Page 22 of Jazz
“No can do, babe.”
“Fuck, Thrash. If you’re here with these fuckers, you’re in deep shit. Get me out of here. Get me back to my brother. The Kings will forgive you; they’ll owe you.”
“So, this is why the Kings have been all over us, huh?” Thrash answered, but he wasn’t answering me.
“Aye, mate. Thought we’d let you see the prize.”
“Thrash. Get me out of here. Fury will sort it out. Get me back to the Kings, and he has to.”
“Chase, shut that bitch up, will ya?” the soft Scottish words stung far more than they should have.
The metal groaned, the winch lifted me, pulling my weight back onto the tips of my toes again. The burn of pain. And then the shriek. My shriek as muscles tore in my shoulders. I screwed my eyes shut behind the blindfold, willing the pain to stop,focussing on the tiny simmering bubble of anger and hate in my stomach.
“Fuck, I could look at that sight all fucking day,” Thrash’s low drawl echoed in the space.
“Aye, mate. We’ve all been doing that. Grim is proper taken with her.”
“Grim has seen her?”
“Aye. He wants her. Nobody,” there was a pause from the Scottish rumble. “And I mean absolutely fucking nobody is to touch her, unless me or Grim says so.”
No one seemed to have been making any noise anyway, but now everyone had gone quieter.
“So, Thrash. You going to rescue her and score brownie points from the Kings?” Dougal asked again.
“Thrash,” I called high-pitched, my voice betraying me.
“Nah,” he interrupted. “We all know the Kings are on borrowed time. There’s no fucking way I’m crossing Grim. He can have her. I fancy my bollocks more than Kings’ forgiveness.”
“You fucking ginger cunt!” I shouted, the bubbling, simmering anger reaching boiling point. “They’ll fucking gut you. From your neck to your balls. Fucking cunt!”
Footsteps. Heavy steps. They grew louder. More urgent. The chain above me groaned again. My arms yanked hard above my head, nothing under my feet but air. And still, the chain creaked and grunted. I could hear it winding over and over somewhere above me. All my weight pulled on my wrists and my shoulders.
The pain sharpened and then blurred. White-hot, and then a dull, constant throb. Every movement upwards rocked my body. My weight see-sawing on my wrists. And now they hummed with pins and needles, whilst a dark empty vat opened outwards from the middle of my shoulders, pain so severe it wasn’t there anymore.
The winch kept eating the slack, and I kept rising until the air around me changed. Thinner. Colder. At first, I held on, counting breaths, pinning the pain down like something I could control. Then the chain wound upwards again, and something inside of me frayed. My muscles. My mind. My resolve.
My wrists were raw fire. The numb edges of my hands jittered into uselessness, and my shoulders felt like somebody had wrapped barbed wire around the sockets and pulled. Every breath was a battle; my ribs hitched, blood and iron filling my mouth with each inhale. This must have been what it was like to be hung, drawn and quartered. Only I was just hanging, my muscles being flayed from my bones.
The heat in my face blurred the world behind the blindfold until everything shimmered. I focused on nothing or something. A point behind the blindfold, trying not to cry out. Trying not to let them have the satisfaction of hurting me. But even that slipped. Chase? I could call his name. Hope he would help. Just cut me down. I didn’t care what happened next.
Somewhere voices folded into the grinding of the chain, words scrunched down into a single, useless thud. Meaningless. Void.
On my wrists, I could almost hear the skin peeling off. The ties cutting into my flesh. The winch still wound me upwards. How high was I now? The voices of men were below me. A chuckle rising. A deep, low drone of jibes and laughter. I triedto keep my legs still, to stop them swinging and scrabbling. But the voice in my head was persuasive. Keep kicking. Keep finding something to prop myself up with. Prop myself on thin fucking air. Each swing of my legs forced my weight against the hook and grinded the ties deeper and deeper.
There was a pop. A sudden movement. The pressure from the plastic ties gone in a moment. And for a moment, I felt no pain. Light. Weightless.
Voices.
Urgency.
All below me. Rushing and cursing. Wind rushed past my face. Cooling. Gentle. Welcome against the heat of my skin. And now my stomach soared into my throat, like I was being dropped at speed, and all my insides were coming up out of my mouth.
Falling.
I was falling. Fast but in slow motion at the same time. The strands of hair loose around my face moved in the rush of air. An urgent chatter of low voices ascended. Growing louder.
I could feel it now. The descent. Quick. Vicious. This was going to hurt. Much more than the pain of my arms being ripped out of my sockets, or the wrists being degloved from the tight plastic ties. This would be bone-shattering.