Текст книги "Skin of a sinner"

Автор книги: Avina St. Graves

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

First, she pulls out two crackers—the ones that are drier than sand but do their job filling you up—and gives one to the toy as she nibbles on the other.

What the heck?

The thing isn’t real, and she’s giving her lunch to a toy? I knew she was spoiled, wasting food like that. If she isn’t going to eat it, then I will.

The mouse shrinks back when she catches me watching. But I don’t look away, tapping my pencil on the paper, waiting to see what else comes out of her lunch bag and if she’s going to waste that too.

I can already tell the next thing isn’t just a cracker. It’s too big to be. My mouth waters at all the possibilities of everything it could be.

My hunger doesn’t stop when she pulls out her pathetic-looking lunch. It’s just two thin slices of bread, partly squashed from sitting inside her bag without a container. Even though it doesn’t look like there might be anything inside, I’m still salivating.

I’m about to scream at her for being such a spoiled brat when she tears the bruised sandwich in two, squishing the butter through the rip. But my mouth slams shut when Pigtails holds her hand out, buttered bread offered to me as if I’m someone to be pitied.

“You shouldn’t share your food,” I bite out at the same time my stomach grumbles.

Her big eyes drop away from my face, and her bottom lip quivers again. Does this girl ever stop crying? Life sucks. Get over it. No use crying about it.

“Oh,” she says, voice so soft I almost miss it. “I thought—"

“Thought what?”

“I thought you were hungry,” she whispers, lowering the food onto the plastic bag directly between us.

She pulls out a reading book from her bag, and I watch her flip page after page while nibbling on her sandwich timidly. When the last bite disappears, she places the cracker next to the remaining bread and pulls the doll into her teeny arms, quietly reading her book.

It doesn’t matter how long I stare at her or how long I pretend to look away, my stomach doesn’t stop groaning, and she doesn’t spare a second glance at the remainder of her lunch—the same lunch sitting closer to me than her.

Tentatively, I inch my fingers toward the food, waiting for her to snatch it away from me as the other kids sometimes do. But she does the opposite. She gives me this sad little smile that kicks me in the gut when I take the first bite.

It’s awful. Both her sad look, and the crap I’m eating.

The bread is probably drier than the cracker next on my list of things to eat. The butter isn’t even spread properly, as Troy’s wife would. She always made sure she got the spread to every corner, and nothing was too clumpy or too thin, and it would always go into a container to stop it from becoming mush.

This tastes like a child made it, and the butter is only in the middle of the bread. I stuff the rest into my mouth, not bothering to savor it or enjoy the feeling of something other than water in my stomach, just in case Pigtails changes her mind.

Too caught up in filling my face, I miss the prickle of her stare until she finally asks, “What’s your name?”

Her voice is so soft and delicate, like a princess who always has flowers in her hair, a big puffy dress, and a blinding smile.

I run my tongue over my dry lips, trying to get some moisture on them after eating the driest food ever. My eyes drift to the drink bottle that’s now next to the plastic bag. It’s the super crinkly plastic kind from the grocery store that’s thrown away once it’s empty.

She shouldn’t be so giving. Someone is going to take advantage of it one day and hurt her.

“It doesn’t matter.” My nose wrinkles as I grab the bottle and inhale a healthy amount of the liquid, leaving her half of it. “I’ll be gone soon anyways.”

“Oh.”

She sounds sad. Why does she sound sad?

The bell rings, and she doesn’t waste time packing away her stuff and scurrying off like her tail is on fire.

The next day, I spot the pigtailed girl in the locker room again at the end of recess, standing in the corner while Skinny and Ugly laugh. Something in my stomach churns when I see the tears running down her cheeks, her face burning red like she’s been crying for a while. Then she wipes them away with her sleeve and hides behind her hair when the final bell rings.

I didn’t see her at the gap in the corner during the break. I thought she found another place where she could hide from the world.

I guess I was wrong.

She runs to her classroom before the two idiots can say another word, and I watch as they cross the foyer and into the room behind me.

There was one other thing I learned yesterday: Skinny and Ugly are in my class. And Skinny and Ugly like to pick on the younger grades.

I know their type; the bad kids who think they’re invincible just because someone smaller than them can’t fight back. Like Pigtails.

When lunch rolls around, I follow them out and wait for them as they grab their bags and disappear to one of the benches near the back of the school. Before Skinny can put his ass on the seat, I sink my grip into the back of his shirt and yank backward. I kick my leg out, so he stumbles over my foot and loses his balance, landing on the ground with a solid thud.

