Beneath Innocence (Deception #2.5)

by Ker Dukey

  A whimper left me and before I could cry out his cloth covered hand came over my mouth.

  I woke in a room, naked and chained to something I used to see in gym hall, a horse vault, my body bent over it, my arms pulled taut and chained to feet either side and the same with my legs so I was spread out and completely helpless. The cool air was hitting my exposed flesh between my legs making me need to pee.

  “She’s awake,” a voice called out that I didn’t recognize. Footsteps pounded the floor in deliberate, daunting steps. A pair of expensive loafers appeared in my line of limited view and a voice I recognized sent shivers through my entire body.

  “Hello Blue, you’re going to learn what breaking the confidence of your clients will get you. Trust is paramount in our circles and you of all people should know that. Make her suffer.”

  “Wait,” I cry but a ball gag is shoved into my mouth to muffle my voice. Heavy hands land with a smack on my hips and Frank’s voice rings out into the room, making bile rise and leak around the gag.

  “Take her ass, save the pussy for my fist.”

  The burning and tearing was excruciating and I couldn’t scream past the gag, the force of his hips crushing me against the vault over and over kept knocking the wind from me and I thought I was going to die each time. His hands were rough on my hips and his disgusting dick was so big it made me bleed to an extent that there was a small puddle forming on the floor.

  Tears blurred and stung my eyes, the blue strips in my hair reminding me of Jenson twirling them through his fingers only days ago, Jenson… I tried to anchor myself to thoughts of him and disappear into a bubble where this was just a body and my mind wasn’t there to engage the pain.

  “Oh look at the mess he’s made of your ass Blue. Oh shit you can’t look can you, let me take this out.” The ball gag loosened and dropped to the floor, my vomit with it. “Eww you nasty bitch.” A smack to the side of my face made spots appear in my eyes, the impact instantly bringing with it pain. “You’re so manly hitting a tied up woman,” I spat at him with the blood filling my mouth.

  The other guy let out an uncontrollable laugh. “Oh she’s feisty for a stupid bitch who’s just been ass fucked within an inch of her life.”

  “Maybe we’re being too soft on her?”

  “Fuck you,” I breathed and they both chuckled.

  “No sweetheart, we’re going to fuck you.”

  Piercing pain lights one side of my ass and I realize the sick prick is biting into me, “She’s so rump.”

  Frank disappeared from my view and not being able to see behind me was terrifying. Hands scratched over me, digging in and taking flesh away, teeth penetrated my skin on my thighs and screaming out left my throat raw. Blood was rushing to my head, making me lose consciousness and I thanked God for the small mercy.

  “There’s too much blood,” I could hear Frank saying as his hips thrusts against mine. I was freezing cold and my body was shaking involuntarily from shock and fear, my bladder had betrayed me and I was laying in my own fluids. I was spread-eagled on a tiled floor my arms and legs tied to chain hoops coming out the floor. I knew Hunter kept places like this for perverts to use for their sick fantasies, women were objects to be bought, used and disregarded like the trash for some of the sick bastards Hunter acquired for.

  My stomach was cramping so bad and all I wanted to do was curl into a ball. The junction between my thighs had become numb to the abuse they had inflicted in my passed out hours.

  Frank’s naked body was between my thighs, he looked like a giant compared to me. He held up his hand which was covered in blood and looked over to a bunch of sexual tools all covered in my blood, “Looks like I may have caused some damage down there.”

  “She looks a little pale.” Another voice joined Frank’s.

  A hot fire stung at my chest. “No more sleeping.” The smell of my skin made me retch, the pig was burning me with a cigarette. “You have such fucking perfect tits.” Burns and teeth marks now littered the skin there so they would always remind me of these bastards.

  “I’m going to fuck her tits.”

  My eyes were closing up from being swollen and I couldn’t see the face of the person now straddling my chest, he was heavy and restricted my breathing from crushing my chest with his weight. My tits were forced together against his cock and he squeezed to an unbearable pressure making me try to twist to hurl him off. I was so weak though, I barely moved and he mocked me with laughter and slaps to my face, “I want to choke her.”

