23. Jack #2
Through the roaring in my ears, through the agony tearing through my ribs, there is only one thought left, echoing like a desperate prayer in the dark before my eyes close for good.
Sol. Please find me, Sol.
* * *
The house above us is dead quiet except for the heavy, rhythmic thud of my father’s and Ray’s boots across the wooden floorboards upstairs.
My eyes flutter open, the harsh yellow glare of the single overhead bulb stabbing needles straight into my brain.
I’m on my narrow cot, tied to it like a naughty dog.
“No, no more.” My voice is a whisper as I beg the silence. I know what’s going to happen, and I know my broken body will not take much more.
My back presses flat against the thin, sagging mattress, my arms wrenched upward and secured tightly to the iron headboard, while my ankles are bound to the foot posts. I am entirely trapped, pinned like an insect on a board.
Heavy footsteps echo down the concrete stairs, and my body starts to vibrate with terror. The sound of their voices scrapes against my raw nerves, making my stomach heave with a violent, sickening wave of nausea.
Ray and my dad step into the cage. Ray is rolling up his sleeves, a dark, manic grin stretched across his face, but it is what my dad is holding in his right hand that makes the blood freeze completely in my veins.
A thick, folded length of black leather strap. The exact leather strap they used when I was a boy. The one that taught me how to scream into the mattress until my throat bled, the one that trained me to be quiet before I even knew what a cage was.
“Look at him, Dale. He’s finally waking up,” Ray mutters, walking over to the side of the bed and leaning down. His hand reaches out, gripping my jaw tightly, forcing me to look at him. “You really messed up tonight, didn’t you, stray dog?”
“I… I won,” I choke out, my voice raspy, broken, and barely loud enough to carry across the room.
My father stops at the foot of the bed. His face is carved from absolute granite, his eyes cold and devoid of any human warmth.
He drops an end, the buckle hitting the metal of the cot, the sharp clang echoing off the concrete walls like a gunshot, sending jolts of irrational fear coursing through my body,
“You won because we told you to survive the first round,” my dad snarls, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy register.
“You didn’t win with discipline. You fought dirty.
You let the crowd see you struggle. You embarrassed us out there, Jack.
You think because you threw some street-fighter punches that you’re suddenly a man? ”
“We built you, boy,” Ray adds, his thumb digging viciously into the bruised hinge of my jaw before letting go. “And if you forget who owns you, we have to remind you.”
My chest heaves, panic clawing its way up my throat as I realise what is coming. I fight trying to break the zip-ties but the restraints pull taut against my skin, burning my wrists as I pull.
“Please,” I whisper, the word slipping out before I can stop it. “Please, don’t…”
“Shut your mouth,” my dad barks.
He steps around the side of the bed, reaching down to grab the hem of my sweat-soaked MMA shorts. With a violent yank, he rips them down, exposing my battered, bruised skin to the cold air of the cellar. The humiliation hits me like a physical blow, hot and blinding, burning behind my eyes.
Ray steps in to hold my knees down, pressing his heavy forearm across my shins so I can’t thrash.
My father raises the leather strap high.
The first strike descends with a vicious, whistling crack that tears through the air. Fire erupts across my stomach and thighs, a blinding white-hot agony that makes my back arch violently against the mattress, straining the zip-ties until they bite into the bone of my wrists.
A ragged scream rips from my throat, raw and broken.
“You don’t scream in this house,” my dad warns, his arm coming down again in a merciless arc. Crack.
The second blow lands directly over the welt of the first, setting my skin ablaze.
Tears overflow, hot and fast, streaming down my cheeks and pooling in my ears as the blows rain down without rhythm, without mercy.
Over and over, they beat me, punishing me not for losing, but for surviving, for fighting back, for daring to hold onto a shred of myself out there in the light.
Every strike of the leather is a calculated blow designed to shatter what is left of my spirit, to drive every memory of Silas, every touch of warmth, every trace of the sky completely out of my body.
By the time they finally stop, my breathing is shallow, ragged, and wheezing. My entire lower body is on fire, numb and throbbing with a dull, sickening ache.
“Think about that next time you think you can win on your own,” my dad spits, dropping the bloodied leather strap onto the floor beside the cot.
They turn their backs, walking out of the cellar and slamming the heavy wooden door shut. The deadbolt slides into place, sealing me back in the dark.
My hands hang from the headboard, my body now shivering uncontrollably, broken down to raw meat and bone.
The darkness creeps in from the edges of my vision, heavy and suffocating.
As my consciousness begins to fracture and slip away into the black, I close my eyes against the pain, holding onto the only thing they can never reach.
Sol… please find me, Sol.