Murder For Hire Read online

  Murder For Hire

  A Psychological Thriller With A Twist You Won’t See Coming…

  Theo Baxter

  Illustrated by Natasha Snow

  Edited by Valorie Clifton

  Edited by Elizabeth A Lance

  Copyright © 2021 by Theo Baxter

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Natasha Snow

  Edited by Valorie Clifton and Elizabeth A Lance

  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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the authors’ imagination.

  Contents

  Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  About Theo Baxter

  Also by Theo Baxter

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  Chapter One

  "You're a worthless piece of shit," he seethed, looking at me with so much hate I was sure that this time he would actually kill me.

  It happened again and he was beyond furious. I remained still, trying not to provoke him in any way, even though that tactic hadn't helped me in the past. He would always find some excuse to take his anger out on me.

  I have to run away from here.

  "I can't believe you're my son. I'm disgusted by you!" my father screamed at me.

  I started to cry. He wouldn't like that much, but it couldn't be helped. Each word felt like a knife through my heart. My own father hated me and for something I couldn't change. Maybe he's right.

  I understood his anger and disappointment in me, but I was born this way and didn't know how to stop these episodes from happening, although I wanted that more than anything else in my life.

  "Dad," I sobbed, trying to placate him, make him understand, but I never managed to finish that sentence because he hit me again.

  "Silence!" he boomed. "Don't call me that. You're no son of mine."

  This time, the hit knocked me down and I smacked my head against the coffee table.

  I woke up covered in sweat. That was only a dream, I reassured myself and my beating heart. I wasn't a boy anymore.

  The rationalization helped only so far since that particular scene with my father had actually happened. My screwed-up brain liked to torment me for some reason, showing me our greatest ‘bonding’ moments while I slept. After that delightful smack-down, I had to be rushed to the hospital to have some stitches since that coffee table had really sharp edges.

  Although it was all a nightmare, my head continued to hurt as though I'd taken a severe beating. Where am I? I wondered, feeling slightly disoriented. Usually, when people woke up they knew they were in their beds and could prepare for their day, but not me. I could never be sure of where I was or how I got there.

  I wasn't in my bed, though. I knew that without opening my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to open them despite the migraine. That didn't provide me with much information since the room was pretty darkened.

  This was my father's house, or so I hoped. Sadly, it wouldn't be the first time I'd woken up in a strange place, not knowing where I was or how I got there. That was one of many delightful perks of being me.

  My whole body ached, and not simply because I was sprawled on the floor. Did I fall on the floor during the night? If that was the only thing that happened during my episode then I was an extremely fortunate man. I was dizzy, disoriented, had full memory loss, and my whole body hurt.

  Of course, I knew all those symptoms well. I'd had another seizure. Freaking great, I grumbled. One would assume I would be used to them by now since I'd had them since I was eight years old, but I wasn't. They were a bitch and always left me feeling drained, body and soul.

  Also, they were becoming pretty frequent since I'd come to this house. I knew I should be worried by that fact, but the truth was, I really wasn't. My biggest wish was that I would die during one of them. At least then, I could escape this existence that had brought me nothing but pain.

  The pain was not the worst part though. If I had to choose, the absolute worse part was the lack of control. Knowing that something, a small part of your screwed up brain, could take over at any moment was maddening. I was a grown man, over thirty, and I had no control over a substantial part of myself.

  During these seizures, I tended to lose time, completely black out. Afterward, when all was over and I woke up, like now on the floor in a dark room, or worse, in the zoo, a classroom, or the middle of the road, I had no memory of how I got there or what I had been doing before that. I took medications for epilepsy, although more frequently than not, I felt like I simply had a split personality, an alter ego that liked to fuck with me.

  Unfortunately, these types of seizures ran in my family. My grandmother suffered from them as well. I never met my grandmother since she died when my father was a teenager. He rarely spoke about her, and always in anger, and I suspected the illness we shared had a major role in how she’d died. Growing up, I feared I would share her fate, and now I wasn't that convinced it would be a bad thing. I was not an overly pessimistic person, simply tired. Tired of this kind of life.

  Doctors called them temporal lobe seizures. I called them a freaking curse.

  To be fair, though, they weren’t the only thing ruining my life. I did that on my own without much help from my medical condition. I banished that thought, not ready to deal with my fuckups at the moment.

