The Swan & the Jackal

by J. A. Redmerski

  “I. Said. Be. Quiet.” I push the words through my teeth.

  After quickly checking the placement and tension of the thin blue tourniquet wrapped around his upper arm, I jab the needle into his vein and pump the contents into him.

  Scrubbing my hands all over again in Cassia’s restroom, I find myself drifting off in deep thought as I stare at the broken mirror. Dante is no longer screaming, but Cassia is still crying, albeit not as loudly as before. But her cries, no matter how hard or soft, make me ache just the same.

  “Let me see your face,” I say to Cassia gently, crouching beside her on the floor.

  I reach out and fit my fingers underneath her chin, carefully raising her face from the confines of her legs.

  “I won’t hurt you,” I say. “You know that. You should know that by now.”

  She shakes her blonde head as her soft brown eyes look up into my blue ones. “You’ve hurt me before,” she says, tears straining her voice. “You put me in that chair when you first brought me here. Who’s to say you won’t do it again?”

  “I’m to say I won’t do it again.”

  I sit down fully on the floor in front of her, my knees bent, my arms resting atop them at the wrists.

  “I will never hurt you,” I say, though I’ve told her this many times since that night. “Things were different then. I thought you…,” I stop myself. I have to be careful the way I talk to her and with the things I say. “Cassia, I thought you knew more than you were telling me. But I know the truth now.”

  My heart utterly melts when she scoots across the short distance and moves to sit between my legs. My body instinctively allows her in, conforming to hers as my bare arms wrap around her small form. Her long, delicate fingers curl about my bicep and she presses her head in the warm hollow where my shoulder and chest muscles meet. My eyes shut softly and a small breath emits from my parted lips as I feel her body against mine. I cup her head in my large hand and savor the softness of her hair pushing between my fingers and brushing my chest like a blanket of silk. My heart thrums inside of me, the first sign of an inevitable betrayal, the one where I become a man that I despise. A man who is weak and defenseless at the mercy of emotions that I learned long ago to reject.

  I wish Seraphina would’ve let me fucking burn in that fire six years ago.

  “You were singing,” I whisper onto her hair. “Connie Francis. Why were you singing, Cassia?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  My arms tighten gently around her.

  “It’s OK,” I say in a quiet voice.

  After a pause, I ask carefully, “Do you remember anything?”

  Cassia raises her head from my arm and turns at an angle to look into my eyes.

  “Fredrik,” she says as softly as I had spoken. “Can I speak freely? Can I tell you whatever I’m feeling?”

  Confused, and even troubled by her question, I’m not sure at first that I want to let her.

  “Yes,” I say, against my better judgment.

  Cassia turns around fully between my legs so that we’re sitting face-to-face, her white gown pulled down over her bent knees, her hands resting on the tops of her delicate feet. I don’t know how my hands found their way at each side of her neck, with my fingers splayed carefully to touch the edges of her jaw, but there they are, like two traitors setting out on their own, independent and defiant of the rest of me. I don’t argue with them.

  Her eyes soften and so does my dark heart.

  I feel like I want to kiss her. But I don’t. I can’t. That’ll only make me want to do other things to her and I’ve been down that road with Cassia before.

  It’s a very dangerous road.

  “What is it?” I urge her, brushing my fingers against her jawline.

  She reaches up and carefully hooks her hands about my wrists, peering into my eyes.

  “The things that you do to those men,” she says with words kind and understanding. “I want to know why, because my heart tells me that your darkness was born from darkness. It’s not just a job like you’ve told me before. It’s more than that, Fredrik.”

  My hands drop from her neck and fall atop my bent knees again, dangling at the wrists. I shake my head. In the eleven months and nineteen days that I’ve kept her here, she’s never asked this question, never pried into my life before Seraphina. Her curiosities have always been—understandably so—only about Seraphina, the very reason that Cassia is here. I guess I never thought that after spending so long with someone that they eventually begin to see through all of the things you think you’re hiding from them so well.

