson, what have you been up to?
“Maybe he has a good reason,” I said aloud to the bodies gently swaying from blasting cold air. It felt appropriate to come up with an explanation even if I didn’t really personally care. I bit the inside of my cheek and brushed my fingers over my thighs. I had a feeling the “good reason” for all this was that Doctor Orson was fucking insane. Funny, since he was my therapist.
My perfect therapist.
This was certainly surprising, but honestly, not totally unwelcome. There wasn’t a single thing I could have found in his house that would have made me dislike him. Even some secret wife he’d hidden from me all these years. Sure, it would have enraged me to no end. The idea of him having a wife made my entire body shake and for the room to fade away as I was overcome with an intense feeling of rage.
I had to keep it together. He didn’t have a wife. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He didn’t even date. I knew these things. I’d watched him closely, though perhaps not closely enough considering it took me this long to discover this huge secret.
Thank god his secret wasn’t a cute blonde wife who wore chunky sweaters and had perfect mental health. A woman closer to his age and social standing. Who had a job and had been an adult longer than a couple years.
That would have been a difficult situation to remedy but I’d watched enough true crime to have some ideas about where to hide a body.
This though? I swept my eyes over the dead ceiling ornaments. This was easy. This was good.
I poked the cheap leather jacket of one of the bodies, checking to make sure this was really happening. It swayed and the urge to push it harder and watch it swing back and forth struck my mind.
Before I gave in to the compulsion, a scuffling noise startled me and my heart leapt in my chest painfully. I sucked in a sharp breath and turned in shock to see one of the bodies begin to squirm like a worm on a hook. The man groaned, his brown bloodshot eyes blinking open at me. Then they widened in terror and he jerked like he was being electrocuted.
His loud panicked grunts and gasps made my heart beat faster. I looked at the cooler door in a panic, as if the noise would summon Doctor Orson immediately, fucking me over completely.
“Stop,” I hissed, but he didn’t. He just got louder, flinging himself around violently. “Shut the fuck up,” I demanded with venom, feeling the bitter taste of panic begin to coat my tongue. I was a sitting duck. This room was a metal box of death and it would be
Orson might see me and not understand that this is fine. That I'd keep his secrets. That he and I were meant to be together.
Also, I really didn’t want him to realize I’d been seriously stalking him for the past couple of months and completely obsessed with him for the past three years.
I needed to get out immediately. Go back through the cooler door, zoom up the stairs, leave this house, and run. Now was not the time to show my hand to him. I wanted to hoard this earth-shattering secret in my two hands, holding it close to my chest. This knowledge would be a tipping point for us. It could change everything.
But first I had to make it out alive.
“Help!” The man gasped at me, his eyes wide. I hadn’t noticed his throat was uncut before. His face was a painting of purple and black, bruises from a brutal beating he’d suffered. Doctor Orson had done that? I’d spent hours obsessing over his manly knuckles and never once had I envisioned them doing anything but gripping fountain pens and scrawling out notes in elegant handwriting. I’d never seen a bruise or cut. He was just perfect all the time.
“Help, you bitch!” The man bellowed, sounding belligerent. I cringed, knowing each new noise was like a shovel of dirt on my potential grave.
“When asking for help, being a rude asshole is probably not the best tactic,” I hissed between my teeth.
I thought I could hear the noise of shoes on the stairs right outside this basement cooler. My hearing was great, but was it that great? Didn’t matter, I was already panicking. My throat closed and I stumbled towards the only furniture in the room I could hide in—a stainless steel sink with a two-door cabinet underneath.
My fingers shook and my hands felt weak as I ripped the doors open and shoved myself in, crawling on top of jugs of bleach in my black slip-ons. The acrid chlorine fried the hairs inside of my nose as if it had been spilled at some point. I tugged at the doors just as I heard the cooler door begin to open.
There was no way to close the cabinet entirely from the inside so they remained cracked, my fingers pressing into the very bottom of each door to keep them from falling open. This was a very bad situation. I really didn’t want Orson to know I’d snuck into his house. That I watched him.
My hiding spot was dark and the smell made my eyes water. Through the brightened crack of the doors, I saw him, my Orson.
My face went slack at the sight and I felt my breathing level out to a calm, almost sedated state. He stepped in the room looking like an assassin porn star. His sleeves had been rolled up his muscular forearms, showing off sinewy muscle and bulging veins. He had black leather gloves, snug over his impressive knuckles. I wondered what it would be like to feel those leathered gloves slip inside me. The sensation of the smooth cloth rubbing against my inner walls.
