Page 24 of Carved Obsession (The Sanctum Syndicate #4)

Scarlet

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I was normal. Or better yet, average. If my body worked like others do. If my mind didn’t follow this unconventional path. And if my mental health wasn’t battered so early on.

I’ve made peace with most of that, no matter how much I get lost in thought about it. What I wonder now is if any or all of the above are the explanation for my mood .

That’s what my brother calls it. “Oh, Scar, you’re in that mood again, aren’t you?”

It’s not how I would describe my rage-filled, recklessly explosive, and wildly destructive temper that takes over in certain situations, but I appreciate him, Dad, and Carmen for not judging me. Not to my face, at least.

None of them have a moral leg to stand on, anyway, but neither do they have this thundering need inside their souls that requires feeding on human tears to survive.

None of them do what I do.

They don’t have to see pain.

Bend it to their will.

Harness it.

I do.

“P—please . . . you don’t need . . . to do this.” The plea comes out slow, slurred.

Just like all the others before it.

These people never learn. It makes me wonder if I give off a merciful-woman vibe. Maybe I need to pick a bigger sledgehammer.

Yup. That must be it.

My cheeks strain with a wide grin as I turn away from the heavy-duty steel worktable Mr. Cohen currently lies on, fully strapped in. Though, he’s only tied up so he doesn’t accidentally fall on his face while I fucking punish every single bone in his body.

With the drug currently running through his system, he wouldn’t be going far, even without the straps.

Benzodiazepine is a marvelous substance.

It gives me the opportunity to subdue a full-grown man who’s much stronger than me, while keeping their ability to speak and feel pain. Well, kind of speak.

But the pain part is the most important one. I need them to feel it all.

I grab the red-handled, eight-pound sledgehammer, balancing it in both my hands as I return to the worktable.

“Much better, right?” I carefully swing the tool up and rest it on my shoulder, looking the asshole in the eyes the whole time.

He blinks between me and the offending article, gaze widening with every passing second. “No, oh God. What are you—”

“See, Mr. Cohen, I have an anger-management problem. Had it since I can remember. But it’s not just any ol’ anger issue. It’s one of those that could get me locked up. When it overcomes me, the only way to appease it is to make people like you hurt. Bad.” I pause, watching him begin to tremble.

Though, with the effects of the drugs, it looks more like a pathetic, weak twitch.

“The reason why it would get me locked up, not exclusively in a prison, but in one of those darling places for the criminally insane, is because beating you isn’t what tickles my nervous system. Your pain is. Your tears.”

The man begins to whimper, a soft, pitiful sound that stops the moment I cock my head. He shakes his, defiance breaking through his gaze.

“No . . . I won—no tears,” he mutters.

I shake my head, snickering. “That’s what this is for.” I raise the sledgehammer high above my head, waggling my brows as I swing it onto his thigh.

The thump comes before the stomach-curdling splintering.

A visceral scream rips out of his throat, bouncing against the concrete walls.

Pain penetrates his expression, and my gaze fixates on his eyes.

On the glassy sheen thickly covering them, the trembling lids, and the angry blood vessels webbing through the white.

I can even see the agony in the irises. A window to a pain-laced soul.

Such a special, special thing, pain is.

A vulnerability that clouds the mind. The judgment.

It spikes emotions and turns you against even the people you love.

It’s a unique physical reaction. Because no other has such effects over the human mind, the body, and the soul.

Not just his—mine too.

His response to pain is a soothing song to my aching, explosive soul.

After raising the sledgehammer, I bring it down on Cohen’s knee in one clean strike, with much more determination in my swing.

Bones crack on vicious notes, sending a deafening vibration through my chest. His scream doesn’t follow immediately.

An imploding shriek comes first—the rejection of defeat.

For one second, Cohen thought he could do it, but when pain comes, it seems to erase their minds.

Pain becomes all they know. All they can process.

But his screams are my focus now. They fill me with mad need.

It’s funny, really, how much these bellows and cries used to annoy me.

No matter if I knew the theory of it all, there was a clear disconnect in my mind between the concept of pain and this irrational, pointless noise.

