Page 99 of Breaking Sanity
“And you never loved Alley?”
“Not in the way she deserved. None of us gave that to her nor did we want to,” he says, swirling the liquor in his glass before downingit. With that he gets up to leave, patting my shoulder on the way out. I remain seated and watch the TV mindlessly spinning my beer.
They haven’t seen her fight or what she is capable of. They haven’t seen her get mentally tortured and drowned consistently, but I have. She must make it through this in one piece. Because I can’t watch another woman I loved come out of that place in pieces, figuratively and literally.
After that get together, I stayed away from everyone until it was time to come back. When I did, Alley was in solitary for beating up Melanie, again. Shadow and I were on guard duty for three days straight and neither of us said a word. At least not to each other. Alley did babble to us while by the open slot window. We didn’t respond because of the outside cameras, but she didn’t care. It seems easier for her to fully express herself when no one can talk back.
She spoke about her mom, Marney, her “mystery men”, and the voices. It was when she got into her past with her father and exes that I couldn’t take it and started to talk to her. I kept my voice low but some of the cameras might have picked it up. Honestly, I didn’t give a shit. Death would be worth it just to make her smile.
She sounded like she started to cry when I finally spoke. It was a victory and a loss all in one. I have no intention of making her cry but if it is happy tears from her just hearing my voice, fuck it I’ll take the W. Shadow just stood there clenching his fist and staring straight ahead. Mother fucker wouldn’t even acknowledge our conversation, despite both of us taking jabs at him. Props to him but at the same time he can go fuck himself. He knows as well as I do that pure isolation is the worst you can do to a person, especially to someone like Alley. She truly cares about people and not being able to see what is going on with the girls she has bonded with is going to drive her mad.
Do I think she can survive? Yes, she can survive in isolation, I mean she cut herself off from the world after everything had happened. Again, no one can blame her for that, and it took Marney basically dragging her out of her apartment to get her to go out. Then signing her up on dating apps and such, she was forced to socialize. It worked for the most part and got her to go to that club.
“Morning,” Alley yawns, stretching. “Let me guess, shower then breakfast?”
“Breakfast is over,” Shadow snips. “Just shower and then go to the day room.”
“Aye Captain.” She mockingly salutes him and heads into the bathroom. Slamming the door shut, letting him know that he pissed her off. They both have short fuses, especially in the morning. Even though I do feel bad for her and I am upset with him, their spats provide a lot of entertainment.
“Fuck,” he exhales removing his mask. He slides the strap down his arm and scrubs his face.
Shadow looks over exhausted, with the deep circles under his eyes and the usual stubble is starting to take on a patchy beard look. His face looks washed out, making his once olive tan skin look ashy grey, almost ghostly. I think the first time I saw him like this was when he watched me 24/7 after Emily died. Shadow didn’t leave my side for weeks.
The second was when we first got here. Shadow kept a picture on his back up phone that he had taken of Alley on her knees with her head up. One of the only ones with her not wearing the blindfold, so you can see her beautiful brown eyes peering up through watery lashes. She had mascara and eyeliner running down her plump cheeks after having Shadow’s cock down her throat. She may not have a gag reflex but having something that thick halfway down your throat would make anyone tear up. Her dark lipstick was smeared and saliva strung down the corner of her lip. Theonly part of him you see is his thumb pressing down on her lower lip exposing her teeth. Seriously, the hottest picture I have ever seen.
He stared at that picture for the first two months, instead of sleeping. He worried about her constantly and what she was doing. I think it was more like who she could possibly be doing. He went over the different scenarios and then Killer had to convince him not to kidnap her and marry her in secret. Undoubtedly, he probably would have done just that and would have taken it a step further by locking her away until he came back.
By the third month of us being here, a contract was a week away from expiring. That is when we saw first-hand what they did. Being part of The Underground, you see a lot of fucked up shit, but not like this.
The girl was one of Carson’s claims, so you can imagine how fucked that was. He strung her up in the mess hall a week prior to her contract being up. Each day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, he would beat her with whatever weapon he got his hands on.
The first day, for breakfast, he repeatedly beat the girl’s shoulder with a rubber mallet. First, starting off softthen quickly turned brutal until her shoulder eventually dislocated. The skin was bruised, and the girl was whimpering in pain. He sat and waited until the girls were close to finish eating when he took a knife and skinned the bruised flesh from her body. Her screams made him smile and to keep that going he yanked her shoulder blade back into place.
Before lunch, he cauterized the skin around the wound so when you walked into the mess hall you couldn’t help but gag on the smell of burnt flesh. Luckily, he let the girls eat in peace until again they were close to being finished. That is when he took a meat tenderizer to the exposed muscle. Then at dinner he raped the girl repeatedly. It got more brutal with each day, and the girls were subjected to watch, because Baron wouldn’t let them starve. Finally, when she was on the brink of death, he set her on fire, subjecting all of us to listen to her scream.
After witnessing that, I understood why he doesn’t get a lot of claims. It was after that week Shadow deleted that picture of her and shut himself off. Not going to lie, I sent the picture to myself before he deleted it. I needed a reminder of the good that was out there. I did have to block out the thought of another man seeing her like that or on our first leave I would’ve kidnapped her myself.
Now, he can’t push her out even if he wanted to. I know that is why he didn’t want to be around her after what happened in Baron’s bedroom. Shadow thought if he only saw her here and there, he could pretend that he was hallucinating and that she wasn’t here.
Instead of that dumbass plan, Baron has him watching her almost 24/7. He has no choice but to face the consequences of our decision. Unlike Vaughn, Baron isn’t a total dictator and does give him a break so he can sleep, but the stubborn fucker doesn’t do that. When he is supposed to be resting, he just works out at the gym here.
I think it’s him punishing himself for what is happening to her. Shadow did try to make it up to her several times, but she didn’t take that very well. Her shutting him out cuts him so deep that I am not sure even Shadow himself knows how to process those emotions. Shadow never gets close to anyone besides us. He doesn’t believe in the existence of romantic love.
In our society he is the one who handles all the dirty work. He was trained to torture people past the point of insanity to get what was needed. Unfortunately, feelings only get in the way and with The Underground you can’t have those.
Not to mention, what he witnessed with his mom when we were kids. Before he was five, he saw what his dad subjected his mom to. Although, his dad claimed up and down he loved his wife. He watched his mom try to push through it but ultimately that ended about a year after we were taken for training. I don’t remember a lot about his mom, but I do remember she was a fighter and loved him dearly.
I think because of that, he has never had a real relationship with a woman. Shadow kept it that way for a long time. So, when Alley almost confessed that she loved him in that bathroom, it jolted him. Despite his denial, Shadow has been in love with Alley since the first day he started stalking her, I think. It just snowballed downhill the more he watched her.
It piqued my interest when I first heard about her from him. He had only been tailing her for a month and wouldn’t shut up about how she jumped out of a moving fucking vehicle to get away from a guy she had been seeing. Shadow told us everything in vivid detail about that night. Then when I saw her at the cafe and Shadow said off limits, I was even more curious. Naturally, when he talked to me about sharing her, I jumped at the fucking chance to do so.
He and I have shared our conquests in the past and never thought anymore of it. I thought it was going to be the same when he invited me that night to that house. I was completely wrong. The way he held her after he made his entrance was so tender and intimate. Which is something he has never done before, and that’s when I knew he was fucked, but then again so was I.
“You need to sleep,” I say, removing my mask.
“I would if she wasn’t so hell bent on getting her self fucking killed.” He covers his mouth to yawn while glaring at the door.
“She has a guardian angel for a reason.”
