Page 49 of Wicked Vile King
Others carved up and bent.
All remind me of my fucking failures and how I ended up here.
If I could manage remorse, I think I'd feel it for the girl in the corner at least, but I don't feel anything at all, except the heavy ache that pulls at my eyelids and fights to slow my heart rate.
"Go away!" I yell at them again, my demons.
I never asked to meet them.
I never wanted to know them.
But here I am, all of us packed like sardines in a can, surrounded by padded walls.
Thwack, thwack, thwackgoes the knife from somewhere closer this time.
There's a girl with half of her face missing, but somehow I know that she's staring as she stands there above me, looking down at me from her spot next to the gurney. She's wearing a white communion gown, blood painting a V down her middle.
Next to her is the oldest, the woman I thought I had forgotten, with her middle cut open, losing her babies that never got a chance to breathe. She stares at me like I can give her salvation, like I can demand fucking retribution. It makes me want to laugh. I can't even find that for myself.
Lightning scatters outside again, sending slivers of white light across the room, and the stench of them hits me all at once. They say memory is tied to your sense of smell, after all.
Puke, piss, shit, blood, rotting flesh, and gunpowder.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Bile climbs up my throat, and my stomach churns, nipping at the back of my teeth as I sputter on it and choke it down. I'm not choking to death on my own vomit today. Maybe tomorrow, but not fucking today.
Rain hammers the window, and the wind howls outside the room, but over it all, I hear thethwackof steel driving through bone and the snap of tendons chopped clean through. In an instant, I'm back there—at the before—on the stained mattress in the root cellar, watching another type of butcher.
"Stop crying!" the fucker snarls at me, repeating his words from all those years before. His dirty rubber apron is splattered with blood as he raises his knife and sends blood dripping down his hands to feed the cool, dry Earth.
"Go away!" I shout at him because he doesn't belong here, not now, not again.
He doesn't listen, returning to his work as the springs of the mattress that isn't really there poke and prod at my ass.
"Go away!" I shout again and again and again until my voice cracks, and I'm coughing as I yell at him. The bald man continues his work, cutting the body across his table. Lightning splits the dark sky, sending slivers of light into my room.
Thwack.
"You aren't real!" I roar. "You aren't fucking real! You don't belong!"
Thwack.
Yet, he remains, and I yell and yell until the cough turns into a wheeze. Then I continue yelling until I can't anymore, until I squeeze my eyes shut and will them away, balling my fingers into fists against the table. Still, though, the ghosts remain. Until I am forced to lie there, watching the first butcher I ever knew work, cutting up the bodies and stuffing them into the metal barrels.
Thwack.Blood splatters, and someone starts to cry. Tears fall to the old mattress beneath me, and I'm not on the gurney anymore. I'm on the floor, curled into a ball, my arms wrapped around my shins and holding tight.
I have to stop crying. I don't want the bad man to get me.
I watch him, and he raises the blade again. Blood drips from the metal in thick drops and splatters on the floor.
Thwack.
I bite my lip to stifle my sob.
