Page 34 of Decimation

I look away quickly, back to Ezekiel’s face and I smile. Refusing to see it, refusing to acknowledge the cracks in my rose-tinted world.

I’m taken to a room to bathe. The warm water soothes my aching body, and I ignore the tinge it turns from all my blood. I ignore the pain too, ignore all the signs that what I’ve endured amounts to torture, not love.

Instead, I tell myself that this is a reward for my good behaviour. I’ve earned this.

I’ve been obedient, submissive, perfect.

The words pulse in my skull like a second heartbeat, obedient, submissive, perfect, and I cling to them because they are the only thing I have left. My reflection in the bathwater is a girl with hollow eyes and a mouth that has forgotten not only how to say no, but that the word even exists.

I tell myself I am beautiful. I am everything Ezekiel wants me to be, I am the perfect wife for him now. The thought coats my throat like honey laced with copper and I swallow it down anyway.

When I’m finished, I walk silently back to my room. My bare feet remember every cold stone, the path worn into my muscles by repetition. The servants don’t watch me anymore, they know I won’t disobey, that I’m too good for that now. Their averted eyes are a collar I wear with something dangerously close to gratitude but as I turn the corner, I hear voices. It’s Ezekiel and Isaac, and their words carry down this cold, empty hallway, sliding into my ears even though I don’t want to hear it.

“She’s doing well,” Isaac says. “Progressing as expected.”

“Yes,” Ezekiel agrees, and my heart lifts for a traitorous moment before he adds, “She’s a good whore. Far better than her dead sister ever was. Cass was a bitch. We should have gone with the younger sister from the start.”

The word ’whore’ lands inside me like a stone dropped into a hollow place, and the echo it makes is my own voice whispering ’He means it as praise, he means it as love.’

I almost believe it until the rest sinks in; Cass was a bitch.

My sister. My dead sister, and he speaks of her like a broken tool, and I am frozen against the wall with my hands pressed flat to the stone so I will not move and give myself away.

Isaac chuckles, the sound wet and pleased. “The younger ones are always easier to train. They’re more docile, more naive. Cass screamed so much we nearly lost the others before the ritual even began.”

“Not always.” Ezekiel’s voice is dismissive, nostalgia without affection. “Ines was young when we started her off, and look how she turned out.” There is a pause, heavy with something unsaid. Ines is my cousin. I never asked what happened to Ines, where she went, why they occasionally mention her. I’m too busy being perfect to dare.

“You know the Brethren will try to put a stop to this. You know they will step in if they can.” Isaac’s voice has shifted, a needle threading through caution.

“Let them.” Ezekiel says. “Let them try.” The words are so soft, almost fond, as if he were speaking of a lover’s challenge.

“They could get hurt.” Isaac adds, and I realise he’s talking about me. About the other women, the other wives I have yet to meet, and the casualness of it. They could get hurt, as if we are collateral, as if our bodies are just geography he is willing to scar.

“If they are we will deal with it. It’s not like we haven’t before.” Ezekiel says in such a matter-of-fact tone. “Is this our third or our fourth attempt now?”

“Fourth.” Isaac mutters. “And it would be far quicker if you didn’t insist on breaking them in the way you do.” Breaking. The word cracks against my ribs. Fourth. Four sets of women. Four harvests of flesh and obedience. The hallway seems to tilt, and I bite down on my tongue to keep from making a sound.

“Tsk,” Ezekiel replies, and I can hear the smirk in it, that shape of his lips when he is about to be cruel. “Like you don’t enjoy the training. And besides, it is necessary. I need my wives to not just be obedient, I need them to be whores, to be willing to fuck anyone and everyone I tell them to. They are instruments to use. Weapons I can wield. Their cunts open doors for me that steel cannot.” The word cunts lands on my skin like a brand, and I feel my own sex clench in a reflex he trained into me, and the shame of it burns so bright I almost vomit.

“Even your precious Leandra?” Isaac says.

A laugh answers him. It’s cold, devoid of any warmth, a sound that should come from a dead thing. “She has a nice cunt. That is all. Do not confuse the matter. I may enjoy fucking her but when it comes down to it, she is nothing more than any of the others. She is a warm hole I happened to break first this time.”

It feels like that knife is back inside me again, only this time it’s so much deeper, so much worse. I feel it slide up under my sternum, feel it bury itself in my heart.

Every touch he ever gave me twists in my memory, every whispered good girl curdles into poison. That carefully built charade crumbles entirely, and I cannot hold all the pieces together anymore.

He doesn’t love me, does he? He doesn’t… I’m just a tool, a means to an end.

The nights he held me down and called it dedication, the mornings he praised my tears as an offering, all of it was a lie carved into my body so deeply I mistook the wounds for devotion.

I’m nothing to him.

Nothing.

After everything he’s led me to believe. After all the times he’s looked at me, touched me, told me I was special, told me I was the one who pleased him most. I remember the way he kissed my forehead after the first time I didn’t scream, the way he said That’s my girl, and I let those words knit themselves into my identity until I couldn’t breathe without them.

He unmade me and I called it love.