A Story of a Killer - Chapter 16: Chapter 16

3rd Person
The air was thick. The clouds were dark and gray, you could tell that they wanted to release the water that’s swelled up inside of them yet they refused to do so. When Titus left the school grounds he wasn’t aware he was being followed. Followed by the main person weary of his actions and wanted to know exactly what Titus was doing. Sora. The youngest daughter in the Jones household. She prides herself at being quick-witted, perceptive and somewhat cunning. Not the same extent as her brother but she was still on the scoring board. Sora followed her brother through the crowded hallways of the schoolhouse when she saw the look of pure rage on his face and him pushing through the wall of students. Immediately it caught her attention.
Of course, she kept a good distance so he wouldn’t notice her, but, how dead set his eyes were on the hooded boy. The boy looked sorta familiar; even though she was looking at a side angle. When both of the boys made it to the bathroom the halls were cleared out as people went to their first-period class. Sora being the nosy person she waited outside the bathroom door to listen to see if her brother was talking. At first, it was pretty quiet which made her press her ear on the closed bathroom door more, that was until she heard another boy scream some words and then started to wail. Sora knew for a fact that it couldn’t have been her brother. Everyone knew Titus doesn’t cry, hell he never even cried as a child is what their mother told them.
As she continued to listen in; she knew for a fact who the crying boy was. It was Jacob. The boy she only met on a few occasions. He was a bit standoffish and would mostly talk to Titus which confused her greatly. He would always smile at her in the hallway and of course, she would smile back but sometimes it would seem a bit forced on his end.
“D-Dad h-he hurt me again!” She heard the boy yell out. Sora was confused. In her eyes, Jacob didn’t look like the type of boy that would get abused but then again she barely knew him. After a while, of the boy crying Sora heard her brother speak to try and soothe the panicked boy.
“I promise you I’ll fix all this,” Then the voices but muffles as though he was speaking through something thick. Sora pressed her ear even closer to the graffitied male bathroom door until she could listen better. “Now let’s blow this pop-stand and do something fun if you know what I mean.” Sora panicked, she knew she had to get away from the door and get away fast. She ran down the hallway and hit the corner on her left just in time as the door opened. She let out a sigh of relief and peeked out to look at the boys leaving the bathroom and Titus cut his head in the direction Sora was standing, she drew her head back to hide again. Titus being the perceptive and paranoid person he was could feel another presence in the hallway, as though he was being watched. He squinted his eyes in the direction of the empty hallway waiting for someone to walk out but no one did so he and Jacob continued their journey leaving the school.
Sora let out another sigh of relief. If she was caught there was no telling what Titus would do to her. She placed her hand on her chest to monitor her fast-beating heart. Everyone knew that Titus wasn’t mentally stable, hell even their own mother knew but she chose to ignore it. When the cases of people dying Sora got suspicious and the only person that came to mind that would do such violent acts as her older and insane brother. When the front door entrance closed with a loud boom she ran from her hiding spot and out to follow both boys. While they walked towards Titus’s car Sora made a B-line to her bike that she rode to school since Titus left her this morning. When the car was about to pull off she hopped on her bike and looked back at the school.
“Sorry for leaving you Tony but it looks like you’ll have to bike back on your own.” She whispered into the air. She got on her bike and started pedaling behind the car.
She followed them for hours upon hours and she couldn’t find anything. She followed them to the old lake by the cemetery which took up all her energy. The thing that shocked her the most was how affectionate Titus was being to another living soul. Never has she seen him smile, laugh or touch another person unless it was to cause pain. It was like seeing a whole nother person, a person that could actually feel emotions.
When they finally left the lake they arrived at Jacob's house. Sora stopped a little ways back with her back and walked the small walk to the house and hid behind a set of bushes. She watched and waited until Jacob finally stepped out of the car and walked to his door. He waved at Titus and then walked into his home. It was quiet after that. An eerie silence took over the night. Titus’s car was still parked on the curb almost as if he was waiting on something to happen. When Sora was getting ready to leave because of how late it was getting and how tired she was, she was instantly stopped in her tracks due to a loud scream.
