Текст книги "Tank"
Автор книги: Carmen Jenner
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
I tiptoe through the house, looking for Mummy. I hear Daddy’s voice from the basement downstairs, and I cover my mouth with my hand so I don’t squeak in fear like I want to.
Banjo wasn’t in the basement, so why was my mummy looking down here?
“You think you can take her from me, huh, bitch? Think you can take my little girl?” he shouts.
“Your little girl?” Mummy says, and she’s using her angry voice now. “Let me tell you something about your little girl. You brutalised her. And I’ll do whatever it takes to get her away from you.”
“You won’t be going anywhere ever again, neither of you will. No one loves her more than I do. No one ever will.”
“You’ll burn in hell for the things you’ve done to her.”
“I haven’t done anything but give her love,” he says. I quietly creep down the stairs to hear them better, careful not to be seen as I flatten myself against the wall and peek around the door. Mummy is on her knees on the floor, holding Banjo to her chest as Daddy circles her like a shark. He’s carrying the axe we use to chop wood, and I watch the way the sharp silver blade swings as he walks. “It’s not sick, or unnatural; it’s just love.”
“I’ll be dead before I let you touch my daughter again.”
“Yes, you will,” he says, and he raises the axe in his hand and swings. My mother makes a single keening cry before the sound is cut short by a sickening thud, and her head rolls along the ground towards me as her body slumps forward in a heap.
The screams echo in my head. My screams. Daddy drops the axe. It’s no longer shiny silver, but is painted red, with little gobs of stuff that looks like minced meat. He staggers towards me, his face spattered with her blood, a mask of death. I take a step back, but before I can turn and run, he’s bundling me up in his arms and carrying me out of the room as I stare back at my mother’s head and the blood that oozes across the garage floor towards us.
I’m still screaming as my father puts me to bed and tucks me in. I’m still wearing my blood-stained clothes. He whispers over and over that he’ll never let anyone try to take me from him again, and that we’ll always be together. No matter what. He’ll always find me and bring me home.
And he always did.
I tug at the cuffs binding my hands together. There are a few ways out of this. One, by some miracle Ivy gets her restraints undone, finds a pin, a paperclip, or a fuckin’ bobby pin and I talk her through sliding it into the keyhole of my cuffs and jamming the shiv. Two, she breaks my thumbs. Not ideal, and it’d certainly make taking that fucker down more difficult than it should be, but it’s not entirely impossible—though I would like to avoid it. Three, the fucktard grows a conscious and lets us walk free. Or four, I wind up with a knife in my skull and Ivy’s stuck down here forever.
Also not ideal.
Prez thinks I’m out on a job. If I don’t report back soon, he’ll know something is up, and if he finds Ivy gone he’ll know where to find us, but all this is a really big fuckin’ maybe. The van would have been reported already. The plates are fake, and we’re always careful not to keep anything in there that might lead the Feds to us, but I hadn’t planned on getting abducted and leaving it parked on some rich cunt’s front lawn. Which means if the Russians didn’t already capture that dickhead, Ivan fuckin’ Milat here shanked Crazy in that driveway, and we left evidence behind. They lift a clear print from the steering wheel and I’m goin’ to prison for murder, forced entry and druggin’ an elderly woman and her maid. They’ll likely throw in attempted theft or some shit too, just because I’m bikey scum.
I guess I’ll worry about that shit when and if I get outta here. Prison would be a fuckin’ vacation when compared to being in this room and watching that fuck shoot her up right in front of me. He didn’t even fuckin’ do anythin’ once she was high as a kite, just laid her back on the bed, grinned at me like a cunt who knows he has the upper hand, and left the room. It was a small fuckin’ mercy, but I know he’s biding his time. He’s toyin’ with us, waitin’ for the right moment. And I feel it comin’.
He thinks he’s safe because I’m locked up, and now she’s hopped up on junk. That motherfucker isn’t safe. Right now, he’s lucky. That’s all. But Lady Luck is a bitch and has a way of turning all your best-laid plans into a pile of shit at your feet. Before long, that’s all he’ll be. Shit and guts and blood underneath my boots, and I’ll fucking dance in it. I’ll revel and rejoice and wear his innards like a crown.
I clench my fists. My fingers itch to claw my way into the softest part of him and squeeze until he explodes in a rain of death and blood, until he feels the weight of the pain he caused her over the years, the weight of the grief and the result of what she’s become.
