Page 34 of Ramshackle
Fuck. He used his gift.
Fear crawls up my spine and down my limbs like paralyzing webs.
“Youbitch!” Gordon snarls. A foot kicks me in the face and knocks me to the ground. I try to lift the knife, to swing at him again more in defense than anything else, and he grabs my wrist and yanks the blade from my hands. His leg swings and hits me in the gut without holding back. I gasp and choke, but he keeps kicking me repeatedly while cursing and calling me slurs. His attacks don’t discriminate as he pummels me from my torso up to my head.
I raise my arms around my head to protect it, and he stomps those as well until I hear a grotesquecrack.
My arms drop, and my body surrenders.
I wake to pain.
Pain that’s so sharp and cutting that a scream is ripped from my lips before my brain clicks online that I’m awake again.
It lances across my back and burns in the wake of whatever just happened. Before I can register that the pain is from something striking my back, I feel another one slicing into it from another angle. But it crosses over the first, and the gargled shriek that leaves my body isn’t human.
Whatever is doing this stops after those two, and I force my eyes open to take stock of what hell I’m waking up to.
Gordon stands in front of me and watches me critically as I fully come to. I’m a bit higher than him for some reason, but a quick turn of my head shows that I’m strapped to some sort of massive X. There’s no headrest or anything for my head to do other than hang down and look at Gordon.
“I’m so very disappointed, pet. You were doing so well, and now this.” He shakes his head.
Another strike lashes across my back, and I can only imagine it as a whip of some kind. I cry out again on reflex. There’s nothing I can do to hold it in when the pain is this bad. The rest of me already feels like something’s not right, and my wrist hanging from one of the restraints is completely numb.
He steps closer to me and strokes the side of my face. “I know what this is, though. You were so close to being completely mine. I’m sure this is your stubborn self trying for a last-ditch effort to fight me.” Gordon shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “It’s a wasted effort. Youaremy pet now. Accept that, and we canfinally move forward. And then you’ll know peace and happiness again.”
A part of me reacts to the promise of peace. Of that numbness I’d felt before in not wasting energy on feelings and just doing what I was told.
But the rest of me, therealme, bucks and fights against every word he speaks.
I collect the blood in my mouth and hock it in his face.
His fist slams into my jaw, and I’m lights out.
Something warm presses into my temple, and I’m drawn back to looking at Gordon’s stupid mug. A man steps back from me and moves to the corner, his head bowed and hands folded in front of him.
“Heal her back so it scars. I want another reminder to my pet of what happens when I’m disobeyed or unhappy.”
The man scurries to do as he says, and I can feel the healing warmth on my back. But it’s not enough. Just when my back is starting to feel better, he pulls away, and I can still feel the ache there from a wound that’s not fully healed.
“Good. Now, lash her again. I want five more before I’ll be satisfied,” he orders to someone else behind me.
I grit my teeth before the first one lands, screaming but trying to keep it to myself even as the tears pouring down my face show Gordon how much pain I’m in.
He begins to talk again. I really wish he wouldn’t. Why can’t he just let me be punished in silence? But he never does. He always has to use his words to drive home his punishment in ways that no healer could ever fix.
“Oh, I should probably tell you while I have your attention. That little girl you saved? Or, thought you saved, I should say.”
Another lash with the whip.
“Did you really think that girl sought you out when everyone was afraid of you? That she stood up and decided to be your friend one morning?”
My teeth grind together, but I don’t say anything. He chuckles and continues, “Well, it was her assignment to talk to you. Tobefriendyou. She was absolutely terrified of you when I asked her to do it, but she did it. I needed…”
Another lash.
“…an insurance policy, you see. For you to care about someone enough that I could threaten them when you refused me. I knew you might be difficult when we switched to training your gift with people, so I had to put her in place before then.”
Something in me snaps. Breaks. My head drops. I can’t even manage the effort to keep it up to glare at him, but he lifts my face so he doesn’t miss out on whatever expression I’m wearing now. Defeat? Anguish?
