Page 10

Nine

I stood under scalding water with my head bowed as it ran down my body, stinging my skin. I hoped my devouring Natavi’s pussy would help clear my mind for just a moment. My chest rose and fell unevenly as I tried to steady my breathing. The storm inside of me was building up relentlessly. Thankful for soundproof walls, I was close to losing control over my emotions. I leaned my face back embracing the hot water as if I was trying to defeat the feeling of hot water burning my skin.

I remember a time when I couldn’t escape the heat, a time where I met the Grim Reaper himself. I defeated him but the deep wounds and disfigurement of my skin was a reminder of who I used to be. My tears were hot and bitter mixed in with the water going down the drain with the rest of my pain. No one will ever love an unknown creature, such as yourself! I shut my eyes tightly, trying to ignore the demon that roared to life in my mental.

I pressed my palms against the tile walls, it was the only thing keeping me upright as my gaze ran over my battered body. The sight of myself disgusted me as anger and hurt took over and fueled me. Each mark on my body told a story, each one held a memory that I tried my hardest to bury. The scars weren’t just etched on the outside of me, they were inside of me. I traced one of my deeper scars that went down my abdomen. I touched it lightly, thinking that it would bust back open because of how deep it was. It still hurt, but not more than the rest of what I had covering my entire body.

A birthday didn’t mean shit to me. I used to share a birthday with a woman who never looked at me with disgust. She was the closest thing to pure untainted love that I ever experienced, and she was snatched away from me.

Chained by my ankles and wrists, the smell of pho and satay made my stomach growl from hunger. Across from me was, Emi. We had been transferred to illegal adult brothels in Thailand, where we were tortured, starved, and brutally hurt, depending on which rich sick American came to visit us. Thailand and Bangkok kept lots of secrets for men that were from all of over the world.

According to Tai, the wealthy man who bought us when we were kids, no longer wanted us because we were no longer adolescents. Tai didn’t appear evil but he loomed over me and the rest of the kids like a dark unyielding cloud. We were all assets to him, trophies as an extension of his control.

We depended on him, and he loved it down to the things that he was supposed to provide like food, clothes and shelter. If we disobeyed, we slept outside. Most of the people that paid him for entertainment didn’t bat an eye my way. He found a way to make a profit off of me by putting me in training at the age of seven for underground fighting.

Emi came when I turned ten years of age. Her parents had an agreement with Tai. He loaned them money and they didn’t pay up so in exchange was Emi. She was beautiful and pure when she came. He made back triple of what her parents owed but refused to give her back. I was injured bad by the age of twelve from fighting kids twice my size. With a broken ankle that made me walk with a limp, I knew my time at Tai’s castle was coming to an end.

Tai was the leader over the Kaicho Syndicate; he was their Oyabun. He also was smart and provided the U.S with nuclear weapons, which gave him open assess to other rich Americans. He had his hands tied in everything, he was deemed as unstoppable and untouchable. His words were his command, everyone surrounding him jumped at any demand that left his mouth.

Whenever his profits lowered with anything that he owned, he would get rid of it. He resold me then sold Emi months later when she got pregnant. They placed us in the same room, chained to walls twenty-four seven, Like animals waiting to be fed or noticed. I blocked it out and forgot most of it. I wondered how I survived it because my insides felt like it was rotten.

“I’m not going to make it much longer, Monni.” Emi’s soft, timid voice stated above a whisper.

“I’m going to figure something out to get us out of here, Emi,” I said with my eyes on her small baby bump.

She was due any day, and in my mind, I was happy but scared all in one. I dreamed of figuring out an escape route for us. I would do whatever it was that I had to do to find her and I shelter. I was ready to be a father to the baby growing in her stomach. Emi and I bonded, shared the same pain of never feeling love. In the darkness of my world, Emi was like my personal angel. She was the definition of grace. I spent countless of nights crying myself to sleep in Emi’s lap, releasing years of pain and rejection.

