Page 20 of Brood

Chapter Fifteen

I don’t have much experience with kids. No experience, really. I was an only child in a club that had kids older than me. I was always the baby. Then when I was taken by Butch, I sure never saw any children. So being around Kasin is a little tedious at first, but we seem to warm up to one another after a while. After talking to him all morning, I have decided that he obviously can’t talk. Or rather doesn’t want to. I have also noticed that his dexterity is a little skewed. When it comes to small things, like opening doors, drinking out of his sippy cup, and even trying to use utensils for the macaroni I made us both for lunch. “I’m not much of a cook, but I can make a mean box of mac and cheese.” I smile at the boy, who even without talking to me seems to fill the silence of the house. After the small awkward phase when Brood walked out this morning Kasin took me to his room where he proceeded to pull out every book on his shelf for me to read.

“How old are you Kasin?” I ask him as we eat our lunch. Holding up my fingers, I first ask one. Then two. Then three. I don’t think he is any older than three, but I ask anyway. When he puts up three fingers, I smile. “You are three?” He gives me that one jerk nod that is probably the cutest thing ever and pokes at a noodle that seems to not want to be eaten. His two little fingers don’t seem to be working for him either. As if they aren’t listening to what his brain is trying to tell them. It’s been this way each time he goes for another piece of food. I want so badly to reach over and feed him a spoon full, but every time he gets a noodle in his hand after trying so hard the triumph that settles over his face warms my heart. When he gets the slippery noodle pinched between his fingers, he quickly gulps it up and goes in for another, proud smile on his face. “That is very good, Kasin. Can I show you how to use this?” His nod is all I need to take the spoon I placed by his plate and put it into his hand. He lets me do this, uncaring I’m touching his hand. I show him how to hold the spoon and then scrape it along the bowl to scoop up the food. It takes a couple of tries, but he seems to get the hang of it. “You got it.”

We smile at each other as we continue eating our food until the open and closing of the front door pulls my attention from Kasin. I turn to come face to face with Brood, who looks over the sight before him. “He’s using a spoon?”

“Yeah.” I don’t understand the look of sorrow that drifts across Brood’s face or why he walks further into the kitchen and places a kiss on his son’s head, all the while looking as though he has unshed tears in his eyes.

“Nice job Kas.” Brood clears his throat and levels his son with a stare. “Save any for me?” I nearly laugh when Kasin shakes his head no then offers up a spoonful to his father, missing Brood’s open mouth entirely when he tries to feed him. The sticky noodles fall all over the floor, some get stuck in his beard. Brood’s throaty chuckle seems to vibrate across the room. “Gotta work on the aim.” Brood stands and ruffles Kasin’s hair before turning to look at me. I resist the urge to reach out and swipe the noodles from his beard as he faces me. Still, he doesn’t let his eyes meet mine. “We got a plan in place.”

“Oh.” Suddenly my food doesn’t seem all that appealing, not with the realization of why I’m here to begin with.

“You are going to die.”

“Die?” I stop and look over to Kasin, who is oblivious to the conversation, too busy trying to perfect his spoon skills to listen or understand. Thank God.

“We got a guy that can help us make a corpse look like you. We just need to know if you have any. Um… marks. You know, tattoos or something that Butch will be looking for when he sees the body,” Brood explains, seeming a little uncomfortable as he tells me this. Like I’m going to have a tattoo on my butt that he will have to examine personally or something. It’s much worse than that.

“Well… that could take a while.” I stand up from the table and take my bowl to the garbage to scrape it clean of the food I can no longer finish.

“Hey, Kas. When you are done, why don’t you put in a movie?” The little boy shoots his father a big smile and hops down from the table, uncaring if he is finished eating or not. Brood doesn’t seem to care though. Instead, he is reaching out and taking my hand to lead me down the hallway. It’s when he guides me into a room that smells like him that he lets me go. The door shuts behind us and time seems to stand still as he looks me over like he might see the scars on my body through my clothes.

“Brood.”

“Yeah?” His brow creases further before his eyes finally meet my face, holding my own for far too long.

“Why are we in here?” I find myself whispering for some reason.

“I…” He clears his throat and shakes his head. “I need to take pictures of whatever identifying marks you have.”

