Machete

by Nicole Thorn

  “What the fuck is this?” I growled. “This is your goddamn child. It should be coded in your DNA to protect him. What kind of a father does this?” Something panged in my chest, along with in my eyes. I ignored it. “Your whole job is to protect him, to make him feel loved. Are you capable of loving something?”

  The man’s expression didn’t alter a single bit. “Of course, I love my son. And he’s much stronger than you seem to think he is.”

  “How dare you,” I hissed. “How fucking dare you say that to me.”

  “Manny,” Becket said, calling me home. I looked at him, and he was not afraid. Blades all around, and he was not afraid. The Devil stood before him, and he was not afraid. “I’m fine,” he said again.

  Oh, my love, you are not fine.

  “I want to protect you,” I whispered because I couldn’t find my control anymore.

  “Good,” his father said. “Then you’ll help me, won’t you?”

  I turned my head to face him, not bothering to hide the fire in my eyes. “With what?”

  He smiled ever so faintly. “I’m very glad my son found someone so loyal to him. Everyone needs a friend. I only hope that you don’t decide to leave him. Such a shame.”

  With my hands in fists at my sides, I dragged in a breath. “I wouldn’t leave him. Not for anything.”

  I watched his head cock, and the knife glinted in his hand. “Then you’ll have no problem doing something for me.” Without warning, he handed over the knife, handle side to me. I took it without thinking. “I need you to cut Becket.”

  My heart dropped to my stomach, and I wanted to jam the blade into Dr. Anders’ throat. I wanted to watch the blood spurt out, painting my dress, and ending this all in only a few moments. Watching him gasp and drown on the floor would have been a lovely end to this night.

  “No,” I said after I’d recovered. “What in the hell makes you think I would hurt him?”

  The man shrugged. “You have two choices. Either you cut Becket right now, or I do it for you. Pick.”

  The pounding in my chest didn’t slow as it became exceptionally painful to breathe. I couldn’t even be sure I was still living. Maybe those people in the woods killed me, and I was sent to Hell. They could have slashed my throat wide open, and maybe I was lying in the dirt and grass and blood.

  Or maybe this was my punishment for being loved when I didn’t earn that affection.

  I stared at the little knife in my hands. I would not have been able to hurt Becket with this or anything. For all the hate and violence I felt in my soul, none of it was for him. I wanted to be his happy place. I wanted to bring him peace when he looked at me.

  “You need to decide,” his father said. “I’m sure your cuts will be far better than mine. Shaky hand, you see.”

  I looked up at him through my eyelashes, power screaming in my ears. It told me that I had a job to do, and I was failing. Peel his skin off and leave him a bloody mess on the floor. Take Becket and leave. Make sure no one ever hurts him again because God fucking knows no one else will.

  “Manny,” Becket said again. His peaceful expression killed something in me. “Don’t be afraid.”

  If I didn’t do this, then his father would. Would he make me watch, or send me away so that he could do it in private? Either way, I couldn’t control how much damage he would do. Maybe it would be so much worse if it wasn’t me. What would be crueler? Letting his father hurt his body? Or less physical damage but inflicted by someone who used to be the only one not to harm him? Truly, I didn’t know.

  I walked over to Becket because I thought having my body closer to him would have made it feel less difficult to breathe. I was wrong but at least I had him close.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said quietly, looking with desperation into his eyes.

  He reached out, taking my free hand. “Don’t be afraid,” he repeated, and then took my other hand. “It’s okay.”

  Becket lifted the knife in my hand, his wrapped around mine, with a blade at the core of all that flesh. He pressed the tip to the skin, right under his eye. When he started dragging it down, I gasped at the crimson that so readily poured like tears.

  I wasn’t breathing but somehow, I still sobbed as I watched the thin line growing on Becket’s cheek. His hand moved mine but it felt like I may as well have been doing it all alone. Hurting the only person I wanted to spare.

  “It’s okay,” he said again softly.

  I didn’t believe him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Shh, it’s okay.”

  “It is not okay.”

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I love you.”

  The knife reached the bottom of his cheek, and Becket moved it under his other eye. It was weak and breathless and broken, the sob that left me as I watched blood drip onto the wooden floor. It splashed, getting on my bare foot, coloring my skin.

  The best I could do was force my hands not to tremble, making the wounds worse. Soon, two thin lines marred Becket’s face, with blood beading and smearing when my fingers brushed it.

  When it was over, I threw the knife onto the desk and wrapped my arms around Becket, sobbing and repeating over and over again how sorry I was. I could not take this back, for as long as we lived. I’d stolen away the only safe thing in his life. He petted my hair, telling me it was okay.

  “Thank you,” his father said to me, drawing my eye. “I appreciate when someone does as they’re told. You’re a very good friend to him, Manny.”

  My sobs stilled for long enough to get out a glare. “Yes, and I can’t wait to prove just how good a friend I am.”

  The man said nothing more before he exited the room.

