For all these years, I felt guilt eating me up inside over the incident, and I didn’t even need to. My father was a pedophile. A sick torturer of children. I didn’t even know half the details of the horrendous things he’d done, but I knew enough to know he deserved every ounce of pain Alex inflicted on him that day.
Just like Dan. He was pure scum. He was responsible for kidnapping god knows how many kids from Pittsburgh and handing them over to his Circle employers… and he actually thought he deserved any sort of freedom? He was deluded and evil, just like anyone else who hurt kids the way these assholes did. Furthermore, he was actually fortunate he was getting such a quick, relatively easy death right now. I knew Alex’s other victims hadn’t been so lucky.
Dan’s legs were shaking now, finally giving way a few seconds later. He plummeted to the cold hard floor, his eyes bulging with dismay as he clutched at his neck, still hopelessly trying to seal the wound and stem the bleeding.
I didn’t look away. Instead, I crouched down and watched his face carefully. I could see the life fading from his sluggish eyes, and as it went, slowly circling the drain, so did a lot of my pain. I knew exactly why.
Alex and my therapist both correctly thought that latent memories of some sort of traumatic event had triggered the stress deep within my mind; the same stress which caused my nerve sensitivity and pain. I knew what that stressor was now—being groomed for abuse at the hands of the Circle, and discovering that I was to be handed to them by my own father.
I would’ve turned out just like those poor girls in the photos and videos Alex had shown me; the ones he got from one of his previous victims who liked to keep trophies, probably to jerk off over like the sick, twisted old prick he was. I would’ve been broken, beaten, branded. I would’ve been raped. And when they were sick of me, they would’ve more than likely killed me. I was twenty-one now, but if I’d been given to the Circle at seven, I probably wouldn’t have made it to this year.
Because of all that, seeing one of the Circle members murdered in front of me like this actually made me feel better. I guess it was like seeing the major source of stress in my brain being slowly obliterated before my very eyes. It was a really fucked up form of stress relief… but it worked. My nerve pain wasn’t completely gone, but it was still the best I’d felt since before it began.
As I watched Dan draw his last breath, I found my own again. With a final gruesome gargle, he stilled on the concrete floor in the vast, quickly-spreading pool of his own blood. Alex wiped the blade on his shirt, kicked the body as far back as possible, then turned and stared back up at me, a half-smile playing on his lips as he wiped his own blood off his face with his sleeve. I knew why he was smiling, and it wasn’t because of the man he’d just killed.
It was because of me. I had a chance at freedom, but instead of leaving I’d willingly stepped right back into my own prison. Like a caged bird given the opportunity to fly free, I’d turned around and waltzed right back in between the bars, seemingly craving the comfort and familiarity of home, even though anyone else could see that home was a cold, cramped jail. I’d just turned my back on my dream to escape, and Alex would never let me go now.
Ever.
I realized now that the pipe was a test. Alex left it there on purpose, knowing Dan and I would eventually see it and realize we could get out if we worked together. He wanted to see what choice I would make, how much I trusted him and the things he’d told me, and it seemed I’d played right into his hand and made the exact choice he expected. He knew I wouldn’t have made any other choice in the end. He knew I wouldn’t leave.
I was truly succumbing to him, unwinding more and more every day.
He took a few slow steps toward me, heavy boots making a sickening sound as they trod through the blood still pooling on the floor. “You didn’t leave,” he said.
“No.”
He tilted his head to the side, a curious expression dancing in his dark blue eyes. “You could’ve tried to hurt me again. You could’ve tried to kill me and broken free.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But you knew I wouldn’t.”
He nodded. “You understand there’s no going back now.” He was close now, so close, breath lingering on my face. “You’re staying here.”
I could barely breathe. “I know.”
“Does that scare you? Are you scared of me?”
I shook my head slowly. “No.”
He gripped my chin and kissed me, forcing me to taste him. I could taste his blood too, that metallic, briny tang, but I barely registered it. When he pulled away, I was panting, scarcely able to breathe again.
Alex was poison, but I was addicted.