by Monty Jay
He’s not going to be happy that they are about to get very, very dirty.
“Let’s see, what else…Don’t do this, blah, blah. You don’t need to do this, blah—oh!” I tap his chest with the pliers. “What are you going to do to me? Good question, Cain. That’s my favorite.”
I flick my Zippo, the satisfying swoosh filling the air, making my fingers tingle with anticipation.
The flame burns steady, never wavering, patient.
“I’m going kill you.” I look him straight in the eyes as I say it because even though he doesn’t deserve to go out like a man, I want him to see just how dark my soul is. I want him to know that this is going to be painful.
“Now that we’ve answered all those questions—” I tear the tape from his mouth harshly. “—let’s get to work.”
As I excepted, he starts to scream, so high and nasally it makes my ears ring.
“So we’re screaming, huh?” I open my mouth, expanding my lungs and releasing a thundering shout. Mine is full of rage and hunger, while his drips with fear. The mixture together in the air makes me grin.
“You grew up here, Cain—don’t die stupid. You know that it doesn’t matter how loud it gets at The Graveyard. No one is coming for you.”
It takes a moment for him to stop yelling, but I’m in the mood to be patient tonight. I look down at the badge on his chest, the one attached to a silver chain, and I lift it up, tugging the necklace until it snaps from his neck.
“You don’t take a man’s badge, you fucking punk,” he hisses, voice cracked from using it too much.
“You’re not a goddamn man. You’re a disgusting pig who preys on little girls,” I spit. “So I’ll take whatever the fuck I want.”
I pocket it into my hoodie, leaving it there along with an idea of what I’m going to do with it after this is over.
“Is that what she told you?” He laughs shakily. “She has done just about everything to get more attention than Rose. Including lie. That’s what she does, she lies. Puts on a big show so she can have the world eating at her feet. You’re just another pawn in her game.”
I grind my teeth, drawing the line at talking badly about a victim he’d abused. I’m not going to allow him to talk about her like that.
He will never be able to even mutter her name again.
“What did I say about lying, Cain?” I slam my palm into his forehead, banging his head against the asphalt.
“They will come for her. It doesn’t matter if you kill me or not. They know she is involved. They will not let any of you out of this alive.”
I use the pliers to snatch his tongue, pressing down on the grip so it squeezes the wet sponge before I pull it from his mouth.
“Let them. They will meet the same fate,” I hiss. “And I hope they send more than just you next time.”
Flipping my Zippo again, I drag the flame to his tongue. Naturally, he starts to struggle, trying to run away from the heat, but I drop my knee onto his chest, digging my kneecap into his body so hard that I know it’s difficult for him to breathe.
The Zippo burns his saliva quickly, drying up the tissue before the scorching process kicks in. The direct flame to the pink muscle makes it fester up, shifting the color to a flaccid white color. He howls in excruciating misery.
“There are thousands of nerve endings I’m roasting off right now, and that’s not even a fraction of what you caused her,” I add insult to injury, my body staying steady while I sear his flesh.
The smell is rancid, but I love it.
Pus pockets start to boil up, their yellow fluid beginning to leak from too much heat too fast. It leaks down his throat, choking him on his own infection. Tears leak from his eyes as he kicks his legs, still fighting against me.
But there is nothing he can do.
I’m the flame that never goes out, and I will not stop until he is nothing but ash.
Once the muscle starts to turn black, I pull the lighter back, feeling how hot the metal is against my own palm, but I use that short burst of pain to fuel my pursuit for revenge.
Pieces of his tongue drop onto his chin, literal pieces of melted tissue dripping onto his neck.
I stand up, tossing the pliers and placing my lighter back into my jeans. Leaving him to suffer while I take my time walking towards the chains and single padlock, I whistle lowly as I grab them from the ground.
They clink and jangle as I drag them across the track behind me.
Cain whines and tries to roll away, battling against fate, still not grasping how this is going to end. I suppose I can understand; when you’re staring death in the face, it’s only natural to look away.
I just can’t believe this town and the people they put up on thrones. Crowning the crooked and evil.
Meanwhile, they had vilified me as a child.
Hiding away a rapist. Covering up sex traffickers, for fuck’s sake.
And yet, the boy who’d watched his mother burn alive right in front of him, he was the antagonist. He was Lucifer. He was the villain.
Not tonight.
“G-God, pl-ple-ease,” he grumbles, asking for service from a holy spirit while he’d been committing such hellish acts.
It’s hypocritical, and it pisses me off.
“He isn’t listening,” I grunt, taking one end of the irons and starting to wrap a figure eight around his crossed legs. “He has left you to deal with me now.”
Once I’ve looped them around enough times, I slap the padlock over the brackets, locking them into place. I look down at my work like a proud Eagle Scout who had just scored his first knot badge.
I stand over him one more time, my feet on either side of his body. Just watching him as he shakes with tears, rocking his head back and forth, silently pleading with me, my eyebrow cocks, and I scoff as I see a large wet stain spread across his jeans.
