His eyes grew vacant, and something inside of me hurt as I watched the life leaving him. Something strange and foreign sat against my chest, and I scoffed at it, staring at him. I wiped the blood and spit from his lips and leaned down, letting my nose rub against his still warm flesh. My hands pushed through his soft hair, and I smiled. Dead, he was pretty good-looking. It was really too bad he didn’t animate as Fred had, but then I couldn’t have it all, now could I? I stood up, realizing I was fondling a corpse, which was a hard limit for me.
I eyed the next secret room and smirked as an idea formed in my head. The footsteps receded, and the voice vanished as I dragged his corpse with me. Dead, he was peaceful and almost tolerable. Pity he wouldn’t stay that way. I pushed him into the closet and closed it, smirking as I leaned against the door, wondering where it was that he went to when he died, or where he popped up when he returned from the grave. Meh, too much brain work, I thought as I started through the walls towards the exit.
Chapter 14
Pain assaulted me; the laughter that followed brought tears of shame to my eyes. I cried out as lash after lash tore through my flesh. My hair clung to my body as my feet slipped in the puddle of blood beneath me. My blood. My feet pushed against the cold concrete, pushing up only to continually slip as the whipping continued. I begged them to stop, admitted I was the one who instigated the kiss, even though I’d never wanted it.
The burning in my spine was brutal, all-consuming as scream after scream was ripped from my lungs while the children I’d grown to call friends watched me, enjoying the pain I received. How could they do this? Didn’t they see it was tearing me apart? I whimpered, crying as I pleaded for my friends to help me, begged them to tell the truth of what had happened, and yet they refused.
They took turns, each one offering to wield the whip against my flesh. My shirt was ripped open, exposing my breasts. They spoke around me, pointing out my deformed features from being beaten, my impurities that made me different. The Headmaster grabbed my face, his fingers crushing my jaw as he held it up, showing them my ugliness as his other hand ripped the skirt off of my body. One by one, they came up to tell me how ugly I was, those who I’d called my friends. Some slapped me, others spit in my face as my blood continued to slowly drain from my body.
“She is Satan’s whore, created to lure you to the sinful ways that lead you down a dark path. This creature was created from lust, from creatures that should never procreate, and yet here she is, this little slut who begs you to the darkness between her pretty thighs. Her red lips beckon to you, begging you to take what she gives so freely, don’t they?” The Headmaster asked as he walked behind me, ripping my head backward as new pain began. Those I’d called my friends watched him, letting their eyes drift to my nakedness with disdain and sneers as his hands roamed over my breasts. “The devil’s tits and flesh call to you even now, don’t they? What lies between this pretty flesh is certain death. This creature was created from the cauldron of Dagda. A magic so deadly, so vile, that it was banished from the land by the Gods,” he shouted as his nose pressed against my neck. “That is why you must not see her as one of us, but see her as what she is, a creature of evil who lures you to her so she can murder you,” he laughed coldly as he released my hair and moved to stand behind me.
The crack of the whip warned me, but it didn’t matter. The cattail sliced through my spine and piss ran down my leg as everyone laughed. My legs gave out, and my body refused to work as I hung there, finally oblivious to the pain. The sweetness of the darkness beckoned me into its embrace, and there, I found home.
“She’s pissed herself,” Kaden laughed.
My best friend.
The one I’d spent my days defending from the other kids, announced my shameful action, and tears pushed against my eyes. Everyone I thought cared about me was watching, laughing, and enjoying the pain I endured at their entertainment.
Long after it ended, they came, laughing as they pounded against the glass room, where I had been placed on display. I couldn’t move. No healers came to fix me, no one cared that I’d bled out each time my body tried to heal itself.
I screamed, bolting up as bile pushed from my lips and my stomach emptied out onto the floor. My hands touched my back, discovering it closed and healed. Sweat stuck to my hair, the room pushed in on me, and I stood up, reaching for the soap before I dropped to my knees, inhaling it as I fought to get out of the past.
