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Chapter Eleven
Alena
Icut off my scream, swallowing it back as his fist comes again, this time hitting my exposed stomach. It steals the breath from my lungs in a grunt as I swing backwards. When I can breathe again, I spit at him and wheeze out another laugh. “Bessie cow, Bessie cow of the farm…” I singsong.
“Shut her the fuck up before Lola kills us,” the other snarls, and his fist is the last thing I see as it connects with my face, knocking me out.
When I wake up again, my cell is empty. I feel blood running from my nose, my stomach cramps and aches, and my breathing is laboured. Shit, did they break my ribs again?
Everything is silent, including the man next door, and as I hang there, memories begin to crowd my mind. Of roaming hands groping me, cocks ripping me open, blood running down my thighs, and the screams of the innocent woman I killed. I can’t take it. He doesn’t want to talk, I know that, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m using him as a distraction until they kill him or I’m free. Just as I’m about to open my mouth, his deep, rumbling timbre sounds through the hole, and I turn my head to see him hunched down, trying to look at me.
“You alive?”
“Isn’t that my line? Yeah, I’m alive, I’ve survived a lot worse,” I croak, and he grunts.
“Least you’re not dead, I hate the smell of rotting corpses.”
“Such a poet.” I grin, and he goes quiet. “That’s it? That’s your whole conversation? Cow Bessie is right, you’re not a talker.”
“Nothing to talk about,” he retorts.
“No?” I fight back the memories. That’s what they wanted, for me to remember I belong to them, that I’m a monster. A dog, like they call me. “What’s your name?” He doesn’t respond, so I try something else. “Assassin. So you kill people, right?”
He doesn’t answer, and my voice lowers as the words escape without conscious thought. “Does it ever get easier?” My question drops into the silence, and I feel his gaze on me. I refuse to look away, to be ashamed. I did what I had to, but I have to know from a professional… Does this feeling ever go away? This dirty, wrong, guilty feeling?
“Why?” he retorts.
“I-I had to kill someone. They were innocent.” I swallow down the pain, hating the weakness in my voice. “Does it get easier?”
“People always say no. They say it scars their soul. That they never forget their eyes or their names or the feel of the blood or the sound of the shot.” He grunts and then pauses. “The truth is, I’ve killed so many people, they are a blur. I feel almost nothing after I pull the trigger. I’m just… empty. It wasn’t easy the first time, but it wasn’t hard, it just felt… right. Which in turn felt wrong. Why should it feel right to kill? But as the light left his eyes and my blade dripped with his blood, I realised I was good at it. Really fucking good.” His breathing is heavier now. This wasn’t what I was expecting, but for some reason, it settles me. “I’m a monster for my crimes. My soul is so black, I will burn forever. I know that, but I don’t fucking care. One more body, one more death, it means nothing to me.”
“Then why did you retire?” I ask, remembering the earlier conversation.
He goes silent again, and I think I pushed it too far. “It was too easy. Too fucking simple. Nothing challenged me anymore, nothing made me feel alive. During one mission, I killed an entire camp of people, and after, while I stood surrounded by bodies, ready to start clean-up, I saw a little girl, crying and screaming for her mother with a bear in her arms. Yet I felt nothing.” His chains slink. “Not guilt for taking her family away, not worry, just nothing. Calm, collected. She was a loose end, but I couldn’t pull the trigger, not anymore. It shouldn’t be that easy.” He looks at me again. “It should hurt, you should struggle. If you don’t, what makes you better than them?”
“It’s not heroes and villains.” I laugh cruelly. “Sometimes, you have to fight evil with evil.”
“Hero? I’ve never been a hero, little girl, so don’t expect me to save you,” he growls out.
I’m angry now.
“I’m not, I’ll save my fucking self, asshole,” I snap. “You killed. You didn’t care. So what? Were the people you targeted killed for a reason? Were they bad people? One life to save hundreds and all that bullshit. I think you’re lying to yourself about it. You liked the way it felt, you liked it and that scared you, so you ran.” I hear him growl, and I know I’ve hit a nerve. “I heard your breathing, the pleasure in your voice as you spoke. You’re a killer, good for you. You enjoy the work. Why is that so wrong? This world is filled with pain, death, and evil fucking bastards. They need killing. Enjoy it, ‘cause they sure as shit will enjoy torturing you, assassin.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he snarls.
I laugh and turn away. “Better find that assassin in you again, Boogeyman, or you’ll die like so many did at your hands. You won’t find redemption or forgiveness here, if that’s what you’re thinking—there is only death. Death and pain. So why not do what you do best? Kill.”
He doesn’t reply.
“Looks like we aren’t so different after all, Boogeyman. We were both betrayed, and now I’m betting you want revenge just as much as me. Wanna team up?” I joke.
A small, cruel smile tips up his bloody lips. I see the side of it.
‘The Boogeyman and the Bitch’ has a nice ring to it.
A civvie and an assassin, side by side… worlds apart. He lived in the dark, me in the light, but none of it matters down here.
Here in the shadows, there’s only survival and revenge.
Vengeance is my only goal, and maybe I can use him to achieve it. He might be a killer, a murderer, but I’m what they made me.
I’m not empty like him.
I’m so full of rage and hate, it blinds me. It might even get me killed, but I’ll take some of those bastards down with me if it’s the last thing I do.
To kill a monster, I’ll become a monster, even one bigger than the Boogeyman.
He’s wrong. I don’t need a hero or even a partner, I just need a weapon.