Ugly is as stupid as he looks because he lunges for me, with no form or practice, all rage. He stops screaming when my fist collides with his face, and he rears back, squealing like a little baby.

Skinny tries to scramble to his feet, but my foot lands on the side of his ribs. “What’s your problem, dude?” he hisses, clutching his side.

“Talk to the mouse again, and I’ll do a lot worse to your stupid face,” I sneer and snatch one of the backpacks. I almost hit them again, just because it isn’t empty like mine.

“Who?” I’m not sure which one speaks.

“Pigtails.”

Without a second glance at them, I shove one of their lunch boxes into my bag and storm away. I can feel them gawking at me, probably nursing their wounds at the same time.

They won’t tell the teacher. What are they going to say?

He hit us because we were picking on the girl two grades younger than us.

I don’t think so.

She’s already there by the time I get to our spot. The rat doll thing is perched next to her, holding half a cracker, while the other is between her teeth, nibbling away like a rabbit as she reads her book.

The same pathetic sandwich is on the same useless, ripped plastic bag. Her pigtails are messier than yesterday, with one sitting near the center of her head and one just above the ear, tied with mismatching hair ties.

Her shoes are holey. A church would be jealous.

Her top is ripped.

The second she sees me, she becomes the same scared mouse from yesterday, hunching her shoulders and staring at the ground as if she’s willing me to go away.

I drop beside her, and she flinches, even though I am a safe distance away.

That needs to stop.

I’m not going to hurt her. Other people can try to.

Besides a sideways glance of curiosity, she doesn’t acknowledge me as I pull out Ugly’s or Skinny’s lunch box, clicking the side open and revealing the type of lunch I thought she would have.

A banana and a decent slice of bread with chicken, mayo, and greens layered in the middle. I push a finger into the bread, checking that it wouldn’t pass as cardboard.

“Eat.” I shove the whole container in her direction and grab her untouched sandwich.

Her eyes grow wide as I take a bite of the awful thing—I’m not even going to call it food.

I bare my teeth out of reflex when she snatches the bread from my hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Her pigtails swing side to side as she shakes her head frantically, trembling as she rips her sandwich in half to push it back into my hand.

Is she serious right now? She’s going to hog a sandwich and a half all to her—

She also tears the other sandwich in half, leaving one on the container and bringing the other to her lips.

“We’ll each have a side,” she says.

I shove the sandwich she made into my mouth and swallow it down. The other one tastes better than anything I’ve eaten in a long time.

Her gaze is trained on me with keen interest. “I thought you shouldn’t share food.”

“Shut up. You don’t count.”

She looks up at me with her little button nose and ridiculous hair, and her eyes sparkle with something I can only call admiration. She’s looking at me like I’m her savior. Just because of a piece of bread?

If she doesn’t stop acting like this, she will get eaten alive by people far worse than the two boys, who are probably still crying over a bit of pain.

But she doesn’t look away; with each bite, the light in her eyes only grows brighter. That look… I’ve never seen that look before. At least not when I’m involved.

And I don’t know if I like it.

It’s weird.

I clear my throat to end the silence as I bounce my foot. “Roman.”

Her little forehead wrinkles. “Huh?”

“My name.”

She blinks. “Oh.” Does this girl ever say more than a few words? What is wrong with her? She clears her throat and frowns at the ground between us as she says, “Woah-man.”

“What? No. Roman.”

She sucks her bottom lip and hides part of her face behind a pigtail. “Woah-man.”

“No, it’s—" I snap my mouth shut.

What did Ugly and Skinny tell her to say yesterday? Raspberry…? The angry beast—the same one that Margaret is always telling me I need to learn to control—rears its head.

Those dickwads.

“It doesn’t matter.” I try to save her from feeling bad. “I don’t like the name anyway.”

She looks back up at me, almond-shaped eyes glossed over, and I want to yell at myself for making them that way.

In her sweet voice, she says, “I do.”

“Why?”

I’ve never liked my name. No one has ever said it with any sort of love or care. It’s thrown around like some kind of insult.

The book she was reading flips to the cover page, where there are twelve drawings of different men and women with golden leaves around their heads and what look like white sheets wrapped around their bodies.

A tiny finger points to one of the men whose eyes are narrowed, covered in armor with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. “He looks like a Woahman, just like you.”

“It says his name is Ares.”

She nods thoughtfully. “But he looks like a Roman.” The ‘R’ still comes out as a ‘W.’