  As far as I could tell, this seizure had been a big one. The fun fact was that they not only robbed me of my memory, but I tended to get violent as well. Luckily, I’d never actually hurt anyone apart from myself or a few lawn chairs or a lamp here or there. No one in my family had that additional symptom. Of course, I had to be special in that way, and I believed my father hated me for that even more. Especially since one time, I broke his prized possession, a Cuban cigar holder he got from the governor. In return, he tried his best to break my back.

  My professional opinion as a psychologist was that the illness manifested itself with that amusing addition was all due to the fact that I had the privilege to grow up with an absolute bastard of a father. My father, Carson Andros, was a mean, abusive asshole, and I grew up trying to stay as far away as possible from him.

  Unfortunately, the tactic didn't always work. He would look for me in this vast house anytime he had a bad day at work or didn't like his lunch or someone smiled at him on
the street. In those moments, he would show me just how much he loved me.

  My father's general opinion was that I was weak. I never cared for my father's opinions about anything, but sadly, I could never escape them either. By his own account, my being so weak and a complete waste of space was the only reason I had seizures in the first place. I was born defective, and that was my mother's fault, although the illness ran in his side of the family, not hers. I pointed that out only once since it cost me a broken arm. No matter what I said, no matter what I did, my father didn't care and was always disappointed.

  I knew I sounded like I was whining, crying over my ill fate. That wasn't the case. It’s just the facts. My father didn't want me, so as soon as I was able, I ran from home, first to a prep-school and then college.

  After finishing college, I started working as an assistant, and over time, I got a job as a professor. Of course, my father couldn't care less that I became a professor at one of the most prestigious colleges in the state since it was only psychology that I taught.

  For him, psychology was not real science but something created for the pussies to feel better. Those were his exact words. The whole year when we didn't talk was the best time of my life. And you had to fuck that up too. There was no escaping his disdain now since I once again lived in his house. I was forced to do that due to a serious lack of judgment on my part.

  Enough with the self-pity, I snapped at myself, feeling like I did that a lot, not only in this precise moment but generally. What could I say? Lately, feeling sorry for myself became my favorite pastime. Banishing all those unhelpful, negative thoughts, I finally took stock of myself and tried to stretch a little.

  Yup, everything hurt as though I fell down the stairs a couple of times, right before a piano fell from the sky to squash me. It was a miracle that nothing appeared to be broken this time. Slightly moving about, remaining horizontal, trying to check my mobility, I noticed something only mildly strange. My fingers were sticky. Considering all that happened to me after these seizures over the entire course of my life, a couple of sticky fingers felt like a breeze. At least they're still attached to my body. I almost smiled at that joke.

  Did I end up in the kitchen during the seizure and ravage the fridge? I hypothesized. Since I could never recover the memory of my lost time, the best I could do was play detective and rely on other people to fill in the blanks.

  I couldn't sense any aftertaste in my mouth but that meant nothing. Carson would be furious if I ate his special homemade breakfast jam. He guarded that shit with his life for some reason. Picturing the look on his face discovering an empty jar did make me laugh. He didn't need much to be disappointed, or even angry at me. He never did, but all the same, it was always a blessing when I could find small amusements in his fury. He was always pissed off at me about something, it was a hefty list, and it gave me immense joy that I could add on it in such a petty way.

  Dad will have to take his toast dry, today, I thought, chuckling, and with almost perverse satisfaction, I licked my fingers expecting to taste the sweet raspberry jam. I froze because I didn't. There was no jam on my fingers. The salty, coppery taste that insulted my taste buds was a dead giveaway of what I was actually licking. My fingers were completely drenched with blood.

  "What the hell?" I exclaimed, sitting up. The abruptness of that movement made me sick to my stomach, but so did the taste of blood. I suppressed the urge to throw up.

  What did I do? I had to wonder. As that thought passed my head, a door burst open and a woman rushed inside. The light that came from the hallway instantly blinded me as it illuminated the whole room. Tentatively, I opened them again, adjusting to the new reality.

  "Dean!" she called out to me, startled.

  My foggy mind recognized her as my father's new wife. Melissa.

  She started screaming like hell hounds were tearing her flesh, breaking my train of thought. I was instantly alarmed, looking at myself, since there had to be a reason that she acted in such a manner upon seeing me here.

  What happened to me?

