Page 14 of Cruel Games

My hand wrapped around the knobs, cutting off the stinging, sharp waterfall racing from the showerhead. I grunted as I realized there was still some soap on the side of my hair, but dismissed it as irrelevant. When I took a towel to my head, it’d dry up just like the water, and nobody would be able to tell.

There were more important things to do with one’s limited time.

The steam from the bathroom had fogged up the mirror, hiding my reflection from me in a half-assed attempt to mock the fact that my insides didn’t match the man on the outside anymore. My fingers worked with a fury, drying stray tendrils of my overgrown hair as I growled at myself and attempted to stare the fog into oblivion. When the last drop had fallen, and all the suds had disappeared, I turned the towel on the rest of my body, rough and hurried like it’d personally offended me.

I hated the man I had become. I was confused because I didn’tfeellike a man. I barely felt human. So much of what I’d learned in my early years tainted my view of the world around me and made it hard to see things in the same light as others. I looked like them, acted like them, and occasionally, I talked like them. But though I walked amongst mankind, I was still an animal at my core.

Eat, sleep, kill. It was all I knew. I’d seen it in the wild, and later, in society, to a degree. And yet, only in society was it a sin to give in to our more animalistic urges.

It felt like a scam.

I yanked pants out of my dilapidated dresser and stepped into them, my toes flexing in the worn shag carpeting. If only it were acceptable to walk around naked. There was no truer freedom than running wild, bare but only for your own skin.

Somehow, I doubted it’d fly around Jackal and Dingo, even if theyweremore understanding than the average dude.

There was no reason to bother with a shirt for now. I didn’t plan to leave the building. And even if I did, the weather was mild. I’d survived colder in less. Jeans would be fine.

Jackal was doubled over in the kitchen behind the table, staring at something in the back of an open cabinet like it held the secrets of the universe or some shit. On the couch across the room sat Dingo, a book in his hand, bundled up like a frat boy in winter in a pair of loose grey sweats and a matching university hoodie, likely for some college he’d never been to. I hadn’t known Dingo as long as I’d known Jackal, but I’d bet money he’d never set foot in the lobby of an admissions office.

Of course, one of us hadn’t even finished high school, so who was I to judge?

His eyes tracked me like a seasoned scout, licking up my torso, making my skin crawl as I settled into the chair nearby and reached for my sneakers. Flinching was unavoidable as the cabinet door slammed abruptly, and Jackal started up his litany of curse words, spewing hatred and frustration in a colorful array of words I was well-acquainted with. Thanks to his vocabulary, it was the first informal speech I’d mastered.

“Fucking hell, man, I just don’t fuckingget it.”He turned on his heel and splayed himself face-first on the counter as if the world were ending. “My fuckingbaby,man. Someone stole mybaby.”

It was just a bat.We all knew it. But to him, it was so much more. To Jackal, it was a memory. A reason. A reminder.

It was what he’d given up when life had broken him all those years ago.

Losing it must feel like losing a limb. I couldn’t relate. And unfortunately, though I wished to, I couldn’t be sympathetic to his sorrows.

Like a magnet, his eyes slowly met mine, then narrowed as Iwinced visibly. The animosity that oozed from him in waves permeated the air and paralyzed me. I didn’t fear Jackal. He gave me no reason to think he’d ever turn on me. But I knew what he was capable of, and a part of me, the base, primitive side I’d been raised with, refused to let my guard down around the possible threat.

If his bat wasn’t frightening enough, his teeth certainly were.

“Look who’s awake. It’s mister can’t-hold-my-liquor-but-i’ll-drink-everything-i’m-handed..” His tongue darted out between his lips in a taunting gesture I knew well, and I returned in kind, rolling my eyes for good measure. “How’s your head?”

At the mere mention of my hangover prospects, I winced, my head throbbing as if it had just realized it was supposed to be insuffering mode.“Mmm,” I growled noncommittally, cradling my temples for a second as I closed my eyes against the light overhead.

Since when did my hangovers take orders and cues from Jackal?

“Fucker probably can’t even see straight right now.”

Dingo snorted, cracking his neck with a subtle roll of his head. “I’d bet he puked up all the booze last night. Probably got away with less than he deserves.”

I got sick?The night was a blur, just a run of faces and hands and drinks in a dark bar someplace we shouldn’t have been, but we were celebrating. The payout for the last job was double what we usually netted, and like starving men at a buffet, Jackal and Dingo’s money burned a hole in their pockets.

I tucked mine away in the little box I kept in the closet. Every month or two, when it got full, I had St. Clair take it to the bank for me.

There were some parts of society I didn’t really understand. And I was too ashamed to ask my brothers-in-arms to help me. I was a grown man. Feral child or not, I should have learned how to navigate the world by now. The fact that I couldn’t managesomething as simple as a bank account was humbling, and one more reason to hate myself for my shortcomings.

Getting so drunk I barfed and passed out would certainly explain why I woke up naked. It would explain the pounding headache. And it would explain the loss of memory. What it didn’t explain was how Jackal somehow lost his bat.

And I wasn’t curious enough to speak the words aloud. I had so few words that made me sound like an actual intelligent man; I’d rather not waste them on these fools.

“I wonder if someone snatched it from the hall while we were busy with Coyote as a joke. Maybe they thought it’d be funny.” Dingo mused out loud as he picked at his cuticles, and Jackal groaned from the kitchen, opening the fridge next.

Seconds later, a bottle of chilled water flew at my head, and I had just enough seconds to spare to grab it before it made contact. If it’d hit me, Jackal would be lying on the floor, taking a little nap of his own.

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