Everything inside of me trembled and mixed together—fear, hatred, embarrassment as the chanting continued even after I’d awoken from the nightmare. I screamed, I screamed so loud that if anyone had been close enough to hear it, discovery would have been a guarantee. I didn’t stop until I was crying, screaming as hatred and self-loathing became second nature, my place of comfort. I moaned as sandpaper slid over my tongue, my fingers flexed, coming back covered in blood as I stared down at my palms where my nails had torn through flesh.
The knife beside the bed caught my eye, and I moved to it, grabbing it with one hand and sliced it through my leg, exhaling as the familiar pain bit through my flesh. It was comforting, the pain that eased my guilt at being what I was. Knowing I was created to be hated, to be rejected, to be loathed from the magic that planted me into that cold whore’s womb.
Blood dripped from my thigh, and I sat back, resting my head against the wall. I chanted what I’d been taught, that I was ugly, wrong, evil, unlovable, and meant to save them all. I was the devil’s spawn, and the moment my purpose was finished, they’d end it. I almost wished it would be that easy.
“You okay?” Fred asked, and I ignored him. “Hey, listen, mistress. We all got some fucked up shit we had to survive. You’re going to be okay, at least until I get my body back and murder you.”
“Go to sleep, Fred,” I urged.
“I don’t sleep, asshole.”
“Pretend that you do,” I uttered hoarsely.
“If you’re going to cut yourself, can I at least watch and pretend that it’s me giving you pain?” he inquired thickly, muffled by the cooler.
“Fred?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what I did to the last person I considered to be my friend?” I asked.
“No, and I don’t entirely think I care to know, either.”
“I murdered him, quite violently, too. I waited until he went into the woods to train on his own. I found him out there, all by himself, and stuck him through the stomach with a spear, missing every vital organ on purpose. Afterward, when he woke up, he realized he no longer had arms or legs. I then took his malicious tongue from his mouth, and I cooked it as he was forced to watch me. I stabbed him nineteen times through his flesh, again missing every vital organ before I used my blade to seal the wounds. As night began to fall, I took his eyes. In those silent woods, I took everything from him that he’d ever used to hurt me. That was over seventy-five years ago. You’re my first friend since then.”
There was silence from the cooler as I stared down at the healing wound on my thigh. I pushed the sweat-drenched, sticky hair from my face and inhaled the copper of the blood with the lavender, swallowing hard as I pushed the memories away, burying them deep into my subconscious, where I didn’t feel or see them anymore.
Seventy-five years ago, everyone I’d ever trusted had turned against me, hurt me. I’d been beaten, pissed on, spit on, and harmed every way imaginable minus rape, and I’d only escaped that because I was the spawn of the devil to them. I’d gotten back up. But when I had, it had been as an unfeeling, uncaring, murderous monster who had embraced the anger within. It had taken ten years to kill—or track down and then meticulously murder—everyone that I had called my friend, anyone who had wronged me.
I’d changed that day. In more ways than I’d thought I would, but trusting people, that was what had gotten my spine severed, my mind broken; and the boys who had cut me as I lay there in my own waste, they’
d taught me that friends could destroy you. Friends, the people you trusted the most, were often the ones who destroyed you in the end.
My hand moved to the pile of soap, and I picked one up, pushing it against my nose as silent tears burned in my eyes. Save them? No, I wanted to eradicate them all. I wanted to watch them as they realized they were doomed to the very fate they expected me to save them from. There was no good in them, nothing to preserve in that race of monsters. They’d earned their fate, and I’d help whoever had cursed them to it. That was my destiny.
Chapter 15
I didn’t leave the room again until I was near starving to death and exhausted from staring endlessly at the walls. Every time that nightmare visited, it took days, if not longer, to get back up from the haunting memories. It wasn’t a sign of weakness, I told myself over and over again, because eventually, I’d believe it. I wouldn’t, of course, because life didn’t work like that.
