Chapter 54 #2
“I didn’t realise that the time between breaking me was getting longer, and I didn’t think much of it when I winced a little when they broke the same toe again after two days of nothing.
When I got back up to screaming and crying, they started on the other toes and kept going until I couldn’t feel it anymore … then they went to the fingers.”
“No,” Julian sobs as my tears fall, dripping from my chin one at a time.
“They started it all over,” I whisper, sounding as surprised as I’d felt realising it in the moment.
How could I still be surprised?
How could I still not understand that there was no reasoning? It was just how those animals were.
I blink the bafflement away as rage takes its place.
“They started it all over again,” I say, this time firmer.
This time through clenched teeth. “And then they kept doing it again … and again … and again. Then they started b-burning me. Fucking burning me!” I shout, laughing on the edge of madness.
This one is filled with humour, even if its origins are manic, and I can tell it scares Julian as much as it scares me.
“They burnt every single inch of my body they could. They let it heal and then did it again. They kept burning me and when they were done with that, they moved on to cutting me. I think that was the worst one.”
It had to be. Those cuts were the ones that made me feel the most like a thing meant to be opened up—an experiment rather than a person.
“They went deeper each time. They … they just kept …” The words fall apart on my tongue as I stare at my skin. It’s all healed, not a scratch in sight, as if it’d never happened. But I see the scars beneath. I see the lines etched over each other, marking me—never letting me forget.
“After a while, I couldn’t cry anymore. I had no more tears; it was like they all ran out,” I whisper as exhaustion falls over my mind.
“I screamed. I just kept screaming. I didn’t need to after a while.
It all stopped hurting after a while. I think I thought if I were loud enough, maybe …
m-maybe someone would hear me. So I screamed and screamed and screamed. ”
Julian sniffles, trying to hold it in as his tears fall to join mine.
“I didn’t get why they were doing it,” I admit quietly.
“It wasn’t a game. They weren’t doing it for fun, but then why?
Why were they so determined to hurt me? Was it a mission?
It had to be, because that was the only reason that made sense.
It had to be their job to torture me, to break me completely and … eventually, that’s what they did.”
I feel something pull at my shoulders and I don’t even fight it.
I let myself fall into Julian’s arms. I let my sobs join my tears until I’m crying in his arms.
Even now, I still want to scream, if only to escape the torment in my mind, but what’s the point? I’d screamed then, and it had done nothing.
“You can stop. You don’t have to continue,” Julian says—begs as he rocks me. “You can stop, Aiden.”
“I can’t,” I cry as I cling to him so that the memories rushing in and out of focus can’t claim all of me. “If I stop now, I won’t do this again. I can’t.”
I’d tell this story once and never again. Never. Again.
I feel Julian nod against me while he tries to hold me, protect me and console me all at once, but he has no idea how.
It’s almost too much for him—all of this sprung now, but it’s too late to turn back.
So he clings to me almost as hard as I cling to him, and tries to breathe—tries to carry us through this.
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I look at a spot in the room—a corner where the bottom of the curtain meets the dresser—and focus on it. I focus only on the singular point and force my mouth to move again.
“One day, the lights turned on.” I barely utter the words before the shaking starts again, and Julian holds me tighter, but it’s worse this time.
“It was a small room. There was a table full of bloody tools and four rogues in surgical suits stained with my blood. It was worse than the dark. It was …” I shake my head, trying to bury the image. The dresser. The curtain.
“They were in the middle of cutting me when it happened, and they just stood there like they realised they were doing something horrible. Then the door opened, and a man walked in. He wasn’t in the same kit, just some jeans and a T-shirt.
He looked normal.” I scoff. “Normal. He told them to leave, and they did. No one asked a thing. They just left, and then it was just me and him. He said his name was Reon. He …”
His steps echo in my ears, and even now I can picture him perfectly. I see the way he approaches me as if he weren’t a threat, as if he was a neighbour popping in to say hi.
All too quickly, memories flood one after the other, and I remember it all.
The terror that raced down my spine when he stopped beside me at the table and just stared at me.
The low cry that I’d pitched when his gaze had settled on my healing stomach.
The way I’d flinched away from his touch when he’d raised his hand.
