Page 68 of Penance

The smell is what hits me first, so familiar and comforting.

Then the silence.

That’s what falls around me while I work.

I hear nothing until I hack away enough at my toys to finally enjoy the gruesome orchestra of pain. I ask my victims questions that I know I won’t hear the answers to. The blood focuses me, driving me forward, there could be a room full of screaming, yet my ears pick up nothing.

I flip my attention to the front of his body. Slicing a nice, neat, surgical line beneath his lowest rib on the right side. Plunging my fingers into the wound, digging around inside him. Wriggling them around until my three thickest fingers wrap nicely around his bottom rib. Getting a nice solid grip on the slippery bone, I tug on it as hard as I can. I’m not the biggest guy, not like my younger brothers Cam and Eli. They spend a lot of their time in the gym, lifting weights and sparring. All my muscle is from running and chasing, digging graves and carrying corpses.

Sweat runs from my hairline, dripping down my forehead at the exertion. Mixing with the blood on my skin, creating a macabre cocktail of murder. I hold his body flush to mine with my free hand, his energy so depleted his legs hardly sway as he tries to kick at me. Continuing to flex the bone forwards and backwards inside his torso, I work tirelessly until it starts to crack. Eventually I feel it start to splinter, and with all my might, I tear the fragmented bone sharply towards me, snapping a part of it clean from his body. Raising it up above me, I examine the pretty treasure I’ve procured under the glow of the orange light.

I smile, my ears still deaf to sound. High pitched buzzing filling my head, like a swarm of bluebottle flies feasting on a rotting corpse. Laying their eggs in every crevice they can squirm into. Their fat, oil-slick coloured bodies digging themselves deep beneath the skin, the buzzing growing louder the harder they work.

“Did you know there are two-hundred and six bones in the human body?” I ask, flicking my eyes up towards his face, but not really seeing him. “I’ve just removed one of yours,”well mostly,“and it took me roughly eighteen minutes. If I remove every single bone at that same speed, it will take me an estimated three-thousand, six-hundred and ninety minutes. That’s the equivalent to sixty-one point five hours or two-hundred and twenty-one thousand, four-hundred seconds. How long do you think you’ll last? Shall we make a wager? I’m not usually a betting man but I like my odds in this game.” I release his body, letting it swing heavily back and forth from the hook, his unconscious weight tugging sharply on his bound arms.

He’s passed out again, bleeding and pale, his breathing raspy and I can hear a gurgle at the back of his broken nose. It’s so boring when they pass out. I grab a metal bucket filled with diluted household bleach. Tossing it over him, he startles awake with a scream of pain as my adrenaline lessens and my hearing fully returns. The thudding of my heartbeat and rushing of blood in my ears slowly dying away.

“Who are you working for?” I ask with a sigh.

I’m growing a little impatient because Dad demanded I be upstairs, clean, dressed andblood-freeby eleven and we’re definitely cutting it close to that now. The man’s screaming, a sound I finally hear, so comfortingly familiar. I could drift off to sleep to it like a child would a nursery rhyme and that’s quite a real possibility right now. I’ve been working on him for almost twenty-seven hours straight and I haven’t gotten a single thing out of him, all he does is shake his head at me. Wordlessly mumbling over and over before losing consciousness again. I think I might have broken him. No superglue in the world is gunna fix this toy.

I prop my arse against the old wooden workbench. Wiping a soiled hand off on a rag before petting Dillon gently on the head, caressing his pristine, white feathers. Crossing my bare feet at the ankles, I take a moment to just stare at the body hanging in the centre of the dark basement. My dad had this cave-like room built beneath the house, airtight and soundproof with a large underfloor drainage system, air vents and four thick steel security doors. Handprint scanners between this room and the stairs that lead up to the main house. Not that anyone survives down here long enough to even consider escaping, but it’s always best to be careful.

