Page 22 of The Devils Melody
“Taking a man’s life isn't a game, Kage. Tell me everything. Tell me why you’re doing this.Now!”
“You always knew I had a fucked up childhood, Nox.” He lets out a deep sigh, picking up the polaroid closest to his feet. “I made it out alive. Barely, but alive. These kids weren’t so lucky.”
Kage stabs the knife into Trevor's leg and punches the guy straight in the face and doesn't stop as he screams, “Were they? Did any of them make it out of this hell hole, you piece of shit?!”
I don't need the answer to know the truth. All the missing pieces start clicking into place. Everything I questioned when I was younger. Why Kage was so quiet and closed off when I first met him as a kid. Why he would flinch anytime my father, Silas, got too close to him.
Kage shifts on his feet, the air between us thick with the weight of what he's about to reveal. “I didn’t want you to ever find out about this, especially this way.” he says, voice low and void of emotion now. “But you were bound to find out eventually.”
I swallow audibly, the sound echoing in the small room. I know this moment will forever alter the course of my life. “Kage. What happened?”
He doesn’t answer at first. He just stands there, eyes on me, the silence dragging out until I feel like I might implode.
Then, so low I almost miss it, “The kids in these photos? This was my life, Nox. I was taken advantage of. Touched bya man who was supposed to be a father figure to me. Who was supposed to take care of me. I was a fuckingchild. He told me that it was normal. He would beat me, rape me, torture me. It started when I was still practically in diapers and went on for fucking years. But I couldn’t tell anyone. He threatened to kill mom.” His voice breaks and I have to fight back the vomit rising in the back of my throat.
“I tried to run once,” Kage continues in a whisper, looking off into the distance as if he’s reliving the moment. “I made it just far enough that I thought I had a fucking chance. But then he dragged me back and made me regret eventhinkingabout telling someone. Safe to say I never tried that shit again. I guess after a while I just became...numb to it. Just resided with the fact that that was my life.”
Tears burn at the corners of my eyes but I refuse to let them fall. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I’ve never told anyone. I didn’t want to burden others with myfeelings.” Kage sounds disgusted, almost as if he shouldn’t be affected by a sick piece of shit taking advantage of a goddamn child. “So now I spend my free time finding these pedo fucks and ridding the world of their evil. One. By. One.”
I look between Kage and the sack of shit strapped to the chair and suddenly, having his own dick in his mouth isn’t enough. Isn’t enough justice for the kids that suffered endlessly at his hands. For Kage.
“His name was Dan. Some lowlife fuck my mom started dating when I was four. I don’t blame her, though. My real father left her when she got knocked up at seventeen, so she had no one to help her take care of me. Dan was older, some big time drug dealer. He made enough money to give my mom whatevershe needed.”
I don't move as he speaks. I just stay as still as possible. Now that he’s finally letting me in, I don’t want to scare him off.
“Dan was great to my mom. Spoiled her. Spoiled me, even. But I quickly learned that behind every kind gesture was a very high price.” He stares off into nothing, transported back into that dark time. “He tried to kill me once. Beat me within an inch of my life when I was twelve. I was in a coma for weeks, and when I woke up my memories were fucked. Bits and pieces of my life, missing. Dan disappeared after that but I never forgot him, even if he was just a hazy memory. That’s how I ended up with you and Silas. He’s the one who took care of me, who comforted my mom when she thought she was going to lose me.
“When I turned seventeen, I went looking for him. The man who'd haunted my childhood. Turns out, ‘Dan’ wasn’t even his real name. That revelation made everything harder. I had no money for a private investigator, no connections. Just rage and a shit internet connection.
“So I went deeper. Past the surface web, into the filth where monsters think they can hide. That’s where I found Jimmy. He calls himself my handler, but he’s more than that. He’s the brain behind every move we make. Jimmy can trace anyone who dares to post children online, like a digital bloodhound sniffing out the disease. But I’m the blade that cuts the cancer out. One name at a time. One scream at a time. Because I know what it’s like to be a kid with no one coming.”
I remember the first time Kage came home to us. I was fourteen and my dad told me Kage had been in a car accident and him and Grace would be staying with us. He didn’t talk much. Didn’t look anyone in the eye. Most days, he stayed locked away in the guest room, only emerging toeat or use the bathroom. At night, I’d hear him; raw screams, torn from somewhere deep within his soul. He never remembered them the next morning, or at least pretended he didn’t. I used to sit outside his door in the dark, my back against the cold wall, just listening. I don’t know why. Maybe because I never knew what it felt like to be completely alone and he shouldn’t have had to either.
One night, I cracked. I knocked gently, almost as if I didn’t want to spook a wounded animal. “Kage?” I whispered. “You okay?”
Silence. Then the door creaked open a few inches. Just enough to see one eye, bloodshot and shining. “You heard that?” he asked, voice low and raspy, like it hurt to speak.
I nodded. “I hear it every night.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just stared through me as if I was a ghost that refused to leave.
“Want to come in?” he finally said. That was the first time he let anyone in. Into his room, into the maze of whatever haunted his mind. We made a pact that night, that it would always be him and I against the world. I didn't know it at the time, but we were about to ignite something far more dangerous than either of us was ready for.
Trevor wheezes then, a rough wet sound that brings me back to the present. To me standing in this house. To Kage and the pictures that surround us.
“Kage, I?—”
Before I could take a single step towards the bleeding man, Kage pulls a gun from his waistband and aims it at Trevor’s head. “Any last words before your brains decorate the wall?” he asks, voice flat and emotionless, as though death itself had learned how to speak.
Trevor starts sobbing, his voice cracked, high-pitched and pathetic, every syllable making my skin crawl. “Please,”he choked. “I—I didn’t touch them. I just kept them here, I swear to God, I didn’t touch them?—”
“God. You fucks always invoke Him at the end. As if He’s going to show up and save you.” Kage laughs, pressing the gun hard into Trevor’s forehead. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no one is coming. Tell the Devil I said ‘hello’.”
I move towards Kage, careful not to step in the spreading pools of blood. Reaching for the gun, I meet his eyes. “Trust me,” I whisper, calm and steady, even though I feel far from either.
He hesitates. His finger steady on the trigger, jaw clenched, weighing the risk. He’s trusted the wrong people before. Once was all it took to turn trust into a loaded weapon. But after a breath, he hands it over. Our fingers brush, the touch electric. Hot and charged, intimate in a way nothing else in this room was. Blood was still dripping in the background, a man dying at our feet and somehow, this was the closest I’ve ever felt to him.