“Tank,” she murmurs in her sleep, and I watch on as she twitches and lashes out at some unseen demon.
“I’m here, Princess,” I whisper back. Ivy jolts awake. Her eyes blink sleepily at me and then they open wider, as if she’s afraid closing them will drag her under again.
“You’re okay.” She gasps, and then covers her mouth because it was far too loud. I can see the soundproofing foam on the walls, but it hasn’t worked, not entirely. I can still hear the sick fuck when he walks around upstairs, and the muted noise of the TV, but best of all I hear it when he leaves.
“I think he’s out. I heard the front door.”
She sags against the mattress with a sharp exhalation and scrubs her hands over her face. “Babe, listen. I’m gonna need you to find something to help me out of these cuffs.”
She just shakes her head and then her tears start, and these great howling sobs echo through the room. She sounds like hell; her voice is croaky from crying and screaming and the drugs he syphoned through her system. She’s likely dehydrated too, and the wound on her abdomen is seeping plasma from its scabs. It’s infected. If the puss and the angry red swelling around it didn’t tell me that, her fever-flushed cheeks and glassy eyes do.
“Ivy, I’m gonna get us out of here, but I need your help.”
Her sobs turn to tremors, and they frighten me more than her infected abdomen. One hit. That’s all it took to undo all of the progress she’s made. It might not be cocaine, but heroin is so much worse, and so much harder to kick. I’ve seen more people die from that shit than I’ve seen buried with bullets. Nothing’ll put you to ground quicker than a bad batch of BTH. And if you’re an addict, there’s no comin’ off that shit. You can fool yourself into thinking you can quit, but she’ll always be there, tempting you.
“Babe, listen to me. Can you stand?”
She draws in a deep breath and exhales slowly. Her whole body trembles as she rolls over and carefully manoeuvres around the rope that tethers her leg to the bed as though she were a dog tied up in the yard. She takes a few shaky steps towards me and almost collapses on her rail-thin legs. “Careful.”
She nods and takes another few steps, and then when she’s almost within touching distance she reaches the end of her tether, and I reach the end of mine. “Fuck,” I hiss, and her face crumples.
“I can’t do this, Tank.” She sinks down on the floor, curling into herself and staring at the wall beside me.
“Hey, we got this, Warrior Princess. You and me are gonna get outta here, and before you know it we’ll be knockin’ back beers on my front porch.” She shakes her head, and in all the years I’ve known her, through addiction and withdrawals, drying out, and hurting so much her body looks as though it wants to shut down, I’ve never seen her look so helpless. I’ve never seen her defeated, but that’s what she is in this moment—defeated. Because of him. The one person in the entire world who is supposed to build her up and love her unconditionally. He tears her apart piece by piece, and then he tapes her back together again, only to slash through the bandages and rent her soul to ribbons.
“I want to die. Why won’t he just kill me already?” she asks, and there’s no emotion in her voice. No light. No pain. It’s inhuman, and it’s heartbreaking. “Hasn’t he done enough?”
And when she looks at me, there’s nothing in her gaze either. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone so bad in all my life as I do right now.
“No one is fuckin’ dyin’ down here. You got me, babe? You don’t get to die down here. You’ll die happy in our bed when you’re fuckin’ ninety-eight, and I can’t breathe on my own any more. You’ll go peacefully in your sleep, holdin’ my goddamn hand, and I’ll follow you. But before any of that can happen we gotta get the hell out of here. I’m gonna need you to help me. You don’t want me to die down here, do you?”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head as saltwater tracks down her cheeks. “I need you to find me something to undo these cuffs with. I can’t help us, I can’t get us out of here without my hands free.”
The creaking on the top of the stairs outside draws both our heads up and the heavy footfalls follow soon after.
Her eyes go wide with fear, and my own mirror the expression.
“Fuck, go,” I whisper and she stumbles to her feet, but she’s not quick enough. The locks slide free, the door opens, and she trips on her leg rope before she can make it back to the bed. That fucker is a black slash across the room. He yanks her head back by her hair, and he slams it into the side of the bed.
Ivy doesn’t even scream, just lets out a small guttural cry as he pulls her to her feet. Her pupils are huge and dazed.
“I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ head off,” I say through clenched teeth, tugging as hard as I can against the iron pipe. Slowly, with his hand wrapped tightly around the back of her neck, he turns to face me.
“Really?”
“Yeah, that’s right, motherfucker. You lay a goddamn finger on her again and I’ll gut you from balls to throat.”
