Page 44 of Tear Me Down
“Then you weren't prescribed the good shit,” he teases.
Damien stands and turns the chair around as he pulls his knife from the sheath, amping up for what he does best.
After about twenty minutes of grueling torture, the man finally tells Damien how Dranan is paying the pharmaceutical company to manufacture the drug and send it into the pharmacies in town under a different name. It's mass produced, and with a pretty penny from Dranan, half the pharmacies in the city are ordering it for him. With what we saw earlier tonight, we’re not surprised, but more or less appalled. It would definitely explain why the manufacturing locations are getting harder to find, and when they do find them, there’s no trace of this new drug.
Damien records the man’s whole statement and sends it to Carter to keep on record, and the feeling in the room plummets. What was warm and filled with bliss only half an hour ago is now stained with iron and pain covered by a chill. My fiancé’s once relaxed posture is now stiff and rigid, carrying the burden of thousands and weighing him down. I watch as he stands and pulls his pistol out, clearly getting ready to end the night and this man’s life.
“You Jenny’s girl?” the man wheezes out, and I snap my head to him, a shiver running down my spine at the name, and realization hits. I haven't heard her name in years.
That's where I know him from…
“Yeah, you're Jenny’s daughter. You look just like her.”
Those words are like a shot to my heart that radiates outward, piercing through any veil of comfort that I’ve hidden behind. Damien immediately senses my emotional turn and sets his pistol down before punching him in the face again, knocking him so harshly that Damien has to step to the side.
“Don’t you fucking say that to her!” he yells so harshly that he trembles. I do look like her, and I hate it. We have the same dark hair and body type while I was stuck with my father’s eyes. Granted, the last time I saw my mother she looked like a walking corpse, but we had very similar features, nonetheless. “How do you know her mom?” Damien asks, but I interject as the memories come flooding back.
“He was my parents’ last dealer,” I force through the lump in my throat, the words coming out strained and hoarse. Both men look back at me, and while I want to focus on Damien’s soft eyes, I can’t help but focus on the dealer’s hardened ones—eyes that have seen years of violence and hazes. “After J.P. OD’ed, they went to him. Turk, right?” He nods in response to my assumption, his gaze softening slightly.
“I'm not gon’ lie girl, I’ve thought about you a few times after that day. You see some fucked up things in my line of work, but that day got to me.” He shakes his head, as if his memories of me as a teenager haunt him in the same way they haunt me.
“I don't need your fucking pity,” I spit at him.
“What day?” Damien asks, but before I can answer, he spins back around and lifts the man, and the chair, by his strong grip of Turk’s throat. “What fucking day?!”
“It was a year before I was legally emancipated.” Damien looks back at me, immediately releasing his grip on Turk and letting him fall to the floor. He cautiously walks back to me and cups my jaw in his bloody hand, caressing my cheek tenderly and urging me to continue. “I had already snuck off and had been staying with Ser for a while, but I had to go back to the house and get something. I'm not even sure what it was now, I don’t remember, but I walked into the house, and he was there.” I nudge my head to Turk. “My parents were buying from him but couldn't find their money. I figured they'd be so drugged up that I could run in, grab what I needed, and run out, but that wasn't the case. I should’ve known better.” I feel my eyes begin to burn at the resurfaced memory, and he lifts my chin, silently telling me to stay strong.
“I didn’t make it ten steps inside before they started screaming that I stole their money, and I didn’t make it twenty before my dad started swinging. After a few good hits, he took my money, every dollar, and paid him with it.” I nod in Turk’s direction again. “My dad said to keep the extra, ‘for the trouble’…becauseIwas the problem, and then he offered me up to him like my presence needed to be forgiven.” Damien’s eyes glaze over with a dark film, and I can almost feel the hatred warm his body, so I interject before he goes scorched earth and takes it out on Turk. “He didn’t take him up on it, thankfully.” He quickly wipes away the lone tear trying to race down my face, and while I can still feel the anger radiating off of him, he seems to be keeping it together. “He reluctantly took the money though, and quietly told me he was sorry when he left.” I start to notice how the years have changed him, worn him down and beat him as mercilessly as the rest of us, and while that doesn’t change anything that happened, it’s a small comfort knowing that the wicked truly don’t rest.
“I used to wonder what happened to ya. It’s nice to see you doing good; those types of things normally don’t end well with the people I see.” I finally look away from him, not wanting his compassion, but the realization dawns on me that in those almost two years I didn’t see my parents again before they died, this man probably thought about me more than they did. As someone who hopes to one day be a mother, I couldn’t imagine having a child and caring so minimally for it. Surely at some point I meant something to them, right? At least some of the hell I went through must have been a twisted outcome of what theytried to do for me—it must have. No one just has a child only to use and abuse it…right?
I look back to Damien, and it’s like it always is; he’s reading my mind and understanding it like I said all of my thoughts out loud. His saddened eyes look at me, not with pity or sympathy, but longing. The compulsion he feels to provide me with reassurance and stability shines through his eyes with a promise of laying my pain to rest. That unwavering devotion to me as a partner and strongest supporter is as solid as it always has been, and it keeps me afloat even as my emotions threaten to flood me.
