33. Jael
LET THE WORLD BURN - Chris Grey
M y teeth sink deep into Dr. Wolford’s flesh, and for a moment, the coppery tang of blood pours into my mouth like a thick syrup. But I don’t let go, I bite down harder—to his agonized screams.
I can feel the throb of Dr. Wolford’s pulse. The chewy, rubbery texture of flesh between my teeth as I rip it away and then spit it out. His hands fly to his throat to stop me but the damage has already been done.
I’ve torn a piece of his jugular out and he’s losing blood fast. He can do nothing but stay where he is and desperately clutch at the open wound, his eyes larger than I’ve ever seen them behind his wire-framed glasses.
“You… you…” he chokes out, but he can’t finish his sentence.
I expect punishment. For him to hit me in the face or much worse.
If he weren’t bleeding out before me, something tells me that’s what would happen. I would be tortured until I really did lose my mind.
It still might happen if he survives. Once Big Bird and the others find out what happened?—
The door bangs open so suddenly, the walls shake. Whoever’s forced it open has practically ripped it off its hinges.
My head snaps to the side as I stare at the hulking figure in the doorway. He fills the space from one side of the doorframe to the other, so tall he skims the top too.
He’s built like a monster out of a nightmare, body solid and broad, carved by bulging muscles. His face isn’t the face of a man’s—it’s that of a minotaur, his curled black horns jutting out like a bull.
I blink and vaguely wonder if I really am in the middle of a nightmare. If I really am dreaming right now.
This can’t be…
Bront? spends a second studying the scene before him—my thin blue hospital gown bunched at my waist, my legs gaped open, Dr. Wolford in the space between with his pants undone, now clutching at his gushing neck—and then he releases a howl unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
It’s a primitive, thundering sound from deep inside his broad chest. The sound’s pure ferocity, shaking me to my core.
He charges forward, once again resembling a bull as he launches himself at Dr. Wolford. He collides with the bleeding doctor, the two soaring together across the room.
They land in a tumble on the ground as Bront? quickly comes out on top and pins him down.
Still strapped to the bed, I crane my neck, tilting my head forward for a look at what’s happening.
Bront?’s fist comes down, pounding into his father’s face until he digs his fingers into the open gash on Wolford’s neck, stretching it wider, tearing at the skin and the vessels and tissue he finds on the inside, coating his fingers in blood.
The room fills with a juxtaposition of Bront?’s beastly grunts and his father’s feeble cries. The sound is almost musical, almost beautiful in its brutality.
Bront?’s literally ripped his father’s throat open with his bare hands.
But even that’s not enough—he reaches for the ECT machine on the cart and smashes it into his skull, immediately creating a massive dent in the bone. He brings it down again and again, bashing his skull in until there’s hardly anything left.
It’s completely cracked open and the inside is in full view.
His father’s body twitches even seconds after he’s otherwise stopped responding.
Bront? rises to his feet and stands over him as if processing what he’s done. His breaths are deep and labored, his back to the bed. Raw fury emanates from him, a palpable feeling that reaches me all the way across the room.
It’s as if he’s so lost to his baser, animalistic instincts that he’s struggling to contain himself.
Finally, he turns to me, seemingly remembering he’s not alone in the room. The mask disguises any expression he could be wearing on his scarred face, but his eyes tell me enough. The fire burning in them extinguishes for the twisted affection he has for me.
He crosses the room in two quick strides and goes straight into fixing my gown and undoing my binds.
Relief sinks into me. I release a whimper from my throat as his massive, gentle hands strip away the leather cuffs and my aching wrists are finally freed. He moves onto the cuffs around my ankles until I’m fully mobile.
After weeks of laying stationary in bed, my body feels unlike my own. He has to help me sit up, an immediate soreness present. He lifts me off the bed into his arms, a surge of warmth passing through me. His energy mixing with mine.
I close my eyes and savor the moment.
For the first time in recent memory, I feel safe. I feel real.
Sane.
He was never a figment of my imagination. He wasn’t an inanimate shadow or part of a dream.
He’s always been my protector lurking in the dark. My savior who showed up when I was alone and needed him most.