  I woke up on the floor, that much I already knew. The twist was I was in my father's room. As far as I could see and feel, I had no visible injuries on me. Although something was wrong with my left eye. I couldn't fully open it. I banished that since that was not the most important thing at the moment.

  Where did all the blood come from? I asked myself with dread since that was the most important thing at this moment. By the way she was acting, someone could easily assume there was a dead body on the floor, and I was much alive.

  Why was I in my father's room? And where was he, for that matter? Melissa was screaming so loudly there was no chance in hell he would sleep through that. Speaking of my stepmother, since she continued screaming, I actually forced myself to focus on her actual words.

  "He's dead, oh my God, he's dead. You killed him!"

  Every part of my body froze, and my mind too, yet I didn't allow myself to stay like that. Slowly, I turned my head toward the massive king-sized bed that dominated the space. Oh, my God.

  Even from my vantage point, I could see my father, Carson Andros, sprawled across the covers in an unnatural way. He was, without a doubt, dead.

  My father was dead, and I'd killed him.

  Chapter Two

  "You killed him, you sick bastard," Melissa continued to shout at me from the top of her lungs.

  I looked at my father's lifeless body in utter disbelief. His eyes were wide open, yet it was apparent there was no life, no soul left in them. Did he have a soul in the first place?

  "Dad?"

  He can't be dead. My mind was rebelling at the reality my eyes were detecting. He was dead, there was no doubt about that, and more to the point, he was murdered. His body was all twisted in an unnatural way, his pajamas all torn in places, and he was covered with blood. The same blood that was on my hands. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

  I killed him. I killed my father. I screamed at myself in desperation. I had no memory of doing something like that, yet that meant jack shit considering my seizures. I must have had one of my episodes last night, come here, and killed him, I realized. After all was done, I passed out, which could explain why I woke up here. That was the only explanation since I quite literally had his blood all over my hands.

  "You killed him! Oh, my God, my poor Carson is dead!"

  "I . . ." I started then stopped, not knowing what I could say. I didn't do it? I couldn't quite say that. I'm sorry? Was I?

  My mind was in shambles. This can't be happening. But it was. My father was dead, and by all accounts, there was only one suspect. Me. Once again, I felt sick to my stomach.

  "I called the police. They are on their way," Melissa informed me. Her makeup was completely smeared by all the tears she'd already shed. She looked grotesque. Considering how much money she had thanks to my father, I would assume that she could afford waterproof makeup.

  "Stay the fuck down, you murderer," Melissa warned.

  I had no intention of moving, whatsoever. I didn't believe my legs could support me at this moment, anyway. He's dead. The words echoed inside my head, causing everything else to shatter. He's dead. The bastard was actually dead, gone, non-breathing.

  And it was all my doing. I killed the monster, but what did that make me?

  Unable to look at the sight of the dead man I shared DNA with, and who’d made my life a living hell, I looked away. Like a true coward, my father's voice mocked me inside my head. No matter what, I was sure I could never fully escape him.

  He’d always said I was weak, good for nothing. Was this small action of mine proving him right? I couldn't look at what I did to him anymore, that was true. At the same time, were my previous actions proving him wrong? I did kill the bastard, after all.

  Those were all strange thoughts to be having at the moment. At the same time, completely understandable considering I’d killed my father. If I killed my father, I corrected myself, having a moment of doubt. Since I had no
memory of doing so, I couldn't know for sure.

  My red hands spoke volumes and my stomach turned. I killed him. I killed him. I couldn't remember it, yet I had to have done it. There was no question about it considering the evidence. I started to spiral, horrified that I was actually capable of something like that. Taking the life of another human being, even if that particular human was my sadistic father. My mother would be extremely disappointed in me. That pushed me over the edge. I started to dry heave since there was nothing inside my stomach that I could actually vacate.

  How did it happen? Why? I tormented myself. Over the years, I had many reasons to hate my father, but I never actually thought about killing him. Apparently, I had no problems with that in my altered state.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember what happened. It was a completely fruitless endeavor since that was something I could never do. My time during the episodes was forever lost to me without any chances of getting it back.

  I suffered from complete black-outs, and that meant just that. When I blacked out, I didn't know what I was doing, where I was going. It was as simple as that. Terrifying. Considering the fact that I may have killed my father, perhaps having no memory of such violence was a good thing.