Page 63 of Ruin

“Come, Baby Bird, I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her calmly, her eyes wide in the red lit room I’m going to miss so much.

She licks the pink tip of her tongue over her cupid’s bow, gaze dragging between the cutters hanging loosely between my fingers and me. Her bony, naked body is hunched forward, shoulders pulled up tight to her ears, the shackle restricting her neck movements, but I don’t want to take it off.

I don’t know why.

But she hasn’t asked. Whether we communicate with words or gestures, she has never once requested its removal.

I’m not sure I would do it anyway.

For one brief second, I have a vision of a lanky, cramped up, white-haired boy with green eyes. Blood running down his face, burn marks smoking on his chest, piss running down his thighs. His nailless fingers torn and shredded, gripping onto the bars of his too small cage. But there’s a smile on his lips, all the same, as another young guy squats down before him, just a couple years older, but it feels like much more, the way he can command a room. He’s on the other side of the bars and he grabs the white-haired boy’s hand, holding it tightly in his like he never wants to let go.

Then I blink.

And the young men disappear.

The cage remains.

But it’s Ava I’m staring down at.

Ava’s dainty, skeletal hands wrap cautiously around the condensation slicked bars of her cage, and she peers at me with uncertainty. Wanting me to reassure her, to explain, but she knows I’m not a man of many words.

I think about her voice. How it sounded, when she gave me her name all those weeks ago. Cracked, dry, nervous, unused. And I wonder, not for the first time, though I haven’t really put much deep thought into it for more than a few seconds. But I wonder if her voice does work, she just can’t get it to come out because she’s expecting sound from her to come hand in hand with something else.

Probably pain.

Maybe something worse.

I think she likes a little pain though.

Or maybe that’s only with me.

It makes my chest warm at the thought, having something with her that no one else ever has.

I ended things with Kazimir for you.

I think it as though she’d understand, even if I said the words aloud, she would have no idea what that meant. Knowing not who he is. What he means to me. But I’ve seen her jealousy, the pain in her gaze when I come back with claw marks, hickeys. Without her ice cream.

I want to shove a hand through my hair, my head cocked, eyes on my booted feet, I want to scream, force her out. If I ordered her out, she would come, but I don’t think I want to own her through fear.

I feel her cunt pulsing and squeezing around my tongue when I ate her out and she came so fucking beautifully. I did that. And I’m almost certain, wherever she came from, that won’t have happened before.

She preens under my praise, she shudders with a compliment, a whispered caress in the shell of her ear.

All of it strikes me in the centre of the chest like it’s going to be the death of me, and I’m not really sure that I mind.

“Be a good girl for me, little Ava,” I coo, although it’s a deep, raspy injection of violence into the words, never taking her gaze from me, she shivers and my lips twitch, readying to smile.

Fuck, she’s pretty.

“Come,” I rasp, low, quiet, and I think she’s moving before my instruction even fully registers. “So good, my little Ava,” her entire body quivers and I wonder if I could make her come from my roughly whispered praise all on its own.

I am towering over her as she hauls herself forward, legs limp, but she feels pain in them, they twitch on occasion, so hope is not lost. It will be better, easier to deal with when we get to the other house.

She slithers her way out of the metal crate, dragging her body along the black painted concrete with her misshapen hands. I thought they were just skin wrapped bones, from malnourishment, but looking at them more lately, they’re crooked and bent and the little finger on her right hand doesn’t bend at all.

She looks up at me as she reaches my feet. One hand finding my left ankle, closing over the leather of my boot. Her other fingers climbing up the leather of my trousers on my right, bunching a small gathering of material into her fist, holding onto me to keep herself up.

Those big blue-brown eyes are wide, pupils large, the room is always dark, only a singular red bulb lighting the space, but she always looksright.Her matted hair needs detangling and brushing and probably cutting and I planned on making my younger brother Cam come down here and do it. He would ask no questions, and he would keep her a secret. But she’s nude, and no matter how ridiculous, I don’t really want to dress her. Which is exactly what I’ll have to do in not too many minutes from now, but before that, I need to cut the length of this chain down.

---