His only response is a harsh barking laugh that makes my hair stand on end. Not because I’m frightened of him, but because I’m frightened of what he’ll do to her. It doesn’t seem to matter that she’s his only daughter. I’m bettin’ she stopped being anythin’ but his plaything a long time ago. He presses the tip of his nose to her throat and inhales, his tongue darting out to lick the creamy white flesh of her neck and the abraded skin where the rope had been choking her.
“I’m glad you’re awake. We can have ourselves a little chat.”
“Leave her the fuck alone and we can chat all you like.”
“I did a little digging on you earlier, Tank.” He spits my name as if it were venom, as he shifts them both forward. “Death. Did you know that’s what everyone calls you?”
I did, though no one had ever said it to my face.
“The executioner for the Savage Saints, and the Angels before them. Ryzhanov was very interested in hearing about how I found you right next door to his Mosman home. It’s a shame I didn’t have the foresight to pick up your friend, though. I hear Lagransky has a beef to settle.”
Crazy. That cunt-fuck got away. Which means if he hasn’t been arrested, there’s still hope that Prez and my brothers might find us.
“You know, there’s a lotta men that would give everything to be in my position right now,” he says, and I smirk, because I know exactly how many men would give their nutsack to get me alone and in a position where I don’t got the upper hand.
“They all sick bastards who rape their daughters, too?” I deadpan. It’s reflex. I didn’t mean to provoke him, but he makes Ivy pay for the slip-up by grasping her delicate throat in his hands and choking her.
I jerk against the cuffs. Later, I’ll likely feel the pain from the gashes caused by the metal burrowing into my flesh, but for now I don’t care. I have to get to her. I have to try.
He releases her and she hunches over, gasping for breath. “So … Death. Wanna know what it really feels like to die?”
“No.” Ivy recovers, and she rears her elbow back into her father’s stomach, winding him momentarily. She feints to the side as he lunges for her, attempting to catch her up by the hair, but she’s faster than him. Not that it does her much good, because just as she’s scrambling away from him the leg rope yanks her back and she lands hard against the concrete, with nothing but her skinny arms and frail body to break her fall.
“Guess you forgot about being tied up, bitch. Next time I’ll leave a little less breathing room.”
She screams as he pins her to the floor with a large hand at her back, and he tugs his pants down.
And then I get a front row fuckin’ seat to him shoving himself inside her, to all of the fucked up shit he did to her. And no amount of screaming, pleading, or yanking on my restraints does either one of us any good.
And he’s right. It really does feel like dying.
She bites her lip until it bleeds, trying to keep it in, trying to keep that shit together, but in the end he wants her screams, and that’s what he gets.
And what do I get in return? The image of her blood and tears decorating the concrete, of her beautiful face twisted in pain, and the suffocating knowledge that I can’t save her. I have two hands, all bloody and ripped to shreds from trying to get out of my cuffs. I’ve gone a good ways to de-gloving my left hand with all the fighting I’ve done, and now I’m in a world of pain.
But it isn’t just my hand that hurts. It’s my heart. Because I’m not enough. I couldn’t protect her. I’d been careless; I wasn’t paying attention, and I let this arsehole get the jump on me, but more than that, I’ve just watched the woman I love get raped by her own father, and I couldn’t do a fuckin’ thing to stop it. I couldn’t save her, and that shit is gonna haunt me for the rest of my goddamned life.
“Ivy,” I whisper. She’s still lying naked on the ground where he left her. She’s in shock. Her teeth chatter; her body tremors from head to toe. “Ivy. Baby, look at me,” I plead, and she slowly lifts her head from the floor to stare at me.
I rattle the cuffs against the iron bar, and wince as the metal slides over my raw flesh. All the skin has been stripped away right down to the first joint of my thumb. I’m pretty sure my thumb broke too. I should’ve been able to work the cuff over my broken knuckle then and slip free, but the more I pulled, the more the metal embedded itself in my flesh. And now it’s swollen so far there ain’t a goddamn thing I can do about it. That whole arm feels like a live wire. I wrenched it so hard, I probably tore a muscle or two.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry,” I whisper. I know she can hear me, because her lip quivers and tears roll down her cheeks. She doesn’t say anything, just lies her head back down on the concrete.
“I need your help. I can’t get my hand out,” I say, and in the stillness of the room I hear my voice, tired and weak, defeated, as if it belonged to another. “I’m gonna need you to work on that rope and then come help me here.”
