SICK HEART

by Huss, JA

  I need her secret.

  I open the gate and wave her forward. Then I follow her up to the training level. She pauses there, waiting for instructions. And I’m not being mean when I think this, but Anya Bokori is weak. So fucking weak.

  She cannot be something special. She simply doesn’t have it in her.

  I have locked eight-year-old boys on the lowest level of this rig—barely ten feet above an angry ocean—for days at a time, just for being little dicks. They got one cup of water a day, if they were lucky. And they didn’t cave. They didn’t cry. They didn’t beg. They didn’t give up.

  Anya had to skip a little rope and miss a meal and she throws a tantrum? I should’ve just let him take her. She’s going to be trouble. And I don’t want to fuck her.

  I don’t need her here to ease my loneliness, because I don’t even understand the meaning of that word. I like it here. I fucking love it here. I hate it when I have to share this place with others.

  I point to the bag. She doesn’t balk at all. Just walks over to it and starts punching it like a stupid girl. No, that’s not even true. I have eight girls at my camp who punch like girls. And half of them can knock out a full-grown man.

  Anya’s punches are weak.

  And yet she’s here, Cort. Why? None of this was in the plan. You were allowed to fuck her, you were allowed to tattoo her, and that’s all you were allowed to do.

  But you brought her with you. Over everyone’s objections. Why?

  I don’t know. I really don’t.

  Anya whines and when I look over at her, she’s cradling her hand. Her knuckles have split open and they are stained with blood.

  Fucking great. I walk over, grab her arm, and tug her into the little building, then lead her into the clinic. I point to a stool in the kitchen and she sits. Then I hunt down a roll of wrap, a mostly used tube of antibacterial ointment, a bowl of hot water, and a clean rag. I place it all on the counter, grab another stool from the other room, slide it over to her, and then start washing the blood off. I’m about halfway done wrapping her second hand when I feel a soft tap on my shoulder. I look up, surprised.

  She motions with her hand. It’s not a sign. She’s making shit up. But I’ve gotten good at interpreting made-up hand signals. She’s asking me why.

  Why what? I sign back. And even my signs are irritated. Because she draws back at their quick sharpness.

  She points up.

  I point to her. You tell me.

  She sighs, then lowers her eyes and doesn’t look at me again until I’m done with her hands.

  But when I get up and put the wrap stuff away, I find myself smiling.

  She talked to me.

  She didn’t use her voice and those weren’t really words.

  But she talked to me.

  Me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - ANYA

  His care in tending to my wounded knuckles doesn’t continue back out on the training floor. I don’t know this man very well, but here’s something I’ve picked up on. Sick Heart is a control freak. Also, he likes a tight schedule. In other words, he’s not very flexible. His world revolves around things he can predict.

  I continue fighting with the heavy bag as I ponder this. It’s not surprising. The world he lives in can’t be much different than mine. I mean, he’s got a lot more than I ever did. And he could do a lot worse than this abandoned oil rig as far as time-out space goes.

  When Lazar was unhappy with me—back when he cared about such things—he would leave me in a dark, windowless room until I was so weak from hunger and thirst, he had to either let me die or bring me back.

  But this place. I pause my punching and stare out across the ocean. It’s peaceful today. No wind, either, which makes the endless flat, blue surface of the water appear deceptively innocent. Of course, under the smooth water there is a whole world of natural-law violence.

  But this rig. It’s not fancy, but it has food, and water, and it’s safe. As long as Udulf stays away. And I don’t know what Cort promised him to make him leave, but he didn’t stay long. I got the feeling that there is no love lost between the two of them.

  I could get used to life on this rig.

  A hand slaps the bag in front of me, pulling me out of my introspection. And when I jerk my gaze to Cort’s face, I realize he’s telling me, without words, that we are not done here and I need to keep going.

  I sigh, but continue punching and kicking the bag.

  I expect Cort to go back to his training, but he lingers, watching me. Then his hand reaches out, just as I’m about to hit the bag again, and he grabs my fist. Blood is seeping through the wrapping over my knuckles. Cort frowns at it, like I’ve just disappointed him. Then he sucks in a deep breath and slowly exhales as he points to the center of the platform.

  I follow him across the mats and then he turns to face me. He does a couple of punches, moving his feet, and then he pauses and points to me.

  I scoff and shake my head. Not because I’m trying to be difficult, but there is just no way I can imitate what he just did. His movements are fluid, like a dancer. Even if I had known that there was a pop quiz coming, I would not be able to do what he’s asking. It’s all blurry. I need a slow-motion step-by-step.

  He sighs again, maybe frustrated, maybe tired, or maybe he’s thinking, Why didn’t I just let my father take her away earlier?

  That gets me moving. I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to be sent to his father. That man is scarier than Lazar. So I make an attempt, punching the air with my fist and hopping a little with my feet.

  His laugh is loud and immediate. And when I look over my shoulder at him, he’s scowling and shaking his head at me.

  I drop my fists and frown back. It’s not my fault he’s asking me to do things I can’t.

