Page 84 of Yours on the Canvas

Rubber mats cover the floor. Free weights line the wall. A speed bag hangs from a beam overhead. And the heavy bag, thick leather, cracked and work, sways slightly, like someone hit it not long ago.

This is where I’m going to live.

This is where I’m going to they’re going to train me, hurt me. And deep down in my soul, I know this will be the place that I die.

Ray steps back toward the stairs, his shadow stretching across the room.

“You’re gears in the locker,” he says, like this is normal. Like is is fine.

Dad throws my bag through the door of the cage, and his eyes meet mine, cold, empty, nothing behind them.

“Welcome back, son.” He says as he motions for me to step through the door into the cage. They’re locking me behind the cage. Behind the mesh.

Back into my kennel.

Ray laughs, and I watch as dad turns and closes the door, locking the padlock, sealing me inside my caged coffin. No windows. No fresh air. Just the buzzing yellow light and the smell of damp stone.

“You eat, you sleep and you train,” Dad says through the mesh. “Nothing more. We’ll be down in the morning to start your training.”

Then he turns and follows Ray up the stairs, and I hear the door shut and the deadbolt slam shut with a heavy, final thud that echo through the room, straight through my chest.

Their footsteps fade above me, and silence drops over me like a weight.

I stand there for a long time, staring at the cot, the mats,the walls that already feel too close. My legs move on their own, carrying me to the bed. I sit down, burying my face in my hands.

The quiet is suffocating, and in the quiet, everything hits me at one.

I try to breathe, but my chest won’t open. My throat is tight and my eyes burn with tears. Then, for some reason, I think of my mother. Her soft voice, warm hands. And her smile. The way she used to tell me I was meant for better things.

But then she’s gone, and I’m back with the men who only ever knew how to break me.

Back on the cot with the threadbare blankets, the pillow that’s hardly there, I lay down, pulling my knees up to my chest, curling myself into as small a ball as I can, and I try to think of Silas.

I feel the ghost of his fingers on my skin, his hands, the way my fingers would trace his tattoos, and watch as goosebumps would surface wherever my fingers would touch. But the thoughts hurt to much. Those memories, those feelings are to warm and gentle for a place like this.

Silas. I think. Sol, please come for me.

But I have to shut it down, I can’t think of him, because if I do, I’ll fall apart, and if I fall apart, they’ll go after Hale.

I swallow hard, staring at the far wall.

This is the beginning. My first night, my first step back into the nightmare I swore I’d never return to.

The light turns off, throwing me into suffocating pitch black. The darkness is a heavy black cloak laid across my body. I close my eyes, trying to keep it out. This is my life now. My future of darkness

And the worst thing about everything, isn’t Ray, or my dad.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see Silas again.

* * *

Without the sun, I count the passage of time by the rhythm of my father’s heavy boots descending the stairs each morning. He brings a plate of eggs and toast, fruit and cereal, sliding it across the floor under the cage door before retreating upstairs without a single word.

When the plate is empty, the training begins. Ray and my dad push me until my muscles burn with a white-hot fury, until my lungs feel like they are tearing apart, and my knuckles are split and bleeding against the heavy bag. They both spar with me, not to teach me, but to punish me, driving their fists into my ribs until I hit the rubber mats gasping for air.

Then they leave me alone in the dark to heal just enough so they can break me all over again.

To keep my sanity from slipping entirely away, I track the days on the wall near my cot. Using a jagged piece of loose metal I pried from the underside of the bed frame, I scratch deep lines into the rough concrete. Four vertical lines, crossed by a diagonal slash.