“Oh, yeah. Well…” I drift off, glancing around the room before I take the hem of my sweatshirt in my hands and pull it up over my head. As reluctant as I am to do this, I know if we are going to be able to pull this off, things have to be accurate. The t-shirt I have on underneath rides up when I pull the first layer away, it doesn’t matter because that has to come off too. When it does, I catch the sharp intake of air Brood takes. The most recent scar I was given by Butch is scratched across my stomach, a tint of that angry red healing skin still lingers.

“Motherfuck.” If I didn’t feel it before, I feel it now, the anger vibrating from Brood as he roams his eyes across my battered body. When Butch was feeling particularly possessive he would have fun playing with his knives. Out of everything he did to me, the knives were the most bearable. He was such a pro at wielding the knife I almost never felt anything until he was done. That was when the pain would set in.

“There’s more,” I tell him, unbuttoning my jeans and dropping them to the floor. The crisscross pattern on my left leg is the oldest and deepest of my scars. Butch took his time perfecting that one, making sure to cut over it each time it started to heal. The edges are raised so high the thought of ever being able to cover it with a tattoo is pointless.

“He did all of this?” Brood has dropped to his knees in front of me, his body dangerously close to my nearly naked one. None of this feels at all sexual, especially not with Brood about to burst with so much anger. I fear he might kill half of South Carolina looking for Butch himself.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” I don’t know why I say it, maybe to try and calm him down a little, but it has the opposite effect.

He shoots to his feet, balling his hands together into fists. “Not as bad as it looks?” He growls and stomps away from me only to stomp back. “I swear to the fucking Reaper I will gut that man.”

“Brood.”

“Fuck. How were you … No, I can’t right now, it will only infuriate me more.” He turns away from me, I can tell from the bunching in his back that he is most likely running his hands through his short beard. Then I have a sudden smile appearing on my face when I remember the noodles that were left there. When he spins back around and sees me smiling, something I can’t place washes across his features.

“How are you here?” he asks, almost as if he doesn’t remember how I got to this town or into his home.

“What do you mean, how am I here?”

“You are standing here in my room, showing me what that monster did to you, and you are smiling. How can you just… how did you make it through all of that?” he points at my leg and stomach. “And still find it in yourself to smile?”

“You had noodles in your beard.” I point to the floor where I see they have fallen as if it explains why I would have a smile on my face in such a serious moment. Only he doesn’t seem to think it’s funny.

He sighs then looks down to the noodles on the floor. It takes him a moment to look back up, and when he does his eyes finally meet mine. “You are something else, Jordyn.”

“If I don’t keep going, he wins,” I say after a beat of silence. “I decided that I wouldn’t let him win after he did this.” I point to my stomach. “He did this only a few months ago. After I lost the baby he had been trying to put in me.” The sharp hiss from Brood doesn’t stop me from telling the rest of the story. “His son, Miguel, had been slipping me pills for years. Right after Butch had taken me. Miguel was…” I pause, remembering my only ally in my purgatory. “He wasn’t a good man, but he did what he could for me.”

“Miguel is the son he killed.”

“Yes. After he found out what Miguel was doing, he killed him. Right in front of me.” It wasn’t long after that the effects of the contraceptive wore off, and I became pregnant. It was only by the grace of God that I miscarried the baby only a couple months in. Butch blamed me for the loss and carved his name into my stomach, telling me that if I couldn’t carry a child, I would always carry him with me. “I made my escape only because of a plan Miguel set in motion before he died. He had someone on the outside. Someone I can’t name, not even now. I won’t risk them. Not after what happened to Miguel.”

“All right. You don’t need to tell me who it is.”

“Thank you.”

He nods at my thanks then reaches to the back of his pocket. I expect him to pull out his outdated flip phone or maybe his gum; instead, he pulls out a sleek iPhone. “I don’t know shit about these, but Sage showed me how to take pictures,” he explains as he swipes his thumb across the screen. “I’ll take the pictures and get them to the guy.”

“Hopefully, it works. There is a lot to go with here.” I try to joke, but Brood ignores it as he starts taking the pictures. I actually believe deep down that Brood doesn’t want it to work, that he would rather Butch come for me just so he could kill him.

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