  He demonstrates again. But it’s still too fast and while I can see that he’s punching with his left hand and taking a step forward—and this seems like a very simple thing—when I try it, none of it works. My punch is late, my feet are in the wrong place, and I actually lose my balance and his grip on my upper arm is the only reason I don’t fall over.

  He shows me again, this time breaking the movement into six unique parts. He holds up a single finger.

  One. Got it.

  He does it and points at me, but when I try it’s… not good. He stops and shows me again. And this time I break this move down into three parts. A baby step forward, a punch, and a bounce back.

  I say that over in my mind as I try and when I look up at Cort, he’s smiling.

  I suck in a deep breath of air and turn my head away so he can’t see me smile back.

  I do that again, and again. Baby step forward, punch, step back. And he corrects me each time, adjusting my hips, or my chin, or my fist.

  Then he moves on to the second move. This time it’s a step back with a punch using the opposite hand. Like I’m retreating from an approaching opponent.

  This one takes me longer because the opposite arm and leg are doing different things. I don’t get it down all the way, but Cort must get bored, because we move on to move number three.

  This one is mostly pivoting my hips while throwing a cross punch. I don’t have to take any steps forward or backward while I punch, so it’s easier.

  Or so I think. Because suddenly Cort is behind me, once again pressing his chest into my back. And when his hands grip my hips, a chill runs through my body at his touch. He directs me to punch and moves my hips, keeping them within some pre-determined parameter. One hand remains on my left hip as his fingertips trace down the length of my right arm. He wraps his hand around my fist and then he does the move for me. His body becoming my body. His hips moving my hips. His hand throwing my punch.

  I get lost in this, my mind unable to process the intimacy of it. And it’s dumb, I get it. He’s not coming on to me. We’re not dancing. This isn’t emotion.

  He’s teaching me how to fight.

  When he backs away, I suck in a deep breath and
force myself to continue the move without him, even though he’s wiped my mind of everything but his missing touch.

  I do this move over and over as he watches.

  Then he points at me. One finger. And he does the baby-step move. I follow along and do it as well. Then he flashes three fingers at me. Which is the hip-pivot cross punch. So I do that. And when he flashes two, I’m ready to take that step back.

  He claps. It’s a slow clap. One you see in movies when people are being mocked. But I don’t care because he’s smiling at me. His eyes are bright and I really think I’ve made him happy.

  He has taught me something.

  It’s a pretty useless thing, if you ask me. It’s not like I can use any of this to protect myself. It’s not like I can say, Hold on, hold on. Let me get my hips in the right position before I hit you with my weak, girly cross punch.

  He flashes his fingers—one. Two. Three.

  And I do them. Baby-step punch, retreat punch, hip-pivot cross.

  He claps again, then holds up four fingers. Moving on, I guess.

  This time it’s a baby-step advance with a one-two punch. And number five is a baby-step back with a one-two.

  I suck at those. But he doesn’t stop to make me practice. Just ends the sequence with number six—a mid-air foot switch.

  Yeah. I can’t get that one.

  But again, he doesn’t care. Just goes all the way back to number one and makes me practice those moves, holding up fingers so I can’t get a pattern going.

  And if someone had asked me last week if I would enjoy learning how to box, I would’ve laughed out loud at the absurdity of their question, today I find it… fun.

  Maybe it’s because after about an hour, I can do these three simple moves on command and I start envisioning myself actually using them in a situation. But more than likely it’s Cort.

  Even though I’ve been acting like a spoiled brat for two days, he’s actually pretty patient when he’s in teacher mode. And he smiles a lot.

  So far, the Cort I’ve come to know is a broody, scowling jerk. So this is a new side to him. Perhaps even a real side to him.

  He rolls his hand at me to keep going, then turns his back and walks over to the door that leads inside, disappearing without any more explanation.

  I do keep going. Even though the Anya of last week would’ve taken this opportunity to slack off because there is no one around to make me work, I suddenly decide I don’t want to be that Anya anymore.

  Before the fight with Cort, that was the only girl I knew. There was no other life for me. There was no future for me. Not a good one, anyway. Not one that involved being alone with a brand-new version of Sick Heart on an abandoned oil rig where I have his complete and captive attention.

  He doesn’t seem interested in having sex with me. And even though he did lock me down on the lower level after my tantrum—and left me there for almost two days—he didn’t beat me to drive his dominance home once I surrendered.

  And this leads me to believe that Sick Heart here has… well, a heart. Or at least a very well-developed sense of fairness.

  I wonder what his life has been like. Did he start out in one of the camps? I don’t remember the Ring of Fire article saying anything about his early years. But he’s been fighting since he was a very small boy. So I bet he did live at the camps. That’s better, I think. Because if he had been a house boy…

  I let that thought trail off because I don’t want to imagine strong, commanding Cort van Breda as someone’s beaten, helpless house boy. Especially Udulf’s.

  Cort grips my arm and pulls me out of my introspection. He’s shaking his head at me. Signing things. You know, the most important thing I’ve learned about being silent is this: Most of the time you don’t need words to understand people. Like right now, for instance. Because he’s telling me that I wasn’t concentrating and my moves are sloppy.