Blood was splattered like art over his white shirt and thin black tie. He scratched his earlobe and left a blood smear. Then he popped the glove in his mouth and licked off the liquid mindlessly and with apathetic eyes. Like someone else would lick batter off a spoon.
My mouth dropped open as I watched his sinister tongue and I tried not to push my fingers into my panties and seek some relief from the tension his show was giving me.
There was a good reason for this obsession with him. Insomnia kept me awake a lot, laying in bed while everyone else slept. I needed things to fantasize about and each night I lay in bed, I thought of him, dragging up every minuscule feature. I’d see his solid jaw, his violet eyes framed by elegantly long lashes, and his tan skin so many shades darker than mine. Combined with those wicked eyes he looked barely human.
I loved his relaxed yet perfect posture. How his eyelids looked when he read something on his desk—like they had been brushed lightly with blue powder. The tight, crisp cuffs of his button-up. The very delicate outlining of his veins on his forearms.
He was elegant and taunting. A gentleman with eyes that held secrets and mirth he never shared with me. Raw sexuality he stuffed inside expensive, designer suits.
There was no one like him.
And now, as he glided into the room with a vicious smirk cut into his face, he ascended to something more. Gone was the detached therapist with the polite smiles and upstanding life. That was a man I held on a pedestal, like a piece of art behind glass.
This man before me now was sinister, fucked up, and wicked. He’d been fooling everyone, even me, and for some reason, the duplicity of his character made me so excited I thought I’d burst. It was a testament to his depravity and intelligence, how well he acted the part of a moral, tax-paying citizen.
His violet eyes sparkled in humor as he confidently strolled to the human worm on his hook. Orson’s tongue darted out, licking up an arrant splatter of blood on his large lips.
How could a girl obsessed with blood end up with a therapist who collected it in buckets? That was a coincidence I couldn’t accept. Had he sought me out? Did he hope to show me this side of him one day? Did he want me to join him?
The wall between us was crumbling to the ground right this minute and I was finally able to admit I was in love. Desperately, obsessively, dangerously. Oh, to be in love was so very thrilling. And now my obsessive love didn’t have to be a fantasy because I could see it clear as day now.
Doctor Orson was my soulmate.
“You fucking psychopath!” The man on the hook yelled as loud as he could, making me wince from the level of noise. “I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you!” Doctor Orson said nothing and gave no expression. His cruelty was coming off him like heat waves and it was so wrong compared to the normal man he pretended to be each day.
Orson held a blank face as the man yelled and struggled, giving everything he had and finding out that it wasn’t going to be enough to save him. Orson grabbed a clean five-gallon bucket from the corner and it made a scraping noise as he set it under the man, never saying a word.
“They’ll find you eventually. I know who you are,” the man snarled. The way he said “they” made me think he was talking about a specific group. “You’re the Bloodless Bu—” He was cut off with wet gurgles as Orson leaned forward and pressed the knife into his neck, dragging it from ear to ear. It felt like slow motion, time grinding to a near standstill as I watched skin split and blood gush out in arterial spurts. The man’s face gaped in horror, an expression so extreme that it made me feel something I couldn’t quite define.
Doctor Orson looked on and groaned—something manly and sensual that hit me right between my fucked up legs. That’s when the blood’s metallic scent bit through the bleach and hit my nostrils. It did something weird to my brain. It felt like my pupils were dilating and like static was in my head as the crimson color made a thick veil on the man’s face. A tiny whine crawled up my throat before I could stop it.
Orson’s face snapped to the side and his violet eyes bore into the crack of my cabinet. Cold shock sizzled up my spine. My lungs burned as I held my breath and tried to pretend he hadn’t heard me. That I hadn’t just freaking whined in want about blood when I was hiding from a serial killer.
My serial killer.
My entire body was beginning to shiver, adrenaline flooding my system for action. Tears from bleach fumes and emotions spilled from my eyes, likely destroying my makeup. It was a weird thing to be concerned about but, if I was going to be killed by my soulmate I wanted to look good while it happened.
Although maybe he wanted me to look like a mess. Maybe he was the type of man that liked seeing running mascara and tears. Maybe he’d push his cock in my mouth roughly, just to see my eyes tear up and my makeup get all dirty.
Orson’s beautiful eyes moved away from my cabinet, making my body sag a little in relief. His gaze trailed over the room, looking for the possible cause of the noise. Amidst my panic, a tiny kernel of hope fought to calm me as I shook. I looked down at the bleach jug awkwardly pressing into my knee and considering readjusting.
