I’m two seconds away from throwing the mother of all tantrums, when I see that he’s set the fork and plate where I had been sitting. As he makes his way back to his seat and newspaper, he clears his throat and continues to read.
“Make sure you eat every last thing on that plate, baby girl. I know you kids had some kind of system with whatever you swore you just couldn’t eat, but don’t forget: you’re the only kid now.”
He’s lying.
I know he’s lying because I can still feel something in my heart that’s only lived there since I was put in charge of Eloy and Vaughn.
“Hey, don’t you have a birthday coming up soon?” he asks conversationally.
“Yes.”
“Any idea what you’ll be wanting?”
“I haven’t thought about it,” I say, finally taking a bite of the steak. My stomach growls loudly and Pater chuckles, but makes no further mention of the disruptive sound.
“Well, how long do we have until it’s time to celebrate, Joce?” he asks, setting his paper down and smoothing out the pages with his hands.
With another sigh and shrug, I take a second bite of the steak. It doesn’t matter how long I feel we have, or how long it will actually be until my birthday. The only thing that matters is when Pater will be ready to dedicate a moment to the day. It doesn’t hold any special meaning to me anymore, my birthday. If anything, it’s a day I’ve come to loathe. I wasn’t born into normal surroundings.
I was born into a world where evil existed long before I was conceived, and where innocence goes to die.
“How old are you these days, Jocelyn?” Pater asks, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. He glances up at me when I don’t answer him right away, and I’m terrified he’s caught me scraping food off the plate into my lap.
“I’ll be twenty, I think,” I reply, as I grab the fork and slice another piece off the steak. I’m not sure what it was exactly that I managed to scoop off the plate, but I hadn’t expected him to ask me something so personal. It’s not like Pater to give a shit, and he should know the answer to that question anyway.
“Huh,” he says indifferently. “That’s about the same age your mother was when she had Vaughn. Eh, I might have to sit through more boys again.”
“Pater?” I ask carefully. Now he’s mentioned Mama, I have a few questions of my own. “May I ask you something?”
He looks at me for a moment as he considers my request. He sucks his teeth before turning his eyes back down to the newspaper.
“Sure, kid.”
“If I’m the oldest, why did you keep getting Mama pregnant?”
Pater lets out a sigh as he closes his newspaper and runs a hand over his face. The good thing is that he doesn’t look angry at my question; he actually looks thoughtful.
“Nothing in the world is more beautiful than seeing the woman you love swollen with your child. Your mother was definitely a good looking gal, and even though I had already fallen in love with you by that point, I wanted to be able to get a couple of more years out of her. I knew I would have to wait a long time before I could make you my wife, and she knew it too, so she did everything she could to keep me satisfied until I was bored with her. There’s only so many times you can keep fucking the same hole before it becomes redundant, you know?”
He’s looking at me knowingly, and I know I’ve still got at least one seed’s worth of growing to do before he decides if he’s going to kill me or keep me.
“Don’t worry about that shit right now, though. I just told you I’ve been in love with you for your entire life. I have no intentions of getting rid of you. I think my grooming the next bride days are done. It’ll be you and me and our children until we both die,” he says, with that damn wide grin spreading across his face.
I sit back and fold my arms over my chest, taking him in. Years mean nothing to me, because I stopped counting them when I turned fifteen. That’s when he took me as his wife and I lost the title of daughter, but I’m becoming more and more curious the older I get, and I have one more question for him.
“Pater?” I ask softly.
“Yes, baby girl?” he asks, still grinning.
“How old are you?”
He chuckles and hangs his head for a moment, before glancing back up at me. His grin has faded into a simple smile and he doesn’t answer me right away.
“Well, that depends, I guess,” he replies mischievously.
I raise an eyebrow but say nothing. I don’t want to continue to ask him questions and anger him instead of just getting a simple answer.
“Will it make you love me any less? Assuming that you do love me, that is,” he says with a smirk.
I do love Pater. I will never deny that, but I don’t love him in the manner that he wants me to. I love him as a father who lost his way long before I was born and needs saving, even though I know he doesn’t want to be saved.
“No,” I say softly.
He grins, gets up from his chair, and walks around the table toward me. Pater puts an arm around my shoulder and kisses the top of my head gently.
“Good girl. I knew you’d always love me as much as I love you,” he says gently. “You about done with that?”
Before I have a chance to answer, or save any more food for Vaughn, he takes the plate from the table and dumps the remnants into the trash can. I use his distracted moments to shove the bit of food I’ve managed to scavenge into the bottom of my shirt, and roll it up just enough to make sure it can’t fall out.
“You can go out and throw him what you’ve saved,” he says with a tired sigh. “If he’s still alive, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”
And with that, he walks out of the kitchen leaving me with one last unanswered question, and the moment I need to go save Vaughn.
Chapter Fourteen
He’s going to kill me.
I know he is, because that’s the end game. No matter what he says, no matter how much he professes his love for me, I know it’s the only thing that can come of this.
I’ll never be the wife he wants me to be, and I’ll never be more than a scared child praying for the safety of the children forced underneath her rule, instead of being by her side as it should have been in a normal world.
