Page 69 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
Dear God, this is terrifying. This is definitely not suited for children. Teague has his face buried against my hip, and I feel for the little guy. Cali’s having a blast behind us, totally unfazed, and I’m beginning to question how unmanly it would be if I grab onto her arm for support. The last room is a sensory nightmare, with the prominent stench of rotten, spoiled food perfuming the musty air. It takes everything in me not to gag. I don’t even want to know how these peoplereplicatedthat smell.
The final victim is a man who’s getting all these dismembered body parts sewn onto his new body like some twisted Frankenstein retelling—the brain from the first man and the lower body from the second woman. In the background, discarded limbs pile high and soak in a mess of bodily juices and syrup-thick ichor. We get ushered out quickly to accommodate for the conveyer belt of incoming bodies, and I’m thankful, because the stench was overbearing.
When we stumble back into the real world, my chest swells with a much-needed breath of fresh air, and the horrified shrieks of other children detonate like a nuclear blast in that surprisingly large garage.
“Wow, that was incredible!” Cali gushes, already rummaging around for another piece of candy like she didn’t just witness someone’s intestines slopping onto the floor.
“Uh-huh” is all I have the energy to say, trying to shake those creatively morbid images from my brain—which will probably come back to haunt me when I’m sleeping tonight.
Poor Teague is quivering against me, and I don’t think he’s opened his eyes yet to notice that we’re safely outside. I rubmollifying circles on his back, trying to coax him to look up at me. “Hey, T. We’re outside. You can look now.”
He hesitates for a moment, as if he’s trying to decide whether or not the coast is clear, and then he glances around, all while keeping his unrelenting grasp on me. “That was scary,” he mumbles under his breath.
“I know. I was terrified,” I agree.
His mouth forms anOshape. “You were?”
“Oh, yeah. But you were being so brave in there that I knew I had to be brave too. I don’t think I would’ve made it without you by my side, Little Man.”
Tears dollop on Teague’s lashes, and I’m not trained enough in kid etiquette to know if they’re good or bad tears. So, I’m about to console him when he charges into me with a lineman-tackle hug, squeezing my legs with his arms. I can hear Caliawwingin the background, and love nestles deep in my heart at how close I’ve grown to Teague in the past month. All the pessimistic thoughts working a full-time shift in my brain—the ones claiming that I’m not good enough to be a role model for him, that he shouldn’t look up at me with hero worship—they’re instantly silenced by the way he smushes his cheek into my thigh.
I was scared of Teague putting me on a pedestal, but seeing him lean on me for support through such a scary event…it feels like maybe I was put on this earth for that exact reason. Put on earth to be someone’s hero. Put on earth to hold shaky hands and calm the tremors.
I want to be in his and Cali’s lives. I want to be a role model who he can look up to. I want to be a father figure to him, especially because he doesn’t have one—and neither did I.
I just…I want to do right by him. By my brother. By Cali.
Careful not to startle him, I scoop him up under his armpits and haul him onto my shoulders, keeping a secure hold on hislegs. It hurts my hip a little, but the look on his face is worth every twinge of pain. He’s giggling uncontrollably, and the three of us start walking back to the Reapers’ mansion to turn in for the night.
“Can we have a sleepover at Gage’s house?” Teague asks Cali from above me.
Cali chews off the end of a Twizzler, humming thoughtfully. “That’s up to Gage, kiddo.”
Teague thumps his little legs against my chest. “Pleeeaaaseee, Gage. Please can we sleep over at your house?” he whines, inspiring laughter to ripple up from my belly and fill the slowly growing silence as we distance ourselves from the main road.
“As long as it’s okay with your sister.”
“Cali, can?—”
“Yes, Teague. It’s okay with me,” she chuckles.
“Yay!” Teague squeals with enthusiasm, and I keep his shins clamped in a stranglehold before racing down the street as fast as my hip will allow, leaving behind the encroaching fear and misguided self-blame from my past.
23
THE NO-ENTRY ZONE
CALISTA
It’s day three, and I’ve been trapped in the bathroom for the past three hours. I don’t know if I’ll survive this time. I don’t remember what the sun feels like on my face or what it feels like to breathe fresh air. Death is a privilege ungranted, condemning me to a weeklong trial run of my own personal hell.
I canceled every dance class I had this week because I’ve barely been able to make it out the door. I haven’t made contact with the outside world at all. I’m beginning to lose my sanity, and soon, I’ll lose all concept of time. The only thing keeping my mind intact is the life-altering sex I had with Gage at the Halloween party. My soul practically ascended over the way he rubbed his ribbed cock inside me, making sure I could feel each and every one of his piercings as he fucked me hard and slow. I’d never admit it to him, but that was the best sex I ever had. And now my body craves him every second of every day, throwing a tantrum whenever I can’t mount him like a bonobo monkey.
God, and if he wasn’t already irresistible enough, the way he was with Teague on Halloween made my heart soar. He acted like he was meant to be a role model…a father figure. It was like hewas meant to be in our lives, if that even makes any sense. Am I making sense? I don’t know.
Everything hurts. This isn’t some painkiller-fix type of hurt, either. It’s the kind of hurt that has you sweating like a pig, on the verge of passing out every few minutes, praying to whatever higher power there is for relief, and making your body so feeble that you can barely unscrew the cap of a pill bottle.
I slump on the floor of my bathroom, resting my head against the cool porcelain of the toilet, waiting for the nausea to run its course. Teague’s knocked a few times to ask if he can help me with anything, but I’ve barely had the energy to answer him. My mother’s still recovering in the hospital, so in a sick turn of events, I guess Teague’s technically my caretaker now.
