Suddenly I hear her voice again.
“I Violet, take you, Killian, to be my husband.”
Fuck. Is that in my head or is it really being played again?
I swallow down a lump and curl into a ball on the concrete floor of my hell, listening to her say her vows to him. Listening to him say them back.
It goes on for a few minutes while I close my eyes, trying to shut it out.
I’m not calling out for her again. Too many times I thought it was her and it turned out to be more of his games. I’d hear her laughing and then talking shit about me. Sayin’ how I’m not worth her time. How she wants to forget the three years she spent with me. Or worse, talking about how fucking great he is. Yeah, he’s fucking great, isn’t he? Torturing bastard.
And now she’s married to him. At least I’m not being forced to watch a video of it. Yet. Maybe that’s coming. He’ll probably make me watch a video of the marriage being consummated. Seven times I’ve been made to watch the video of him fucking her on his kitchen counter in some swanky pad when they got back from getting married in Vegas. Vegas was our place – mine and hers. And he fuckin’ married her there. All I could see in the video was their heads the way he edited it, but saw her face, heard her calling out his name while it was obvious what he was doing.
Doesn’t matter how many times I ask him to just fucking end me, he only laughs. He told me I’m on his timetable here. Paying for what I did three years ago. Paying for what I did for three years, being with her. For all the shitty things I said and did. For repeatedly fucking him over at and after Atlantic City. Like he’s so perfect. He says he might keep me barely alive for three years. He might end it any day now. I’m at the mercy of his whims. The mercy of the coins. The cards.
This is what I get for being cocky about it.
I thought he’d gone legit, gone soft.
I was so, so fucking wrong. As usual.
Kill Coulter is a fucking psycho.
Someone’s babysitting me these days, he’s hardly been here. The last beating I took from him, he took me out of the other cell and stuck me into this concrete box, left me in the dark for days or even weeks, warning that he was on his way to go pick her up so he could put a ring on her finger. He was gone a long time and then he was back for a day to play that video the first time. Since then, someone’s been throwing me down the dog food, the bottles of water. Playing the video on the wall down here with a projector or making me listen to the audio from their wedding. Been down here for weeks judging by the smell of me and the smell of my filth in the almost full bucket in the corner.
I can’t take much more of this. I think I lost my mind weeks ago. There’s only so much abuse a person can take. Only so much dark. So much fucking dog food and living in your own filth when you’ve got cuts, bruises, and can barely move because your kneecap has been blown to smithereens.
When he’s here and not kicking the shit out of me, fucking with the temperature either making me sweat or making me freeze, he’s doing brainfuck warfare shit with making me listen to her conversations, making me watch videos or slideshows.
Her sitting at her desk at her job, telling her friend how amazing her husband is.
Her in that swanky apartment, giggling while he touches her.
I feel around and find the can of dog food. This one has a tab on top; he usually throws them down to me without the top, meaning I get to scrape some off the cement before I dig in with my fingers for whatever remains. Unless it lands in my toilet bucket, which happened the other day and I went hungry and not for the first time. Can’t count how many times I’ve been left for days before he’d come or have someone else come in. I pull the tab and peel it back.
Instead of digging in with my fingers like usual, I rip the sharp edge of the can top across the inside of my wrist.
I laugh as my head falls back against the wall and warmth seeps out.
I’ve had enough of this shit. Only a matter of time before it ends.
I’m laughing and crying at the same time.
He told me I’d be sorry, and I am. I had moments in the other cell he had me in where I’ve pleaded, I’ve cried. I’ve begged him to end it with me. I know he won’t let me out of here alive and I think he’s gotta get bored of punishing me soon. Gotta get bored of flipping a coin and calling out what happens next if it’s heads or if it’s tails. Sick of making me play poker with him over and over.
I’ve told him how sorry I am for crossing him three years ago, but the truth is that I wasn’t sorry for having Violet. Not sorry for having love for the first time in my life. No, I’m not sorry that for once, I won something that actually mattered and made life good sometimes. Even if I did cheat to win it, even if in the end I did fuck it up. That’s not my fault I fuck things up. It’s because that’s all I know. What else happens when you grow up being told you’ll never amount to anything? That you’re worthless? I grew up with fuck ups and I grew up without love. I’ve got the shittiest luck… Nothing ever fucking goes right. If only my parents had been better, my life had been better I could’ve been better for her. I tried. I did. And yeah, I fucking failed.
But so did she. She promised me unconditional love. And the bitch lied. She doesn’t love me. She loves Kill and all his money.
My biggest mistake was walking up to him in the bar a few months back.
I should never have tried to again rub his nose in the fact that I won the girl that night and still had her. If I’d just walked away, things would’ve been so different. He wouldn’t have sent me to Atlantic City. She wouldn’t have gone with him to his place. Wouldn’t have eventually climbed on his cock like a cheating whore. I wouldn’t have been arrested. And fuck me… when I got out on bail I should’ve known to lay low. Or better yet, disappear. Didn’t matter, though, not really. Because I’m pretty sure he’s the one that made that happen. He got someone to get my ma to bail me out all while he was fucking my girl, planning to grab me and throw me in a trunk, drag me to this basement in the middle of nowhere by the ocean.
Ma told me she got an anonymous donation to bail me out with the promise of more money later. So long as she kept her mouth shut about it. She told me to lay low, not fuck up. I knew it didn’t smell right and I was paranoid it was Killian but thrilled to be out of that hellhole jail where I know people had it in for me from day one, so I did lay low at first. The minute I stepped foot outside Ma’s apartment, desperate to get fresh air because she wouldn’t stop bitching at me, it happened. I went to the store two blocks away to grab some beer, hiding my face, trying to fly under radar, but I got jumped and taken here by the Rossi brothers.
Thought they were gonna take me somewhere and do me in. But I wasn’t so lucky for it to end quick like that.
I’m not hurting so much right now. There’s a lot of blood trickling out of my wrist. I feel around in the darkness for the can top and pull it across my other wrist.
Too bad it wasn’t Mrs. Shear that raised me. Fuck, but she loves her dead son Danny. Wish I were Danny. Danny raised by a woman that loved me and believed in me. Danny that’s dead right now so doesn’t have to feel this pain, doesn’t have to survive on dog food.
Yeah. It should be over soon. Then Coulter’s thug won’t be able to taunt me anymore. Won’t see Kill’s face again, smug, showing me more pictures or videos of how happy Vi is with him. Won’t tell me how good her pussy feels taking his cock. Won’t turn on the sound of her laughing upstairs from here, talking about decorating his big house, talking about how he’s the best she’s ever had.