Page 34 of Ruin

His heaving back, the sounds he makes, like strangled, breathless sobs.

Pain.

I should be pleased, after the ways in which he has already devoured me, that he is feeling some sort of hurt. Whether physical or emotional, I should be rejoicing in it, revelling in it. Something to even the playing field a little, even if I am not the one who directly caused it.

I stare at his feet, black suede, lace up boots, dried blood flecking the fabric, wrinkling of jeans on his lean legs. I follow the black material all the way up the length of his legs, over the curve of his arse, to the twin dimples in his lower back. White, naked skin, etched with black ink, slick with blood. The red bulbs illuminate his snow-white hair, causing it to look pink in the dark, and even from my position at his feet, I can see the contortion of his face, a side angle, but it is clearly pulled tight in some sort of agony all the same.

I glance away from him, eyeing the white duck sitting atop a small wooden cart, a string looped from the contraption, tied around a leg of the workbench. It looks back at me, its eyes glassy, but it feels as though it’s looking right at me. And I consider this man’s relationship with this taxidermy bird.

Tucking my dry lips between my teeth, I look back up, Charlie’s face contorted, eyes shut tightly, mouth open, air being sucked between his lips in shot, sharp gasps. He sounds like a fish out of water, desperate for air.

Slowly, carefully, I extend a shaky hand, my long skinny fingers trembling as I reach out, and then finally, the tips of them brush along the front leg of his jeans, just above the top of his boot. His heat radiates through the thick, dark fabric, almost singeing my bleeding fingers, the concrete floor having snagged my already torn nails.

I stroke my fingertips up and down lightly, not touching skin, not applying pressure, just being present. I watch little smears of blood press into the fabric, soaking and seeping slowly in. My nails catch the denim, a wince in my eyes but I don’t stop trying to soothe him.

Maybe he can’t even feel me, perhaps, he does not even know I am down here. My eyes are closed, the motion of my fingers gliding lightly up and down a very small patch of his jeans, but it is a struggle to keep my eyes open. All of my weight resting on a painful, shaky forearm, muscle non-existent and I have done nothing but cower inside a cage for what could be years.

It is my breathing then, that rushes in and out of my lungs. Desperately clawing in oxygen as the pain in my arm, the uncontrollable shake in it, becomes almost unbearable. But I don’t stop, even as my elbow buckles and I grab onto his foot to stop my chin smashing into the floor. Fingers stopping their soothing and latching around his ankle instead. Heel of my hand pressing into the top of his foot, inner wrist resting atop his covered toes.

That’s when I hear it.

The silence.

His erratic breathing has stopped.

Not slowed.

Stopped.

Complete and utter silence buzzes inside my brain, his breath is held now, and my own is caught in my lungs. On a shaky palm, using my grip on his foot, I push myself up, using the leg of the workbench to support my weight. I am trembling, a cold sweat pebbling over my flesh. And I know he is looking at me before I even glance up. It heats my skin like blistering rays of the sun and that blush begins to creep its way back up my throat, heating my cheeks.

Swallowing, breathing slow and deep, I blink, glance up, and I am speared directly through the heart with the look in those sinister emerald eyes.

They glisten as he glares down at me, the right one red and swollen from my fingers that still rest against his shoe, the suede soft and dry beneath my buzzing fingertips. Lips parted, air sails up my throat, making the repressed splutter hack its way free. I am breathless, coughing, pain hammering through every bone in my chest.

My abdominal muscles clench tight, willing my stomach not to force up bile, but stars dart across my vision, causing my lids to close. White light streaking across my eyeballs beneath shuttered eyelids, I clap a hand over my bare stomach, spine crunching where it is flush with the rough wooden table leg, splinters catching my skin.

Cool hands curl around my upper arms, gentle at first, soothing, but as my coughing continues. Uncontrolled, dangerous, air not able to seep its way into my wet lungs, the grip becomes brutal. My body sagging, his brutal hold keeping me up, fingers biting my skin, he drags me up, my toes grazing painfully over the rough ground as I slump into his chest. My body seizing with hacking coughs, lungs lurching inside my skeleton.

I am exhausted, eyes streaming, throat burning, neck painful where the shackle rubs against my already broken skin.

“Ava,” Charlie rasps, and my watery eyes blink open, cough slowing, breath heaving in and out of me.

My hands settle on his bare chest, sticky, cold skin beneath my bony hands. Forehead dropping to the base of his throat, my eyes sag closed, cheeks wet, I just breathe. Breathe him in, smoky clean copper. It settles something in my core, lungs screaming but not threatening to suffocate me. His arms are like iron bars around my back, a hand protectively cradling the crown of my skull. His fingers bite into my head, tight and unrelenting, like he’s trying to shatter the bone in his fist, but strangely, I like it, it makes me feel safe.

Here.

With him.

But then his hold intensifies, and I can’t stop the cracked cry that explodes from my mouth, my legs buckling beneath me as he drops me into a heap at his feet.

“Stay,” he hisses, venomous and commanding and I daren’t move.

Trembling, propped up against the table leg, I breathe hard, lungs rattling and wet. It makes me feel like my stomach is going to punch its way up through my throat. Anxiety and fear still me, I don’t attempt to crawl away, drag myself back to my cage.

The space I never should have left.

Trembling, my skin prickling with goosebumps, exposed and always cold in this cave-like lair. My teeth chatter and my eyes stare blankly ahead, red light the only thing misting over my vision.

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