  Cassia pushes herself closer when I thought she couldn’t get any closer and urges me to look at her. Her right hand moves toward my face to console me, but I stop it, holding it at the wrist and pushing it back down.

  “The only one of us who should be talking about our past, is you,” I tell her.

  Her doe-like eyes fall under a shroud of disappointment.

  But she’s not going to give up so easily.

  “You’ve asked so much of me, Fredrik,” she says with such kindness, “but when I ask anything of you, you turn me away. I only want to know this one thing. I don’t care anymore about Seraphina, or the history you have with her. I don’t even care what I have to do with it.” Her soft hand ends up touching the side of my face anyway, and I’m not sure how she slipped it past my barrier. “All I care about anymore is you, Fredrik.” She peers deeply into my eyes and ensnares my gaze, her face full of heartbreak and longing. “What are your demons trying so hard to kill?”

  I push her hand away more forcibly this time.

  “Do you remember anything?” I ask, disregarding her question altogether.

  “Stop,” she says with more intensity than I expected. “You’re going to give me this. Before you leave me alone down here another night, you’re going to tell me.”

  The desperation in her eyes bores into me. I look away, only to look right back at her.

  “Please…,” she says.

  A lump moves down my throat and settles somewhere in my chest. All ten of my fingers spear through the top of my dark, messy hair and I let out a miserable sigh of defeat.

  I never talk about my past to anyone. Ever. I try not to think about it, but on some days that is as futile as trying not to breathe. It wasn’t until I met Seraphina eight years ago that I learned to control it, that I became a much different man from the one who hunted shit stains like Dante Furlong, tortured and murdered them every other night, never feeling the satisfaction that I longed to feel with every kill. I was like a drug addict, always looking for a fix but never really satisfied enough to stop. Never satisfied at all, because I only wanted to do it more and more.

  Seraphina helped me control the perpetual urges. She showed me how to release the darkness within me with quieter, cleaner methods so that I didn’t leave a trail of bodies and evidence behind. But the biggest impact that Seraphina had on my life was making me feel like I had one. Because before her, I was just a speck of dust floating around in oblivion. I didn’t know the meaning of happiness, or understand the thrill of pleasure or the hunger for excitement. I was just a shell of a man who knew only darkness and death, who only felt the emotions of anger, and hatred, and rage and vengeance.

  But Seraphina, she was my dark angel, who came into my life and showed me that there was so much more to living than I ever understood. Ever since she left me in that field the night she set my house ablaze, I’ve been slowly but surely succumbing to my old life again, and I need to find her before I fall too far.

  If I haven’t already.

  Seraphina is the only person I’ve ever talked to about my past. If I do this with Cassia, I fear I might open doors that need to stay shut, for both our sakes.

  But…I can’t deny her.

  I feel like I owe her after all I’ve put her through. And since it isn’t anything about Seraphina, which I can’t tell Cassia no matter how
hard she pries, I resolve with myself to tell her what she wants to know.

  Gazing into Cassia’s eyes, I search them for a moment, rapt by her strange feelings for me, and briefly wonder why she even cares. And then my gaze falls on the wall behind her, in the corner where she’s always sitting when I come down here.

  Finally, a fragment of a memory spills reluctantly from my lips.

  Twenty-three years ago…

  Dust swirled up before me when the heavy door to the chamber room groaned opened. A dull gray light filtered inside the room from the hallway onto the stone floor. It hurt my eyes. My filthy hands came up mechanically to rub them only to push dirt behind my eyelids. I winced and shut them tight as tears—brought on only by the aggravation—drained warmly from the corners.

  Boots tapped against the stones. Olaf’s boots. I knew the sound of his just as I knew those of all the men who ran this place. It became mandatory to know, like that of every other part of my surroundings at all times. The smell of the guard’s body odor who watched this chamber room from dawn to noon. The squeaking noise the guard’s cigarette lighter made who guarded the chamber from noon to dinner. The swishing of guard number three’s long trench coat that always sounded like the rustling of a plastic garbage bag. These things were vital that I know because I was going to escape this place no matter what, and I needed to memorize every aspect of my environment.