He gently pulls my hands to position me on my own two feet, showing me that I can truly stand in the face of my past. Turk may not be the worst aspect of it, but he’s the only living connection I have left, and the idea that I’ll soon be completely liberated from it is compelling. He pulls me to stand in front of him, my back to his chest, while we look at the last remnants of my familial trauma. He leads me to stand only about a foot or two away, grabbing his knife again and bringing it to my hand.
“You wanted some training? We’ll use him for practice before I kill him.” He encases me in his hold and gently wraps his fingers around my wrist, directing my hand with the knife in it. “I can teach you how to fight, baby, but only maneuvers that keep you safe. You know how to scrap, and no amount of lessons is going to help you against a guy like him or me. They’re too strong, too big, and you'll be focusing on the things you shouldn’t.” He moves the hair off my shoulder and buries his nose in the strands on top of my head, as if even having to say this aloud is painful for him. “If someone comes for you, create distractions. Anything that could either draw them the other direction or change their focus, even if it’s for a second,” he directs, almost desperately, and I nod to show that I understand. “Once, or if, they set their eyes on you, you scream—as loud as you can, and get as much information on your assailant in the air as possible. Scream out features of their face, scars, eye color, anything that could identify them, because I’ll always be watching.”
He takes a deep breath in my hair, inhaling me like he’ll never get the chance again, as if the scenario he’s describing will never happen outside of his thoughts. But we both know deep down that he can’t promise something so unpredictable, that there will always be a threat that either he can’t see or control. Well, I know he can’t, but he might truly believe that he would never allow something so dangerous to happen.
“Describe him,” he commands through a struggled whisper.
“Tall, six feet probably, large build…”
“No baby, I can see those things on surveillance.” He points my hand with the knife to the security camera in the corner before dragging it back to point at Turk. “I’m talking about things those cameras may not be able to see, small details that only close ups can make out.”
I nod my head and look over Turk more closely, examining him with a sharp gaze. Now that I know what to look for, the small details are sticking out—a scar here and there, weirdly shaped freckles, and tattoos. Smaller things that I would normally only recall in memories when they resurface.
“Large scar, top left shoulder. Gold tooth. Tattoo on left hand.”
“Good, that’s good.” He moves me forward and points the knife in our hands to Turk’s throat. “If someone actually gets their hands on you, I don’t care if you think it’s a cheap shot, you fucking take it. It’s your life we're talking about. Kick his balls in, scratch his eyes out, punch him in the throat, whatever is going to help get him off of you. If it comes down to killing him, if you even get the chance, you're only going to get one shot. Go for the easy kill. The carotid artery is on the neck, but it’s deep, so just scratching won’t cut it. You drive a fucking knife in it. It runs from the ear, straight down the neck.” He takes my hand and drags the knife down Turk’s throat, just enough to make him bleed where the artery runs. “There’s one on both sides.” He slides it down the other side, and my eyes follow the blood that drips down his aged skin. Turk hisses and grits his teeth. His obvious pain slithers through my blade and I can feel his trembling, but he keeps his composure—almost as if he approves of the lesson.
“The brachial arteries are on the underside of the arms, just above the elbows.” He shows them to me by cutting Turk again. “Then the femoral arteries.” The process repeats, intriguing me even more. I had no idea that there were so many easily accessible arteries, how many quick ways someone could die. “It will still take them a couple of minutes to bleed out, but after about sixty seconds they won’t be able to contain you anymore. Of course, you could always stab them in the middle of the throat or their dick to immobilize them, but that’s harder to aim for, and slitting a throat quickly takes strength and precision that you don’t have yet.”
Once he’s sure that I understand, he takes the knife from my hand as he kisses me softly on the cheek, almost relieving me of a duty, in a way—silently telling me that everything is okay, and that I don’t have to do anything with the information today if I don’t want to. I meet Turk’s gaze again, seeing the pain and underlying fear. This isn’t fair. Yes, he’s a drug dealer and does horrible things every day, but he never did anything to me directly. If anything, he spared me from more agony. I shouldn’t blame him, stand by and subject him to this. I know deep down that this is wrong, at least on my part. I just used him as a test dummy because he’s the only person I have left to blame.
“I'm sorry,” I admit in a soft whisper, feeling my anger starting to rise and get the best of me. I don’t know why I say it, it just comes out, but I remember when he showed me a glimmer of sympathy that day. I guess I figure I could do the same for him.
“Don’t say that,” he says, with pity laced in his voice. “Because if I were to walk out of here right now, I’d tell my contact to tell King he was right about you two.” That cold wave of dread, and a hint of betrayal, crashes over me. He would really run back to Dranan? “It’s no offense kid, it’s just the life.” He shakes his head lightly in disbelief, like I should automatically understand; as if I’ve lived by the rules of a drug addict my entire life and didn’t free myself from that hell.