All the tiredness that she felt just a second ago left her body. She turned around instantly and stared at the house. It was Jacob who was yelling.
“Please! Please stop!” The boy yelled from inside the house. You could feel the pain in his voice. Sora wanted so desperately to go help the boy but she knew that it would blow her cover. She wondered why her brother didn’t get out of the car yet to help the boy that was obviously getting hurt. “Please some- ah! Titus please!” A look of confusion passed on her face. She was confused as to out of all people that he could’ve called he chose to yell out Titus’s name, as though he knew the boy would still be out there. The sound of a car door slamming shook her out that state of shock as she watched the tall muscular boy, she called her brother stormed up to the front door and kicked it down.
She jumped back a bit in fear but it didn’t last long. She was determined. After following her brother and this boy around for so long with nothing happening she was finally getting some action. She pulled out her phone and ran towards a random window of the house, she wasn’t that tall but neither was the window so she had the perfect view into the house to see that happened but when she looked she got sick to her stomach.
There on the floor all bloody and bruised was Jacob. He looked so fragile lying there with the burly black man standing over top of him with a bottle of some sort but you could see the droplets of blood falling from the bottle onto the floor. On the other side of them, you could see Titus standing at the door with a look of pure rage in his eyes. His face didn’t necessarily tell it but the look in his eyes was what sent chills down the black-haired girl’s spine, he was out to kill and that was what scared her the most. Sora pulled out her cell phone and started to record what was happening in case she needed to show it to the police.
“Who the hell are you?!” The big man yelled at Titus while taking steps towards him, he didn’t get to close as he was still trying to process the situation. Sora moved the camera a bit to capture her brother in the shot, that’s when he started laughing. His laugh was loud. Loud and scary. It was the type of laugh that you would hear from a serial killer, it was sinister and scared Sora to the core.
“Who am I?” Sora had to make sure that she heard what she heard since Titus started to whisper. “Well, I am the one whos going to have so much fun slitting your throat and ending your pathetic life.” Sora had to do a double-take. She wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly, her brother, ending someone’s life? Sure he was violent and narcissistic and had a bit unempathetic but still, she couldn’t see him ending someone’s life. Zooming in on her phone Sora got a close up on Jacobs and that’s when all hell broke loose.
In one quick motion, Titus lunged a knife into the older man’s neck, the bottle dropped and the man stood still. Titus slid the blade from one side of the man’s neck to the other, when he ripped it out blood squirted onto Titus’s face and the old man’s body dropped to the floor. Sora felt sick to her stomach and vomited next to her feet when she was done she wiped her mouth and looked back inside. She was surprised that no one heard her. Jacob looked pale; well as pale as a black person could get, which wasn’t much. He had plastic bags in his hands and gave them to Titus and they started to wrap the body up. There was literally blood everywhere the sight was sickening to Sora but when she looked up to look at her brother all she could feel was fear. There was no remorse in his eyes. He didn’t feel sorry that he actually killed someone, instead, there was a look of satisfaction almost as though he’s done it before.
A look of realization made its way onto the young girl’s face. She was scared and confused. Scared because her brother was potentially a serial killer; not just any serial killer but one that’s in her town and that lives in her house, confused because she didn’t understand why Jacob wasn’t running away and telling the police that Titus killed his father. Sure he looked very abusive but that doesn’t mean that he deserved to die.
When they started to pick up the body Sora ran from her place by the window and hid behind a bush a little bit away from the house. She watched as the boy she believed was sweet and kind and the brother she knew for all her life carried the dead body inside of the older males trunk.
“Holy shit.” She breathed out. She couldn’t actually believe that she had witnessed a murder. A murder by none only than her brother nonetheless. When both boys entered the car Sora looked around a bit to make sure no one was around but her breath caught in her throat as she locked eyes with a pair of light brown orbs. The house across the street was pretty much dark but you could see a figure peeping through the curtains with a dim lamp behind them. Maybe it was a lamp or another light source of some sort, but Sora couldn’t tell. What she could tell though that the person would have most likely seen the whole thing just like she had which was great news, considering she would need more witnesses to justify the events in this small town.