  I looked up from the edge of my elevated cot made of old wire and worn springs to see Olaf standing over me. My eyes still burned from the dirt I smeared in them. The other boys in the room were also sitting on their cots just as I was. Quiet. Scared. Each of them fearing that Olaf was here for them for punishment, and not for advancement like I was being treated to on this day.

  “Come now,” he said with the subtle backward tilt of his head, “I’ll show you to your new quarters.”

  It had been a day to look forward to, when Olaf, after six months of confinement, believed I had learned my lesson and would never try to escape again. I was caught just outside the tall brick wall that surrounded the massive property. My only friend, Eduard, who spoke only French, was with me. He was shot in the head next to me, his sentence for fleeing. I was left alive and Eduard’s death had been my final warning.

  Olaf had always had a soft spot for me. He showed that by taking me away from the violent men and from the brutal beatings they inflicted on me. And he continued to show it by having me sleep in his quarters on some nights, sometimes on a cot on the floor next to his bed, while other times he insisted I sleep with him in his bed. I did not want to, but it would’ve been foolish to protest.

  I stood from the cot and kept my eyes on the floor, my small, boyish hands folded together down in front of me. I smelled of urine and I was embarrassed. I had been wetting myself in my sleep the whole six months I had been imprisoned in this room. They did terrible things to the boys here. Unspeakable things.

  Following Olaf past the tall iron door, my eyes finally began to adjust to the light in the hallway. The humid air stank of mold and garbage. I heard the pattering and squeaking of overfed rats scuttling down the hall in front and behind me. In this section of Olaf’s estate, the rats were fed better than the boys were.

  Olaf was wearing cologne and this frightened me. He was also dressed in a suit, although his pants were an inch too short and he wasn’t wearing anything as distinguished as a tie. But the suit was a stark difference from the navy pants and wool sweaters he often wore. Olaf only wore suits and cologne for special occasions. And his special occasions almost always entailed teaching me the greatest of lessons, which I was always the most afraid to learn.

  I dared not speak unless spoken to as he guided me down the long, dusty hallway and outside the building. I walked alongside him obediently toward the old, yet more immaculate building I had lived in with Olaf before I attempted escape. The sun was shining brightly overhead as my bare feet went over the prickly grass. The warmth on my skin was a godsend. The clean air filling my lungs. The sweet smell of the white flowers with bell-shaped petals that grew alongside the building.

  But it was gone all too quickly, as well as the sunlight, when we stepped through another door and I was bathed in a harsh orange light in the foyer and the acrid smell of incense and cigars.

  Willa, in her average height and average frame, greeted us wearing a long gray dress that fell just above her ankles, and a pair of flat black shoes over thin white ankle socks. Her arms were covered by the sleeves of a white button-up top that she wore underneath the dress, the collar fixed neatly around her neck with a little four-leaf clover broach pinned to the left side. I liked Willa. She was the only person other than the boys who were imprisoned here like I was, who I didn’t want to see die a painful and horrific death.

  Willa was young, but older than me by at least five years. A kind and beautiful girl of about fifteen or sixteen. She was taken by Eskill at a young age, the same as I was. But she would never be sold and was treated kindly by the other men for the most part. I never knew why.

  But Willa, also like me, put on a very different face in front of the men.

  And as always when I saw her, I went along with it.

  “Vhy geev me the runt?” Willa snapped in a heavily broken accent, her pretty natural pink-colored lips curling with censure as she looked down at me through harsh, but beautiful green eyes. “Vhy must you always geev me ze hopeless ones?”

  “Because you are the only one here, my dear Willa, who can make the hopeless ones at least appear worthy.” Olaf smiled. I wouldn’t dare look at his face, but I could tell there was a smile on it without having to see.

  My body jerked forward and I nearly lost my footing as Willa’s hand yanked on my elbow. And then I saw stars when she slapped me hard across the face with her free hand, and finally my wobbly legs came out from underneath me. My bare knees scraped against the wood floor, but I kept myself from falling further, bracing my free hand against it to hold up my frail weight.