She shakes her head. It’s a very small movement but it feels larger than life, because it means giving up. And despite the shame and hatred I feel that I couldn’t stop it, I won’t let her give up. I’ve never given up on anything in my entire life. Even with the cuff, I haven’t given up. I’m physically incapable of getting it off my wrist because the fuckin’ thing is embedded, but that doesn’t mean I’d stop tryin’. The choice is clear here. I can’t watch that again; I can’t let her go through that again. So I’ll break every bone in my fist to get free, but if I want hands to be able to kill her father with, I’ll need her help. “Come on, Warrior Princess. I fuckin’ need you, babe.”
“I can’t,” she murmurs. “I can’t. I should never have run. I shouldn’t fight him.”
“Bull-fucking-shit you shouldn’t fight. You get your sweet arse up and you start working on that rope. I don’t care if it takes all fuckin’ day. I don’t care if your fingers bleed and your whole body is so tired you just wanna lay down and die. You work on that shit until you’re free, and then you come over here and help me with these cuffs.”
“I can’t,” she says, and she turns her face away from me and weeps into the floor. I slam my head back against the wall, wondering if she isn’t right. Maybe we’re screwed either way. All I know is that I can’t watch her get raped again.
Much later, when the crying has stopped and she’s had several hours of fitful sleep, I drift into my own state of restless slumber, but I’m woken by scratching, and the frustrated gasps from Ivy attempting to loosen the knots on her leg rope. No sound comes from the TV upstairs, there’s no creak of floorboards above us, just silence.
“That’s it, baby. Just keep going,” I say.
“It’s not budging,” she huffs, and exhales her exasperation loudly.
“You’re doin’ just fine, Warrior Princess.”
“You know I used to have days down here. Some days I didn’t want to escape, because I wasn’t sure what was waiting for me on the outside, and others I just didn’t have the strength. I had nothing to fight for.” She looks at me and frowns. “I still don’t.”
“You got me. I know I’m no fuckin’ prize. I’m a bastard, and I push you to do things you don’t want to, and I’m a cunt when I’m hungry, but you have me,” I say, and I wish more than anything that I could have held her as I said those words, as if it somehow would have given them more weight. “You’ve always had me … for what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth,” she says solemnly, and goes back to working on the rope.
I wish it were true, but the fact is I promised to keep her safe, and I failed. I fucked up, and the two of us—well, we’ll pay for it for the rest of our lives.
Sometime later, after picking at it for hours with bleeding fingers and lifted nails and blisters that are red raw, Ivy finally frees her leg from its tether, and looks at me with wide-eyed wonderment, though I can clearly see her fatigue.
“I did it,” she whispers, and I can’t help but grin, because even weakened and exhausted as she is, her eyes are lit with fire. With hope.
“Get over here,” I whisper back, and she scrambles off the bed and gingerly walks over to me. She carefully climbs into my lap and I’ve never regretted the loss of the use of my hands so much, because I can’t hold her right now the way I want to. I pepper her face and hair with kisses and she takes mine in her hands, careful to avoid my black eye, and the laceration at the corner of my mouth.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper into her hair. A lump forms in my throat and tears spill out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I haven’t cried since I was a boy, but now that the floodgates have opened, I can’t seem to stop them. I don’t much care either. “I couldn’t do anything. I tried, I nearly took the skin off my fuckin’ hand, but I couldn’t protect you.”
“Shh. It’s okay. Shh.” She kisses my forehead, my cheeks, tastes my tears, and then she glances at my hand, and the revulsion and pity on her face almost flattens me. “Oh God, Tank. It looks bad.”
“Yeah, it’s about to get worse,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I hope you haven’t got a weak stomach, darlin’, ’cause I’m gonna need your help.”
I never told another living soul about my mother’s murder. I was too afraid. I was afraid he’d find out, and that he’d kill me too. Some days, I fantasised about it. When I’d spent my childhood locked down in this basement, I’d dreamed of breaking out and telling someone all the horrible things my father had done to me, to my mother, and to the boy across the street. But I never told, because I never had an opportunity to, and when I did finally escape, I was free—if only in the physical sense of the word. I’d never be mentally free. He’d made sure of that.
He made sure that I’d never think of another man again when they fucked me. Even with a clubhouse full of men. Even when it’d just been Tank and me alone in his room, I’d never seen the man in front of me. I’d seen my father, and the years of repression and the pain that he’d taught me to crave. I was sick, and I’d loved every second of it, because it was all I’d ever known. It was what I was bred to know, it was what I’d become accustomed to, and it was safe.