  “Just don’t kill her.”

  Hands wrapped around my throat, robbing me of the little air I had. Darkness was my friend, a gift.

  Water woke me, freezing cold and poured straight over my face, “Why so much blood?” I could hear Hunter ask. “She’s haemorrhaging, deliver her now before she fucking dies.”

  I felt restraints being taken from me and I was lifted from the floor. My arm felt too loose, I had no control over it and every part of my body screamed at me when I was slung over a shoulder. Feet pounded and the temperature changed from hot to cold as I was taken through halls and then into the air outside. Whoever had me threw me into a van and the impact stole my breath. I was dying. I could feel my spirit splinter and float away in all directions.

  Darkness swallowed me.

  “Oh shit, is she breathing?”

  “Barely, we need to deliver her now before she dies.”

  “Dead wasn’t the fucking contract idiot!”

  “Not my fault, they call his junk the pussy terminator for a reason you know.” A man laughs and it’s like an echo in an alleyway. Cold air rushes over my naked fragile body and I’m pushed into the air. I feel the burn of the concrete as it scrapes my flesh away.

  “Oh fuck, call an ambulance and help from inside but tell them to keep Jenson away” I hear called out before I lose the light once again.

  Time passes with flashes of consciousness; I was in a hospital, the beeping of machines. The coming and going of doctors made me aware I was away from my tormentors.

  “What happened to you honey, can you sip some water for me?”

  “Baby…” I murmur already knowing the answer,

  “Shh, we can discuss everything when you’re more awake.”

  “Is she well enough to tell us what happened?” Voices ask, coming and going.

  “She’s still not talking to anyone.”

  “The Baby, the blood was our baby.” I cry.

  “What? Shhh, it’s okay, don’t speak Martha. Shit, I can’t believe you did this.”

  Reality floods in and I’m being carried out of the shower by Greg, sickness burns my throat but I don’t have the energy to retch.

  “Fucking help me!” I hear him call as he descends the stairs. Dad’s whore’s screams echo through my head and a wave of ‘fucks’ and ‘call an ambulance’ boom from the men who work for my Father.

  I’m dying, the darkness has come back to claim me.

  And I welcome it, so very much.

  Chapter Eight

  Finality

  Jenson

  “Just let them do their job, Jen. For fuck’s sake. What the hell is it with you?” Cade shouts, finally losing it with me. “Are you hell bent on destroying not only yourself but the band? Your friends? Kimberly?”

  I push at the nurse, quickly moving her aside as she tries to insert the syringe for the fourth time when I fly for Cade.

  His head bounces off the wall, the sound of his back slamming against the brickwork loud and heavy in the cold clinical room. “Don’t you dare fucking preach to me!” I spit out, fury taking over. His eyes are wide, stunned. Yeah, eat my wrath you condescending asshole. “This is your fault, Cade. I did it for you! I did it all for you!”

  He’s staring at me, but I ignore the slight wetness to his eyes as he witnesses my breakdown, the shattering of my mind that has been threatening for way too long.

  I’d woken in this room two days ago, the stench of blood and chemicals scorching the
hairs in my nostrils. It was all so clean, so damn fucking white! Everywhere I looked all I could see was a blank canvas for my mind to paint pictures on, a clean sweep for too many pictures to assault me with. It was like one of Faye’s blank canvases for me to fill with one color. Blue. Blue’s blood. Blue’s tears. Blue’s torture. Blue’s love, or lack of.

  They’d even sent a fucking fuckwad of a ‘head’ doctor in to see me. Dr Hilary Van Gohan. What a fucking name, how the fuck they expected me to take her seriously with a ludicrous name like that was beyond me.

  Not only had the people in white coats penetrated my mind as the ones in blue penetrated my skin, but ones in black had toyed with my emotions. What the hell was wrong with these people? Why couldn’t they just leave me to reach the end of road I was on? The road I hoped led me to hell because I knew it would be a better place than the damn purgatory I was in right now.