To survive much longer than I know I’m meant to, I’ll have to be more careful. He knows too much, sees more than I think he does, and he’ll stop me when he feels I’m getting ready to strike.
He’ll be the end of me. He’ll send me to the afterlife with a smile on his face once he has another child to hold in his arms, but I will take a part of his soul with me.
I won’t think about it now. I still have Vaughn to worry about, and I don’t think he knows that Eloy is still alive somewhere in the woods. That’s where Vaughn would have taken him, because that’s their safe place away from this hell we have to endure.
I can see the top of the oubliette from here and I stop walking, taking a deep breath. I have to prepare for the worst, because if I hope for the best and it’s not there, it’ll crush me completely.
I’ve managed to save one son so far by putting on one hell of a show, and I know I won’t be able to handle not saving the second.
Please, I pray silently as I kneel down by the broken door that sits on top. I close my eyes for a moment, trying to find the courage to do what I know has to be done, to calm my nerves and steel myself against what I hope I don’t see, before I finally pull the door open.
It’s dark in the oubliette, but that’s the point. To be encased below the ground in the darkness, with only the occasional chirping of birds, or the crickets at night; the punishment always fits the crime, and if Pater has banished you to the underground dungeon, the transgression must have been severe.
It’s my second home because I defy him so frequently to protect Vaughn and Eloy, but I don’t mind it as much as he thinks I do. From what I know so far, he hasn’t laid his hands upon them in any form of sexual deviance, and because of that, when I’m in the dark, I
sleep more soundly than I do in his bed.
It’s the days leading up to my freedom that always make me anxious. That’s when I lose the most sleep, because I have to face my children and hope they’re still safe from having to feel his touch.
A pocket of air was enough to save Eloy; maybe the will to survive the fall will have been enough to save Vaughn.
I let out my breath in a rush of quick air as I lean over the side. I can’t see him from the top of the pit, which means he’s huddled in a corner, or dead where he’s fallen.
“Vaughn?” I call down quietly, my voice cracking. I take a deep breath, clear my throat, and try again. “Vaughn? It’s me; Jocelyn.”
Silence greets me in return. I blink furiously to keep tears from falling and call out his name again.
“Vaughn?”
I feel like the world is slowly starting to crush me into the ground when I still receive no answer, and just as I’m ready to accept that he’s gone, I can almost swear that I hear a slight shifting sound at the bottom of the pit.
“I have food!” I call back down as I unroll the bottom of my shirt and drop it into the pit. The sound I heard could very well be the rats that make the inside of the walls their home, but I’m too stubborn to give up all my hope until I know for sure.
My entire problem is that I’m blinded by the one thing I refuse to let go of. Hope that Vaughn is still alive. Hope that Eloy is safe, wherever he is. Hope that Pater will see the madness in this entire scheme and let us go.
My own worst enemy is the only fucking thing I keep hanging on to. If I learn to let go, I know things will become clearer; this will all end the way it’s meant to, and not how Pater wants it to.
There are no further sounds coming from the darkness below, and there’s no sign of movement. If Vaughn is still alive down there, he doesn’t trust me enough to let me know.
I can’t blame him.
He walked into a nightmare, thinking that his younger brother was dead at my hands, but even when he realized he wasn’t, he couldn’t find it in himself to forgive me for tricking him into thinking otherwise.
I’m okay with it.
I have to be.
If he doesn’t trust me, it will only make his will stronger, and maybe it’s him and not me who will be the one to end all this.
“Find what you were looking for?”
I jump in complete shock at hearing Pater’s voice coming from above me, almost losing ground and falling into the pit, but he’s faster and much stronger than me, and manages to pull me back before it happens.
He gets me to my feet, giving me an unbelievably harsh glare, prompting only a nod in return. I won’t attempt to mimic the look he’s giving me. He’s won this round and he knows it, because if he thought otherwise, he would be smiling at me instead of sneering.
“Why are you always so content to defy me?” he asks in a low, even tone.
“What? You told me I could—”
Pater smacks me so violently that I fall back onto the ground and come dangerously close to plummeting into the darkness. He gets on his knees in front of me and grips me tightly by the arms. He makes no move to pull me away from the abysmal opening, instead leaning my body further into it.
“Don’t play dumb, Jocelyn. And drop the fucking innocent act. I thought we actually understood each other at this point, but you still seem to be full of games, and we can’t have that,” he says, as he tips me a little further back.
My hands immediately clench his wrists. If he throws me in, I’m going to make damn sure he comes with me. Ending this now would be premature, but why does he deserve to breathe another breath when those of us that were chosen for this are considered so easily disposable?
I take a deep breath and clench my jaw tightly. The pressure of being bent in such an unnatural manner is starting to hurt me, but I refuse to let go of his wrists. I’m not as strong as Pater, and I’m not as fast as him, but I hold an equal amount of determination as him, if not more.
“I think we need to go back to the beginning here, Jocelyn. I think we need to go back to the very first Task I gave you, and complete it together,” he says meaningfully.