“Our time is up, Monni. Here.” She tossed me a bobby pin and started to cough violently.

Emi had been sick for months now, coughing uncontrollably. I begged the guards to get her help, they ignored me, and when they got tired of me asking, they would knock me out with the butt of their guns.

“I heard men talking, they plan on burning this place down. They’re not going to free us, Monni. Someone on the outside told and the cops are going to shut this place down, and then…” Emi’s words trailed off as smoke creeped into our bunker.

“Free yourself, Monni. I love you—” Emi coughed violently as I yanked at the chains.

I yanked hard, with all my might. The spikes cut deep into my wrists as my heart thumped hard in my chest. I wanted to break freak to save her, this couldn’t be the end for her and I. Chaos erupted and echoed off from down the tunnel. People screamed and banged their chains in hopes of getting someone’s attention. I didn’t hear heavy boots stomping, which told me the guards had already deserted us.

“Emi!” I screamed her name as sweat dripped from my brows.

My chest heaved as I took ragged breaths. Smoke slithered like a predatory fog, curling around my ankles then climbing higher, filling the suffocating small space that we were in.

“The pin, Monni. Use it.” Emi coughed violently.

My fingers trembled as I swallowed down my fear. The smoke started to blind and sting my eyes as desperation took hold of me. This couldn’t be the end. My muscles tensed as I yanked against the chains with raw knuckles. I winced out in pain as the bobby pin clattered to the ground. I couldn’t give up, so I got on my knees to search for it.

I coughed harshly as the smoke thickened with Emi and my safety on the line. I found it just as I started to grow dizzy. I fought against passing out.

My phone ringed from the bathroom counter. With a heavy heart I stepped out of the shower, ridding my thoughts of that day away. I thought of Emi every day. I saw her face each time I shut my eyes. If I would have saved her that day, things would have been a little different for me. Now, I couldn’t think rationally. The urge to kill and destroy breathed through my being.

I roughly tapped my phone to answer it. Jalissa liked to play little games that I never played into with her. If I spoke, it was for a reason. In this moment there was no reason to waste speaking, especially since I didn’t have the urge to.

“Well, I’m waiting for you to say something, Monster. I haven’t heard from you in weeks. When I finally call, your mute.” I shut my eyes, calming myself down.

I looked down at my bare feet, noting the way my toes tried to grip the cold tile beneath them.

“Have you been to Arkville?” She questioned me, as I counted each breath that I took.

“No.” I answered her with my gaze still on my feet.

“Well, I need more money, and you need to do what you promised! I got you in close enough to Detavio! You are the chief of his security! No way he’s keeping you away from Impurity!” Jalissa’s voice slightly rose.

“He’s not keeping me from there! I’ve been there?—”

“Yes, you have been there! You fucked it up by saving one of his whores!” She spat into the phone.

I dropped my head and shook it from side to side. My hands trembled as I went to open the medicine cabinet to retrieve the pills that would calm me from having an attack that I couldn’t afford to have right now.

“Detavio handles things differently than his father?—”

“Bullshit! He’s just like that sick bastard!”

“He’s not! I’ve been around him more than you, he’s nothing like Impurity. I’ve been to Arkville several times. Detavio keeps his business separate from Impurity. That’s what makes it hard for me to really get close to him. Detavio is my—my friend!” I rushed to say as I fumbled with the pill bottle.

My hands trembled violently as my stiff finger struggled to open the pill bottle. Seconds later after I failed to get them open, the pills spilled across the bathroom floor like tiny white confetti. The room started to spin as the bathroom walls seemed to collapse. I bent down, but my vision blurred, making it hard to see just one pill to pick up.

Panic started to claw up my throat as my heartbeat thundered in my ears. I couldn’t control me shaking uncontrollably as I tried my hardest to pick up pills that kept slipping through my rough fingers.

“Fuck this.” I mumbled lowly as I bowed my head to the ground.

