Sinners Kneeling in Repentance

1. Roxy

Roxy

This one song won’t leave my brain. Throughout the entire appointment that I just finished, I found myself humming it over and over until the man huffed and stuck in his ear phones.

Pausing the cleaning, I grab my phone and click on the song. Immediately Poison by Alice Cooper blasts through the small space.

That’s better.

Now I can close up shop with the actual words being played to the melody.

It’s dark out, so anyone walking past can probably see me singing and dancing to the song like an idiot. It doesn’t stop me.

My wrist aches and my eyes are bleary. All the signs of a good day of work.

Who cares about a little carpal tunnel if it’s caused by being able to put my artwork on someone’s body permanently.

In my opinion, it’s the highest honour someone can give me.

They trust me and my skills enough that they pay me hundreds of dollars to drag a needle over their skin.

The song swaps to another, and I continue wiping down the tables, muscle memory from doing this thousands of times taking over. With the music so loud, I barely hear the bells jostling above the door.

I swear I locked that.

“I’m closed,” I shout, peering my head around the corner.

My blood goes cold.

It’s been three torturous years filled with sleepless nights and constant looking over my shoulder, since I’ve seen that face, though I remember every stark detail. Because it’s a face that often visits me in my nightmares.

Though no dream captures the essence of cruelty that wafts off him. No figment of my imagination can portray the pain and horror promised in his smirk.

“Jacob,” I choke out.

It makes me sick, the way my body reacts to seeing him.

Weak. Scared. Small. All the things I thought I had let go of.

His lips twitch in something resembling a pout, but it looks wrong on him. Any other emotion besides cruelty doesn’t suit him.

“Surely you can stay open for an old friend,” he murmurs, stepping further into the studio.

I can’t believe I didn’t lock the door. I always lock the door.

Growing up with fear of the darkness means you always lock the door.

I straighten, running my sweaty palms down my dark, oversized shirt.

“Why are you here?”

The way my voice shakes makes his eyes gleam with satisfaction.

Moving through my studio, he pretends to inspect the place. Eyes sliding over my framed drawings and flash tattoo art. His fingers skim over the photo pinned up of me and Maddy, a small quirk of his lips twisting at it, before moving on.

The thought of his fingers, of his breath, being in this place makes my teeth grind. This place is mine.

The only place that has ever been mine.

“You’ve been a tricky little cat to hunt down,” he muses, picking up my tattoo machine and flipping it in his fingers. Turning those green eyes on mine, he grins again. “Imagine our surprise when we find out you’ve been hiding in Havenport, like a little rat.”

If I weren’t filled to the brim with dread, I’d roll my eyes. Because, of course, I’m in Havenport. It’s the only place that offers me protection from them.

The very fact that he’s here defies the ruse of safety I had built in my head.

“My friend is about to pick me up,” I grit out. “You need to leave.”

Jacob throws his head back, laughter spilling from his throat. The sound makes my fingers tremble before I ball them into fists.

It’s the same sound I used to hear when he slipped into my bed, time after time, while my brothers partied in the room next door. The same sound he’d make when I’d cry, after he took everything from me.

Eventually, I stopped crying. And eventually, he stopped laughing.

“Even if that were true,” he starts, taking a slow step in my direction, “I’m sure they’d love to watch what I’m about to do to the little traitor.”

He takes another step, and I follow, my back hitting the wall behind me.

“You’ve seen what we do to traitors, haven’t you, Roxanne?” he murmurs, sliding his hands into his pockets as he takes another step.

Trying not to give myself away, I search for the one person who might help me.

Okay, she’s not a person.

But she’s the closest thing I’ve had to a best friend before Maddy walked into my life.

She leans against the wall next to one of the tables.

He continues his advance, slow and confident. “I’m sure you can only imagine what your brothers have been thinking, since you ran away...” That sickening fake pout twists again. “They’re worried about you.”

“Bullshit,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

He chuckles, though no humour graces his eyes. The only thing swirling in those green orbs is sickening heat. Sliding against the wall, I sidestep in the direction of the table. In the direction of Kitty.

The old baseball bat that got me out of the clutches of evil the first time. My saving grace.

He follows, faster this time, growing impatient.

“I promised I’d come find you,” he says, grinning, “but not after I have a little fun. I’m hungry, Roxanne. You’ve deprived me for too long.”

