Page 11 of Haunt

I shiver at the cool temperature, the summer heat having been so hot all day, when night falls, it is a welcome reprieve. But it is cold and my skin smatters with goosebumps as his gaze holds mine. My breasts are exposed, gold pendant hanging between them, small cotton knickers the only thing covering me, my hair brushing my lower spine. I do not cover myself from him, even as everything in my brain demands it.

Billy steps back from me, further, never looking at anything below my chin. As though he knows it doesn’t matter because he can demand to look at what he owns anytime he wants. He turns from me, bending over the bag, black shirt tight across the expanse of his broad back. The zipper opening is loud in the room, the prospect of what could be inside causing my blood to pump faster. Anticipation is lustful as it floods through my veins.

When he turns back to me, a short handled axe in his left hand, bone saw in his right. I eye the instruments, both things I have used before, but neither one of them particularly my favourite.

He watches me. My slow approach. Bare feet, naked body. I am pulled towards him by something that lives deeper inside of my skeleton than marrow, an infection burrowed beneath my skin that I do not want to cure.

It is a swirling vat of toxins, a poison. The living, breathing thing stitched beneath my skin, a cloak of darkness merged with my soul.

My neck arches back, gaze never straying from his, he grins at me, eyes glinting, wicked and cruel. My toes brush the tip of his boots, suede soft against my skin as I stop before him. I reach up, fingers tracing down the length of the bone saw where it hangs between his loose fingers. The metal glints beneath the glow of candlelight as I drop my gaze to focus on it.

It feels like he is giving me a gift as, without a word, he lifts it towards my hand, offering it to me as if it cements something between us.

A binding of sadistic, soul-deep sorts.

Slowly, heart pounding, my fingers curl around the smooth handle extended to me, eyes lifting back to his, my lips begin to mirror his own, twisting into something truly horrifying.

And it is the first time in twelve years, I feel something other than cold.

It’s the feral glint in her big eyes, the brown as black as her blown pupils. The way she blows a stray wet hair from sticking across her face, hooking it from the corner of her mouth with her little finger, that has me pausing. My chest heaves where I am bent over the chopped torso I’m butchering. Drenched skin, my upper body bare, my face dripping, hair heavy with the life fluid of someone she killed so neatly.

I wonder if she prefers it that way.

Clean.

Testing her with the tools I revealed, seeing how she reacted. There are others in the bag, she didn’t ask to see them. She did not hesitate to pluck up a weapon and begin.

It is one of the reasons she is deemed worthy.

As I watch her saw her way through the back of a knee, tendon and bone squeaking and crunching. Her small frame seated cross-legged on the floor, small grunts of exertion punching from her chest. I am enthralled by her, and I worry, not for the first time, how I am going to hide this level of utter devotion from Milus.

Our God.

Leader.

Father.

He does so like to ruin us by destroying our possessions.

I think of Gore, how father destroyed what he had.

I shake my head, clearing my thoughts of dread.

This is okay. It is by Gore’s order that I am here, after all. Finally. And my oldest brother very rarely would offer up something like this. Knowing I would be gone more than a day. There are many things coming up that I am to be present for. My instructions on obtaining my pair were strict, sharp, no fucking around. It’s why I have everything so meticulously planned.

I am standing over her, and I blink, wondering when I took the seven steps across the room to reach her. The axe is heavy in my hand, but I cannot seem to detach it from my fingers. Naked body, white cotton underwear on her lower half, all of her covered in blood. She shifts to her knees, a leg in her hands, looks up at me, fingers of one hand curled over the ankle, the other palming just above the sawn knee. It is not yet severed, the leg, not all the way through. And I watch her small hands, with her eyes on me, as she rests it over her thigh, bending it backwards as she attempts to snap through the final pieces of joint.

It crunches, the knee, something I have broken on many men twice her size before, the sound not unfamiliar. It is hard work. Tearing and snapping through sinew and bone, but the smile on her face, the strain in her biceps, forearms, the slight heave of her chest as she puts all of her strength into severing the limb in two, has my mouth salivating for a taste of her.

She grunts, a huge exhale of breath immediately following, and as I lift my eyes to hers, she drops her own to the leg. Tossing the two separate pieces just past where I stand to join the pile of meat behind me.

The bit of my axe finds the hollow underside of her chin and I use the sharp edge to drag her face up to mine. She peers up at me, the flicker of the chamberstick candle on her bedside table the only thing lighting her up. She is a vision, and my cock weeps at the sight of her slathered in blood.

Applying more pressure with the sharp curve of the axe, she starts to rise with the motion, never once straying from looking at me as she climbs to her feet. I let my gaze wander then, down the exposed length of her neck, curved where she is forced to arch it back. Red pools in the hollow of her throat, having collected there, but now it is steadily dripping rivulets down the valley of her small breasts. I graze the butt of the axe over the hard point of her nipple, drawing it into an even sharper pucker with every gentle grate over it. Her chest trembles, body shaking, but she does not object as the weapon lowers further. The cheek of the blade following the curve of her waist, stopping at the outer jut of her hip. I glance up, grin at her, enjoy the attempted hidden tightness of fear in her face.

“You haven’t bled for me in so long, I can hardly remember what you taste like,” I murmur it lowly, dragging the axe across her lower belly, just above the band of her underwear. “Will you?” I whisper, already knowing the answer butneedingto hear her say it. “Bleed for me, Little Lamb?”

Her exhale is shaky, but without hesitation, she is resolute in her answer, “Always, Billy.”

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