Chapter 7 Cade
Cade
The blood on my hands turned into stains. Even after I’m brought back to my cage and hosed down, the rusted crimson stays beneath my flesh, refusing to wash away. Months' worth of gore mar my mottled skin, and after tonight, another layer will be added.
I’m pulled from the octagon, feeling weightless, as two guards guide me into the lit hallway, the name Marone gave me still being chanted in the other room. “You earned me almost fifteen grand tonight. Good fight, kid.”
Good fight, the mustached guard, Vince, is his actual name, says, praising me as if this wasn’t the fifty-seventh kid I gutted.
For the first two months, vomit would rip through my throat when the body hit the ground, another life ended by my hand.
Now, almost seven months after that first kill, there’s nothing left to feel.
They let me keep the blade after every fight. I use it as they drag me off to somewhere new to drag it against the outside of my thigh. Fifty-seven.
Fifty-seven boys. Fifty-seven slashes.
Fifty-seven reminders.
“You’re going to give yourself one nasty fucking infection if you keep doing that shit,” Vince comments.
Good.
Maybe I’ll fucking die.
I tell myself that’s what I want, but then I’m pulled back into the ring, and suddenly everything changes. There’s an instinct built into all of us to survive. I try to ignore it, but I’m weak.
“Where are we going?” I wasn’t going to ask, but then our route changed drastically—polished hallways turned into something more… homey. I was expecting to be brought down the same corridor into the elevator I hate so much. I wanted to sleep.
I wanted my cage.
“Boss is giving you a treat,” Vince says while the other guard snickers. “Good dogs get rewarded.”
My fingers twitched to flick the blade into his side, but I held myself back, remembering how the butt of his gun felt as it cracked my skull. Only recently has the tenderness subsided. I don’t need to feel it again so soon.
Walking down the hall, we pass a series of rooms with grunts and groans crying inside them, stopping when we reach the one at the end of the hall.
I tuck the blade into my ruined waistband as Vince unlocks the door.
I’m pushed through by the younger, cockier one, stumbling over the soft carpet.
From behind us, Vince’s walkie-talkie goes off, a staticky voice barely coming through.
I don’t know what’s being said, but Vince seems to understand, a stern, “Be right there” spitting from his lips.
“Stupid fucks can’t do anything right,” he mumbles to himself before turning to his partner.
“Watch him, Ramirez. Hannidy and Culver are on their way now with the package. Make sure everything runs smoothly. Don’t let them fuck anything up!
” Those were his final words before storming out, the door slamming behind him.
Once Vince is gone, the two of us stand in the middle of the room, neither saying a word.
I take in the space, slight confusion sinking in.
A fluffy carpet, a well-used chair, a lamp, and a bar with some drinks and nuts take up the central part of the room.
There, just beyond a dark hallway, I make out two other doors.
“What’s in there?”
“Go see for yourself while there’s still time,” the guard says, pouring himself a drink.
It doesn’t feel like a trap like so many others have before, so I decide to take his word for it and look. On the right is an empty bedroom, minus the simple, thin mattress in the center. On the left is a bathroom equipped with hotel-sized toiletries, towels, and clothes. I run to those first.
Soft and clean.
“Are these for me?” I ask, delicately holding the plain white shirt and gray sweats.
“Yup,” he says from across the room.
I’ve been wearing the same ruined clothes since Marone first brought me here. They’re covered in various bodily fluids, mine and others. They’ve been ripped, slashed, and hosed over and over, but never cleaned.
I haven’t been clean for almost a year. That’s… somewhere over two hundred and thirteen days. The realization is the closest thing to bringing tears to my eyes, but I push them away. I don’t want to feel when I’ve been able to go without for so long.
Setting the clothes back on the counter, I rid myself of the ones I brought from home. They’re the only piece of my life I had before this. I wonder if I’ll see them again.
I wonder if I’ll see any of it again.
Stripped bare, I test the water, shocked to find that it actually works.
Before anyone decides to change their mind, I jump beneath the spray.
My body doesn’t register how cold it is, too overwhelmed by how good it feels to stand underneath the steady stream.
Slowly, the temperature changes, and my muscles relax—at least to the best of their ability after all this time.