Pain, hurt, anger. They were safe.
Now though? Now pain is my enemy. It’s a bright slash against the night sky. A burn, rendering my flesh useless. It’s fear like I’ve never known, because for the first time ever I have something, someone to fight for. I never cared whether I lived or died. I craved death. I longed for it, but now that is the last thing I want. Now I want to fight, I have a reason to fight, and I’ll be damned if I let him take that reason from me.
I hope you haven’t got a weak stomach, darlin’. I’m gonna need your help, he’d said. But I couldn’t do what he was asking.
“There’s another way,” I say, shaking my head. “There has to be.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Oh God. I can’t.”
“Listen to me—I need you to do this,” he says, with a clear, level voice. “You do this, and you do it now, and you don’t fuckin’ stop until I tell you to and my hand is slapping outta those cuffs, you got me?”
“It’ll hurt you,” I say. I can’t even look at it, much less inflict more pain on him by trying to slide the cuff over his mangled fist.
“Stayin’ down here is gonna hurt me and you a lot more.”
“The sound will bring him running.”
“You give me somethin’ to bite down on then,” he whispers, and I still shake my head. I can’t make my legs move to stand, my arms to take hold of his hand. I can’t do this. I can’t hurt him.
“Ivy,” Tank says in a warning tone, “you do this now. I know you been wantin’ to pay me back for all those times I said no to givin’ you drugs.”
“That’s a little different from breaking both your thumbs, Tank.” I shake my head and admit, “I’m afraid.”
“You ain’t gotta be afraid, darlin’. I’d let you break every bone in my body if I thought it would save you,” he whispers, kissing my mouth. “Now come on. Let’s get this shit over with before he comes back.”
On shaking limbs I climb off his lap, and I kneel on the floor beside him. I lean over and take his belt buckle in my hands, unclasp it, and thread the belt through the loops until it’s free. I fold the leather and place it between his lips. He nods. And then I take hold of his wrist and gently slide the cuff down as far as it will go. It pulls on the metal embedded in his hand and he closes his eyes tightly shut. A strained groan escapes around the belt in his mouth.
I yank my hand away as if I’ve been burned. “I can’t do this.”
Tank growls and sets me with a look. I swallow hard. He was right about always making me do things I don’t want to. I slide my fingertips along the hard edge of his forearm, over bulging veins and down over his clenched fist.
Not even when I’d hated him mid-detox for withholding drugs from me, not even when he’d dragged me up to his cabin and kept me isolated from everything, and when I’d begged, kicked and screamed for him to give me the poison I was so eager to pump into my veins, had I ever wanted to hurt him like this.
I might have shot Killer for a fix, but it was purely accidental. I was so blinded by adrenalin and the fear that I had the coke in my hands and mightn’t get to taste it before he could snatch it away again. I hadn’t meant to shoot him, and I hadn’t meant to hurt Tank ever. I hated that this was our only option, but I steeled my courage because I’d rather he lived—we lived—than die down here.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and his body stiffens as I grab hold of his good hand and press the pad of my thumb against his joint. I force it down hard until I feel the knuckle give way under my fingers. He screams, but it’s silent, internalised, and made that much worse because of it. I want to be sick, but I keep it together as best as I can while Tank’s whole body tremors. He takes short ragged breaths in and out through his nose as I apologise over and over.
I slide the cuff down his wrist. More trembling. More silent screams swallowed up by the leather belt in his mouth. His hands are too large for the loop, even after I broke his thumb. I feel the bones shifting beneath the cuff the more I work it back and forth. It’s not just the thumb I broke that’s the problem—every tug of the metal pulls on his partially skinned hand and seems to bury it deeper. It’s another few minutes of what I’m sure is agony before I can work the cuff over his thumb and slip it past his fingers. The other, the partially skinned hand looks much worse than it did before, and the empty cuff that isn’t embedded in his flesh dangles like a macabre bracelet. His anger is a living, breathing shroud around him. And though I know it’s not directed at me, he won’t meet my gaze when I crouch down in front of him and remove the belt from his mouth.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” I chant over and over, and I press my hand to the side of his face so he’ll look at me. When he opens his eyes, they’re lit with fire and agony and rage. It’s a scary combination, but it gives me the strength I need to steel my resolve. I take his elbow and help him up, but he’s so blinded by pain that he stumbles and I wind up grabbing hold of his arm to keep him upright.
