by Mason, V. F.
“Think, Emerald, think.” I see Micaden still lying on the deck, but I don’t have all the time in the world. He’ll be awake soon, and this is my only chance at escaping.
Then I remember.
Huffing in annoyance, I lean on Brochan, nuzzling his neck while he chuckles. “Come on, baby, I need to call the coast guard.”
“Can you kiss me first?” He slides his hand to my neck and then pulls me forward, giving me a deep kiss that curls my toes and hazes my mind before letting go and placing one last peck on my lips.
“I’ll give you more once I call. I think I saw hunting boats out there. I need to inform them,” I tell him.
“Of course.”
The poor dolphins are dropping like flies here and I don’t want them to suffer at the hands of bad people. He quickly dials the numbers, and I decide to memorize them just in case.
Okay, I can do this.
I press the buttons 3, 7, 9 and then Dial, but it’s silent. My brows furrow. I try again, but the same thing happens. “What is—” I trace the cord and then gasp, seeing it’s been cut.
No, he couldn’t have done it. He couldn’t predict that….
Loud clapping from behind snaps me out of my stupor, and I swirl around only to notice Micaden resting his shoulder on the doorjamb, looking fucking perfect if it wasn’t for the bruises under his eyes. “I have to say I’m impressed. You did try to help yourself. Great plan.”
“You knew I’d do it?” I hate how my voice trembles, because it gives him more power over me. He knows how much all this hurts and scares me. It gives him satisfaction and he’ll bask in it. I have no solution for my problem, I’m at his mercy, and whatever he decides will happen.
“Well, I thought you might. Anyhow, it failed.”
“You gave me a false sense of security.” That’s why he kept gazing at the horizon, as if he didn’t give a rat’s ass I was playing along with him.
“I figured you’d want privacy coming up with your great plan.”
“My suffering is so funny to you.”
He rubs his chin, contemplating my words before answering. “Funny, no. It doesn’t appeal to my sense of humor. But satisfying? A bit.”
“You’re insane, Micaden.”
“I am. And guess who made me like that?” He enters the cabin, aiming for me, but I step back farther into the space, hitting something with my back. It falls on the floor with a loud clang, but I don’t even check what it is.
Because my whole attention is on the predator in front of me who wants to catch me. “Don’t come closer.”
His brows rise. “Or what?”
My raspy breath fills the space while I think about the things that can be used against him, but the cabin has nothing. He’s prepared, that’s for sure.
“You’re in a helpless position.”
“Fortune favors the bold.”
He blinks at that and stops, cracking his neck to the side, and I still, not really understanding his reaction. “Does it now? Well then, that’s probably why I’m still alive.”
Alive? What does he mean by that? Someone wanted to kill him?
But I quickly shake off the thought, because the last thing I need is for any kind of tender emotions to come back. He’s mental and deserves nothing. Besides, it’s a war. Even I can recognize that.
If I don’t save myself, he’ll kill me. And maybe I have nothing in my life worth living for… but I don’t want to die. Especially not by the hand of the man I fell in love with twice and who hurt me so much.
And for him, I went against my family? I can’t believe this. I was such a fool.
Twice.
I’ll try one more time to make sense of this puzzle he keeps throwing my way as if I’m supposed to understand everything. Besides, if I get a peek inside his crazy mind, maybe it’ll teach me something about him that I can use against him in the future. “Micaden, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can talk like normal people, and you can explain why you hate me so much.” And part of me, the one that’s is in love with the “good” Micaden slash Brochan, yearns to know it too. What possibly changed him from a loving man into this?
However, maybe he always has been like this and hid it well behind the mask of a lover. After all, I’d have never suspected this from him.
“This patronizing tone and soothing voice won’t work on me. I’m not a psycho.”
“When I called you a sociopath, you didn’t deny it.”
He laughs, finding it funny for some reason. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t use the term on me, or a certain someone will kill me. I don’t have labels. I just love to kill.”
I move back again, confused by the change of energy around him that practically vibrates with tension. “The cries of my victims, their suffering, their blood. All this gives me pleasure.”
“You’re sick.” I can’t believe he’s saying all this, admits to it. He’s a killer, and I let him touch me. Sleep with me. Make love to me.
I believed his lies, and he betrayed me.
They’re not called perfect manipulators for nothing after all. “Sometimes evil is the only cure. But your defeat doesn’t appeal to me.” He comes closer, but I have nowhere else to go. The boat equipment digs painfully in my lower back as he advances, caging me in before he slaps his palms on either side of me.
I tilt my head to hold his stare, and he drills his blue orbs into me. “There’s a satellite phone on this boat. I won’t tell you where it is, but if you find it… and press 757, help will come.” He leans closer, his lips grazing mine. I turn my head, hating his touch, but he doesn’t let me, catching my lower lip in time and biting on it, drawing blood.
I cry out, pushing at his chest, but it doesn’t help. I have the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, and he shifts lower, nibbling on my chin. “But you want a little secret?” he whispers in my ear, and I shake my head, not interested in his twisted game. The only information that matters is the phone, the only escape on this boat. “You will never find it.”