Instead, it fucked you every chance it got. It knocked you down, and every time you got back up, it hit harder than before. I’d left the Druid’s Den years ago, preferring life on my own even though they’d dragged me back each time I’d left, beating me into a bloody pulp to instill the fear of God in me, and yet every time, I’d run again. It had become a default setting, to escape them, to live away from the horror that awaited me at their hands.
I knew Callaghan had been the one to stop the last beating, showing up as I’d been tied in the gathering room, strung up like a spring chicken with my clothes off. They stripped me every time, to show the ugliness, I guess, and expose how unnatural I was. He’d come in, covering me with his cloak, and whisked me out of the room, and I’d thanked him by punching him.
Reflexes, that’s what I’d told myself, but in the silence of the room where he’d watched me dressing, I’d found comfort in his presence, and that terrified me. It had been something I never wanted to feel again. I’d promised myself never to allow anyone to get close to me because the moment I did, they’d have the power to destroy me. I wouldn’t ever give another person that power over me.
Then came the day when he started prepping me for what was to come. How my destiny was to save their races. It proved where he ended up on my list, right at the bottom of the very long list of people I wanted to watch die. Yet every time I found myself at the end of a blade held by a Knight, he’d stayed their hand. As if he thought he was doing me a favor.
Still, the comfort of his voice as he spoke had seemed familiar, and no matter how much I tried to place him, I could never find him in my memories before he’d saved me from a beating. It was as if he was there and yet had erased them from my mind. I’d let it go years ago, not bothering to delve deeper into the mess of my psyche. There was too much bad shit in there, and nothing good came from opening those scabs. So I built a wall, and I put everything that didn’t make sense or seemed off behind it.
I popped open Fred’s cooler and stared down at him as I lowered to the floor, hating that towering above him made it hard for him to see me. He didn’t speak, and at first, it scared me. I grabbed his hair, yanking him out and then exhaled as he shouted.
“What the fuck?” he demanded.
“I thought you died,” I admitted as I placed him back in the ice and scooped more I’d been making into the cooler.
“Unfortunately, no,” he uttered in a pissy tone. “No such luck there.”
“I’m heading out to gather food,” I announced, watching him as I placed the ice around him. “I have to go to the Guild, to see if I can find anything out on the witches who cursed the Templars as well, so I may be a while.”
“Don’t care,” he said as his tongue pushed against a stray piece of ice as he adjusted it.
“Wish me luck,” I muttered.
“Die, please,” he responded.
“You do know that if I die, you will remain here, in this cooler, forever,” I said as I tilted my head, studying his dark eyes. He was handsome, or had been. It was unfortunate that I’d had to take his head because he enjoyed harming people. “Right?”
“You forgot to ask me if I care,” he snorted as he pulled his tongue back into his mouth and stared at me as if I bored him.
“Okay, well, I hope I make it back so that you don’t have to be rotting inside a cooler forever. Alone. Without me. Forever,” I grumbled low, under my breath.
With that, I slipped on my backpack and started out of the room. Outside the wall cutout, I paused, turning around to close the cooler lid to keep him safe. I pushed the hidden panel back into place and made my way to the exit, watching the storefronts for signs of anyone being present before I slipped from the protection of the corpses which had begun to stink in their thawing state.
I moved silently through the hallway, stepping over the other rotting corpses that I’d eventually get around to burying when I found the time. I was a firm believer that no one should be left to rot or die alone, but this world wasn’t for the weak. The weak died as the corrupt and vile creatures slithered into it, more and more.
Pausing at the open main doors, I watched a headless body ramming a pole repeatedly and frowned as I exited the building, moving towards the mutilated headless corpse. Fred just didn’t get it; he wasn’t leaving me, and I wasn’t leaving him.
He made the ideal friend, and I enjoyed our conversations. He had no arms to hurt me, no way to do so in any shape or form, and until he saw the errors of his ways or I figured out a way to die, he was stuck with me.
