Page 84 of Under Your Scars
“Don’t you fucking dare. Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Her.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Neil snarls, pulling his puny dick out of his pants and pumping it a few times. I can’t let this happen to her again. I won’t be able to live with myself. I frantically look around the room, trying to find anything to help me break the glass. I can’t find anything. Nothing but a dozen dead men scattered around the room and an axe held tightly in my fist. My breath turns panicked as Neil lines himself up with Elena’s entrance.
I reach into my utility belt and pull out a small vial of strange clear liquid. I bought it on the dark web, and it’s said to push your body to its limits. I don’t know what it’s made of. It could be straight meth for all I know, but I don’t care. I’m fucking desperate. I plunge the needle roughly into the meat of my bicep and press down to release the contents into my veins.
It burns, and then I feel my heart begin to race. My vision tunnels and my body begins to tremble. The axe suddenly feels featherlight in my hands and I start swinging it against the glass again. At first, it does nothing, merely bounces off the surface with a loud thud—but as my body grows accustomed to the mystery substance each strike of the axe makes the cracks grow wider and deeper. I start grunting and roaring like a wild beast to try and push out every last drop of strength in my body.
I swing again, and nearly faceplant onto the stage when the glass shatters, covering Elena in dozens of cuts. A thick shard implants itself into the meat of her thigh and she barely flinches. Valenti breaks out into a sprint, disappearing behind the velvet drapes. Neil cowers backwards, his hand over his dick as he scoots back and back as I stalk towards him like a predator that’s finally cornered its prey. I shoot him in both his kneecaps, and he writhes against the floor, screaming out in pain and crying for help.
“Please!” Neil begs as I take his arm and handcuff him to the decorative brass pipe along the edges of the stage. “I—I—I have a wife and kids, man. I’m sorry!”
“I don’t give a fuck! Now shut your goddamn mouth or I’ll kill them too.”
He bites his lips to keep silent as I quickly kneel in front of Elena, my hands hovering above her in caution. She’s trembling, rocking herself back and forth in the fetal position. She’s pressing her head into the fluorescent white tiles beneath her. Her eyes are shut tight, tears leaking from them and dripping off her nose and cheek to the floor. With my own trembling fingers, I slowly push a strand of hair out of her face.
“Angel,” I coo softly. Her bottom lip trembles and then a guttural sob escapes her throat, so extreme that it wrecks through her body, and she chokes on her own broken spirit. “Baby, it’s over.”
“Hey.”
A feminine voice from behind me has me spinning on my heels and aiming a pistol at her head. “God damn it,” I grunt at Kate. “I almost blew your brains out.”
I notice she’s holding some clothes in her arms, and she very cautiously peeks over my shoulder to look at Elena. Her eyes flicker back to me, like she’s waiting for my permission, and I give her a subtle nod. She tip-toes around me like she’s still afraid I’ll shoot her. She crawls onto the stage and kneels next to Elena’s naked body.
“Hey, pipsqueak,” she murmurs, carefully squeezing Elena’s scratched up and lightly bleeding hand. “Don’t go all looney on me, you’ll get through this.”
Elena slowly opens her eyes, bloodshot and glassy with tears still profusely leaking from them. She makes eye contact with me, but there’s no emotion in her honey brown irises.
When Elena is happy, or laughing, those subtle gold flecks in her eyes sparkle brightly even in the dimmest of light. When she’s angry or upset, those flecks turn almost orange to match the fire raging in them.
Right now, Elena doesn’t have any gold in her eyes at all. They’re so lifeless. Emotionless. The only sign of life in her at all is the uneven rise and fall of her chest as she cries blankly in my direction. Kate and I both share a look, and silently agree that she’s better suited to dress Elena, even though it feels like a fucking dagger in my chest to let someone else take care of her.
“I’m going to put some clothes on you now,” Kate announces. “Shirt first.”
I watch carefully as Kate puts the shirt and sweatpants on Elena, as gentle as someone would dress a newborn baby. Elena doesn’t react, and I’m certain that she’s so dissociated that she doesn’t even realize what’s happening.
Thank God Kate seems to have a soft heart for her friend, because after a lot of careful touches and tender words, she manages to convince Elena to sit up. Kate pats away some broken glass that’s caught in Elena’s hair. She gives her friend an encouraging smile and then takes a step back as if to say, ‘allyours’.
I shake my head. “You need to take her to the hospital. Valenti got away, and I have to deal with that fucker before I leave.” I roughly point at Neil, who whimpers when he catches my fiery stare. “I can’t be seen with her. Please do this for me. For her,” I beg, even clasping my fingers together as if I’m praying to her. “I’ll pay you—”
“You don’t have to pay me. Not for this.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, and nod, walking around her towards Neil, but she digs her fingers roughly into my arms. It causes me to throw my head over my shoulder, silently asking what she wants.
She lets me go and saunters over to Neil, and then harshly stomps on his dick with the pointy heel of her stiletto. She huffs and then turns around as if it didn’t happen.
I wait patiently until Kate and Elena are in the elevator before my heavy boots reverberate against the floor with each step towards him. His breath quickens. If I didn’t have my mask on, he’d be able to see the absolutely malevolent scowl painted across my face.
I kneel next to him, taking a deep breath before pulling out one of my pistols and reloading it. He cowers away from me, but he can’t get very far. I grab him by the top of his head because he has no hair to rip out, and I tilt it back slightly before sticking the pistol in his mouth. Sweat drips down from my brow into my eyes as he begins to gag at the intrusion.
“Oh? What’s that? You don’t like having something forcefully shoved into your body?” He shakes his head and whines, pulling a sadistic chuckle from my chest. “There are not enough words in the English language to describe the shit I’m going to do to you.”
He cowers away from me further with each passing moment as I describe ingruelingdetail each heinous method of torture I’ll inflict on him. He stays quiet through my entire monologue, save for his pathetic whimpers.
“Do you believe in God?” I ask. He nods, and I laugh. “Look at me.Look at me. I’m your God now. Do you want to know why? Because I’m the only motherfucker on this planet that can show you mercy. Start praying. You’ll need it.”
I take the pistol out of his mouth and quickly replace it with a wide, serrated hunting knife. I watch as blood pools in the corners of his mouth as I slowly press it into his lips. He tries to push me away with his casted arm.
“What did I tell you the last time you saw me, Neil?” He stays quiet, and I can see it in his eyes that he has no idea what I’m talking about. I remove the knife from his mouth and press the tip of the blade over his dick. “I told you that if you ever touched her again, I would kill you.”