“Are you ready?” I ask, tilting my head playfully. “Hell has been waiting.”
Backing away from his body, I turn around as I hold the other end of the chains in my left hand, feeling every single bit of wickedness as I make my way to my bike.
Once I get there, I click the grappling hook that is connected to the end of the links on the frame of my bike, looking back at him just to see what he looks like intact one last time, before I climb on and start my engine.
Adrenaline pounds against my skull like a drum. My legs vibrate with the force of what’s beneath me. I briefly glance to the side, seeing all the guys leaning against the chain-link fence, watching me with unwavering stares.
I look ahead of me, to the four turns in the track, knowing Cain probably won’t survive one lap but silently hoping he does so his suffering is prolonged.
Twisting my wrist backwards shoots fuel straight to the engine, and my bike propels forward. It takes only a few seconds before the slack in the chain gives, and I can feel the weight of Cain’s body being dragged behind me.
His screams last longer than I expected, but I drown them out with thoughts of her.
The other night I’d allowed myself to be soft. In the hushed space of that moment, my guard had fallen completely in front of Sage, and a part of me wished I could stay there for longer. Inside the cracks of the chaos, where there was a sense of peace.
I could still feel her warm skin pressed firmly into my body as we stood in the kitchen. It wasn’t sexual. It didn’t even feel physical.
It was something deep, deep inside of me that was being coaxed out, comforted by the smell of her freshly washed hair. It was the closest I’d ever been to forgiveness. And even though it would take more than one shadowy night in a kitchen to heal my inner wounds, to help me overcome my demons and learn to forgive myself, it was enough at that moment.
However, I couldn’t stay there. Not forever. I don’t live in a world where that was possible.
It didn’t matter what we were. What had happened that night or how soft I’d been. Because right now, I’m every single bit of my reputation. A grotesque, vile soul that�
�s starved for vengeance. That’s all I care about.
Making sure no one would ever taint her wings ever again.
My breathing is erratic by the time I cross the finish line, slowing to a stop where I’d once started. My pulse jumps inside my throat as I knock the kickstand down, leaving the engine purring.
Cain’s body had rolled as I drove, bounced, and ricocheted off the pavement from the force of the pulling. I’m surprised to see all of his limbs still attached to his torso. As I draw closer, I can see just how much damage the unforgiving payment had done.
A long, thick trail of blood and skin marks the path behind him, winding all the way around the track. Portions of his scalp are peeled away from the bone, sagging from his head. I bend down, examining his trembling and disfigured form.
His clothes had been yanked and shredded from the road rash; uncovered flesh had been singed from the friction. A part of his tibia had splintered through the skin, the fleshy white bone punching out. Extensive patches of torn tissue and muscle are dispersed across his entire frame, but I can still see his chest trying to rise and fall.
It doesn’t feel like enough, but the human body can only handle so much. If I could, I would repair him over and over again, just to find new ways to tear him apart.
“P-Pl-Plea…” He gurgles, suffocating and choking on the crimson liquid that pours from inside his lungs. Drowning.
A surge of victory washes over me.
Silas had asked one thing of me.
Make him beg for it, and I’d done just that.
I’d brought him through so much misery that he’s imploring for death, but as Thatcher likes to say, death must be earned.
“One last lap.”
Sage
It’s just one day. You can handle one day.
I tell myself this knowing I’ve been through harder things than this. I had spent months of my life trapped inside of a psych ward, where I’d been mistreated and abused. I’d lost my twin sister to a gruesome murder, and I had gone through the worst thing imaginable as a young girl.
I had survived all of these traumatic things, and yet, this Spring Luncheon in celebration of my father feels like the last straw for me.
“Sage,” I hear, prepared to settle into another dull conversation with another person who didn’t care about a word I had to say.
It’s the same thing for each new group of people.
How are you?
How is college treating you? What are you majoring in?
Some of them slide in a joke they think is original about how college is the best years of your life. My father would occasionally compliment my academic excellence and talk about how bright my future was going to be.
But I can see in their eyes what they really want to ask me. They don’t care about any of this.
They want to know if I’m mentally stable, how I am with Rosie being gone, how losing my mother had affected me as a woman. I can read them; they’re paper-thin in this light. But instead of actually asking me, they keep quiet, waiting to draw their own conclusions when I leave.
I blink, turning my head to see Conner Godfrey, my school counselor, standing next to me with a smile on his face and a glass of champagne.
“You look miserable, and I thought this might help.”
“Thank you,” I say simply, pressing the edge of the champagne glass to my lips.
Attending this ridiculous event had not been my idea. It had been a stipulation when I’d talked to Cain at the church. I hadn’t found out any new information, and in order to stay in his good graces, I was to show up, wear something pretty, and play the role of the supportive daughter.
“I didn’t know you were friends with my father,” I say, making conversation, not wanting to assume anything about him, but also confused as to why he’s here. From what I know about him, he lives quietly with his wife and two children, having only moved here a few years ago.
