Highway to Hell



  Highway to Hell

  By

  M.T. Acquaire

  Published By:

  Copyright © 2013 by Matthew and Tanya Acquaire

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Highway to Hell

  The nighttime sky was a blanket of darkness that devoured the scant moonlight. It was a night for hunters to stalk their prey. It was a night for sinners to flee their crimes. It was a night for judgment to be passed; quick, brutal, and bloody.

  It was a night for murder.

  Jeans dirty and torn, tiny specks of maroon marring the denim, Jason Montgomery headed down the empty stretch of road, his footsteps muffled against the sand-swept asphalt. It was nearly the witching hour and there wasn’t a single soul on this lonely stretch of road beside him – at least none that were living.

  Shrugging deeper into his denim jacket, he slung his backpack higher up on his shoulder. The night air was cool, almost chilling. He had forgotten the desert could be like that; one minute hotter than hell, and the next, well, cold enough to make you wish for hell.

  He drew out the last cigarette from his pack of Lucky Strikes, lighting up the darkness with a brief flash of blue-wrapped gold before stubbing out the flame with roughened fingers that were stained red.

  Crumbling the empty pack, he tossed it to the side of the road, not one to give much thought to littering and all that tree-hugging bullshit. As far as he was concerned, the world was one giant cesspit spewing its vile brew to pollute everything it touched.

  The human race was nothing more than cockroaches who were spreading their infestation faster than this ecosystem could adjust to, a certain death warrant if he ever saw one. But hey, who the hell cared what a high school drop out thought, right? So, in the grand scheme of things, his crumbled pack of Lucky Strikes was about as insignificant as an anthill when you looked at it from that perspective.

  Not that he cared either way, melting cesspool or not. No one was going to tell him what he could or couldn’t do ever again. He had made sure of that the night he had slaughtered his way to freedom.

  The thrill of his first kill still sent shivers up his spine. A sexual rush, only better, one he could only get when he took a life.

  The first time had been an accident, the speeding bullet of anger mixed with a deadly elixir of adrenaline. She had been so sweet, so very soft, his innocent crush at the tender age of 17.

  For years they had attended the same school, a hillbilly lockdown deep in the south that they called a high school; kids bidding their time until they could roll a joint, make it with a girl in the bleachers, or steal their old man's car.

  He had sat behind her, barely listening to the teacher drone on endlessly while he had dreamed of running his hands through her long blond hair. Years spent side by side, invisible, her bright smile never beaming his way, until one fateful night.

  It had been a night much like this, the spring air cool against their bodies as they tangled their naked limbs about each other. Stacy Williams had been as hot as any other red-blooded girl in their farming town, her long blond hair and bright smile really no different in the end.

  So filled with life and so desperate to prove how special she was, even if it was in the backseat of her daddy’s Cadillac.

  They hadn’t been dating. They hadn’t ever even really talked. He had always been a speck on her radar until the night his beat-up motorcycle had finally given up, the engine rolling over into a stuttering metallic death.

  She had come cruising by in her daddy’s car, the paint gleaming and the seats still smelling of new leather. His heart had thudded painfully when she had pulled over, that brilliant megawatt smile focused solely on him.

  “Hey, it's Jason, right?” She had called out to him, her voice sweetly musical with the slightest of husky purrs lingering to play with his mind. She was every man’s fantasy whether they knew it or not, apple pie and sin. “Do you need a lift?”

  Barely able to speak, his voice abandoning him, Jason had simply nodded. Tossing his helmet into the backseat, he had climbed in beside her, his hand brushing against hers as he did. She had smiled at him, shy-like, yet her eyes had sizzled with heat at their brief touch.

  In that moment he was lost, forever.

  He never made it home, not that night or ever again, his destiny far greater than even he had realized. She had been his messiah.

  She hadn't taken him home. Instead, they had driven to Lookout Point, the local make out spot in town. He had been so young and nervous, not daring to believe she would want him, not when she could have anybody. But then, maybe that was the thrill of it. You see, she could have any man she wanted, which had to get a little boring after a while.

  That night she was hungry for something new, something exciting, and there was nothing more exciting than screwing the town's reject in the backseat of her daddy’s brand-new car. Imagine the town prom queen and the reject trailer trash from the wrong side of the tracks smacking thighs where anyone could catch them.

  He had been deep within her flesh when she had begun to fight him. At first he had thought she was simply playing, her fists pummeling at his chest as she began to struggle. One minute she had been all over him, her lips tearing at his own, and then next she was clawing at his face like a madwoman.

  “What the hell's wrong with you?"

  He tried to pin her wrists at her sides, but it was no use. She was venomous, at the world, at him, at everyone and everything, and he just happened to be a convenient whipping boy.

  “You're nothing but a stupid reject,” she had spat at him, slapping at his face once more. Her eyes glinted at the surge of anger she saw flash on his face, her grin growing wider at the fury she had ignited in him. She may have been a sweet-as-pie princess in everyday life, but here, with the town reject, where no one could see, she no longer had to play that part. Here on her back with him inside her she could do anything she wanted and no one would ever know.

  “What did you say?” He had whispered, his face glistening with cold sweat as she had laughed at him, her blonde hair fanning out in tangled lengths beneath her.

  “What's wrong, Jason? Can't hear right either? I called you a reject. Nothing but trailer trash.” She had trailed her nails down his chest, her blue eyes locked on him as she squeezed him tighter to her. "Everyone knows your momma is a whore and your daddy is an alcoholic."

  “Shut up, just shut the fuck up, Stacy.” His words were a broken stutter. He tried to pull away, desperate to free himself from her suffocating grasp, but she refused to let him go. Desperate, she had clawed at him, her angelic face turning ugly at the dark knowledge that he was rejecting her.

  Her laughter lashed out at him as she had continued to taunt him, all the while slapping at his face, her hips locked on his own. Desperate to silence her, he had wrapped his hands around her slender neck, his knuckles turning white as he squeezed while she struggled. He hadn't stopped until he had crushed the delicate hyoid bone in her neck, her lips parting in one final sigh before dying.

  Staring down at her pale beauty, he had stumbled from the car, his body drenched in the scent of her as his hands pulsed with the memory of her fading heartbeat. Bending over, he had vomited his dinner, a chilidog and fries, his body betraying him in his darkest moment.

  He had taken the life of a girl he had grown up worshipping.

  Once the shakes had passed and the dry heaves that followed his init
ial sickness subsided, he had stared at her lifeless body, entranced as her eyes watched him, blank and beautiful. Gone was the insane anger that had filled them as she had cursed at him, her rosebud mouth branding him as the rejected trailer trash that he was.

  He knew he what he was. He had grown up hearing his mother scream as his father beat her as he had made his way past the gleaming piles of Jim Beam bottles that littered their trailer. His mother's only defense had been to cover the bruises with makeup once his father would leave, soon to follow to screw her way through bar after bar, her pride restored when she was on her knees.

  School hadn't been any better. A reject from birth, kids could sense that kind of thing. He had been slammed into more lockers than he could count, sports not really his thing, which only made him more of a target.

  The moment Stacy had touched him, the instant their lips had met, everything that he had been had been erased. She had elevated him beyond his dirty roots and checkered upbringing, making him as pure as she was.

  Only, in the end, Stacy hadn't been any better than his mother.

  That was the night he disappeared, the body of his first victim discarded callously, and in her death he had been born, a mythical phoenix that rose from her smoldering ashes.

  From that