My lips clench together, trapping the whimper that begs to be released. I won’t give him my fear. Not again. Never again.

Three more steps. Three more steps for a chance to get out of this. Because if I have to endure one more second of Jacob’s brand of cruelty, I’m not sure I’ll come out of it alive.

The last time, it took me years to claw my way out of the darkness. Years of waking up in the middle of the night screaming until my lungs gave out, and my body was covered in scratches from my own nails. The need to claw my dirty skin from my flesh, all-consuming in my mind.

No. This time would be the end. Of that, I’m sure.

Two more steps.

“I’m going to ruin you,” he growls, voice turning feral in an instant. “If you thought I was bad all those years ago, just you fucking wait. You’re ours, and I’ll make sure you fucking remember that.”

He pounces, his hard body colliding with mine as we crash into the table.

Every cell in my body recoils from his touch. His heat. His strength. The smell of weed and rum. Like it remembers, even after all those years.

I cry out, my body turning feral in an instant. Nails scrape skin, and legs kick. Everything inside me fights to get him away.

He curses as my long, red nails scrape down his face, blood blooming from the scratches.

“Fucking bitch!” he grunts.

But it’s useless. Too strong and too big, his body doesn’t relent. Through layers of clothing, I feel his erection pressing against me. A sob rips from my chest.

No, no, no. Not again. Please, not again.

With powerful hands, he twists me, pushing his crotch against my ass. Kitty sits just a metre away, waiting for me. So close.

I fall against the table, reaching. Not close enough.

Defeat, unlike anything I’ve ever felt, washes over me. She’s too far away.

“You’re not going to recognise yourself when I’m done with you,” Jacob snarls. “I’m going to fucking destroy you.”

This time, when I sob, tears fall. Because I believe him.

My tights are no match for his hands, as he rips them past my ass. The feeling of one less layer between us fuels my fire again. With everything, I jolt towards Kitty, the faded wood glowing like my salvation.

This time, my fingers graze the handle, closing around the splintered surface.

He’s not expecting me to fight back. I never have before.

Little does he know, I’m not the same girl he tormented all those years ago.

I’m not Roxanne anymore. I’m fucking Roxy.

My arm twists back. Wood cracking bone echoes in my studio. It makes the most satisfying, delicious thunk. He stumbles back in shock, eyes blinking. It gives me room to face him, cocking Kitty over my shoulder with both hands, and slamming her straight through his ugly fucking skull.

Like a sack of useless potatoes, he drops to the ground. Unconscious with one hit.

I want to laugh, so I do.

A maniacal, strangled sound at seeing one man who almost ruined me, on the ground, knocked out.

By a girl with a baseball bat named Kitty.

My breaths come out in short, quick bursts as I cock her over my head and drive her into Jacob’s face.

The corners of my vision turn a dark crimson. The same colour that leaks out of his nose and mouth.

I hit again. Hit the man who thought he could touch me with zero consequences. The man who saw a small girl and thought she was weak.

Maybe I was...

Right now, I feel nothing close to the word.

“Fuck you!” I scream through gritted teeth. My arms burn as I bring the bat back down to his face, a sickening crunch of bones following. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

I hit. And hit and hit and fucking hit.

I continue to hit him until I feel blisters forming on my hands. I continue to hit him until Jacob no longer looks like Jacob. And I continue to hit him until blood stains the dark floors of my studio and the smell of piss and blood makes me dizzy.

Only then do I stop.

Only then does realisation set in.

I killed him. I killed Jacob in the harsh light of my studio.

I only come back down to earth a fraction, but it’s enough to know that I’m royally and totally fucking screwed. Hugging a bloodied Kitty to my chest, I fall against the table, shivering with adrenaline and dread.

I can’t take my eyes off the lifeless lump on the floor, in fear that he still might rise and continue to torment me.

Without bothering to walk around the growing pool of blood, I reach for my phone.

Only one person can help me. The one exception I made when I vowed to stay far fucking away from the life of violence and motorcycles, even though I knew she was right in the middle of it. I thought I could pretend that part of her life doesn’t exist.

And here I am, diving headfirst into it.

She picks up straight away.

“Maddy baby,” I whisper, swallowing a few times before I can get the words out, “I need help.”