He holds his broken hands aloft as he wraps me in his big arms and squeezes me as tightly as he can with only his biceps to anchor me to his body. “We’re gonna get out of here. I’m gonna get you out, and I’m gonna put a knife through that fucker’s skull.”
“How?” I say, carefully stepping out of his embrace in order to see him better. “How do we get out? Both your hands are broken and I weigh next to nothing. We’re no match for him, Tank.”
“I’ve never met a man I couldn’t kill, babe. Why the hell do you think I’ve been around to annoy you for so fuckin’ long? I’m gonna need your help, though. You’ll distract him while I move in. First, we gotta kill the light.”
I shake my head. “The lamp I can turn on and off, but the switch for the overhead light is outside the room.”
“I need you to smash the light bulb, babe.”
“But the noise will bring him running.”
“Exactly.” Tank leans down and reaches for the belt, and I help him when I realise what he plans to do with it.
“Your hands are broken,” And my voice sounds pitying and small, even to me. “How are you going to hold it tight enough?”
“Don’t you worry about me. Listen, when I wrap this thing around his neck, I need you to promise me you’ll run. Get outta here, flee, and don’t you dare fuckin’ look back. You run as far as you possibly can, and then you call Prez for help.”
I shake my head. “I’m not leaving you. He’ll kill you.”
“He’ll try.”
“You can’t fight him with two broken hands,” I argue.
His eyes placate me. They hold me in an embrace when his arms can’t. “I told you I’d break every bone in my body to keep you safe. I meant it.”
“This is crazy; there has to be another way.”
“We gotta do this now, Ivy. Promise me you’ll run, no matter what you hear. You run and you keep runnin’.”
“I promise,” I say through my tears, but I’ve broken promises to him before. What’s another one? No way am I going to leave him down here at the mercy of my father.
“Thatta girl,” Tank says, and he kisses me before gritting his teeth and wrapping the ends of the belt tightly around his hands. His arms shake as he does this, and his face twists with pain, but then his eyes meet mine, and his determination spurs on my own.
I nod, and then I wait until he moves back into the shadows on the other side of the room before I yank the lamp from the wall. I hurl it at the ceiling. The light bulb shatters, the lamp splinters into what sounds like several pieces on the floor and glass rains down all around us, littering the ground. The room is pitch black, save for the light that creeps in through the tiny gap around the door.
Above, I hear footsteps through the living room, and then on the stairs. My heart races, and I wish I could see him in the dark. When my father slides the locks free and opens the door I get a glimpse of Tank’s outline, a warrior, a gladiator veiled in shadow, just waiting for the right time to strike. And then I have to avert my gaze so I don’t give everything away.
My father stands in the doorway, the dim glow from the stairwell burning my eyes after the long seconds of darkness. He’s silhouetted by light, and it isn’t until he moves that I realise he’s holding the axe in his hands. My blood turns to ice in my veins, and all of the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. A small cry escapes my throat as he moves into the room.
“You’ve been a very naughty little girl, Ivy,” he says, and I don’t disagree. Breaking the light was stupid; this whole thing was stupid. We can’t escape. The best I can hope for is that he kills Tank quickly, but I am never getting out of this room, and I am never going to forget the sounds, the rush of wind as he swings the axe, and the way Tank’s head will hit the floor. After all, I’ve never forgotten those things about my mother’s death. I’ve never forgotten the metallic tang of blood in the air, or the taste of it on my tongue as it misted into my open mouth.
His boots crunch on the broken glass as he crosses the floor towards me. He glances at the wall where Tank should be, but without the overhead light he’s as blind as I am to that corner of the room. My breath cycles hard and fast through my lungs, and I scream when I see him heft the axe over his shoulder but he doesn’t swing it, only rests it there so that even in the dimness I can see the glinting silver blade, and practically feel the metal against my flesh.
My father turns to me. He doesn’t understand my outburst, or maybe he does and he’s just toying with me, dangling a knife over my head and threatening to drop it.
“My sweet girl,” he says, reaching out to touch my face. I draw back, but he grabs my arm and yanks me to him. “I’ve missed your temper tantrums.”
Tank looms behind my father. The pop and splinter of glass under his boot echoes throughout the room and fear splits my heart in two as my father’s eyes grow wide with realisation. He’s too late though. The belt whips around my father’s head and Tank yanks him back against his huge body, suffocating him.
