Page 1 of Bathed in Blood

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Breeze

Limbo by Freddie Dredd

Mom always told me that the ferocious way I loved the people was admirable, that someone who loved with their entire being was rare. She said I’d make an amazing wife and mother someday. To me, love never felt like a steady burning flame. No, it felt like an unyielding explosion. As I grew, I realized just how wrong she was, how loving like this was painful more times than not. I loved suddenly, deeply, and Iacheddeeply. Mom admired it anyway, so I never tried to change it, never made so much as a move to protect myself from… myself, from what that undying, selfless kind of love does to a person.

I always knew my little brother was her favorite. Lewis needed her doting in a way I never did, so I understood, even when it took away from what time she and I had. Truth is, I adored him too.

Almost as much as her.

With his shaggy, caramel colored hair, the way he refused to let it be brushed, but insisted upon keeping it long; what was there not to love about the way he unapologetically followedevery whim he had the moment it popped into his head? The way his golden bronze eyes looked at everything like a door waiting to be opened, consequences be dammed.

He was her baby boy, her fierce ray of sun. Me? She said I was like the breeze on days her sun was shining too brightly. I made the fierceness of the sun bearable. I was the best big sister ever; he told me so himself. It was a role I took seriously.

Maybe that’s why it was so easy that day to sign my life over for his. It wasn’t even a question in my mind; I didn’t take even a second to consider the consequences.

When I rushed into that godforsaken parking garage and saw Lewis on his knees, bloodied and terrified, all I could see was the bright eyed, headstrong toddler who needed his big sister to kiss his skinned knee and then swear to never tell his friends. He was the little boy who ran through the woods behind our house and climbed the biggest tree he could find. I didn’t see the man he had become, those golden eyes swallowed by his pupils, his young face aged by years of hard addiction. I didn’t see the track marks that lined his arms or the way his hands shook.

He was my little brother.

I should’ve left him there that day, my love soured by the times he’d stolen from me, hurt me and Mom in a drug induced rage. I should’ve remembered the night the very men who held him hostage broke into our home looking for him. How their hired muscle beat on Mom. How terrified I was, how my throat burned from screaming. I didn’t think of any of those things. All I felt was that stupid, unyielding, explosive love. I thought of how hard Mom would cry. It would kill her as surely as they would kill him once they wrung him dry. She was nothing without that little boy, but me?

I was the breeze.

I tug the straps of my negligee up high onto my shoulders, the expensive black fabric hugging the generous swell of my hips,the deep neckline ending just below the line of my breasts. The sudden, sharp sound of a fist beating on a thick wooden door didn’t startle me.

Little startles me these days.

“Come in.”

The heavy door opens with the same ominous creek you hear in horror movies, the ones where the damsel’s chest is heaving under the weight of her fear as she cowers inside the closet, her hand clasped tightly over her mouth in hopes it would stifle her sobs. The killer’s heavy footsteps taunt her from outside the veiled safety of that closet. It's not a matter ofifhe finds her, butwhen. She knows it, the audience knows it, but we sit on the edge of our seats, anyway.

“We’re set.” Vince's voice is as cool and collected as ever, a strange contrast to his volatile, hell spawn brothers.

I fluff my deep red curls, making sure they fall perfectly over my shoulders as I pull my mask into place. This isn’t a movie. There’s no damsel, only killers. And me? I think I'm the worst of them all. The first time I made this walk is an ever-present weight on my chest. I can still feel the way my heart pounded in my chest as tears streamed down my cheeks. Anton called it my christening, and Jax lounged against the stone wall of the basement, the axe resting over his broad shoulder like a threat. He laughed, said it was “time to break in the cunt”.He’s never called me anything butjustthat.

The cunt.

He told me the watchers would love the pitiful tears that leaked out from underneath the mask they forced into my trembling hands.

He was right.

They loved me.

I remember the way I sobbed as I made the first swing. I remember how much more terrifying the axe was after I sawthe way a human skull exploded under the weight of it. My first swings weren’t strong enough; I was timid, and my victim paid the price as I found my footing. The sound the woman made as the axe lodged itself into her head is a permanent fixture in my mind. I didn’t know it then, just how much worse things could get. I had no clue it was the day of my rebirth. The day I becameher.

The Blood Princess.

Bits of the woman splattered my mask while bits of my vomit splattered the inside. I was royalty. A myth. A legend. The next few years dragged on like entire lifetimes. I was more than a sister held to pay off a debt, more than just their prisoner now. I was a fucking cash cow, bringing in one point two million dollars per stream. I lost count of how many lives I took after that first year. At some point, I’d stopped crying. The nights were filled with such tormenting monotony, I’d even started looking forward to coming up with new, more graphic ways to rile up the viewers. I learned what the human body could take.

What it couldn’t.

It was somewhere in the third year when I realized they would never let me go, that the carnage would never stop as long as I remainedher.The bullet I’d assured myself would come any day now for two entire years was a pipe dream. I lulled myself to sleep every night thinking of the ways they would kill me on stream, dreaming of the night my karma would finally come calling. The Blood Princess’ Final Show sounded like a good name. Theatrical—Jax would like that.

I’d deluded myself into thinking that was rock bottom. It was short-lived, and soon after that first year, I plummeted all over again. My soulless walking corpse found a new rock bottom to lay and rot at. Anton and Vince, they’d gotten…attached. They opened up, and suddenly, I wasn’t just a toy for them to exploit, a living sex doll. No, I had become part of the group, though nota part with freedom, like they had. I haven’t left this mansion in four years, but they started asking me things, wanting my input on a new device, a victim, sometimes even giving me the option to say no when they wanted to fuck. Still, the illusion of a choice was more painful than none at all. I found myself disgustingly grateful for Jax’s cruelty, because in all my fame and success, in all our time together, I was the cunt.

“I knew you’d look amazing in this. I had it made especially for you, Lana,” Anton whispers against my neck, my body tensing at his touch. The tang of bourbon on his breath tells me he’s going to expect more from me tonight, a proper show. He’s always harder to please when he’s drinking, which is a lot these days.

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