“It says he’s the God of War.”

Brown eyes peer at the writing, and her mouth moves like she’s sounding out the word. I don’t think she knows what it means.

I shrug. “Still don’t like it.”

She twists her lips, looking around our nook like she might find a response somewhere. Her attention lands on her toy, and I practically see the lightbulb go off in her head.

“How about Mickey?”

My lips twist into a scowl. “Are you calling me a rat?”

The hold she has on me the second she laughs is immediate. I’ve never heard anything like it. There’s joy in there, but something more. It’s like the feeling I have when I finally have a meal or when the sounds in my head stop.

“No, silly. He’s a mouse. You can be Mickey, and I can be Minnie.” She sighs in wonder as she hugs the decrepit thing to her chest. “Mouses are my favorite.”

Mice, I think.

It’s fitting for her.

“What if I don’t want to call you Minnie? What can I call you then?”

The look that flushes her face is worse than getting kicked in the balls. I’ve disappointed her. I’m not sure why.

She chews her lip. “Isabella. But everyone calls me Isa.”

Her name triggers some distant memory. “I’ll call you Bella.” Because she’s the only person I’ve ever met who deserves to be called pretty. Even with her messed up hair and inside-out ripped t-shirt.

“But—"

I stop her before she tries to protest. “I like Bella.”

Her smile is bright enough to stop the sun, and with it, maybe even my plans of escaping this place.

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Chapter 3

ISABELLA

Present

Roman pulls away once the bleary haze takes root in my bones, numbing me to my thoughts.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Where would I go? I wasn’t the one who left in the first place. I’m still caught in the web of our making, stuck under a roof where every breath feels like it could be used against me.

I barely register the feel of his lips pressed against my forehead before he leaves. I hardly hear the slap of boots hitting wood, leaving me to stare blankly at the line of scarlet splatter on the flyers stuck to the fridge.

It’s hard to think the fridge containing leftover dinner is in the same room as the man slaughtered by my childhood love. It doesn’t match the purge mask sitting in a pool of blood on the table, right next to yesterday’s newspaper, Millie’s cross-stitch supplies, and Greg’s severed fingers.

The dishes drying on the rack don't match the body hanging from the beam in the living room. Mundane things surrounded by broken parts, which are all out of place. It’s just like my hollow heart.

There was never any hope in this house. No one here saw a future beyond these walls, or the hardware store Greg and Millie own—owned.

Marcus was always meant to suffer because of his own sick desires. Greg was always meant to die facing the consequences of his actions, whether drinking or sitting idle. And me? I was always meant to be broken by the boy who put me together.

It’s funny how life turns out.

Roman could hurt me a thousand ways, and he wouldn’t need to lay a hand on me; a single word, and I would be done for. The sight of his back as he walks away would be enough, and nothing would put me back together.

All the broken shards that made up my being would catch in the wind, and I’d never be complete. Not that I ever was. But he made me feel like I could have been one day.

Frantic movements pull me from the darkness, and it takes more energy than it should to turn my attention to Marcus, who’s wriggling and shuddering helplessly. I assume he knows how tonight will end.

The last meal he ate will be the overcooked chicken I prepared. The last person to lay their hands on him will be who I thought was my other half. But the last face he sees will be mine.

Little Isa.

Pretty Isabella.

Or his personal favorite: fucking slut.

His eyes plead with me as he cries, probably praying I will be the angel sent from above to save him. He’s right about one thing: I am an angel. But I wasn’t sent, I fell. I descended through the sky with burning wings, landing outside Eden in the land writhing with serpents. Because Roman pushed me out.

I don’t realize I’ve started walking until I’m in front of him, slowly tearing the tape so he feels every bit of it.

The second his thin lips are free, he gasps for air like it’s his first time breathing. “Isa, pl—you’ve gotta help me. You’ve gotta—he’s a fucking lunatic.” He blinks fast, swinging his petrified gaze between me, the stairs, and the knife block on the kitchen bench. I keep my eyes on his face, ignoring the blood draining from the hole where his appendage used to be and the liquid clumping in his bloodied chest hair. “There—the knife. Cut—"

“Did I look this pathetic?” I ask, emotionlessly.

Like a child sniffling as the tears mixed with sweat and snot? Was this me? Did I look so deserving of the torment too? Wide, innocent eyes so full of delusion that I thought someone might actually come to save me.

“What are you talking about? Just get the fucking—"

“No.”