  When we were alone, I wrapped myself back up in Becket, touching as much of him as I could. My hands ran over scars that varied in age, and my power told me how old each and every one of them was. I winced when I found the ones from when he was far too young, and the ones so recent that I should have known better. His back had burns I wanted to make go away. I wanted it all gone.

  “I’m so sorry,” I cried again as his hands held my face. “I didn’t want to.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m fine, Manny. It doesn’t hurt.”

  It wouldn’t hurt when I was finished.

  Looking up, I moved his hands to my waist so that I could have better access to him. My fingers brushed his cheeks, and then found the top of each wound I’d put there. Slowly, I sealed his skin, erasing all evidence that they were ever there to begin with. All that was left was the blood I needed to wipe away.

  He took me up to his bedroom and cleaned off his face. While he got ready for bed, I shakily took my dress off, folding it up before setting it on the nightstand. I stole one of his sweaters to wear, so that I wouldn’t be almost naked in his bed. The sweater covered me to the middle of my thighs.

  Becket got into bed next to me, and I curled up to him without hesitation. My body shook, positioned as close as I could be, with one leg over his body. All I could see when I closed my eyes was the blood that had been on his face. The blood I put there. Nothing would ever make this right.

  His hand slid up and down my back. He said nothing.

  His scars sang to me, and they would not fall silent. Not anymore. My eyes had been ripped open, and I couldn’t ignore any of the stories they told me. Was there ever a time in his life where anything felt safe to him? Did he once have the love he should have, and that just ended somehow? I doubted he’d ever caught that much of a break but I still wished for it. I wanted him to have gotten days when he was little, where he didn’t have to worry about a thing. Where he could be young and innocent, and no one would take it from him.

  The scars painted different pictures.

  I sat up, facing Becket as I searched for his hand. I found it in the darkness and laced my fingers with his. Feeling the rough skin of his scar, another wave of guilt knocked me down, telling me I knew nothing of suffering. Mind games and drugs and violence. Becket never had
peace.

  I turned his hand over, covering the old wound with my fingers. Maybe I should have asked for permission but I didn’t think to. I wanted something on him to be smooth and clear, and not a reminder of something awful that the man downstairs had done to him.

  The scar vanished at my command, leaving a perfectly smooth palm on Becket. He could look down without seeing something painful. I wanted something better for him.

  Becket sat up when he saw what I’d done, and I honestly couldn’t have guessed how he would react. If I thought I could have done it without him freaking out, then I would have made each and every single scar on his entire body go away. And I could have. In a minute, I could have given him a perfectly clean slate, with no carved stories of times his father decided to play with him. Becket would have had a chance then, maybe. A chance to see how things should have been, a chance to see that this wasn’t right.

  “You made it go away,” he said, staring at his hand. His voice was too flat. I wasn’t sure at all what he thought.

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you shouldn’t have to look at it.”

  How did I wake him up? How could I make him see that he was being hurt? Damaged? The things done to him were not kind and not normal. It seemed so obvious to me but maybe Becket was too used to this to understand. Did that happen? Was he so accustomed to being abused that he didn’t even know when it was happening? I would have rather known and been stuck than not understand.

  “I want good things for you,” I said. “I want you to be happy and to feel loved. Because you are loved. Maybe not by your father, or at least not in any kind of way you should be. But I love you, and I’m going to protect you.”

  Becket’s forehead furrowed. He took a deep breath. “He does love me, and I don’t need to be protected. I take care of myself.”

  “Is that why you were just stripped and forced to get cut?”

  He blinked. “It doesn’t matter to me. I just want you safe.”

  “I’m plenty safe,” I told him. Why wouldn’t I be?

  Becket took my hand again, brushing his thumb over my missing nail. Then he looked up at my throat that he’d healed only a few days ago. “You’re not at all safe, Manny. They hurt you all the time.”

  I flinched at the words. “My brother can’t help it.”

  “And?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Lane hurt me but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. And at least it wasn’t being played with in my mind. I didn’t have to wonder when my father would stroll into my room and give me an impossible choice. My issues should not at all have been compared to Becket’s because mine were hardly problems at all. My family loved me, his didn’t. My parents treated me well, and sometimes Lane just lost his temper. That wasn’t a big deal because at least they never made me hurt anyone else. Never kill anyone else.

  “No one should touch you,” Becket said. “You shouldn’t be the target of anyone’s bad mood.”

  I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I could avoid being around during the bad times as best I could but I would fail. I always failed. How many times had Lane come to find me when he was upset? I could remember days where I was outside playing, when Lane would come to get me. He’d tell me that our parents needed me home, so I would follow him. Each time, he brought me home and hurt me. Once, he’d pinned me to the carpet, pressing his knee into the middle of my spine, holding my hair in his fist and my throat with his other hand. He’d cracked at least one of my ribs but I didn’t tell anyone. He told me he would do it again if I did.

  God, how many memories did I have like that? Not even all with Lane. My father had a habit of snapping at me, smashing things in front of me to get my attention. Slamming his hands on the table or counter. And God forgive me if I accidentally talked when he was about to. While Dad never hit me, he did shove me when I was little. Lane, too. Sometimes I wondered if he did more to Lane but I was too little to remember it. I wondered if he had done something that taught Lane that was the way to get the anger out of him. I couldn’t ask Lane because it would have only made him mad. I would have gotten hurt for the question, ironically. Best to live in wonder.

