Page 45 of Dark Side of the Cloth (The Righteous 1)
“Wait, Mabel’s alive?”
“No thanks to you, but yes, she pulled through the surgery and seems to be heading in the right direction.” What Jeremy did next shocked him more than anyone had in a long time.
“Thank you, God!” Jeremy’s eyes found his, and tears spilled down his dirty cheeks. “Kill me, please just end this. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t be this person. Mabel was the only person that treated me with any kindness, and I hurt her, I…” Jeremy looked away from him. He no longer was tense beneath his knee, and he seemed to have resided himself to his fate.
“My only friend and I tried to kill her when she tried to give me food instead of her money.” Jeremy slowly looked back up at him, and the pain he saw was too familiar.
Only a soul that has seen horrific abuse for far too long had a look like that—a bottomless pit of true despair, so death becomes the best option.
At one point, before Dean escaped the prison that was his father’s compound, he felt like that, and he knew the look on the young man’s face all too well because it had been on his own. Now, he understood what Mabel saw in Jeremy. He wasn’t a malicious person by nature—he was a product of his circumstance. The question was, what would Jeremy do if he was given a better choice?
Taking a chance, Dean slowly rose and stared down at Jeremy. Predictably, Jeremy grabbed the gun, and his hand violently shook as he pointed it up at Dean.
“You need to kill me! You can’t leave me to live like this anymore. I’m worse off than the rats that come in at night to steal my food. Please.” Jeremy’s bottom lip quivered as much as the gun.
“With your hand shaking like that, you may kill me before I can kill you.” The young man looked at the weapon in his hand and then tossed it down on the floor.
“I have no more bullets. I couldn’t kill you if I wanted to.”
“Do you want to? If you had one bullet in there, what would you do with it?”
Eyes, as lost as a ship stranded at sea, looked up to him. “I’d put it in my mouth.”
“Stand up,” Dean ordered.
“Why?”
“Stand up and find out.” Jeremy stumbled to his feet. He was tall, the same height as Dean, but wiry and thin. His scraggly dirt brown hair needed a cut, and the kid needed to be taken through a car wash to get all the dirt off of him, but he might clean up okay. Dean walked over and grabbed the discarded gun. He double-checked, but the kid had told the truth. It was empty, so he tucked it away and walked for the door.
“Follow me.”
It took a minute, but eventually, Jeremy came out of the room and joined Dean in the hall. He marched to the door that led to the roof and jogged up the steps to the top. It didn’t take much to jimmy the old door open. Stone crunched underfoot as he walked toward the edge.
“What are we doing up here?
“Come take a look.”
The wind picked up, a swirl of snow spun around the roof. Jeremy wrapped his meager hoodie tighter to his body and shivered as he tentatively stepped closer.
“Mister, I don’t know what you want from me.” That leery look was back in Jeremy’s eyes. Unfortunately, things were going to get a whole lot worse for him before they got better.
“Take a look down there and tell me what you see.”
Tentatively, Jeremy stepped forward, and Dean nodded. Jeremy turned away and peeked toward the ledge. Quickly, Dean reached behind his back and pulled the end of the repelling rope attached to his vest forward. Swiftly, he tied a bowline knot and waited.
As soon as Jeremy was close enough to the edge, Dean made his move. Grabbing a fist full of the back of the kid’s sweater, Dean pushed him down, so he was dangling over the edge from the waist up. Desperately, Jeremy tried to scramble back, but Dean had him pinned with his knee and forced him to stare into the depths of the street below.
“What the fuck?” Jeremy swore, fighting his hold hard.
Dean pushed harder on his back. “Look. Tell me what you see,” and Jeremy froze.
Dean used that moment to slip the knotted rope around Jeremy’s legs, braced his feet, and gave Jeremy a shove over the ledge. Fully hanging over the side of the building by his feet like a helpless piñata, Jeremy screamed.
“Oh my god! Pull me up, man. This isn’t funny.” Dean dropped him a couple of inches, and Jeremy screamed louder. “Please! I’m scared of heights. Pull me up. Oh my god.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted? You just begged me to kill you,” Dean called out.
“Not like this!” Dean dropped him a couple more inches, and Jeremy swore and yelped again. “Please, man, I’ll do anything you want, just pull me up.”