  “Jen…” he begs, the pain of realising what he had done finally crushing his face. “I…”

  “Don’t!” I scoff, “Don’t act like you care now. You didn’t care when you destroyed my life, when you used Blue for your own fucking gain, to save your precious Faye… all at the expense of everyone else’s happiness.”

  Unable to look at the devastation and guilt, the mirror image to mine, on his face any longer, I push him out of the way and head for the door.

  “Mr Hallam, if you would just…” She gasps when I glare at her.

  “Move the fuck out of my way, before I move you!”

  “Jen!” Cade tries.

  “MOVE!” I bellow, my temper fraying with everyone. I need to get out before they all send me into that little black spot in the back of my mind, the spot where nothing matters, not even breathing and living.

  Quiet follows me after the sound of the door hitting the wall when I barge through. I at least expected Cade to come after me. Yeah, once again I was alone, left to deal with my shit alone. Just like always.

  I know the outside will be swarming with media, paparazzi that will think Christmas has come when they see me leaving the building in nothing but a blue gown, my cute little ass poking through the open back, but right now, I don’t care. I don’t fucking care.

  It’s late in the day but the hospital is still busy, alive with nurses, people, all of them rushing about their daily lives like everything in the world wasn’t sick and twisted. Fuck them and their rainbows, let their unicorns shove them up the ass with their nice pointy horn, because I was done. I was out.

  This lie I was living had eaten its last truth. Because I wasn’t living, I wasn’t even existing. I was just breathing. Just filling one lung at a time with fuel that kept my brain working. Well I don’t want my brain to work anymore because all that it grants me is torture. Heartache and cruelty.

  Blue wasn’t just my woman, she was my soul. I’d destroyed her and in that, destroyed myself. I didn’t deserve to live, not after what I’d done.

  Funny how you see things when you’re not high, or have your dick dipped inside a wet cunt. It’s funny how you realise that this world doesn’t actually hold the pleasure you thought it did when your brain is actually functioning on undiluted oxygen instead of other substances.

  And if the world only revolved around heartache and pain, then why the fuck was I still breathing? What the hell was the point anymore?

  I was ready to taste hell now. Heaven was a pipe dream for me. I’d killed, taken the soul from someone, even if he had deserved it. But the thing was, I would do it all again, for her, for Blue. And if that made me a bad person, well then, may Satan prep my bed for me.

  The hospital is like a maze, corridors taking you the wrong way, doors leading to empty rooms, all of them enticing you to postpone the inevitable. Like Satan is tormenting me, delaying my homecoming. Well he doesn’t know me, he doesn’t realise quite how fucking ready I am to shake his hand. Fuck it, I’ll even tempt him to a game of chess before the night is over.

  I shift aside, holding my back to the wall and hiding my ass as a team of medics burst through a pair of double doors at the end of the corridor, random shouts and instructions blasting the quiet and making the ache in my head wince again. I watch them pass, a team of four, one in blue scrubs knelt astride the patient’s chest on the gurney as he desperately tries to resuscitate whoever is slipping into the depths of hell before me. Do they actually deserve to be saved? I know I don’t.

  Quiet fills me once again, the corridor that was alive seconds ago now eerily quiet. A door is ajar opposite me, a waiting room. Muffled sobbing fills the quiet, but it’s a gentle sobbing, a weeping that is full of grief, heartache. I want to console whoever is in there, but there’s a part of me that wants to yell “Accept it! Accept death because it’s the only guarantee of fucking quiet your head will ever get!”

  But I don’t. I can’t. Who am I to preach when I have taken someone’s life? I have taken a mother’s son from her. Fair enough, a monster most probably birthed by a sane and fairly normal woman, but still, it was my choice and I have no right to comfort anyone.

