Page 3 of Ruin

I step closer, her warmth at my spine, close but not touching.

“Actually, Charl, I need to talk to you about someth-” she starts but she doesn’t finish because I tear the door back, the smell making us both hack a cough.

My eyes water, burning, but I push forward, into the darkness, I blink, eyes already somewhat adjusted to the dark. My steps are silent on the tin floor, stacks of boxes I have no interest in searching piled high. Hiding something. Strategic placement, but there’s a pathway through. Someone has been here. The trespasser. I’ll find out.

I step around a tower of crates. The smell growing stronger and stronger the further I venture inside the container. I hear nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat pulsing in my ears, the tips of them surely red. I stop. Still. Dead in my tracks. Kyla-Rose steps in beside me after a moment, back of her hand to her nostrils, I hear her gag, contained in her throat, then a flare of light from her other hand.

“Holy.Fuck.” she splutters out on a choked whisper, but I hardly hear it, my throat burning, my neck itching, hot and irritated. “Is that…” she trails off, not really a question because we can both see it.

What it is. Revealed beneath the torchlight.

A person.

In a cage.

The beam of light is blinding to look at, but Lala roves it slowly from the body’s head down. Tangled, matted hair, dark brown maybe, maybe lighter, might be dirt. Pale skin. Covered in filth. Their own. Could be someone else’s too. Bones, everything sticking out. Skin on a skeleton. Their spine is curved, the way they are lying, back to us, I can count every disc of it. Coccyx bone protruding almost like it is trying to escape its flesh confines. Their backside is hardly noticeable as it morphs into thighs, bones sharp. I calculate it in my brain. The decomposition. I don’t think long. The smell is more waste than death. My eyes run over the backs of their legs, down to the prominent point of their ankle bones. I can’t even tell if they’re male or female.

“Are they…?” Lala rasps, something like dead emotion in her throat.

“Get the tarp.”

Chapter2

Charlie

Lala moves fast, out of the container, but I can’t shift my feet to move away, only closer. Eyes locked in on the skeleton. I watch their back, waiting, squinting, wondering. How long have they been in there? Where did they come from? How did someone smuggle this shit intomyfucking territory?

I stare at the bars, thick, round, the gaps between them deceptively large. You can’t get out. I would know. It doesn’t matter how many bones you break, trying to contort your way out of your prison. There’s no escape from something like this.

I step closer, running my hand over the top of the box, it’s not more than four-feet in length, three-feet high. That’s when I see the chain.

A full body shudder rips through me at the memory. It makes my knees lock, the bones feeling like liquid. The cage isn’t barred on the top, not like mine was. This one has a thick flat surface. My fingertips grind into it as I flex them.

Slowly, letting my hand slide off of the top, circled fingers gliding down one of the thick steel bars, I shift into a low crouch, knees clicking as I fold myself. The rancid smell does nothing to affect me anymore. I’m used to it, I spent months with it, sitting in my own filth, chained, cramped. Just like this.

Even in the darkness, I follow the chain links, attached to the floor at one end of the cage, the length of it heavy and coiled. There’s not a lot of slack in them where they disappear beneath matted dark hair, but I know what that means.

A neck shackle.

My spine twitches at the thought, vocal cords tightening. Despite not being able to see the collar, that is what it is, I feel my own phantom version tighten around my throat.

I slap my hand hard against the enclosed metal top. Squeeze my eyes shut tight, breathe in hard through my nose. Nostrils flaring, I catch the stench again and I think ofhim.

Blue eyes. Chestnut hair. Taunting fucking smirk. His face boils my blood and my fingers, slick with cold sweat, squeak over the metal top. That’s when I hear it.

A rasp.

An inhale.

My eyes fly open like a sparked match, pupils blowing wide as they try to swallow the darkness. I peer through the bars, watching the naked carcass before me, straining my ears as they roar with the pounding of my heart. And then the chain clinks, a toe twitches and the almost silent, ragged inhale sounds again. Their spine bows with it, like the body knows it hurts, I imagine it does, but they do not seem conscious. They do not know I am here. There is no fear as I flick out my tongue, paste it across my bottom lip, tasting the air.

Death is all that is here.

I watch then, fingers tightening around the metal bar. I don’t move closer, but I angle forward onto my bent toes, stare hard through the shadows. I don’t hear their breath again, but I see it, the slow, too widely spaced inhales. Far too many seconds between each one. They are dying. They may never rouse again. The state they’re in.

I want to turn them over. See their face. Know who they are. I never forget a face. Not one. My mind moulded to remember everything, every tiny detail of a person. Freckles, scars, all of it singeing into my brain. I breathe in deep, stand, my palm flat against the top of the cage. I search for the door, padlock, chain, hinges, two full circles of the small prison, and there is a gate, or was a gate. But this person has been welded in.

Silently, I move backwards, out of the container. Force down the acid in my throat. Being trapped. Like that. At least I had a door. Some days, it was the only thing that kept me alive. That tiny sliver of hope.

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