Page 77 of Letters to the Lost

The pot-bellied man in the chair seems to rouse from our voices. His eyes widen when he sees me.

“Autumn, please.Help me. He’s crazy. Tell them…” he coughs violently, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, “Tell them I never touched you. I never did anything that you didn’t want me to.”

“You don’t get to look at her!” Dominic seethes storming over to him, grabbing his chin roughly between his fingers making him look up at him “You ever look at her again and I’ll cut out your eyes. I’ve already removed something from you Alex, haven’t I? We don’t want me getting chop-happy now.”

“Please don’t. I’m begging you,” Alex begs Dominic.

His face is wet from his tears, snot, and saliva mixing with the blood that is splattered across his face. I feel no sympathy for this man and why should I?

He had none for me when I begged him not to.

“Did you listen to me when I begged for you to stop? When I pleaded for you to not put your rotten dick inside of me after I had been torn to shreds by another man just the night before. What about when you paid Jane for my ‘services’? You deserve everything Dominic is doing to you and more,” I shout at him.

Years of anger pouring from me as I shout and scream at him. I can feel the rage from the others, the room turning thick with tension as I shout about everything he did to me.

I never forgot who visited me in the night. The ones who crawled into my bed, their breath always smelling of beer and ash. I remember every single one of them, they play in my head on repeat when the nightmares plague me, and I’m thrown back to being that scared little girl who didn’t understand why her mom hated her so much.

“Princess,” Zander pleads with me, standing before me when I finally catch my breath. His light blue eyes are filled with sorrow as he looks at me heartbroken, “He’ll suffer Autumn. Look, he already has but we’ll make him suffer for everything he did to you. We’ll make them all beg for their lives if that’s what it takes to help you heal.”

Finally taking a breath, I look at Alex. Really look at him even though every part of my brain is screaming for me to run.

Alex’s torso is covered in what looks like burns, but the skin hasn’t blistered instead as if it’s been charred until it’s turned to charcoal.

“Did you burn him?” I ask Dominic, who just hums in response.

Continuing my perusal of the man in the chair, I realize a dirty rag is pressed to his groin, soaked with what I’m assuming is his blood. His pleas still fill the room, but I drown that out. Trying to figure out how far Dominic went.

“What happened there?” I nod to the blood-covered dirty rag.

“Oh! That’s an early Christmas present just for you! Do you want to see?” Dominic chirps from his spot, a wide almost deranged smile spreading across his face.

Nodding because that’s all I can do, my words escaping me at how happy Dominic is down here.

Everything he told me in the hospital making sense as I watch him work around the room like it’s the most natural thing in the world to him.

Dominic’s hand curls around a power tool, pressing a small button on the side to turn it on.

The sound makes Alex flinch, his pleas turn to begging as he shouts and screams begging for him to stop, that he’s sorry.

“Are you sorry Alex? Are you really? Because I don’t believe you. I think you hurt my girl when she was just a child, a fucking child. That deserves all of this and more,” Dominic whispers into his ear loud enough for us all to hear.

The others stay silent beside me, a few groans of discomfort slip from them when Dominic rips the blood rag from between Alex’s legs revealing a mangled penis.

“Have you actually sanded off his penis?!” Atlas exclaims, gagging at the sight before us.

“I did! I told you it was on my bucket list and what better way to do it than to turn Alex here into a real-life Ken doll,” Dominic chirps back.

“Please,” Alex tries to beg but no one pays him any attention.

My attention is fixated on the scene before me.

Dominic leans down, the whirring noise of the sander turning quiet and a little wet as it meets Alex’s already mangled penis. Alex’s screams soon drown it all out, his tears mixing with the blood as he hunches over in an attempt to stop Dominic.

I feel no sympathy for this man, for everything he did to me.

Maybe the old Autumn, the one who felt she deserved everything that happened to her, would have asked Dominic to spare him.

This Autumn though, the one who has healed and learned that she never deserved anything that happened to her as a child at the hands of her own mother and all the men who paid for her body to use for their own pleasure.

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