Page 3 of Your Soul Is Ours

The night passes me by. Everyone’s happy. I get to my supplier’s door and have to hand over the money, taking more product. I look into his glassy eyes. He’s higher than his clients. As I walk away from his apartment, I ignore the hallways lined with grime, yellowing walls, and a staircase that creaks more than it should. Glassy-eyed souls sit at the entrance of the building, and the outdoors are covered in people attempting to get higher than the clouds in the sky.

I get into my car and drive home to the two-story structure. ‘A house is not a home without a family.’ The cross stitch in the living room pisses me off. My father should have thought about that before he gave me that last belt lashing. Now the house is just a house, a structure filled with memories that hurt, an empty space filled with too many ghosts. I grab a smoke and light it up, walking out the backdoor to the shed. I turn on the lights, inhaling the musty scent. As I pass the crumbling brick wall, the vibration of my steps causes more of the mortar to break off. It’s at least a hundred years old. The house came with a pre-made playpen for bodies. I’ll have to spend the next few days digging to make them disappear. Pushing through the plastic panels in the entranceway, I duck through into the larger room, the low ceilings the bane of my existence.

Old pallets and garbage from the past owners lay in the corner. Flicking on the lights, the girl in the metal crate twists andsquints. Her eyes are clearer than yesterday, but I know she desires to piss away her life, filling her veins with more drugs than the day before.

“What do you want from me? I don’t owe anything,” she screams at me.

Money isn’t what I want. I want to eradicate the disease from the streets. Taking a long puff, I sit across from her on a wooden chair. “How do you feel?”

“Feel? I feel like fucking shit, you fucking asshole. How the fuck do you think I feel?”

“You stopped puking? Have you learned your lesson?” I ask her, stubbing out my cigarette. I cross the room to stand in front of the metal crate.

“This is to get me clean? You are the fucking asshole who sells the drugs. If you don’t want people hooked, maybe don’t fucking sell them?”

“Oh, if life was only so easy.” I grab the rubber mallet. As soon as I open the door, she breaks into a sprint. The sound of the mallet hitting the back of her head echoes through the room as she hits the floor like a rag doll.

I pick her up from the ground and place her on the table, locking her wrists and ankles with the restraints. Then I hook up the five-gallon bucket to the hoses under the sink of the table. Entering the small room off to the side, I stand surrounded by my tools, picking the ones I want most: pliers and a knife.

Working on her teeth doesn’t take long. She doesn’t have very many it’s a side effect of the poison she chooses to partake. Won’t be her problem much longer. Placing them in the container for drying, I take them back to the room. The table is on an angle, propped up on cement blocks so the blood runs towards the sink. I watch her until her eyes flicker open.

“What the fuck?! What the fuck?!” Her lips release a piercing scream as she wrestles against the restraints, her muscles tautand pulsating beneath the skin, but her thin frame is no match for the leather ties I’ve made. The air reeks of body odour and urine, creating an overpowering stench.

They always say the same things. One time, I’d love for someone to say thank you. Would it be so hard to show some gratitude to the man willing to end your poor excuse of a life?

The knife slides over her jugular, cutting open the skin smoothly. Crimson pours in waves, and I watch as it travels to the head of the table mixing with her stringy hair, and falling through the hoses to the bucket. She grows weaker as her essence leaves her body. The life she led was nothing but a waste, and there’s one less soul sucker left in the world.

After washing my tools, I bring them back to the tiny room, untying the long, heavy plastic apron. With a final glance around the musty room, I verify that the stone walls and cement flooring are pristine, exactly as I want them to be. I leave to let gravity do its wonderful magic. Riding my high, I drive around town.

Detouring to Marla’s, I watch her sitting in her living room chair, the light reflecting off the blade in her hand. What I wouldn’t give to feel her under me, wrap my hands around her throat as she begs for more. Make her really feel truly alive for once.

I watch her slice open the skin on her arm, the beads of blood forming before dripping down her flesh. The relief she must feel, I know that I will do anything to bring her the same euphoria. When her head suddenly turns, I take a step back. After she sets down the blade, she disappears to the bathroom and then lays on her bed.

I wait patiently, I observe until I'm convinced she's drifted off to sleep. As I pull open the window, I listen to the sound of her soft breathing, the only movement being the rise and fall of her chest. I open the closet door near the bathroom and grab some gauze and tape. I sit on the edge of her bed, gazing down at theoutline of my perfect dark angel beneath the sheet. Running my thumb over the beads of blood on her skin, I bring it to my lips. The metallic tang of her essence lingers in my mouth, binding me to her. Wanting nothing more than to devour her, bring her to the edge of pleasure and have her moan out my name, I hold myself back. I won’t touch her until she wants me just as badly as I desire her. I’m not a complete monster.

Instead, I cover her arm, gently taping the gauze in place. I’ve been doing little things like this for months, she needs to take better care of herself. Sometimes I bring a small amount of groceries, other times I’m bandaging her. I will do whatever it takes to keep her here with me.

I leave her bedside and pocket the blade before I leave quietly out the window. She must learn that no one can hurt her, and I’ll do everything possible to stop her from hurting herself.

Three

Marla

Two days without my mother makes me almost feel like a normal person. The haunting ghost of silent treatment curls around me like a hug from an old friend. I know that no matter how hard I try, she will never love me. There is nothing I canever do to make her see me or care, and the deafening silence, while lonely, brings me to a place I never knew I needed. My wish to feel has simmered to a low, dull buzzing in the back of my head, the fresh cut lines on my skin a stinging reminder. I’m unsure where the blade has gone. I’ve turned my apartment upside down but cannot find it, details blur during a cutting session, and often I don’t remember where I’ve put things. When I’m done here at the centre, I’ll go to the hardware store to buy another.

I got here an hour before it opened, hoping to beat the rush and get a number in the mid-fifties. The line is already long and I wonder if an intake will actually help me. Telling someone everything I can within the time restrictions, exposing the family secrets that keep me subdued, quiet, and invisible—would it really fix me? Would I be able to move on with my life? I don’t know, but I look around as we enter through the doors. The two older ladies who always come on my day are missing. They remind me of my grandmother before she passed away. Their presence gave me something to look forward to, and now I fear that has been ripped from me.

“Hey, do you know the two ladies that usually sit there?” I ask the man wearing a hat reaching for a number at the same time as me.

“They were chosen yesterday. They went through the back and didn’t come out.” His mouth forms into a pressed line, not offering any sort of condolences.

I wander to the back, where I always stand, sitting because the news hurts more than I want it to. The rush of emotions covers me. I run my tongue over the inside of my lip to stop the tears.I didn’t even know their names. The government decided they weren’t worth saving. I fucking hate that they get to choose. Just because they were older doesn’t mean that once they were better mentally, they wouldn’t contribute to the economy. I loathe thatmoney will always decide someone’s worth. The focus should be on people, not the financial benefit.

Hours pass. As the numbers crawl along, emotion bubbles in my chest, and grief runs through me, but I don’t want to cry here. Knowing from experience, I cannot cause a scene. Drawing attention to myself is the last thing I want to do, and I've learned that the hard way.

“Hey.” His voice again. I glance at him as I swallow the tears. He’s wearing dark wash jeans, black boots, a grey band tee, and his hat is backwards.

“Hi.”

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