Page 38 of Undertow

Drip.

I watched a documentary on blood spatter once. You can tell a lot from the way blood expels from the body and meets its final resting place. But mine is lying right now. The person who finds it won’t begin to understand the twisted history of these drops.

“You’ve been doing so well, Picasso. Why’d you have to go and mess it up?”

I don’t bother answering. It wasn’t a real question anyway. The real message was a not-so-clever transition to the chair bolted to the floor a few feet away. But I know from experience these bullies are not as creative as others.

“Let’s just get this over with,” I spit out. “Torture me or kill me, but you can tell yourbossthat I don’t hurt children. I willneverfucking hurt a child.”

“Tortureyou?” he says with a bitter laugh. “No, my friend. We’ve learned you only have one weakness. This one is going to hurt.”

My blood runs cold at the sound of the steel door. I twist enough to see three sets of feet moving through it. The rustle of resistance forces me to angle through the pain for a better view. My heart stops.

Kristen?

Oh god.

I can’t breathe again as they drag my only true attachment into the room. We’ve known each other for just a few months—since they placed me at the Towers Hotel in Chicago—but she quickly became a necessary part of my life. I hadn’t realized how starved I was for a meaningful human bond until I had a lifelong friend after one conversation.

She was an instant connection that seemed endless, symmetrical to my brain and soul that rarely find a match.

And then the kiss.

And then… she was everything.

Her red, puffy eyes widen when she sees me. The tape prevents any verbal protests, but betrayal burns in her frightened hazel irises as they piece together the scene. By the cuts on her face and disheveled state of her clothing, they’ve already started on her.

But Kristen is just an innocent victim, a bystander who got caught in my riptide. She’s not equipped for this. Not like I am. They know I’m only vulnerable in one place. I’ve kept it locked safely in a notebook for most of my life, because this is what happens when my heart seeps out.

This is why my true self can’t live in my world.

“You bastards,” I growl for her sake. So she knows I didn’t want this, as if that makes any difference in these perverse moments.

I will leave my resistance at that, however. Theywantme to beg. They want to see me crack and splinter and dissolve in the wake of a shattered conscience.

But I won’t. I will give them nothing more than what they’ve already stolen from me.

So I remain stoic as they shove their confused, terrified hostage into the chair.

Stoic as they reach for the knife and flash it in front of me like a trophy.

Stoic through muffled screams that gut me and rip through my insides in mirrored carnage of what’s happening in front of me.

They will never know they broke me today.

What is the story Kristen Lee’s blood will tell?

That I had one friend. And I just killed her.

there are words in my mouth that taste like blood, crashing and crushing anything in their path. dissecting themselves and searching for the spirit, deepening and dampening the weight of the wounds they’ve festered in. the calm has vanished. in its place is a cold October breeze that has extinguished the flame I once called peace. cracking my lips and even more so my bones,

I am pleading with the sun to consume me.

-JD September 4

7

ISLAND OF MONSTERS

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