  “Geet up!” Willa pulled me to my feet.

  “Willa,” I heard Olaf say in a forewarning tone, “I’ve told you, not in the face. Now go. Get him cleaned up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Willa said, curtsied and then turned on her heels with my elbow still clutched in her hand.

  She walked me up the winding staircase to the second floor. Passing other servants in matching gray dresses, Willa grabbed me by the back of my dark, filthy hair and wound her fingers aggressively through it, pushing me along in front of her cruelly.

  “I said valk straight, boy!” she growled behind me.

  When the door to her quarters was opened, she gave me a hard shove and I fell through the doorway onto my hands and knees.

  The lock on the door clicked behind me and then Willa was sitting on the floor next to me, pulling me into her lap and rocking me against her chest.

  “I’m so sorry, Freedrik!” she cried into my hair. “You vill forgive me?”

  Tears soaked my cheeks, streaking through a layer of dirt I could feel on my face. But I wasn’t crying because of the way she treated me. I was just glad to see her again.

  “I’ll always forgive you, Willa.”

  I felt her lips on the top of my head and it sent a rush of warmth through my body.

  “Ve must get you ready quickly,” she said, helping me to my feet again. “I don’t want Olaf to have any reason to put you back in confinement.”

  “I’m afraid, Willa.”

  “I know, Freedrik. I know.”

  She kissed me lightly on the cheek and wasted no time getting me into the bath. She was always so careful with me, just as she was with all of the boys who were placed in her care. And she never violated me. She cleaned every part of my body with a caring touch. I never wanted to leave her room whenever I was there, but I would always be whisked away soon after, to avoid suspicion and to make certain that Willa maintained her place as head servant.

  After I was bathed and dressed in a clean white T-shirt and a pair of
khaki pants, Willa hugged me goodbye as the kind and loving young girl, before taking me back out into the hall as the girl with the iron fist.

  Minutes later, she was gone and I was back in the company of Olaf, who seemed to be waiting eagerly for me in his too-small suit and headache-inducing cologne.

  “Before I take you to your new quarters,” Olaf said walking beside me with his hands resting folded on his backside, “there is something you need to see.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Already my legs felt shaky, my stomach queasy and tied up in knots. I inhaled a deep breath and remained silent with my eyes facing forward.

  “Do you remember when I punished you long ago for forgetting to brush your teeth?” he asked.

  I nod. “Yes, sir.”

  How could I forget? He brushed them for me in such a violent manner that the toothbrush had been shoved into the back of my throat numerous times, and he scrubbed my gums so hard that they bled for three days afterwards.

  We turned left at the end of the hall and came upon a door.

  I heard screaming inside and my legs began to shake more noticeably.

  Olaf placed his weathered hand on the lever-style handle and said, “This is what will happen to you if your teeth become damaged, or diseased, or grow in crookedly after the old ones have fallen out. You’ve been lucky so far to be blessed with good teeth. Let’s hope it stays that way. You will become a young man soon, in your prime, and how your body begins to take shape now will be with you forever. If any part of it isn’t satisfactory, you’ll face extensive cosmetic corrections, or, depending on how well you are fancied by myself or another Master, you could be disposed of.”

  My heart sank and my knees began to buckle, but I straightened up quickly.

  He pushed open the door and the screams escaped the room in a whirlwind as if they had been waiting on the other side of that door to be set free. I wanted to cover my ears with my hands, but I knew better than to try. I knew to remain standing with my back straight, my eyes lowered and my arms either down at my sides or placed on my backside like Olaf was standing. I opted for folding my hands together behind me so that I could at least dig my fingers into one another as a way to cope and distract from the screams. They echoed vociferously through the moderately-sized room with high vaulted ceilings. I could smell blood. Bitter and stout, as clearly as if my face had been shoved in a pool of it. I had always had an unfortunate strong sense of smell that I often thought of as a curse. Especially in times like these.