“We’ve chatted in passing. Stephen and I went to graduate school together,” he says, smiling charmingly. “He actually got me the job at Hollow Heights. I didn’t necessarily come from a family with this kind of wealth.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that with the last name Godfrey.”
“I hear that more often than you would think.”
Not able to stop myself and not caring either way, I speak my mind.
“Was Stephen always a pompous asshole?” I look over at him, watching as he keeps the smile on his face and chuckles.
“He has always been…” He thinks for a moment. “Driven. But no, there were times, believe it or not, that he would stumble into our shared apartment piss drunk. But his father was very strict with him about taking over the family business. I think over the years he has just done what we all strive to do—make our parents proud.”
He’s right. I don’t believe Stephen is capable of anything other than poise and discipline. However, it would seem he passed that tradition down to his son, turning him into another man fueled by toxic masculinity and entitlement.
“Not all of us strive for that,” I say honestly. “Sometimes it’s the opposite.”
I have no reason to lie or uphold an image. And while I wouldn’t run around screaming my father is involved in a sex trafficking ring and is the reason my sister died, in order to protect Rook, I won’t pretend to like him. Not anymore.
This makes him pause for a second before he nods, accepting my answer and taking it much better than anyone else would.
“We all have something that drives us, and it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it makes us better people in the end.”
“That’s good advice. Ever thought about being a counselor?” I quirk an eyebrow up at him, smirking, and he grins, showing off his white smile.
I may not know fully who I am or what I want for myself—I don’t think that’s the point anymore, because we are supposed to grow, to change, to heal—but I do know what drives me.
It’s to make sure I never become like them, all those people surrounding me. I refused to become what they want me to be. I’ll never allow anyone to try and mold me into the image they picture ever again.
And that feels far more important than not knowing who I am.
“There you are,” I hear my father say. “My beautiful daughter. I got that dress for you in Paris on your sixteenth birthday, didn’t I?”
I glance down at the Hepburn-style black chiffon dress. It melts against me because it had been custom-made for my body and also from the heat of being outside all day. I knew the long sleeves were going to make me sweat, but I suppose when short sleeves and spaghetti straps are out of the question, you work with what you have.
Plus, I’d worn this dress for a reason.
“Don’t give yourself that kind of credit. Rosemary bought this for me.” I look back up at him with a look so harsh, it could slit his throat.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Conner says before clearing his throat. “Sage, it was lovely talking to you.”
I watch him disappear into the party, leaving me alone with my dad for the first time in over a year.
I look at Frank in his dusty-pink blazer and cream slacks, ashamed that I’m even related to this man. It feels wrong to stand by his side, showing my encouragement, while I know who he is underneath.
A murderer. A fraud. A money-hungry swine.
This is one role I don’t want to act out anymore. My family died the day Rosie did, and when this is all said and done, I want to have all ties severed from my Donahue lineage.
“You don’t have to make this so hard, Sage,” he breathes, opening the door to the backyard. “I’m still your dad.”
I look over at him, not able to put away my look of disgust.
“My dad?” I scoff. “A father is a man who would do anything to protect the family he built. You are a cheap, weak man with absolutely no backbone. You are nothing to me except the man who murdered my sister.”
I search his eyes for any form of regret or sadne
ss, but I see nothing. He’d done nothing but given me half his chromosomes and ruin my life. That’s it. And soon, he won’t even be that.
He’ll be a corpse.
“Ah, I see you’ve found her!” Stephen Sinclair makes his appearance, a smile on his face as he comes into my space as if he is allowed and kisses me on the cheek. “It’s so good to see you, it’s been too long. I’m sorry I haven’t stopped by to chat on campus. With all the disruptions last semester, I’ve been putting out fires left and right.”
I lift the left side of my mouth in a half-smirk, not missing the implied statement about literal fires that had been started. I’m not sure of Stephen’s involvement in all of this, but I would be naive to think he wasn’t at least aware of what Rook and his friends were up to.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” I say mockingly.
“Quoting Voltaire. I always told Easton you were too smart for your own good. I hate that things couldn’t work out between the two of you. You were so good together.”
Didn’t work out? That’s what he’s going with?
I mean if anyone was thankful for ending the relationship with Easton, it was me, but didn’t work out?
He acts as if he didn’t blacklist me the second I was hauled off to the loony bin. My mental health episode would have been a stain on his family’s reputation, and he couldn’t have that.
“It’s from Spider man, actually.” I tilt my head, taking a sip of my drink. “Mary is much smarter than me. I think they make a much better fit than we did. He is much more docile.”
I knew where the quote originated from, but I’m in the mood to be a smartass. He, along with his family, don’t deserve an ounce of my respect.
Stephen isn’t the only person in this space that can play dirty. If he wants to take digs, he better get a fucking shovel, because I guarantee my hole will be deeper than his at the end. I lost a lot of things this year; my razor-sharp tongue was not one of them.
He laughs, and it actually sounds real. Like me challenging him is the most humorous thing he’s experienced in years.