It’s hard to understand, let alone feel compassion for something you will never relate to.

Years have passed since I began this therapy , and their wails have become my soundtrack. I’m learning. Associating. Adjusting.

“Please, Lord, plea—Sav—” he begs, slurred words joined by more whimpers deeply etched with pain.

“There’s no salvation for you here.”

Raising the sledgehammer, I let the man see it for a few excruciating moments, right up there, about to crash down on his bones once more. You’d think that seeing what’s coming makes it easier. Gives you time to prepare for it.

Spoiler alert—it doesn’t.

His screams fall into a constant, defeated cry, head lolling to the side as he sinks into the agony of his broken bones. And just like that, defeat comes. Tears stream steadily from his eyes.

I rest the sledgehammer against the wall and grab the green glass vial from a nearby table. The vial is a pretty little thing, made of thin, delicate glass, narrow at the mouth and bottom, round and fat in the middle. It has a tall stopper, long and thin—it looks like an old perfume bottle.

I remove the stopper as I reach the man, holding his head to the side as I place the open vial at the corner of his eye.

He’s too blinded by his suffering to understand what I’m doing. Or even acknowledge it. He simply cries, body cracked open to make way for his broken soul.

And it will be broken.

Men like him deserve so much more.

“This is what happens, Cohen. This is the consequence of your crimes. All of them.”

His cries grow as he appears to register my calm words.

“You hurt the innocent. The voiceless ones. Hunt them for sport. Torture them. Parade them like trophies in narcissistic photos on social media. Then chop off their heads and display them on your walls.”

His body trembles as he tries to pull his head out of my grip. “It’s...called hun—hunting.”

“No, my darling, it’s called murder. Hunting is what animals do when they seek prey they plan to feed themselves and families with.

Hunting is what human animals do when they have the same need, and they honor every part of that soul.

Use it, so no part is wasted. So it didn’t die in vain.

Animals are different from us, but we have a different type of intelligence—we understand suffering, both physical and emotional.

We understand torture, and that a kill for a purpose like this must be quick. ”

Satisfied with the amount of tears I collected from him, I close the vial and place it back on the table. When I return to Cohen, I grab the sledgehammer again, and without warning, I bring it down on his hip, grunting sharply when it shatters beneath my rage.

“You don’t. You choose cruelty.”

Smash.

“You choose pain and waste.”

Smash.

“You choose selfishness and ego.”

Smash.

“And I choose the same for you.”

Two more times, I bring down the tool on both his ankles. His screams lose themselves somewhere in the background, where I don’t really give a shit about them anymore.

That pain in his expression, the violent twitch of his body as his nerves and heart acknowledge and try to live through it, has me transfixed.

“Then you had to come back from your bloody safaris and hurt animals here.” I shake my head.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Lion cubs are not pets, motherfucker. And they’re certainly not fucking punching bags.

I know what you’ve done. I’ve seen the mangled little bodies.

I’ve seen the photos you took as fucking trophies.

I saw your smile as you held that poor soul.

I wretched and vomited through it all, but I still looked.

I looked because I had to feel that horror in the pit of my soul and decide what punishment is the most appropriate for you.

” One deep breath later, I say the next words with a wide grin on my lips.

“Well, I have decided, darling. And I still don’t think the punishment fits the crime. ”

He opens his mouth, attempting to form words, but somewhere before my eyes, red seeps in, emotions spiking with the thought of the other reason I’m here.

The man I would love to do this to too. The emotional pain he causes me.

The fucking heartache as he threatens my parents.

The absolute rage at the audacity to cheat on me with my best friend and then refuse the divorce.

All of it blows into me all at once, and when I smash that sledgehammer into Cohen’s shoulder, the wail that rips out of him is so loud, so visceral, so charged and guttural, it makes me pause. Not stop completely, but admire.

There it is...that splendid moment when humanity is gone and all that’s left is a meat-sack of pure agony. I harness it carefully, storing all the small reactions in my imaginary filing cabinet.

Maybe I should write a horror novel someday. I will have a detailed list of physical reactions to pain and fear to choose from—no need to scour the internet for examples.

But my rage is not gone yet.

The moment to admire is over.