Jethro #4
“What else can I do to make you focus inward and not be so fucking weak all the time?” Cut prodded my chest where my teenage heart thundered. “Tell me, Jethro, so we can end this charade.”
Jasmine’s hands looped around the handle, yanking on the heavy exit.
Yes, run. Go.
The wood grunted like a beast hunting in the woods.
No!
Cut spun around. His eyes bugged as he dropped his hold. I couldn’t move, hanging on the rack as he balled his hands and strode to the table where things of nightmares rested. “Where do you think you’re going, Jazzy?”
She plastered herself against the door, shaking her head.
“Run, Jaz. Run!” I struggled. “Don’t look back. Just go!”
She didn’t.
She froze as Cut picked up a black club and advanced on her.
“No!” I squirmed harder, drawing more blood, more fear.
“I’m going to teach you to control it, Jet, if it’s the last fucking thing I do.” Cut swatted the club into his hand, making goosebumps scatter over my body.
Jasmine trembled as Cut towered over her. “You love your sister. Let’s see if you can protect her by focusing for once.” His hand rose, shadowing her face with his arm.
“Run, Jaz!” I screamed, tearing through her terror and kick starting her flight. Her fear kept her mute, but a sudden resolution filled her gaze.
She ran.
Pushing off from the door, she charged around my father and darted across the barn.
Cut spun, holding the club, watching his daughter bolt from him. Only, he didn’t let her go. He gave chase.
“No!” I couldn’t do a thing as he stormed after his child and wrenched his arm back to strike.
“Jasmine!”
And then it was all over.
The club struck her back.
The force sent her tumbling head over heels.
Her little shoes clattered against the floor as her skirts flew over her face. She came to a stop facing me, her little eyes glassing with tears, locked on mine above her.
For a second, she just lay there, blinking in shock, cataloguing her hurt.
Then, the thickest, hardest, all-consuming wave I’d ever felt washed over me.
Her pain drenched me. Her agony infected me.
Everything she felt—her childish whims, her hopeful wishes—they all rammed down my throat and made me sick.
I vomited as Jasmine burst into tears.
Her screams echoed around us, slipping out the door, licking around the trees and rising to the crescent moon above.
I cried with her. Because I knew what’d happened as surely as she did.
Winter had watched this atrocity. Frost hadn’t prevented it. Ice had let it happen. And a blizzard began deep in my soul.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
I couldn’t handle my sister’s agony, my father’s despair, my own brokenness.
I can’t do this.
And neither could Jasmine.
Her tears stopped as suddenly as they began, but her eyes never tore away from mine. Her cheek pressed on the floor as her breath puffed cold smoke from bluing lips.
And she uttered the words I would never forget.
The words ensuring I stepped into an icicle prison and gave her the key. The sentence forever turning me into snow so I never, never, never had to feel what I’d felt that day.
“Kite...I can’t feel my legs.”
I howled in remembered agony, hating him all over again. He’d disabled my sister. He’d broken her back, crippled her spinal column. He’d irrevocably destroyed her life all because of me.
Me.
Fuck!
Blocking out his screams, I stormed toward the head of the rack and traded the club for the lever. While Cut trembled and shook in his restraints, I punched the mechanism, cocking it another rotation.
His broken ankle and limbs stretched further, eliciting more screams, more begs. The barn filled with sounds of popping and cracking. The gristle and ligaments finally gave up, breaking in increments.
I wanted to be sick. I wanted to wade through his pain, and for once, stop wallowing in others’ misfortune. But unlike the instant with Jasmine teaching me in one violent swoop to stop, I couldn’t.
“Jethro—stop. Please...” Cut’s voice interspersed with deep-seated groans. I wanted so much to give in and obey. But he’d committed too much. Done too much wrong.
He hadn’t paid enough. Not yet.
Shoving the club down my waistband again, I sat on my haunches and grabbed the small wheel below the rack. I knew this machine so well. Too well. It’d become a regular enemy, and I’d learned how to use it from too young an age.
Cut had felt what it was like to lay horizontal while receiving pain. It was entirely a new experience to be vertical.
