Page 14 of Ricochet
Insubordinate, they said.
Reckless.
Wild.
My father thought sending me to Siberia would fix the problem. That this barren place would finally break me, leaving a clean slate for him to build on. Daddy dearest didn’t know that there was nothing left to build on. In the year since I became a part of this fuckery, I killed, maimed and attacked. After the first fifty of them, the faces became distorted and their screams haunted me.
When I closed my eyes, I could see theirs, pleading with me.
When I sat at the table, instead of my mother’s voice, I always heard the other women. They begged me, and then they were cursing me—cursing the ground I walked on, wishing the worst on me and my family. Poor things didn’t know that I didn’t have a family, not really. So when I started screaming back at them, when I started killing people who shouldn’t be killed, I was sent to the end of the world.
Where winter never ended, and the torture was served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“Dorogoy.” My father kneeled behind me, his presence almost soothing. He was the only connection to Croyford Bay. “You’re so strong, aren’t you?”
Was that awe I could hear in his voice? Was he finally proud of me?
I hated the man, but some fucked-up part of me always wanted to please him. Always wanted him to see what I could do. I wanted to make him proud as much as I wanted to defy him. I hated myself for being this way. For being this weak in the presence of a man who wanted nothing more than to break me. His touch on my neck felt both like hellfire and holy water in one.
Before I could answer him, blinding pain went through my body as he dragged his finger through the wound on my back, pushing harder, scratching at the raw skin. I felt the wound open wider with his strokes.
“Papa!” I cried out, my voice echoing in the room, but he didn’t stop.
Have you ever watched a butcher slice a piece of meat? That slicing sound at the skin removal, the smell of blood in the air. The sick satisfying look the butcher had on his face.
Well, my father was my butcher.
His breathing, my screams, the ripping and slicing, those were the only sounds you could hear. Do you know how it feels when your body is trying to heal itself, to close the wound, but something is stopping it?
“Can you feel that,moy malen’kiy drakon?”
He still thought I was his little dragon? Papa loved me, he still loved me.
“Can you feel your skin trying to close down? I can almost see it beneath my fingers.”
“Papa, please!”
“No, goddammit.” He pressed into the other wound, my whole body coiling from the pain. “I asked you a question. Can you feel it?”
More pressure, more pain, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Papa,” I yelled. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“Answer me!” he roared out, punishing me with his hands. “You better answer me, Ekaterina, or you are not coming out of here alive.”
He would kill me. I knew he would. Papa always kept his word.
But he loved me, he really did. I was his favorite, his little dragon, his heir. But I had to be stronger than this. I had to be stronger than my mind.
“Yes, I can feel it,” I finally answered. My mouth was dry. The lack of water for the last three days was insufferable. My lips were parched, breaking apart. I could taste blood from them, but I didn’t know if I was the one who broke through the soft tissue or did it happen when one of the guards hit me in the face.
“Your body will always want to heal itself, but you have to let it. Can you let it heal?” my father started again. “Can you accept who you really are?”
Could I accept myself? Could I accept the monstrosities I committed? Could I run away from the voices in my head, from all the faces haunting me in my sleep?
“You need to let it go,dorogoy. You need to fucking let it go.”
“But they are here,” I cried out. “They are everywhere, Papa. They’re calling me, haunting me, screaming my name—”
