Page 155 of Degradation

She shudders, taking a step away, only, I grab her back, snatch her back, and hold her so that she’s pressed into me. “You’re not the weak, docile creature they forced you to be, Paitlyn. I know it and you know it too. How long are you going to allow people to continue to use you before you finally fight back?”

“I, I…” She stammers as her hands clutch at my t-shirt.

“I know inside there’s something dark, something as twisted and fucked up as me, it’s time you embraced that, time you let all that anger and rage out.”

“I can’t.” She snaps.

“Yes, you can.”

She screws her face up, giving me such a look of disdain, “Oh yeah? And how do you think I can when you took my sight? When you took my fucking eyeballs?”

I grin, hearing the fury finally starting to erupt in her. It’s about fucking time.

“You may not wield the blade, malkta, but I’m more than happy to do the dirty work for you. I’ll kill them all, I’ll butcher every last one of them, I’ll leave the world drowning in blood if that’s what it takes for you to be happy for just one moment.”

“That, that’s not happiness.” She replies. “That’s fucked up, that’s…”

“Love. Devotion. The truest form of worship there is.” I growl back. “How many times has God demanded we sacrifice for him? How many wars have been fought in his name? How many people slaughtered, and lands claimed? I will do all that and more, I will be your most loyal follower, your most devoted priest, if you let me.”

I can see the way she’s trembling at those words, the way she’s trying to wrap her head around it.

“And if I do?” She whispers. “If I…” She falters, turning her head in the direction of where her uncle is now starting to twist and jerk and really make some noise. “If I do that, I become like you, I become a monster.”

My lips pull into a grin at those words. “You think being a monster is a bad thing?” I reply. “Would you rather be something everyone feared or something everyone knew they could walk all over; they could easily break?”

She winces as the weight of those words clearly sinks in. “He used to bully me, belittle me, even when I was helpless child.” She states. “He never saw me as a person, he just saw what he could get from me.”

“So, isn’t it time you made him pay for it?” I ask.

She nods, slowly at first, hesitantly too. And that’s all the go-ahead I need. I stride towards him, pulling out a flip knife, and I start cutting, carving, slicing off bits of his flesh.

He screams, of course he screams, pathetic waste of space that he is, he doesn’t even try to be brave for a moment.

I rip the gag from his mouth and those pitiful sounds echo around us both, and they sound like a song, like a eulogy to all the pain and suffering Paitlyn has endured because of this waste of space.

I glance back at her, at where she’s stood, her expression now one of awe as she hears everything that’s going on.

Not for the first time, I wish she could see, I wish she could witness this.

I begin describing each slice, each cut, going into detail about the way his blood trails down, about the way he flinches and recoils and how he begs for mercy.

Oh, I have no intention of giving him it.

No intention of killing him anytime soon.

He’s going to endure weeks of this, he’s going to bleed and bleed, and only when Paitlyn decides it’s been enough, will I finally end it for him.

Pailtyn

He saidthatword. And not for the first time.

There’s a part of me that wants to dismiss it, to pretend that it’s bullshit, but the way he reacted, the way he went from a raging inferno to something calm, something still,that can’t be denied, can it?

I can hear my uncle’s screams. I can hear the way the chair is shifting that every moment of this is pure agony for him. Good, I hope it hurts. I hope he truly suffers, because he made me suffer, he made me endure the worst things imaginable, and even whenhe saw it with his own eyes, when we were at that party and he couldn’t deny what Gunther was doing, he didn’t have sympathy for me, he didn’t seem to give a shit what I was going through.

I shudder, shaking my head, trying to rid myself of another unwanted flashback.

I know my uncle is still here, tied to the chair, bleeding and whimpering, but right now, I can’t think about him, maybe it’s bloodlust, maybe it’s something else, but I feel like I’m high, possessed, that I’m as much of a psycho as Devin is.