Page 83 of The Way We Rot
The knife flew up between us, and I missed. Blade slid through skin, right at his shoulder, and I knew it was a miss, no bone, no artery, no organs, just a burning slice that would heal.
Still, he shouted out in pain, and blood poured from the wound when I yanked the knife back out. It didn’t spurt.
We froze, neither of us with enough energy to process. A mess of limbs on the dirty floor, scattered with wounds, pouring blood and dried blood, bruises, scars, dirt and sweat.
I lifted the knife again, my entire body wavering, my mind swaying as I tried to focus on the task before me. Hands on my throat. Torture across my body.
“Little killer,” Adrian muttered. It would be easy for him to push back, to overwhelm me. Stronger, more energy, a calmer mind, I’m sure.
“CO Darling,” I said back, blade raised above my head. But I wobbled, the pain throbbing across myface, over my entire body, threatening to send me to oblivion.
“Are you going to do it?” His eyes were hard, burrowing into my very soul.
I exhaled, elbows dropping.
Then I tried. I drove the blade down, aiming for his heart, screaming as I pushed every last bit of energy I had into it.
He punched me a split second before the blade landed, sending my body flying sideways and my mind whirling. I screamed at him and scrambled, the knife having flown from my grasp.
But before I had the chance to move, to crawl away or get any kind of upper hand again, he was there, naked and pissed, grabbing my hair and yanking me halfway up. Then his fist was flying into my face once more, his features contorted with such an intense rage I— well, I believed it.
My heart stuttered, and I opened my mouth to say something; but nothing came out. But then his fist connected, and he dropped my hair. My head slammed onto the hard floorand—
I woke up to him fucking me, his cock driving into my ass, over and over. He swore, cursed my body, my mind, my actions, but kept going. He was a demon about it, rough, angry, clawing at my skin with his hands, slamming his cock as deep into my unwilling body as it would go.
My hands tied behind my back, my ass in the air, my face digging into carpet. We’d moved, no longer on the balcony, but it was too dark to tell where. I tried to grunt, to make it clear I’d woken up, and he had a witness to this darkness, but I couldn’t. I was fuzzy, blinded and confused. Pain welcomed my sanity, took it in its embrace and twisted it.
“You bitch,” he huffed at me, grabbing at my body, his fingernails digging into my injured stomach, burrowing under my skin while I tried to whine, to cry or move away.
Time had passed, because I wasn’t bleeding anymore, I think. May even have bandages on, but it was hard to tell in this mess I‘d become.
I could only take it, shoved into position, body in pain, knees scraping abrasive carpet, face burned and rough, ass ravaged and taken.
He kept pounding into me, insulting me, hurting me.
I just let him fuck me and drifted back off, where I was supposed to be. Somewhere else.
“I promise I’m fine, Mom,” Adrian’s voice said from nearby the next time I woke up, maybe another room, but close. He sounded tired, like he’d repeated it multiple times. “Just needed to get away.”
“They’re saying you took that girl, that you—” a woman’s voice sounded on loudspeaker. My attention spiked. Me, she was talking about me. This was close to being over; it had to be. With whatever path Adrian chose to take with me, we were nearing its end. “Adrian, I know who she is. It doesn’t sound like much of a coincidence…”
“Mom,” he said, and I heard him pacing, fast and antsy. I was on the carpet still, but it might have beendays or weeks later for all I knew. My body throbbed with pain almost everywhere. There was a blanket over me, and I was on my side, a cushion under my head, like he couldn’t bear to look at me all cold and collapsed. I’d have to ask him. Did he care, even a little? To not leave me lying there, frozen and abused on his floor?
I stayed still, listening.
“You don’t trust me?” he asked his mother, a scowl in his tone.
“No, Adrian. I don’t. Since Jake— You know you’ve been different.” His mother sounded like a good lady. Her voice sounded tinny through the speaker, but it was filled with genuine care. For a second, guilt rippled through me. I’d taken her son away, both of them, really, and she hadn’t done a thing to deserve it.
I had that genuine care too, from both parents, from a sister too. They loved me, wanted to understand why I was the way I was. Lacey had pushed for psychiatric help, but I always fought back. Should I feel guilty? I was a depraved, fucked up mess of a person, and they still showed me nothing but love. I’d ruined so manylives, including the lady I could hear almost crying on the phone to her living son.
The prison called me uncooperative; I called them fucking idiots, and they threw me back into Cell Block A, into gen pop to rot with the masses. Lacey tried so damn hard to get me to work with them, but I never would. It was my penance, my punishment. I got to fester in this fucked up brain for what I’d done.
I almost missed it now, the predictability, the alone time of prison. How the thing I most wanted in the world was a shower, chocolate, a shot at freedom. A hug from my little sister.
For a few short minutes, I’d had that freedom. Fresh air, trees, unshackled.
Adrian had freed me from one prison and tied me to another, and I walked with him open and willing.