Mouth agape, he pauses. “What did you just fuck—"

“Shut the fuck up,” I spit.

His eyes widen, and his face loses its color.

Good. He’s scared. He should be.

“You don’t get to speak to me like that anymore.” My voice shakes as I say it.

There’s something cathartic about seeing him like this, limited by a prison of someone else’s making. I’ve never squirmed away from a little bit of blood—I’ve seen Roman covered in it enough times. This is fucked up beyond comprehension.

Usually, I’d rather walk away than cause someone’s downfall. I wouldn’t call it being the bigger person; I’d just say it’s because I’ve had enough.

He hurt me. He made my life hell. He made me scared in my own home. He made me hate every second of my life.

Now, he’s at my mercy.

My fists tremble, wanting to be unleashed on something—anything. But the thought of touching Marcus again sickens me to my very core. He’s laid his filthy hands on me for years, and I guess life comes full circle; Roman, the man who used to keep Marcus at bay, will be the one who kills him.

I reach for the shelf and grab the first thing I can wrap my fingers around. Then I throw it at him with every bit of force I can muster. One right after the other, I keep throwing everything I can get my hands on. His participation trophies, bolts, tools, photo frames, ornaments, leaving red marks on his skin.

He buckles and screams, but I don’t stop throwing item after item, until I keel over and throw up again from the sight of the blood splashing across the room.

“You’re going to die tonight, you fucking pig,” I spit. “And after everything you did to me, I’m going to enjoy watching.” I take a step forward and point at him with a shaky finger. “You’re a pathetic piece of shit who preys on women, and you’re going to suffer for all the times you’ve assaulted me.”

“Are you seriously mad about that right now?” He swings as he jerks, flapping his feet in a fruitless attempt to reach the ground. “Grow up. Untie me.”

“I was a child,” I snap, then turn to Greg, shaking my head at the sight of him and the belt around his throat. It’s mortifying, yet the perfect form of justice. “I didn’t need to grow up.” I wanted my dead mother. I wanted my father, who didn’t want me. I wanted not just to be loved but to feel it too.

“Isa, get the fu—"

I slap the tape back over his mouth, silencing him. Sometimes when angels fall, the serpents devour them. Other times, they learn to live with them.

“I’d say rest in peace, but I hope you never find it.” It feels liberating to let it roll from my tongue.

The back of my neck prickles with awareness right before I hear Roman come down the stairs.

“He better not have said anything he shouldn’t have.” The rage in Roman’s voice is well hidden underneath his sinister veneer.

I don’t need to look at him to know he’s giving Marcus a smile that’s all teeth. Because my foster brother looks at me again, pleading with his eyes for my help. How the tables have turned.

Marcus never stopped when I asked him not to push or touch me. This household turned its back when I cried because his hand slipped beneath my shirt. There’s a certain peace in knowing that he will die realizing that no one will come to save him. That I will be part of his downfall.

Behind me, something drops to the floor, but I don’t want to risk looking at Roman to figure out what it is. I should be grateful that it sounds too heavy to be another body, so maybe it wasn’t a lie Millie is alive after all. Or perhaps she’s seconds away from joining her husband.

Roman’s shoulder brushes mine as he moves past me. I know he wouldn’t hurt me physically. But I’d rather have scars on my body than my soul.

He all but saunters to Marcus, twirling the switchblade between his fingers as if he were putting on a show. “You know where you went wrong?”

Marcus sobs, flicking his bloodshot eyes between me and the monster I helped create. I bite the inside of my cheek, feeling like I need to say something, but the words are nowhere to be found.

“You fucked with my girl.” Roman chuckles darkly, glancing at me before saying, “And you should never fuck with my girl.”

The tip of the blade digs into the corner of Marcus’s jaw, blooming red as it follows the path to his chin. His thrashing only makes the cut deeper, more vicious, a thorned rose rather than a smooth lily.

I edge back, tripping over my feet as I stumble to a wall for support. I can’t look away, but the sight of the gore makes me tip over to gasp for air.

“You’re lucky she’s here. If not—you and me—we would have been having fun all night long.”

A boulder lodges in my throat, scraping along the walls of my neck.

Roman hums a made-up tune as he continues carving all sorts of shapes into Marcus’s already deformed skin. Stars, hearts, circles, his own initials—that he promptly slices through—undeterred by Marcus’s squeals of pain muffled by tape. Roman watches his handiwork with intent eyes following each motion, his body leaning forward as if in a trance, like a child doodling in class. Each glide of his hand is purposeful, going deeper in certain areas while barely grazing the flesh in others. As if he’s trying to stop Marcus from bleeding out.