  Then there was my mother, who never did a damn thing. Sure, she would yell, and she called us names sometimes. That hardly registered to me but it pissed Lane off all the time. He couldn’t handle being called dumb or simple. It would send him into rages that sometimes my parents would lock him up for. He really liked to break things, with a habit of picking out expensive ones. The longest he’d ever been locked up was only a weekend.

  But Mom... She would watch Dad do what he did, and never say a word about it. I didn’t know if she was scared, or if she just didn’t care at all. We never got an answer from her. She’d asked about a few of my bruises but I’d lied the best I could. When I was little, I was awful at it but she believed me. Or maybe she didn’t want to dive too deeply into the reasons my body was always scattered with multiple colors. She only got upset about it when we had an event to go to.

  “I’m tired,” I said weakly. “Can we go to sleep, please?”

  Becket nodded and pulled me closer to him. I laid on his body, my head under his chin as I listened to him falling asleep. The room got darker somehow but I could still see the stars out of a barely-opened window. They shined in all this blackness, making me feel less alone with the silence and the scars and the blood. Everything hurt so, so badly. I wanted to fix things, to break things, and to them go away. I could do none of it, so I laid there in the darkness.

  When his heartbeat steadied, I knew he was asleep, so I moved off of him. I didn’t deserve to get that kind of connection right now. Not when I’d let him down so completely. I should have said something to his father. Stopped it before it started. Put my foot down, and then called the police. Becket may have hated me but I could have gotten his father put away for a long time for all he did to his son. He needed to be punished.

  I needed to be punished.

  Laying on my back, I put my hands around my throat and pressed. Familiar discomfort and pressure set in, and I closed my eyes.

  I just let it happen. I let Becket hurt himself, using my hands. That was all on me, and my entire body ached with the failure. I knew from the start that Becket needed someone to look out for him, and I was so sure that would have been me. I could still hear steel against skin, and smell the blood that leaked from fresh wounds. His skin had split open like nothing, and his eyes had held nothing.

  My own voice echoed in my ears, telling him I was sorry over and over again. He told me it was okay but I didn’t believe him. Something in him had to resent me for my betrayal. It may as well have been me picking the blade, carving him into pieces.

  I felt myself losing air but I didn’t stop what I was doing. It played in the back of my mind because more important things were at the front. Like how calm Becket had been, and how many times he must have lived through that. No one to talk to about it, to the point where he didn’t think he needed anyone to talk to. Even now, I doubted that talking about it would have made him feel less alone. How could it, when he didn’t even know there was anything wrong?

  How many things had I missed since knowing him? It had been a short time but I didn’t care. I knew bad things happened right under my nose. He’d offered to kill my family for the small things they’d done to me but these massive sins flew right under his radar. It was not fair, and I wanted to right the wrongs done here. I wanted Becket to open his eyes and magically know what he was supposed to get out of life. I wanted him to have a mother that stayed, and a father that adored him. People should have been proud of him. They should have loved him and made him feel like he belonged. There was no justice in this world, and I wanted to cry.

  My head felt light. I didn’t know why. Something inside of my brain yelled at me but I didn’t listen as I held my hands tighter against my throat. I did such an evil thing tonight, and Becket didn’t even care. He looked at me like he
always had, which just made it worse. He should have hit me, or shoved me, or told me to leave and never, ever come back. It should have been worse than that. He should have made it clear that he now knew how worthless I was to him and the rest of this world.

  Something changed, and I heard a heartbeat that was no longer steady. My eyes opened up again as the bed shifted at my side. Becket looked at me, and suddenly I felt the hands wrapped around my neck.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Life in Scars

  Becket

  I opened my eyes because I didn’t feel Manny sleeping against me. The place where she had been was now cold but the bed was still depressed where she sat. I blinked heavily, looking around for her. When I found her, my heart shot into my throat. It pounded against my chest.

  Manny sat on the edge of the bed, with her hands around her throat. Her face had gone a dark shade of reddish purple, and her eyes bugged out of her head. Mouth opening in little gasps, she stared straight ahead, seeing nothing. Her eyes were empty of emotion or personality.

  She closed her eyes, and I sat up, horrified that she might be dying. What was I supposed to do if she died? I didn’t want to be without her, not after finally having someone that seemed perfectly fine with who I was. I didn’t want to go back to the life I had before her.

  My heart pounded harder as I sat up. Her eyes snapped open, and she turned to stare at me. There was a brief moment, one I wouldn’t have caught if I wasn’t paying so close attention, where her eyes widened even more, where she looked confused and horrified.

  I ripped her hands from her throat without thinking. This was a rare time where I didn’t need thoughts. I didn’t need to worry about what my actions meant, or where they would lead me. I would not let her die, even if that meant upsetting her. Even if that meant making her want to walk away from me. At least she would be alive to take those steps.