Letting my tongue lead the way, I stuck it to the tiled floor until two tiny pills latched on to my tongue, making it easy for me to swallow them down.

“You’re fucking pathetic, Monster! After all of what I told you about Impurity, you constantly take your time to do what needs to be done! He’s the reason why you keep having all of these attacks! Do not forget that you belong to me! I saved you, you owe me!”

My head hung low, eyes still fixed on the floor as I crushed the pills between my teeth. I welcomed the chalky bitterness that coated my tongue. My hands were still unsteady as anxiety gnawed at me relentlessly. Each time I swallowed felt like a weak attempt to break through the suffocating cloud of panic that tightened my chest.

Jalissa’s voice cut through my haze, it echoed from the phone still sitting on the counter.

“Fuckin’ failure! If I knew it would be like this, I would have left you in that tunnel burning!” Her words stabbed at me.

She didn’t know that if she left me in that brothel, she would have done me a favor. I wanted to die that day along with Emi. A part of me was jealous of the fact that Emi was free and happy while I was stuck in the past mixed with the present, living in internal hell. I was a prisoner to my own thoughts. Darkness had swallowed me whole, and my demonic cravings never eased up off of me.

I thought at first with Jalissa, that she would come with promised change. Instead, she did more damage. She not only proved that she never loved me enough to save or fight for me, but she just came back into my life to use me as a pawn, and I fell for it in hopes of at least having one parent to love and help fix me. Reality started to settle into me years ago, there was no fixing me. I was just existing and going along with the flow of everything, not really knowing just what the fuck I was doing.

I stood in the dark and quiet shadows on my lonely days with the weight of the world pressed against me. I was haunted, and it wasn’t by ghosts, but by my past, the faces, chains, and voices that forced me to believe that I was not a man. Each wound refused to heal, they all bled slow while it silently continued to poison my soul. There was no fire behind my actions, my heart beat out of sheer habit and not because I willed it to. Jalissa didn’t know shit but her own selfish desires, and all of it would be coming to a stop very soon. I just still had some missing pieces to myself that I would like to figure out before I put her out of her own desperate misery for redemption.

I was used to her constant venomous approach to get whatever she wanted out of me. I hated her and thought about killing her plenty of times. My brain played sick and twisted tricks on me when it came to her. Maybe it was her all along, fucking with my mind. I hated her for even thinking that saving me was a favor when it should have been out of duty since she proved that she was my biological mother. When Jalissa took me in, she immediately got to work getting a blood test done to prove that she was my mother. Next, she got in contact with a female friend from the U.S that helped us get back to the states safely and undetected. For months she fed me with lies and broken promises. She was a mastermind when it came to setting certain things up in order for them to go in her favor.

She cried to me over and over about how Impurity was to blame for stripping me away from her at birth. She stated that Impurity’s ex-wife was still in love with him and had offered her millions of dollars to disappear. Jalissa claimed that she had an affair with one of the guards in Arkville and that is why Impurity sold me after an hour of me being born.

The more I sat back and thought about the picture she painted, the more I saw just how selfish and demented she was. Jalissa didn’t want to make up for lost time with me. She never had intentions on being a mother after all of these years. She planned that fire so that I could be at her mercy. After years of suffering with no hold over my life, I refused to be at anyone else’s mercy.

Time would reveal everything there was that I needed to know. There was a reason why she only catered to Octavio and let him live his life without the burdens or worries that I carried on a day-to-day basis. Vengeance would be mine, and I wouldn’t give a fuck about whoever I crushed in the process.

“Fuck you, Jalissa. Go see about Octavio. Whenever I have an update, I’ll call.”

I planted my foot flat on the floor and used all of my strength to stand.

“I’m unfuckwithable, Monster. You’ll soon see what the fuck I mean by that. Time is running out, my boy. You better make me proud, or all of this will backfire in the worse way possible.”