When the car pulled away from the house Sora immediately ran to the entrance of the house. The air had a metallic taste to it, which caused her to cover her nose unless she would puke again. She took out her phone and started to take pictures of the bloodied floor and some of the broken bottle on said floor. She took pictures of the messed up house and broken take also just in case. She didn’t know when her brother and the other boy would be back so she hurriedly left the house and went across the street to where she saw the lady.
“Hello?” She yelled while banging on the door but no one answered. “Please!” She begged. “I know you’re in here and I know you saw exactly what I did. Please, I just need another witness. I need to stop them before it gets worse.” There was a long pause. Sora was about to walk away thinking that no one would come to the door but was stopped by the sound of locks unlocking. When the door opened there stood an older lady. She looked to be about in her fifties, she had smile wrinkles around her eyebrows and curved around her lips. Her dark skin shone brightly in the moonlight making her look younger than what she really is.
“Please,” Sora begged once more. The older lady stared at her a bit more, she was still skeptical.
“I don’t know anything. Now get off my property.” The woman was trying to close the door but Sora put her foot in the way.
“Look just help me get what I need and I’ll leave, I promise.” Sora tried to get the lady to see reason but she wouldn’t budge, she was like a mule, an old stubborn mule.
“If you don’t leave right now I’ll call the police.” The woman’s voice was hard and steady and Sora was shocked to hear those words come out of her mouth.
“What the hell, you would call the police on me? A person who’s trying to do something good but you won’t call the police because you witnessed a murder? What kind of logic is that” Sora yelled in the woman’s face. The lady just shrugged her shoulders and kicked Sora’s leg so it would move out her doorway, and when it moved she closed the door and locked it.
Sora kicked and screamed at the woman’s door trying to get her to open it once more but she wouldn’t. Eventually, Sora left the house. The bike ride back to her neighborhood seemed so long and when she finally made it there and opened the door she came face to face with Tony.
“Jesus Christ, Sora! Where the hell were you?” He yelled at her. His accent was thicker when he yelled. He grabbed Sora's face and examined it to make sure she wasn’t hurt. “First you leave school and then you’re not home for hours. Didn’t you know there’s a killer on the loose.” Sora let out a dry laugh which caught Tony off guard.
“What’s funny.” His question only made her laugh more.
“It’s funny how you’re so worried about a killer catching me out there when he’s already got us.”
“Sora. Stop speaking in riddles. You Americans need to stop beating around the bush and just tell me. What exactly do you mean?” He shook her by her shoulders.
“Shh. Or you'll wake mom. The killer that no one can seem to find is Titus, Tony." He let go of her and shook his head. Sure Titus gave off certain vibes but he wasn't a killer he couldn't be. Tony had known him for years so this couldn't be true.
"No, you tell lies." He tells her to keep her distance. Sora shook her head at his denial.
What I speak is the truth Tony and you know it. You've seen the signs and I have the proof. If you'd just watch-" she was cut off by his yelling.
"No! How could you say such things Sora? He is family, семья, you do not accuse family of such horrid things." A look of disgust made its way onto his face, which made Sora feel a tug in her belly. Tony only looked at her with affection so this new look made her feel a certain type of way. Instead of dwelling on it so much her face turned cold.
"Is everything alright here?" Said a voice coming down the stairs. It was Sora's mother. Her black her in a messy bun on top of her head and she was wearing fruit loops pajamas. Sora and Tony shook their heads to answer her question.
"Well If everything is good go to bed. You all have school tomorrow…. Where's Titus usually he would come to ask me for something around this time?" She asked a bit confused.
"Uh. Titus is with a friend." Tony answered before Sora got the chance to, which in turn angered her more. The older woman was excited about the news, of course, she would be. Everyone knew Titus was a loner and him having friends, other than Tony, was excellent news.
"That's great, " She breathed out. "Glad to hear my boys enjoying life. Now go on to bed you two. You will not stay home just because you wanted to stay up all night." With that, she turned back upstairs and to her room. Tony and Sora made eye contact with each other, Tony shook his head and went back up to Titus room and Sora went to hers.
That night Sora didn't sleep. Tony didn't sleep. Titus never came home that night and their mother? Well, she slept like a baby.