Thick black wings were mere stumps that stuck out of his spine. I winced at the damage I’d done as he’d watched me from where I’d placed his head on a spiked fence, making sure he understood that his body was lost to him. I slipped my backpack off, pulled out the kerosene, and doused him, putting it back into my backpack before I flicked a match and set him ablaze again. I watched for mere moments as it patted itself, finally dropping to the ground to roll towards the frigid river as I started in the opposite direction.
I made it ten blocks before I noted the tail on me, and began dipping through alleyways and then buildings until I was running as fast as I could towards the Guild. I rounded a building and hit something hard, bounced off of it, and rolled on the ground, moaning as I touched my face. I remembered what had been behind me and jumped back to my feet, expecting a fight, but there was nothing there. I stared at the empty space as the hair on my nape rose.
I peered around, searching the shadows before I started forward again, knowing something was here, and feeling it to the very pit of my soul as I continued on. I hit my max speed and was almost within sight of the Guild when I hit it again. I winced as I dropped to my knees and holding my face, I looked up to find Callaghan there, watching me through angry slits. Shouting sounded behind us and he moved, grabbing my arm until I thought it would be ripped from the socket as he pulled me into the nearest building.
“Asshole,” I seethed as I felt my face for damage.
“I believe the words you’re looking for, Erie, are thank you,” he growled as he pulled me up a flight of stairs, pushed me through another building, and then slammed me against a dust-covered wall.
“No, I’m pretty sure I meant what I said, Callaghan.”
“Poison lips, really?” he snarled as he pulled something from his pocket and pushed it against my lips. “Of all the ways to kill me, pushing that sweet flesh against my cock as I died probably wasn’t the best thing. I come back with my memories, every fucking time. You were getting off on my corpse.”
“I mean, that’s not entirely true. I did play with you a little, but corpses are a hard limit for me, so there’s that.” I blushed, uncertain what else to say about my fondling his dying body. So I shrugged and dropped the subject, praying he would too. My gaze strayed to his lips as I licked my own and then felt the numbness when I swallowed. My body started to sag as he smirked, watching me with a dark look in his gaze.
“Yea
h, Erie, I can play dirty too,” he crooned as he trapped me there with his leg holding me up, staring at me as his fingers pinched my chin, lifting it.
“Bastard,” I hissed as my eyes grew heavy and my head rocked to the side; I moaned. The poison was slowly moving through me as he watched me. I should have freaking known better. Instead, I’d figured he was testing my lips for poison. “No wrecking ball penis,” I uttered.
“What?” he asked as a smile lifted his mouth, and his eyes lit with laughter.
“I will kill you again,” I swallowed as my legs gave out and he caught me. He picked me up, hoisting my slight weight as he carried me deeper into the abandoned building.
“I know you will, but I’ve decided I enjoy this cat and mouse game we play. Just to be clear, you’re the mouse.”
“But I have the pussy,” I whispered.
“And it’s a very nice tight pussy, one I intend to use very often, little druid.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What, a druid? You have the blood of both races in your veins.”
“I’m the spawn of Satan,” I laughed, or I thought I did.
“You’re not, and even if you were, demons all started out as angels before they fell,” he growled, or I thought he did. Darkness swam in my vision as all coherent thought left me.
Chapter 16
My head pounded as I pried my eyes open to figure out where I was. I licked my lips, cringing as the vile taste of the concoction Callaghan used to subdue me hit my tongue again. Lifting my head, I peered around the decrepit room as I tried to get my bearings while I took stock of my position on the bed. My arms were chained, held above my head and secured to a metal bed frame. My legs were chained as well, positioned to be open, and yet I still had room to close my knees together. I yanked against the metal framework, moaning loudly. I struggled to get free and then hesitated as a dark shadow moved in the corner, catching my attention as he slipped from the shadows into the dimly lit room. My head dropped onto the feather-soft pillow as I watched him slowly walking towards the bed, staring down at me, surveying me while I came to the sad conclusion that there was no escape.
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