As if he’s tortured someone like this before.

I wipe my trembling hands along my bare thigh and cover my mouth to silence my sobs. Marcus keeps looking at me to help him. Some sick, twisted part of me wishes Greg was still alive to be a bystander in his son’s demise.

I don't know what I feel. Guilt? Fear? Disgust? Anticipation? I feel all of it, yet none of it. Each swirl of emotion is so visceral but still so dull, as my mind refuses to comprehend the scene before me.

This is fucked up on every single level.

I know I should call for help. I need to stop Roman before he kills Marcus. I should have saved him when I had the chance.

But I can’t do anything, paralyzed in my spot, focused on trying not to pass out.

Roman pauses, looking up at Marcus with an eerie innocence that makes my stomach clench. “Do you want me to let you go?”

I stiffen and everything goes silent. He wouldn’t… would he? The Roman I knew would burn the entire city down before letting someone who hurt me walk free. But three years will change someone.

My foster brother nods slowly, sending me a questioning look. I swallow. Would Roman really let Marcus go? This is the question in both our heads, but I know for a fact that Marcus won’t be asking if Roman will let me go. He’s selfish. There’s no planet where he’d give a shit about what happens to me.

“It doesn’t seem like you want to be let go,” Roman practically sings, swirling the knife around Marcus’s cheek without breaking the skin.

Marcus swings his head from side to side violently, shaking his whole body. He doesn’t seem to care about the pain he’s causing himself because he doesn’t stop.

Worse, I can’t seem to care either.

“That’s better.” Roman smiles in the same way a tiger would before tearing through its dinner’s neck. He may like inflicting fear, but what he loves most is making them beg. “Apologize to my girl.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, it’s fine. He doesn’t have to. But I want to hear him say it. I want him to beg for my forgiveness.

The duct tape is ripped from Marcus’s mouth for the second time tonight. But like the idiot he is, the first words out of his mouth are, “Please, let me go.”

The words earn him a knife to his stomach. I flinch back from the suckling sound combined with his howling. Whether from morbid fascination, a sense of responsibility, or some sick need for closure, I keep my eyes open, staring at the gruesome sight through new tears.

“Apologize,” Roman growls, twisting the knife.

My chest tightens. Watching this kind of thing on TV is different from seeing it happen to your foster brother. I wish I had the strength to hurt Marcus the way Roman is, not just for vengeance, but to prove to myself that I can take care of myself in every possible way.

Marcus screams. What if the neighbors hear? What if the police come? What if Marcus lives and tells the police that I was an accomplice, like I know he would?

Marcus’s lips quiver, spit and blood flying out as he looks at me. “I—I’m sorry.”

I grit my teeth. His apology doesn’t make me feel any better.

“You can do better than that,” Roman says.

“I’m sorry!” Marcus cries as Roman applies more pressure to the open wound. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “Please, just let me go.”

“Keep going,” Roman says.

I dig half-moons into my palms and watch Marcus beg. “Please. I swear—I swear I won’t tell anyone. Do whatever you want with that slut—"

I suck in a sharp breath as the blade rips through tendons and sinews before my tormentor can finish his sentence, but the damage is already done. The rage vibrating from Roman is a living, breathing thing I can taste in the back of my throat.

An endless stream of blood pours from the yawning slit across Marcus’s neck. The crimson waterfall soaks his chest and rushes down his legs before pooling onto the floor.

I start heaving, but nothing comes up.

Inch by agonizingly slow inch, Roman turns his head in my direction, and I’m frozen in my spot. Dark hair falls over his beautifully vicious face, covered in my foster family’s blood.

Electricity cracks in the space between us, and every cell in my body is a live wire under his stare. When his eyes snap up to mine, it’s like I’m finally looking at him and seeing him for the bloodthirsty beast he is. And he’s found his next kill.

Me.

Pure animalistic instinct takes over with the single-minded need to run from the apex predator. My foot slides backward as he steps forward. One foot back, another forward. Stalking me. Hunting me.

The all-consuming urge to run has nothing to do with his strong strides or the knife fisted at his side. No, it’s the glint in his eyes. He isn’t warning me not to run.

He’s hoping I will.

Reason left me a long time ago. Logic is still tucked away in my bed, oblivious to the chaos below.

You should never run. You can climb, and you might be able to hide, but you never run.

Yet, that’s precisely what I do.

I run.

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