I close my eyes tightly and do my best not to cry. He knows; of course he knows. I was stupid enough to think about how I saved Eloy, and Pater picked it out of my brain.
“Where is he?” he asks, pulling me back toward him. I’m inches from his face now. I know because I can feel his breath on my face, as well as the rage radiating from his body. It’s equally terrifying and intoxicating.
“I don’t know,” I reply truthfully.
“Do you really want it to end like this?” he asks me angrily, giving me one hard shake. “We have plans, Jocelyn, and you’re willing to throw it all away on some bastards that aren’t worth more than dog shit on the bottom of a shoe? Give me one good reason I shouldn’t drop you into this fucking hole.”
I take a deep breath and open my eyes. Pater’s face is twisted in hideous rage and genuine confusion, and for the slightest of moments I feel bad for betraying him.
My heart aches slightly when I’m confronted by the complete and utter hurt on the face of my own personal devil, knowing now that he’s been betrayed.
“Because I’m the only hope you have for a new family,” I respond quietly.
He lets out a guffaw, and his hands begin to shake. He knows it’s the truth, and that’s why I can now openly go against his will. He’s laid his cards bare on the table and foolishly told me he needs me, allowing me to use it to my full advantage.
In the rare moment Pater tried to be nothing more than a man in love, he sealed his own fate. He showed me that I’m his weakness, and that he needs me now more than I need him.
Even though the realization hits in this moment, holding me on the brink of life and death, I don’t plan on using it to my advantage. Not until I can get Vaughn out of the darkness and make sure that he and Eloy can find their own safety far away from this place.
Chapter Fifteen
The soles of my feet are scraped raw from walking the property barefoot, since I’ve agreed to go into the woods with Pater and try to locate the young boy. I figure it’s a small price to pay. He says if we find Eloy and finish what I should have done together, he’ll assist me with getting Vaughn out of the oubliette.
“I really think we should have Vaughn with us right now,” I grumble. “I don’t know where he hid Eloy. I don’t know if he’s even still here.”
Pater tightens his grip on my arm and shakes his head. “He’s still here. Know how I know? Because you don’t want to help look for him. You want to pawn this off on Vaughn, and you hoped I would fall for it. I’m not as stupid as you’d like to think I am, Jocelyn. Vaughn earned his time in the hole. Eloy earned his punishment. And you’re going to be a good little wife and follow through on what you’ve promised me.”
Pater stops walking abruptly and glances down at me with a devious smirk on his face and cruel intentions in his eyes.
“Tell you what,” he says, licking his lips and pulling me toward him. “You help me take care of this, make it all the way it should be again, and I’ll take you to see your precious Mama.”
I stare at Pater with wide eyes and the most doubt and confusion I’ve ever felt in my life. How can he take me to see her when he’s already told me she’s dead?
It has to be where she’s buried. That’s the only thing that would make sense with a promise like that, isn’t it?
“How far in do you think he is?” Pater asks, running his hand down the length of my arm and intertwining his fingers with mine.
I shake my head. I don’t know; I really don’t. I only assume, as he does, that this is where Eloy would be because it’s his favorite place to go when he’s allowed outside. Of course, after the debacle with Laura, I honestly doubt that he would want to wallow in whatever memories his mind was forced to create.
“Alright, then you can go first,” he says, letting go of my hand and pushin
g me in front of him. It’s not that he’s afraid; nothing scares Pater. His intention is that if there is a boy to be found and I’m seen before him, then the confidence would be there to make himself known.
It’s a fucking trap, and I’m the bait. What will happen if Eloy steps forward unknowingly? Will Pater end him right then and there, or will he leave the task up to me again? He’ll watch, I know he will, and he’ll make sure that this time it’s done to completion, and the blood I’ve tried so quietly to save will flow freely over my hands.
“May I have a moment first?” I plead, turning to face him. My hands automatically go to his chest, the safest place I knew as a child, and I can see it still has an effect on him by the rapid way he blinks.
“Only a moment,” he agrees with a sharp nod.
I pull away from him and immediately begin to push through the low hanging tree branches and overgrown brush. Pater won’t give me more time than he feels is warranted, and I haven’t even earned these precious moments he’s given me.
He should have just thrown me back into the darkness. If he had thrown me back in after Laura was disposed of, this wouldn’t be happening. This is all my fault.
A sob escapes me as I reach the clearing. There’s a rather large circle of trees that span a patch of dirt in the woods. A large stone sits in the center of it, with smaller rocks scattered about, almost like a tiny village of sorts.
In the large stone, there’s a makeshift chair; a throne. It was there before me and it’ll be there after me, because I do not believe him when he tells me I’m the last. It was the chair I sat in after he bound us together as husband and wife. He said the chair held special meaning, that it would help us survive any obstacle set before us, and yet I can’t help but find only lies in a truth only he believes.
In that stone chair, there’s now a body, slumped over and bleeding. I can’t tell if there’s still life inside it or not. It’s hard to even tell if it’s human from where I am, and since I don’t have time to waste, I run over and stop just short of it.
Inferno Page 6