Spinning the wheel, I shut my ears off to Cut’s string of curses and pleas as the table slowly tilted upright, transforming from bed to wall.
With every inch, Cut’s body shifted as the weight transformed from his back to his wrists.
His spine remained stretched, his body distended, but now the new angle meant he could see me moving around.
He was the messiah this time about to die for his sins, not others.
Feeling his eyes on me, I didn’t look up as I made my way toward the table of horrors. Gently, I placed the club back into its dusty spot and grabbed the cat o’ nine tails.
“Have you hung there long enough, Jet?”
My father’s voice roused me. My head soared up even though my neck throbbed.
He’d left the clock on the stool in front of me, letting me count the time.
Today, I’d been on the rack for two hours and thirteen minutes.
Jasmine was still at the hospital. The doctors did all they could to fix the blunt force trauma to her spine. But they weren’t hopeful.
Nothing Cut did to me now would ever be as bad as watching my sister run for the very last time.
I’d made a promise never to come here again, but that was before Cut scooped me from my bed at daybreak and gave me no choice.
“Let me down.” I coughed, lubricating my throat. “You don’t need to do this anymore.”
He came to stand in front of me, his hands jammed in his pockets. “Are you sure about that?”
I nodded, tired and strung out and for once, blank from feeling anything. “I’m empty inside. I promise.”
He gnawed on his lower lip, hope lighting his gaze. “I really hope this time you’re telling the truth, son.” His head turned toward the table. The dreaded, hated, despised table.
A thought clouded his face as he strolled over and picked up a whip with multiple strands with cruel knots tied in the cords. He’d threatened me with the whip before but never actually used it.
I tensed in the cuffs. My limbs had stopped screaming, but my joints were beyond moving. Cut knew how far I could be stretched these days without causing me too much agony.
After all, it was about keeping me immobile and sensitive, rather than ripping me into pieces.
“Let’s see if your lessons have been learned, shall we?” He dragged the whip through his fingers. “Call this your final exam, son. Pass this and you’ll never have to come in here again.”
He didn’t give me time to argue.
His arm cocked backward.
The whip and its knotted tails shot forward.
The first lick shredded my t-shirt, biting sharply into my chest.
A scream balled in my throat, but I’d finally learned. I’d learned not to focus on myself or my sister or prey or hope or happiness or normalcy. I’d learned to focus on him—my father, my ruler, my life-giver.
So I did.
Every strike, I took with pride because Cut felt proud of me.
Every cut, I accepted with gratefulness because Cut finally believed he’d earned a worthy son.
I listened to him and only him.
And it saved me from myself.
I gripped the table as a feverish weakness throttled me. I couldn’t do this much longer. Every part of me was heavy with sickness and toil. I’d proven my point. I’d made him suffer. I had to end this before I drove myself into a grave beside him.
Pushing off from the wood, I stalked to face Cut on the rack.
His eyes widened, locking onto the whip.
“Let’s see if you’ve learned your lesson, Father. Let’s see if you can accept what you gave me as quietly as I accepted it.”
My arm shook as the whip sailed over my shoulder. I paused as the cords slapped against my back, ready to shoot forward and strike its quarry.
Cut bit his lip. “Kite...”
I didn’t wait for more. “No.”
Grunting, I threw every remaining energy into my arm and hurled the whip forward. The knots found his shirt; they sliced through it like tiny teeth, blood spurting from his flesh.
And finally, his emotions switched from sadistic hatred, misplaced actions, and a lifetime of incorrect choices to begging and shaming and accepting everything in full measure.
His head bowed as I struck again, tears streaming from his eyes. Not from pain. But the knowledge he’d done this to people he’d loved. He’d willingly done this to his children. And there was no worse crime than that.
I’d finally broken him. Finally shown him the error of his past. Finally taught him what it was like for us. He paid homage to Emma Weaver. He said sorry to Jasmine. He repented toward Nila. And finally, finally, he submitted to me and my power.
His apologies layered my mind.
His regret boomed in his thoughts.
He accepted what had to happen.
We were no longer father and son, teacher and disciple.
We were two men cleaning up the mess we’d caused.
Two men alone in a world we’d created.
And we would both suffer a lot more before it was over.