Page 58 of Cruel Pleasures
“That’s beside the point! Fix your mistakes. Make her suffer. Drive her crazy. Or I will find someone who will be useful.”
“Your first mistake was thinking I cared to be.”
Her gloved hands ball up, words failing to come out in time. I’ve made my second exit within minutes, back to the shadows where I belong.
The players grow restless in their cells. They’ve been kept locked up since the end of round one. Talia Weinberg’s death intensified their captivity. In order to monitor them more closely, they’ve been permitted no free range time beyond quick breaks to relieve themselves.
The wardens are given clear instructions for the evening. We are to gather them up and divide them into pairs for round two. For this round they’ll be tasked with playing a boardgame. Four of them won’t make it out alive.
“Look who we’ve got here,” sneers player seven. He’s long and lithe with arms that have an impressive reach. He unfolds them and stands up straighter from where he’s been leaning against the wall. “Our masters are back! Come to inflict more pain and misery? It’s okay, I can take it.”
I give no reaction as I stop in front of his cell door and twist the key into the lock. He’s not the first player to try to bait me. The silent, stoic archetype seems to give them the courage to act out. They’re often too foolish to realize I could strike them with a deadly blow and have them curled up in the fetal position before they have time to utter, please, don’t.
Behind me are the two other wardens on shift. Hurst and another misfit named Rook. As the illegitimate child of Harold Vanderson and one of his many affairs, he’s been deemed too unfit for civilized society. Watching your mother be murdered in cold blood by your father’s hitman can have that effect on children. The trauma manifested into dangerous coping mechanisms as he got older, which resulted in Mr. Vanderson dumping his bastard son off on the island. He’s stuck in limbo in the same way Hurst and I have found ourselves stuck. Small but stocky with a dark complexion, he makes for useful brawn.
I crank open the cell door and step aside to allow the other two to issue orders. Hurst takes the lead, reading out their numbers and who they’ll be paired with. Though I’m silent, my expression unreadable, my glare speaks for me. I stare at the back of Hurst’s golden brown head and fantasize about what I had last night—driving a blade into him. I’d lodge my knife into the base of his skull and step back to watch him die in slow agony.
Tension must pulse the air because as Rook leads the first group of pairs out of the cell, Hurst shifts his attention to me. His mouth tips into half of a grin, his sapphire eyes glinting.
“Something on your mind, my dearest pal Ry?” he asks, spinning the keyring around his finger. “You wouldn’t be thinking what it seems you are, would you?”
I offer him no reaction. “Maybe it’s your paranoia speaking.”
“Careful, Ry, my bestest, closest buddy. You really don’t want to go swimming in shark-infested waters, do you? I have my boat and I’d love to give you a ride.”
“The players. Finish the job at hand.” I jut my chin at the remaining players, but he demonstrates no interest in what we’ve come down here to do.
He folds his arms across his chest. “I detect some bitterness on your part, Ry. Could it be you’re… a little jealous? I have made significant strides in my task. Can you say the same?”
“That could be because I chose to keep my appendage inside my pants,” I snarl before I can stop myself. Almost cringing at my own words, I lament giving him ammo.
“So you know,” he chuckles. “You always have been one to watch others, haven’t you? That how you get off? Here I was thinking it was that playroom of yours.”
I step toward him. Only an inch separates us in height difference. “Most real predators stalk their prey beforehand. Careful or you might find yourself in the same predicament.”
“That would be interesting. I’d love to see you try, Ry. The only person who’s ever taken themselves more seriously than you was Kaden, and we all know what happened there. You should loosen up. Stop the sulking in the shadows. You might have a little more fun.”
“How about you do things your way, Hurst? And I’ll do things my way. I intend on winning this undertaking. I’ll make the pretty little bait you’re so taken with regret ever stepping foot on this isle.”
15. Imani
A Girl Like You - Anna B. Savage
The afternoon fades away without me noticing. I’ve stopped thinking about anything but the contents of the trunk I’ve found. I sit on the ground, my legs long ago numbed, staring dumbfounded at the items sprawled out in front of me.
Contents that were buried inside the trunk before I emptied it out; contents that seem to belong to none other than Lyra.
Several of them things I had noticed were missing the afternoon I stopped by her room and messaged Francesco. The photo album that had been propped up her broken bed frame. The cracked phone I’d seen her fiddling with on so many different occasions.
And things I’ve never seen before… like a composition notebook that’s been frayed and faded over time. I crack open the notebook to little doodles of animals and flowers she’d likely drawn when younger in the middle of class. Music notes curl across the page as if she’d been composing her own pieces when bored.
I breathe easier for the first few pages I flip through. The notebook appears to be from Lyra’s adolescence. Probably middle school or high school sometime. I’d had a notebook just like this that I used to sketch in instead of taking notes in whatever class I was stuck in.
But as the pages flip by, I notice some are missing. Others have violent ink marks strewn down the page. Dozens of them, as if Lyra was angry or upset and stabbed her pen as many times as she could. Chicken scratch drawings of a little girl pouring tears… or blood.
I can’t decide as I turn to the next page and see X’s drawn where her eyes should be. What looks like a cane is depicted as about to come down on her.
A chill courses down my spine and spreads throughout the rest of my body. I can’t look away as I flick to another page and then another, and the drawings become more dark and disturbing. There’s no other way to describe them as I come to another page with a woman lying in a pool of something Lyra filled in with the black ink from her pen.