I zone out, for how long, I’m unsure. But I’m suddenly back in the room when I hear the sliding of bolts in the third door away from me. My ears prick up like that of an African hunting dog, always pricked, alert, listening. Well, except in times of torture. I run my fingers along the rough bone of the rib still clutched in my hand as I study it in my thick fingers. Spitting on it, I rub my fingers over it, cleaning it off. Bones are a weird thing. Everyone expects them to be clean and smooth and rigid, but in reality, they’re messy, rough and flexible. They get stiffer as they age but they’re pretty pliable things usually.

The heavy door swings open. Kyla-Rose entering the room, her too large eyes finding mine in the dim light. A soft smile gracing her red lips when she finds me. She’s the only person in this lifetime who could enter my space without needing my permission.

“’Sup, Charl? Merry fuckin’ Christmas!” she cheerfully sing-songs from just inside the open doorway.

Her gentle husk immediately drawing and captivating the entirety of my attention. A white sequined, spaghetti strap, mini dress sits snugly on her lean body. The hem of it close to showing off something inappropriate. The top of it cut straight across her chest, the thin corded straps barely holding it up. The heavy sequins catch what little orange glow of light there is. Colourful patterns reflecting across the ceiling like rainbows, cutting through dense darkness as she struts further inside.

A demonic smile curves her plump red lips, it’s sharp, threatening,delicious. I lick my own lips, tasting salt and copper. Tilting my head, my eyes tracking her across the short distance, she travels across the space gracefully. Her long lean legs carrying her further towards me, pin heels tapping against the concrete, vibrations echoing around the walls. She glides as gracefully and skilled as a gazelle, light on her feet, silent movements, but there’s no gazelle underneath that perfectly imperfect skin, no. A demon lies dormant beneath, both savage and beautiful.

Deadly.

We are monsters.

Her and I.

Cut from the same cloth of fate, both travelling down the bloodiest path to hell.

Together.

But I don’t mind, for thrones wait for us in those fiery pits, eagerly awaiting us to rule together.

She parks her perky arse against the workbench, our thighs almost touching but not quite. I let my eyelids fall shut as I inhale her familiar scent, vanilla, coconut, limes. She smells like her soul, soft, delicate, with a deadly sharpness that cuts through the creaminess of her. She reaches down, her tattooed arm brushing against my sticky blood splattered one. Her fingers lazily stroking Dillon’s head. I almost frown when I see her injured hand bandaged and tightly tucked into her chest.

“Who’s this?” she asks, drawing my attention away from her self-inflicted wound.

Cocking her head to one side, her grey eyes gliding rapidly over the bloody body suspended from the ceiling. Assessing, analysing every cut, bruise and detail she can lay her eyes on.

“A threat. I tracked him. For a name on the list,” I grunt, not giving her anything else, that’s enough, today anyway. “He’s not talking,” I growl lowly, the husk of my voice carrying through the silence, roughly vibrating through my chest.

Kyla-Rose looks at me from the corner of her eye and scowls. Her red lips pursing into a tight line, distaste at my lack of information. Effortlessly pushing herself up from the workbench, she takes a few slow steps forward, drifting in the direction of my prey. Victim is the wrong word to use. He is not innocent in this game. She circles the unconscious form, taking her time, narrowing her eyes in on particularly vicious wounds. Stopping just before him, her back to me, her knees bending slightly. Her head moving closer to the body, slowly tilting it again to one side.

Kyla-Rose glances at me over her shoulder, a slow wink of mischief lighting up her grey-green eyes. Knowing I like a show, she steps to one side to not hinder my view. Her full focus now on the broken body, she reaches out. Her thin finger traces over the gaping wound -the place I removed part of his rib from- before thrusting her long taloned finger inside it. Shoving it in hard and deep, right up to her tattooed knuckle, harshly dragging her clawed fingernails through the torn flesh. My prey snaps back to consciousness with a long low cry, snot and tears rushing down his face as he struggles pathetically against the damaging bindings. The irritated slices in his mangled wrists oozing and weeping. Even if he did get out of this, his arms would never work the same way again, the way the barbed wire is cutting into his flesh, the nerves will be destroyed.

“Hello,friend,” Kyla-Rose hisses in a hushed menacing whisper.

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