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“I’m going to get us out. We’re so close, Nali. So close. I almost have enough saved up. Just a little bit longer.” Kai’s gaze strays to the corner of the meager room they’re in, zeroing in on a weathered side table beside the mattress in the corner.
“Promise me.” Nali’s form stops shaking as she sits up in place, pulling away from his lap as she wipes at her face.
She’s almost unrecognizable, her once delicate and sweet features swollen and bruised into a disfigured mask, one eye unable to even open. Kai’s gaze quickly drops to his hands, as if the sight of her injuries is too much for him to look at for any length of time, before he forces himself to stare determinedly in her one good eye.
“I promise,jamae. I will get you out of here.” Her eye starts to water, tears trailing down her cheeks in the same path of the countless that have fallen before, and as is now routine, Kai wipes them away gently before grabbing her frail hands in his. “I’m going to get us out of here and you’re going to live a long, long life far away from here, annoying the hell out of me for the rest of your days. I swear it.”
“I look forward to it,” she sniffles and he squeezes her hands tighter.
“You better start planning all your little tricks now. Wouldn’t want me to think you’ve lost your ability to get on every nerve I possess, would you?” Nali giggles softly, a small up ticking of her mouth like the sun shining after months of darkness in Alaska.
“Never!” She hiccups and pushes his shoulder gently. “You’re going to get so sick of me! Just wait and see.”
“Never.” And the word leaving Kai’s mouth sounds like a promise holding the weight of a thousand lifetimes.
* * *
“Nali! I’m home!” Kai enters the house, the state of it far less clean and well-kept than the first vision, like the life in the home has been sucked out and everything was simply left to rot. He pauses in the entryway, listening for movement and only just catches a scraping sound coming from below him.
Jumping into action, his movements are jerky and uncoordinated as panic propels him forward. Rounding into the living room, he almost slides past the door to the basement with his rapid momentum, but manages to grab the knob and jerk the door open before racing down the stairs.
The sight that greets him is one manifested from his worst fears, his darkest nightmares, because there on the punishment post that he and his sister have spent most of their lives…is his sister.
Just shy of sixteen, a year and a half younger than him, she hangs there lifelessly, Her pants around her ankles, her shirt in tatters and barely there on her torso, and her face bloody and bashed as if she tried to fight to no avail.
“Nali?” Kai’s voice is a plea, a wretched sound barely able to be forced from his throat. Animalistic and broken in countless ways.
A noise forces his now blurry gaze away from his sister’s unmoving form as he watches the monster–his step father–stumble to his ass on the couch, barely getting his pants around his waist, belt hanging open at the front. Beside his feet on the floor is the unmoving form of his mother, her small frame virtually untouched outside of the bloody hole in her forehead.
The monster must see where his gaze is because he chuckles dryly and starts to speak. “The bitch finally decided to fight back, didn’t she? Ha! Her timing is impeccable. Been wanting to put a bullet in her brain for years.”
Kai dismisses his mother’s body, his gaze returning to his sunshine, her small form still preternaturally still. He doesn’t say a thing, but when he tries to step toward her, the cocking of a gun stops him in place.
“Ah, ah, ah. I’m not done with her yet.” The monster’s voice is full of malice and black-hearted joy. “Huh. Maybe I should just kill you too and be done with all this. You were always way too much trouble than you’re worth.”
“Then do it.” Kai finally speaks, eyes razing like a wild inferno over the man on the couch, his gun pointed directly at him. When the monster doesn’t move though, Kai stomps towards him, unafraid of the destiny he’s inflicting upon himself. “Fucking do it! Kill me!”
“Kai?” The voice is soft and it pulls Kai’s attention, seeing the small stirrings of his sister hanging from the post. He changes direction immediately to go to her.
A shot rings out and Kai jerks forward, stunned into stillness.
In what feels like slow motion, he looks down, vaguely noting the red blossoming out on his gray shirt from a small hole on his stomach, like a rose in bloom.
He looks back up again.
His sister’s lifeless and glazed eyes stare back at him.
The bloody hole on her side far bigger than the one on his shirt.
He turns and charges.
Another shot rings out, but it doesn’t stop him.
He reaches the monster, barely taking in his wide, terrified gaze before Kai’s fists reign down brutal hits on his face like God himself is pursuing justice through his hands. There’s another shot, but Kai is undeterred, he continues thundering down his vengeance–his devastation–without stopping.
He doesn’t stop when the man no longer moves.
He doesn’t stop when his limbs start to ache and his chest burns.