“I hate you.” And although I say those words, I’m not sure I feel the emotion behind them. While I’ll never willingly be with him again, love can’t disappear in the span of a moment.
“I hate you too, Emerald. But you don’t hate me. Not yet. But how about we change that, so we’ll be on the same page, shall we?”
He wraps his hands around my throat and presses on it, so hard I cough, but then my knees weaken, and I fall into his strong arms, and the last thing in my mind before I lose consciousness is, If he thinks this doesn’t make me hate him…
…what then in his mind will?
Micaden
Hope is a fleeting emotion that occurs when we desperately want or need something, but it’s not in our power to achieve it. Or we are on the path for it, but we need a little help.
We hope and hope and sometimes pray, holding on to the belief that something will come and save us.
Often, it does.
Then we experience the happiness that rushes through us and reminds us that good things indeed happen to people. But often, they don’t, and then the desperation sinking in our blood drives us to a hollow place where there’s no one to soothe us.
Everyone has their own description of happiness and desperation, of pain and chaos, of love and hate.
But hope is one emotion that connects all people, because each one of us has it or had it.
I hoped and lost.
So now Emerald can hope and hope and hope… but she’ll never feel this happiness. Because she’ll die in a hollow place lullabied by her cries.
Every monster or serial killer, or just a bad person, has a creator or an event that triggered them into becoming that person. No one is born with a knife in their hand. And although not everyone succumbs to dark desires, a lot do.
We are a product of someone else’s carelessness.
We are a product of someone’s indifference.
We are a product of someone’s evilness.
And the fe
eling that connects all of us no matter what our crimes are?
Our hope was crushed and burned in the inferno of agony and pain.
Chapter Nineteen
Micaden, 22 years old
“We can’t appeal?” I ask my lawyer, and he shakes his head, wiping his eyes, and I frown, because it makes no sense to me.
Why is he crying if he was the one pleading for me to accept this deal? “No. You will stay here.” He doesn’t tell me anything new, but Tom is still searching for a solution. He told he’d travel to Seattle again and try to find Emerald, so he can persuade her to admit the truth.
I was thankful for his offer and accepted it with one condition: to be gentle with her. Although she broke me beyond measure, harming her wasn’t and won’t be on my agenda.
At least not physically.
“Thought as much.” But then it dawns on me. “Why are you here?” Last time we’d seen each other was three days ago, when they dropped me off here and he promised to visit me in a month. The prison is far away from our hometown, so I didn’t expect him to make the trip often.
He fumbles with his fingers, wipes his eyes. And then the tears come again, and I blink, not understanding what’s going on. “Patrick?”
He exhales heavily and clears his throat, and then says, “Your old man died today.”
I freeze, afraid to even take a breath, still processing his words when he continues to speak, with each word hurting me more and more while agony spreads inside me. “It all became too much. People painted your house in red paint, claiming he raised a rapist. They wouldn’t come to his auto shop. Money became tight with all the lawsuits. The entire town turned their back on him. The final nail in the coffin was your sentence. He couldn’t take it anymore, because there was no hope left.”
I cover my head with my arms, roaring while Patrick adds something else, but I don’t hear him.
All the memories of my father flash through my mind, the only man who gave me a home and all the values I lived by till today.
“Always be fair, Brochan.”
“Even if people aren’t?”
“Even then. They lost their way, but you didn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I be weak for it?”
“No, my boy. The real strength lies in not succumbing to the desire to be exactly like the people who hurt you.”
However, my sweet old man didn’t really know life.
Because the injustice that’s been done to both of us can’t be forgotten.
Alone.
I fell in love with a girl and because of her… lost everything.
* * *
I numbly watch the laundry being washed as the sheets keep spinning round and round in the machine. I rest my back on the counter in front of it, still processing the earlier visit, and press my palms against my sockets so the tears won’t escape.
I can freely cry once in a cell, but here… showing weakness here is out of the question.
I’m so deep in my thoughts, reliving all the good times in my head with Dad, that I don’t see the blow coming.
The metal object swiftly hits the back of my knees, and I cry out, falling to the ground, shocked.
The man jumps me, hitting my shoulder, but this time, I’m prepared, and I hit back, sliding from him and standing up while fucking pain travels from my knees to my head. But I ignore it.
The beefy asshole swings his fist at me again, but I dodge it, and then bend quickly to deliver my own blow, and he groans as it connects with his stomach, and I kick him.
But then muscled arms wrap around me from behind, locking me in a tight hold, and that’s when the first guy starts to punch me in the stomach.
Blow, blow, blow.
I keep it tensed as much as possible and try to get free, and I finally do, breathing heavily and thanking God for exercising in advance, or it would have been a quick fight.
“You little shit,” one of them seethes and goes after me again, but I dip, and he goes flying past me. But then the blow comes from behind once again, and this time the metal hits my head.
I drop to the floor, my knees landing hard. I’m dizzy when the two men kick me with all their power. At some point, the bat returns, delivering another blow to my head causing me to cry out, unable to withstand it.