  It’s the first time in months, maybe a year that my head is clear enough to realise who I am. What I am. And I’m not sure I like who I have become. I blamed Cade, but in the end, he didn’t hurt Blue. It wasn’t Cade that tore her apart, or who took her from me. It was myself and the man who is now fish food. I have no one to blame but myself.

  My chest hurts. I don’t realise I’m crying until the waiting room door opens slowly and an old woman is staring at me, her wet blue eyes full of sadness. “Oh my dear.” Her voice is gravelly but soft, soothing and coaxing. Her hand reaches to mine and she pulls me gently. I allow her to lead me into the room, her movements slow as her old weary legs shuffle in front of me. She sits me down on the sofa, her leathery hand never letting go of mine.

  “You lost someone too,” she whispers.

  I can’t answer her, I’m not able to feel, never mind talk. Her eyes drop to our joined hands. “My Herb just left me. Cancer.” The sound of her voice makes my insides hurt for her. But looking back up at me she smiles, softly, almost…almost gratefully. “Pain is a funny thing,” she says quietly, sensitively, as her eyes fix on something over my shoulder. “He was in so much pain that I agonised over it. His pain became my hell, my own physical agony.” Although I can tell she is well into her eighties, her bright blue eyes are so very young, full of life and love for her dead husband. “But his love had the power to overcome it all. The way he loved me told me that he would fight to the end for me, hold on to the thing that pained him to stay with me. But in the end, we all choose the right path for our loved ones. We all help them in how they want to go. And we all do anything to make that love last till the end. Even if it guarantees us a place in hell.”

  My eyes snap to hers. Is she telling me she helped kill her husband? She shrugs faintly but smiles as if she’s aware of my silent question. “We all have demons, my dear. It’s how you choose to fight them that matters.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Shhh. Death isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of a journey, a journey none of us are willing to face but very ready to accept.”

  “I would die for her.” I’m not sure what made me say it, I’m not even sure if I did say it but the lady smiles once again, the wrinkles beside her eyes making her expression soft and warm.

  “And I know that if that is the case, then you’re worth it. Not many of us ever get to touch love, some of us are not lucky enough to ever see inside another’s soul, but when we do, it’s the only thing that leads us to our death because we never let it go, never. And we take that piece with us, through life, and even through death. My Herb will never leave me, he’s just moved ahead, but he’s waiting for me. We’ll meet again.”

  I can’t say anything. My throat is so tight I’m sure I’m choking right in front of her.

  “But that’s the thing, you see. Love. It makes us hold on. It allows us to face anything because love is all the drug we need, and to get the hig
h from it is like nothing else.”

  How she seemed to see inside me was inexplicable but for some unknown reason, I knew she could.

  She pats my hand then stands and makes her way out but before she closes the door behind her she turns back to me. “Just hold on, my dear. It will find you. And not before you’re ready for it.”

  The corridor is silent and empty when I emerge out of the room sometime later. Darkness has descended, the lights from the activity on the street below causing frequent flashes to bounce off the glass of the windows.

  Another burst of doors and I once again move aside. A team of three this time, all of them running. My eyes lower to a trail of blood following them, the thin crimson line someone’s life-force.

  “Stem the bleed you idiot! Seal the damn wound!” one of the white coats shouts to a nurse. He nods frantically, grabbing onto the pale wrist that has dropped off the edge of the trolley. Another nurse, a female, is running alongside holding a bag of fluids, her hands virtually squeezing it to push it through quicker.

  Long hair falls from the head of the trolley and I’m strangely mesmerised by it. It’s long and thick, like Blue’s but without the streak of blue running through it. I smile to myself, picturing how I would always run my fingers through that particular part after we’d blown each other’s minds.

  “Pulse is dropping!”

  “We’re losing her!”

  “Damn it, move! Move!”

  I feel sad. It was obvious this person had slit their wrists, wanted to end their own life like me. What made this person any less deserving of life than me? Here I was, a murderer, a killer, and someone had taken their own life because maybe their boyfriend was an ass, or maybe their husband was cheating on them. Who at the end of the day controlled you enough to make you want to end your life?