Bront? sees me when no one else does; he cares when the rest of the world has thrown me away.
We share no words as he sets me down on my feet and cups my hand in his. It’s as if we’re mind readers as we turn toward the door and set off on our new mission.
Making every person who’s caused us harm pay.
I change quickly into the single set of clothes I have on hand. Some jeans and a flannel shirt tucked away in a dresser drawer, the only other piece of furniture in the room.
The hospital is in turmoil now—patients and nurses scattering, doors flying open, people scrambling to flee. But we don’t stop. We don’t slow down.
We emerge in the corridor disheveled and covered in blood as we indulge in a little much-needed chaos.
Bront? grabs a crutch we come across and uses it like a baseball bat, striking at the orderlies who had once drugged me.
I rush toward a nurse on the phone calling 911 and wrench it out of her hand. I wrap the cord around her throat and tug as she shrieks and squirms, choking more the harder I pull.
More nurses race toward the door before Bront? hurls a chair across the lobby and knocks a few of them down. Some of the patients seem to relish the chaotic environment and begin destroying the hospital with us.
Windows are smashed. Furniture is overturned and torn apart. Things like computers and purses are stolen as other patients laugh and dash for freedom still in their hospital gowns.
“You’ll come to regret this!” Nurse Hinkley hisses as she emerges from the fray. Her normally feathered hair is more ruffled than usual, a scratch mark on her cheek from where a patient apparently accosted her. Eyes narrowed in loathing, she starts toward me as if she expects to control me like she’s done so many times.
But I’ve had enough of her. I’ve been manipulated and gaslit and made to feel crazy enough to last me a lifetime.
No more drugging me. No more playing mind games.
I snatch a pen from the nurse’s station and cut off Nurse Big Bird before she can ever reach me—I leap at her and jam the ball point pen in her eye. Her scream is shrill and instant as she covers her face and stumbles back in horror.
I watch her recoil with a deep sense of satisfaction thrumming through me. “I don’t think I’ll ever regret doing that. You should’ve been nicer to me, Big Bird.”
Bront? finds me in the disorder and pulls me toward his side. He’s slicked in even more blood, telling me he’s upped his kill count. It’s almost like a competition between us as he peers down at me through the slits in his mask and asks, “Burn it down?”
A dark smile curves my lips. On the inside, I feel wild and untamed. More alive than I’ve ever been.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
The lighter fluid spills all over the floor as I pour it wherever I can. The scent burns my nose, acrid and chemical, but it’s nothing compared to the stench of this place. The walls reek of bleach and antiseptic and the decades-long suffering that’s been endured by so many. I’ve dreamed of setting fire to the hospital a thousand times in the dark, often in the dazed state I’d be put into after the sedatives they fed me.
Now the dream is reality.
Bront? moves beside me, steady and silent, as he douses the hallways on the ground floor. His breathing is deep and even, the way it always is before destruction. The minotaur, the monster, the man I trust more than I trust myself. His knuckles are bloodied from ripping apart this place, from wrenching the door to my room off, from tearing his father to shreds until he ceased to exist.
When we finish, we meet in the lobby. Bront? pulls a matchbox from his pocket, flicks it open, and hands me the match to do the honors.
My hand trembles, but not from fear. Anticipation pulses through me as I strike the match and prepare to watch it all burn.
The flame licks to life in an instant, hungry and bright. I drop it at our feet, and the fire races outward, climbing the walls, slithering up the stairwell, spreading at once. It catches fast, faster than I expected, and soon the air is thick with heat and the first tendrils of smoke. The fire roars to life, snapping and crackling like it’s alive. I feel it in my bones—the same wild, consuming heat.
The same sense of destruction burning inside me.
We don’t run. Not at first. We watch for a moment as the flames take hold, as the building that held me prisoner begins to die. Then, with a last glance at the flames licking up the walls, Bront? takes my hand, and we flee into the night.
We make it a few buildings down before climbing onto a rooftop, our breath fogging in the cold air, our bodies still buzzing with adrenaline. From here, we can see everything—the fire tearing through the hospital, windows exploding, the roof beginning to buckle. The night is filled with sirens now, distant wails growing closer. But they’re too late. The damage is done.
