I open my mouth to answer, but feral sounds fall out, chunks of worry wrapped in sweat and bile. I want to shriek that I’m cold even though it’s warm, and I don’t know where I am, I’ve been breathing through my nose so hard that it’s all sore inside, and won’t he please come and get me? This isn’t funny. My head aches. I hurt.
I’ve spent the past minutes…hours…time jumps just listening to the waves below me. In my small, shut-down mind, the crescent curves of foam have become tangible though I can only hear them, and I’ve focused on them only, stripping away horrible thoughts of what the hell’s happened to us all.
Next door, there are bad noises. My hours are numbered here; it’s like I slay them myself with ever new sob of worry.
“Leo!” So animal and strained.
Abel tuts to himself as he closes the door, drowning out the bangs and screams of Aeron, who is the dangerous one. Or was. It’s every sociopath for himself right now…the way I suppose it always is, only worse.
“He hasn’t taken any of this very well.” Abel sets a few things down, and I strain to see them; a candle. A bottle of something. A bundle that looks like a blanket. Nothing, thank Christ, that looks like a knife. “You put a bullet in my boy.”
I snort, and it echoes uncomfortably around the panties still stuffed into the top of my throat.
With a sigh, he slaps a big hand down and fishes the panties out. Air rushes in like warm needles, making me cough and baulk all over again.
“Answer the question. It was a question, Cock Sleeve. Did. You.” He sinks down on his knees until he’s eye-level with me. “Put. A. Bullet. In. My. Boy?”
It’s like oxygen half-chews my words. “Y—yes.”
“Why’d you go and do a thing like that?”
How long do you have, strange creature? “He hurt a lot of people. He hurt me.”
“Everybody hurts,” he sings to himself, almost cheerfully.
“You hurt a lot of people.”
“That ain’t the half of it.” He peers over me and tips his jaw, sending sandy hair across his forehead. “You going to put a bullet in me now, too?”
I stare back at him with everything I have—more for me than him. Somehow, I have to harden. Not a dog-walker, or a colleague, or a heart and a brain; just a machine with a couple screws loose. We all know what happens when machines go wrong. “You put your voice on. Hide your accent.”
His upper lip twitches; he wants to snarl or chuckle. Can’t decide. “We can’t all be English crumpets now, can we?”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m going to make you feel like I’m listening, and then I’m going to take it all away.”
With that, he shoves the soggy balled-up panties against my lips again, and when I don’t respond, he rams his fist into my belly so fast that I don’t feel my throat being stuffed. The room burns white until an orange haze builds around it, throbbing black and bronze until the pain ebbs and I can focus again. An acidic spasm curls about my abdomen, swinging up and down my ribcage like a pack of vicious apes. After a moment, I realize the weight against my stomach is my own legs, pulled in on reflex, and the orange bleeds from a candle lit down on the floor beside sitting, sighing Abel. And the sounds, the muffled wails that seem so distant and desperate…those come from me.
Abel side-eyes me in the candlelight and takes a long swig of water from his bottle. My bladder is full to bursting, and I’ve been holding on so long that just the thought of liquid provokes a dull sting between my legs. Flecks of grey pepper his sandy blond hair, the shade so similar to Aeron’s but dulled with age.
“I didn’t keep the others alive. Not like this.” He’s almost talking to himself; a conversation with an old friend. “Don’t go thinking that makes you special.”
I absolutely do not feel special.
“It’s absurd, this little setup, huh?”
I make a soft sound of agreement, mainly because I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t.
“I mean, here you are, the little huntress…fucked now, aren’t ya? No way out of this.” He gestures around the small room with his water bottle. “However will our noble heroine escape?”