Overcome with the sensation, I entirely neglect the soap and shampoo.
It’s only when I start to hear some commotion from out in the main room that I rush the process.
When I feel the cleanest I’ve felt in months, I dry myself and slide into the new clothes.
I pause when the soft material settles against my skin, unused to the comfort.
I carry that feeling with me as I leave the bathroom, but I should have known better. There’s no such thing as comfort in a place like this. Culver and Hannidy are finally here, trapped in their hands, a ghost from the past.
“Clara?”
The last time I saw her, Clara was all smiles. Her skin glowed, as it always did, and there was a sparkle that had never left her eyes. It’s gone now, just like her glow.
Clara was always thin, but her bones jutted out at all angles. Her hair, which I used to watch bounce as she walked away from me, hangs lifelessly down her body. My best friend has turned into a shadow, at least until she recognizes me.
“Cade?” She doesn’t wait for a confirmation. Running to me at full speed, she breaks away from the guards, face contorted and red. I catch her and hold her tight, burrowing my face in her hair while she sobs into my neck.
Rubbing my hands down the white silk dress clinging to her form, I whisper, “I thought you were dead.”
“I am.”
Pulling away, I grab hold of her face and stare into her eyes, searching for that spark. “No, you’re not.”
Her tears fall just as one of the men begins to speak, and then her stare glazes over. “Boss wanted to give you a treat. A nice little reunion!” They laugh as one. “What do you think about that, dog? You got your bitch back!”
Slow simmering pressure begins to bloom in my chest. It presses tightly against my sternum, creating fissures in the bones keeping me together.
As their laughter grows, the tension inside me intensifies, building in waves.
With each howl coming from their lips, the temperature of my blood boils higher.
I feel like my mother’s kettle, ready to boil over.
“Well, what are you waiting for, dog? Fuck her.” I feel Clara tense in my hands. Chest tightening to the point of breaking and muscles tense, my heart races, and heat spreads through me, almost suffocating.
“Oh wait,” Culver, the fat one, pauses, “the cunt likes cunt.”
Clara’s tears cascade down the back of my hand, creating a river on my flesh. Shakes take hold of her. Before I can pull her behind me, shielding her breakdown from their view, Hannidy darts forward, spearing his knobby, chewed-up fingers into her tangled hair.
Their laughter is louder than the sound of hair tearing from her scalp, but it’s all I can focus on—that and the pained mewling coming from her quivering lips.
Jumping toward him with the blade in my ready hands, I prepare to cut those fucking fingers off, but Ramirez and Culver know me well enough and anticipate my moves.
The butts of their guns hit me before I could even reach for Clara, one in the gut, the other in my chest. I think Ramirez was aiming for my throat.
He got my collarbone instead, shattering it on impact.
I go down on my knee, knife falling somewhere on the ground while I cradle my fragmented bone.
I can feel pieces moving beneath my flesh, stabbing and threatening to break through my skin.
Panting, with furious tears beading in my eyes, I attempt to stand, but Ramirez strikes me for a second time, right in the back of the head.
With the help of his boot against my neck, I fall face-first into the carpet, pinned under his weight.
For extra security, Ramirez rams the nozzle of the gun into the back of my shoulder, digging it into my flesh until I feel it pressing against my broken bones.
A scream tears through my throat while stars and black spots dance around my vision.
The sudden burst of pain sends vomit spilling past my lips, a little puddle forming before my eyes. Ramirez kicks the back of my head, pressing my face into it. Sour fumes sting my eyes, blurring my vision, but not enough to stop me from witnessing the guards folding Clara over the chair.
Hannidy struggles to hold her hands against the base of the seat, fighting to keep her still while Culver pulls a rope out of his pocket.
When he begins wrapping the coarse fibers around her wrists, looping them beneath the chair and back up again, I attempt to throw Ramirez off.
Bucking and flailing, I squirm beneath his boots, panic swimming through my veins when they tear the soft fabric from her body.
The horrors she’s experienced haunt her eyes and hang from the brittle ends of her hair.
They dangle in front of a face I’m unfamiliar with.
There was a searing hot iron that twisted my insides when the guards presented her to me, but none of it compares to the agony I feel when I see the barbarity sprinkled across her flesh.