It won’t be long before the entire building collapses in on itself.
I sit on the ledge, my legs dangling over the side, the heat of the fire warming my skin from across the street. Bront? is on my left, my protector even now, dutifully by my side. I lean my head against his shoulder, watching as the flames twist and coil, devouring the past.
A strange peace settles over me.
“It reminds me of the first time,” I say softly.
Bront? doesn’t move, but I know he’s listening. He always listens, silence his language.
“The first time I set a fire,” I clarify. My voice is steady, but my fingers dig into my thighs. “I was just a kid. We were living with my grandma then. My sister and me. After she—” I stop to swallow. “After she killed our mother. She never said she did… but we knew. I knew because I knew how they were hurting her… and me.”
Bront? turns his head slightly toward me, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I was so angry with her,” I say. “It fucked up my whole perception. I blamed her somehow. For the way my mother favored her, even if it was only ’cuz she saw her talent as a meal ticket. But it was easier to blame my sister than face the fact my mother never really cared about me. She let that man—the man who was my sister’s piano instructor—do things. She never stopped him.
“But she was my mother and… and I loved her. I always wanted her approval. Some of her attention. So when my sister took the possibility away, something inside me snapped,” I sigh, forcing the words out for the first real time. “I couldn’t cope so I tried to burn the apartment down with my sister inside.”
Bront? doesn’t react. He gives no judgment or any kind of repulsion like most people would.
“I waited until Grandma Opal was out running errands and we were home alone. I remember being so transfixed by the flame on the match. For the first time in my life, I felt powerful. I was in control.”
The fire crackles below, smoke hazing in the brisk night air. I take a second or two to breathe it in, choosing my next words.
“I had problems. Lots of them. I was sent to a place for troubled children and my sister was put into foster care. Our grandmother couldn’t handle us. We were never able to fix any of it. My sister promised she would write me… but she never did. I hung onto the hope that maybe… maybe someday she wouldn’t hate me anymore. It’s why I’ve searched for her the way I have. I love her. I really do, and I wish she knew that…”
I sniffle and fall silent, admiring the flames and their glowing beauty. It feels cathartic to get things off my chest, even if it won’t fix anything. My sister’s still gone and we’re as far apart as ever.
Bront? slides his large hand over mine, giving it a squeeze.
A simple gesture most would think nothing of, but it means everything to me.
Our fingers intertwine as he anchors me to the present and we sit with a front row view of the raging fire.
The flames curl high into the night, licking at the plum sky. Glass shatters as the windows burst from the heat, sending jagged shards raining down onto the pavement. The air is thick with plumes of smoke. It should choke my lungs. It should sting my eyes.
But I just breathe it in, letting it cleanse me.
“I used to dream about this,” I murmur, my voice quiet, almost lost in the distant wail of sirens.
Bront? turns his head slightly to nuzzle the top of mine. “Burning it down?”
“Yes. All those days locked inside my room.” My fingers tighten around his. “And not being alone when I did.”
A long silence stretches between us, filled with nothing but the distant roar of the fire and the slow, rhythmic sound of Bront?’s breathing. Then, finally, he shifts. One of his arms moves, wrapping around my waist, pulling me closer. I go easily, molding against him, my body fitting against the hard planes of his like I was always meant to be here.
Down below, the fire trucks finally arrive, too late to save anything. The brilliant orange glow bathes the whole street in light, flickering against the sides of the other buildings, making the whole world feel like it’s on fire.
I tilt my head back, gazing up at Bront? through the firelight. The mask covers his face, but I don’t need to see his expression to know how he’s feeling. His arm around me says enough. His heartbeat, steady beneath my ear, tells me everything.
I smile to myself. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever felt free.”
Bront?’s fingers brush along my spine, slow and gentle, as if he’s tracing every vertebra, memorizing every inch of me.
We stay like this for a long time, wrapped in the glow of destruction, bound together by blood and fire and the unshakable truth that nothing—not his father, not the Midnight Society, not the past—can ever keep us apart.