The blood slips past my lips and from my forehead onto the floor. My ribs hurt like a bitch. Some are probably broken, along with my nose.
Blood, so much blood, I can smell it.
The click of fingers echoes through the space, and immediately all the action stops. I gulp a breath, wincing, because it’s fucking unbearable to even breathe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see several feet coming closer and closer, but the most prominent ones are black leather sneakers that I know for a fact belong to Ken.
He squats next to me, and I scrunch my eyes to properly see him as dizziness and nausea make it almost impossible to focus on anything but the wounds.
Ken fists my hair and pulls, sending burning through my scalp. “We don’t like rapists here, Brochan. Especially those who touch underage girls. Do we?” he asks someone, and they must have nodded, because he turns back to me, sighing. “I might have been more lenient if you had told me about it… but since your mouth was shut, you left me no choice.”
So he’s spinning this story in his favor, is he? His words make it sound as if I touched a small girl and harmed her.
Guys behind him hoot, and I hear zippers being lowered. He leans closer though, and murmurs for my ears only, “And someone offered me so much money for this, you have no idea. I like a little raping myself, but then no one knows that, do they? Let it be our little secret.” His breath fans my face while hate unlike anything I’ve felt before surges through me. I try to get up, but the kick from behind keeps me on my stomach.
Ken steps back, and says, “All yours. If he’s dead, I won’t be sorry.”
His black shoes disappear from my vision as I feel hands touch me from behind, dragging my pants down, and although I fight as hard as I can, my strength is nothing against the ten men surrounding me.
There’s more beating before each one of them proceeds to teach me a lesson I’ll never forget.
Pain, agony, blood, cold bottles, dicks, and spit. Laughter and burns from the cigarettes. Arms that won’t let me look away and voices that forever stay imprinted in my brain.
On that cold floor with nothing left to live for while men rape me for hours, Brochan dies forever.
And instead, someone else is born.
He doesn’t have a name yet, but he won’t rest until all those people are punished for what they did.
Hope dies too, and instead, he’s fueled by the desire for vengeance.
Island, United States
August 2019
Emerald
Wincing, I groan as the throbbing in my head assaults me the minute I move it on the pillow. I still, breathing deeply through my nose, and concentrate on calming my nerves.
I must have fallen asleep last night on the couch after creating yet another drawing, preparing for my students to learn new techniques.
This is what happens when you get too excited.
The bed is fluffy and cold under me, bringing relief to my skin, which is drenched in sweat for some reason.
My brows furrow as I wipe the sweat from my forehead blindly. This seems odd. The AC is always running high in my room. I can’t tolerate heat, since it always increases my headaches. Kaden made sure to install ACs in all the places I visited.
I probably turned it off at some point while painting, because it dries the paint unevenly, but then forgot to turn it back on.
Sighing heavily, I lift my eyelids only to close them again, huffing in annoyance. “How could I have gone to sleep without AC?” I grumble, pushing the words through my sore throat.
I shift to the side to lean over to my bedside table, where there’s always a bottle of water waiting for me, when the deep voice coming from somewhere freezes me. It brin
gs back all the flashbacks and memories at once, almost hitting me with the realization while I listen to his words. “That’s the only thing that worries you? I’m impressed.”
Looking in the direction of the voice, I don’t see anything, since the place has no light, but I scoot farther up the bed. I press my back against the headboard while placing my palm on my heart, which beats so wildly in my chest that I’m afraid he might hear it.
I’m on the boat with Micaden.
No. I’m on a boat with Brochan, who’s completely lost his mind and wants revenge for something I have no idea about.
“Why am I here?” I rasp, remembering the last seconds before I passed out, and I touch my throat, realizing why it burns. He freaking choked me. “You are—”
“Uh-uh-uh,” he scolds, and I can imagine him wiggling his index finger at me. “Be very careful what escapes that pretty mouth of yours.” Although his voice is smooth and friendly, the warning skirts around its edges, prickling my skin and reminding me I’m in way over my head in this.
I don’t deal with crazy on a daily basis. “Or what? You’re going to hurt me more?” It’s hard not to hear sarcasm in my voice, but instead of replying to my jab, he clicks his fingers. Suddenly, the room brightens, the harsh light almost blinding me until I cover my eyes, bringing back the pain again and adding blurry vision to it.
Fucking perfect.
“I was gentle with you, because I know how your eyes can’t handle all this harshness at once, but you didn’t appreciate it. So no more mister nice guy.”
A chuckle slips from my mouth, a hollow, hurtful chuckle that displays all the desperation I feel in this moment. “Excuse me while I laugh at that statement,” I finally say, adjusting my eyes and breathing once again through the discomfort.
I do not intend to become a victim in his triangle, or whatever he called it.
Besides, he’s like a wild beast hunting and playing with his prey. But they want a challenge, right? Maybe my disobedience will actually make him wait to kill me, and I can find some help with that phone he mentioned. Playing compliant at this point will bring me more harm than good.