Only it wasn’t some new form of torture, he was unbuckling my muzzle.
“He asked if I knew why I was there,” I mumble as the words echo in my head.
I clear my throat, trying to stop myself from bleeding into the memory, but I can’t resist the current that drags me down.
“Do you know why we’re doing what we’re doing to you?”
It was weird hearing voices after so long. Voices that weren’t my own. Voice. One voice. He only had one voice.
Was this another weird dream? One of the ones with the other boy next door, only there was no boy and now there was a man.
I stare at him, wondering when he’d fade away, but he doesn’t. He stands there, watching and waiting, and then, when he gets tired of waiting, he pushes his finger into my open stomach. The screaming begins again.
“‘I asked you a question,’ he sounded so calm,” I tell Julian in a hushed whisper. “Like he did when he told me his name, like I wasn’t screaming at all. Then he asked again, ‘Do you know why you’re here?’”
“N-No,” I stutter, wheezing around his finger until he pulls it out.
Whimpering, I try to get away again, but there’s nowhere to go. The straps were still as strong as the first day.
“It’s because we need something from you.
We’re not doing it for fun, we’re doing it because we have to,” the man says while he slides his hands over the table and peers down at me.
“You see, we rogues don’t enjoy being ‘savages’ or ‘beasts’.
We don’t like acting without reasoning. It’s not something we choose.
It’s a fate we’re forced to suffer just because we’re no longer in our packs. That’s not fair, is it?”
“If you didn’t want to be like that, then why did you leave your pack or misbehave to be kicked out?”
“I didn’t see the hand coming, only his black eyes bleeding into red before his hand was across my face. You’d think he’d know that it wouldn’t hurt, that there was no point to it after what they’d done to me.”
My tongue darts out, searching for the blood that had slid down from my lips.
Closing his eyes, Reon took a deep breath before he opened them again and looked at me with his black eyes, faking calm. “Speak when spoken to.”
“You asked me a question,” I growl before he slaps me again. I barely felt it.
“It’s not fair. That’s why I started trying to bring back my sanity,” he says, continuing as if he’d never stopped at all.
“It wasn’t easy, but all you have is time when you’re lost in your own head, after some work, I found a way.
I got the voices out, the confusion faded, and finally, I found a way to think clearly all the time and not just on the lucky days. ”
“I’ve helped others, you know,” he shares while he circles me like he’s trying to figure out where to hurt me next. I whimper as I squirm away from him. “I’ve helped so many, and in doing so, I’ve made us better than we ever were. We’re free—strong—without the burden of insanity.”
“So why are you hurting me?” I spit angrily, already tired of listening to the stupid man talk without understanding any of it.
“We need you, Aiden,” he says as he stops over my head to gently trace his bloodied finger over my shaking face.
“You’re helping us. With you, we can find the next step, and help everyone like us settle into a real pack.
Not just scattered numbers running around looking for safety until we’re hunted and killed,” he says with a weird sort of excitement.
“A pack. A pack that can help each other be free.”
“That’s stupid,” I say, making him freeze. “Why would you leave a pack to go make a pack as a rogue?”
“We’re better werewolves as the rogues we become,” he replies as he leans over me, forcing me to look into his eyes as they bleed red again, only this time it’s even darker than before.
“And if we’re stronger alone, we’ll be stronger together.
” With a huff, he straightened and returned to the door. “You’re too young to understand.”
“Wait!” I shout as the door opens, but he doesn’t even look back. He just leaves, allowing the other rogues to return. “Please! No! Wait! It’s not stupid! I’m sorry!”
“The lights cut out, and they continued as if nothing ever happened,” I whisper as the memory slips away, freeing me from its clutches as the darkness returns. “He was fucking crazy and he didn’t even realise it. Sane? Noone sane does what they did to me.
“After that, I never saw Reon again. I started to think we’d never spoken and he was just another person I made up to cope.
I still kind of do. It just all went back to normal, and I preferred that.
Time passed, and one night, I heard screaming—screaming that wasn’t my own.
I knew for sure it wasn’t because it was coming from so many people.
The lights turned on, and everyone in the room with me wasn’t quiet anymore. ”