  He looks a little frustrated again. Like maybe he’s thinking I’m a waste of time. I might not have understood every word that transpired between Cort and his father, but I heard enough. The rest I can deduce. Cort’s ownership of me is dubious at best. Udulf didn’t retreat, his absence is only temporary.

  I don’t belong to the Sick Heart.

  I belong to Udulf.

  This makes me shudder as my skin prickles up with the thought of what will happen to me when my time out here on this rig is over. I can think of a few possibilities. None of them are good.

  I think I was supposed to die at the end of the fight between Cort and Pavo. And I lived instead. That’s not good either. When the men in my world make a plan for someone, they make it with a goal in mind.

  So if I was supposed to die, and didn’t, then I messed up someone’s plan. And I will pay for that sooner or later.

  Cort points to the stairs and for a moment I think he’s going to take me back down to the prison level. But he points up and when he moves towards the stairwell, still holding my arm, I follow willingly.

  I want to eat, but the kitchen is on the training level. But the hose is on the top level. And I can barely stand the stench wafting off me, so a shower—even a harsh one that stings my skin—is worth the wait for dinner.

  When we reach the top he leads me around the birds and past the old mechanical building to the fire hose, but he stops and frowns at me, then points to the cistern mounted on the roof. He’s tall enough so that when he reaches up, he can tap the water line clearly visible through the semi-opaque white tank.

  Well, shit. I frown. There’s not enough water for a hose down, I guess. I don’t know how long we’ll have to be here. But it must be a while because the cistern is huge and I would guess that there are a couple hundred gallons left. There are six of them, actually. But the rest are already empty.

  Still, a couple hundred is a lot if you’re just drinking it. But that bath the first night—that must’ve used up fifty or sixty. Plus the hose down.

  There will be no more baths. And no more hoses, either, from the looks of it.

  I huff, irritated. Why did he bring me up here if we can’t even wash?

  He shoots me a crooked grin, but I don’t find it charming. I smell. Bad. And now that I know I can’t get clean, I’m noticing the pain in my stomach from not eating. I frown deeper.

  Cort tugs me over to the wall and then points up to a shower head.

  My mouth makes a little o. And then I smile. When I look at him he’s… what? What is that look? Smugness? He’s definitely feeling smug.

  But his hands are flashing at me. So I watch, carefully, trying to understand what he’s telling me.

  I think he’s saying it needs to be quick. That makes sense. He keeps pointing to the showerhead, then him. Then me. He holds up one finger. Then two.

  Meaning—I’m not supposed to be here. I am eating his food, and drinking his water, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to run out of both.

  I nod, understanding, then I wave him towards the shower in a Be my guest gesture. It’s his water, not mine.

  But to my surprise he leads me over to the shower with him. Then he pretends to take off an invisible shirt and points to mine.

  Oh. I see.

  I don’t even bother fighting this. I take the shirt off. Because this is not my shirt. These are not my shorts, this is not my water, that is not my food, and let’s face it, this is not even my body.

  For every moment of my life, someone has owned me.

  At some point these men—these monsters who run my world—were given dominion over me. Over all of us. We have no rights.

  Not even girls like me. Girls who lived under a king’s roof. Who ate a king’s food. Who drank a king’s water and wore a king’s clothes. We are nothing and no one.

  We are disposable.

  I came to terms with that reality a long time ago.

  I am not a girl. I am not a woman. I am not even human to them. I am nothing to them.

  But that’s not all there is of me.

  There is on
e piece left. One sacred piece of me that they can’t have. No matter how hard they try, they cannot take my silence.

  She is all I have left. The spirit of me inside my head. The one who can’t talk, or walk, or do anything but go along for the ride.

  So when I take the shirt off, I immediately go for the shorts. And then, moments later, I am naked.

  When I look up to meet Cort’s gaze I find him once again frowning. I sigh and look down at my feet.

  He takes my hand again, but instead of leading me over to the shower, he just… holds it for a moment. A long enough moment to make me look up and see what the hell he’s doing.

  His eyes are locked with mine. He does not look down at my body. And then he flashes his fingers at me with deliberate intent, his pointer and middle fingers snapping down on to the pad of his thumb.

  No. That’s what his fingers say. No. He signs it again. And his eyes are angry now.

  I don’t know what he wants from me, so I just shrug and resume looking at my feet. He stands there for another long moment, then he sighs.

  We seem to do a lot of sighing.

  Are we frustrated? Or tired? Or giving up?

  I don’t know.

  Maybe for me, it’s all three.

  CHAPTER TWELVE - CORT

  I have seen monsters in my day. Hell, I’ve become one.

  I fight the king’s fights. I kill the king’s enemies. I accept the king’s prize and I live under the king’s rules.

  I do the king’s bidding.

  It’s a bad lot in life, no doubt. But it’s nothing compared to what some do for the king. And I’m starting to get the feeling that Anya was one of the some.

  She has done things and she will never forget them.

  It would be easy to assume Anya is one of the strong ones. She has made it longer than any other slave in her king’s house. What is she? Seventeen? Eighteen? She might even be as old as twenty. That’s an amazing accomplishment for a sex slave.

  She is not a whore. There is a very definite difference in these two things in the world of kings. Sex slaves are children and whores are women.