Page 5 of Ruin

My fingers glide soothingly over my stuffed duck, Dillon’s, white, feathered head. His pulley string tied around the table leg to prevent his escape on his wheeled wooden cart. His duck eyes glassy and fixed, the same way mine are, on our captive in a cage. It took twelve men to heave the thing up, load it into a truck and then bring it down here. I had to clean afterwards. Having that many people in my space makes my skin itch. It’s all I can smell now, bleach. It feels like it cleanses my insides as well as my space when I use it.

The pale flesh behind the bars glows a gruesome pink, it is easier to see now. The filth, the bruises, the bleeding, the cuts, the scars, the wounds.

It is beautiful.

Her.

The unconscious female shackled in steel.

Kyla-Rose was not happy about me bringing her here. Wanting to clean up the mess, dispose of the body. I told her I wanted to do it. Provide the end for this suffering link of bones. She didn’t argue. She doesn’t anymore. Not really. It’s guilt. Over us. My brother. Her cousin.Jacob.

My free hand curls over the edge of my workbench where I rest my arse against it. Tension vibrating up my forearm as I think of him bleeding out on the floor of our warehouse. Fight Night continued not forty-eight hours later. As though his life was not still staining the polished concrete.

But I saved her.

I will always save her.

In this life and the next.

Our love is dead. But we are not. It has been a long time. Five years. And I will, hopefully, one day, learn how to cope with that.

I watch her. The skeleton in the cage. Like a little runt bird flung from her nest to die. Her back. Rising. Falling. So slow.

Reluctantly, I remove my fingers from Dillon’s head, cock my own and stare. Counting. Eight seconds. That’s the space between inhales. At rest, twelve to sixteen breaths a minute is average. But average things have never really held my attention for long.

I wonder how broken she is inside the parts I can’t see. Beneath that strewn tangle of matted hair. Is there a cracked skull, torn skin, missing eyes, ears, pieces? I wonder what her mind is like now. Fractured. Splintering apart like she’s nothing more than a burning sheet of newspaper, all of the important things distorted by the flames.

On bare feet, I pad over to the opposite workbench, flush along the entire length of the entry-door wall. Picking up a needle, some medical tape, a few bags of saline and some antiseptic wipes, I carry it all over to the cage. Legs folding beneath me, weight resting on my jean-clad shins, I sit on my haunches. The floor unforgiving on my bones as I get down on the ground, but I enjoy the sharp pain as it pulses through me like a dull heartbeat. I lay down the supplies, out of reach of the bars, just in case, and then I watch her.

She’s easier to see up this close, my head cocked to one side. I peer at her through my razor-cut hair, chin length pieces of jagged white blonde slice across my vision. Her skin is white, beneath all the filth, the surface of her flesh so pale it could shine like the surface of the moon.

My eyes rake up the length of her body. From her small relaxed toes, over the sharp point of her ankles, to jutting kneecaps scraped and bloody. Visible hip bone that threatens to carve its way right through her skin. Small, bloated, round belly leading to a concave looking sternum. Each rib countable, protruding like antique birdcage bars. Her breasts are gone, if she ever had them, malnourishment having hollowed her out like she’s already a corpse. Her collarbones slice their way across her upper chest, the hollow in the base of her throat not much more than a black hole in the shadows. I can’t see her face, hidden beneath a curtain of dark, matted hair. So I follow, instead, over the cap of her shoulder, down her skinny arm, the skeletal bend of her elbow, to one of her hands, the other arm tucked beneath her, lots of her out of my view.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Why I’m sitting here with supplies I keep for protecting my family, the prisoners I want to keep alive longer as I slowly torture them to death. But I find myself unable to look away.

I think of the man then. The trespasser. The one who was visiting this woman, maybe girl. It is hard to accurately age someone you cannot fully see, and who is already well on their way to meet The Devil. I wonder who this is to him. How long she has been there. In my territory. Under my nose. It feels like a violation. A stranger in my space. Whether or not she chose to be there. She was. And it makes me itch beneath my skin. I will find out later, when I decide to get to him.

It feels strange. Not being in a hurry to do just that. Torture and kill the man for information. But I find myself not wanting to go anywhere until I feel finished here.

I don’t know why I’m bothering, though. This girl is going to die. And I do not feel any particular way about it. But Idofeel unable to leave her.

Yet.

I eye her skeleton hands, long bony fingers with a mixture of broken and missing nails, bruised knuckles. Dirt and waste. Old and new. Smeared and dry across her skin. I flick my gaze up, the long length of steel chain disappearing beneath her hair, I know it’s around her throat. The shackle. I want to see it. Crave to.

Instead of reaching in towards her face, pressing forward, bare chest against the cold iron bars, I stretch my arm through a gap, collecting the dainty weight of her only visible hand in my own. Perhaps she only has one. Feather-light in my palm, I smooth over the back of her fingers, the scarred, calloused tips of my own, so rough against her silky skin that the pad of my thumb snags over a scabbing cut.

With my right hand, I peel open the wipes beside my thigh, tug one free and swipe it across her skin. It comes away dark grey when I’m finished, so I drop it beside the packet and use a second one to wipe again. Her fingers hang loosely, hand over the back of my own, curling naturally up into the centre of my palm as I insert the butterfly needle beneath her ashen skin. Her veins are practically shrivelled dry, but I manage to get it in and tape it in place on the second try.

I connect the first bag of saline, fiddling with the little plastic roller clamp to control the speed. And then I hold it high, watching her as the almost silent drips drop into the chamber, rolling down the tubing.

And that is how I sit for the next three days.

Counting the inhales of a corpse.

Chapter4

Charlie

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