Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (21 page)

Anyways it was… disgusting, everything he did to me was disgusting. I wasn’t going to be one of those men on the porn movies he showed me who touched himself and made noise. I was an object to him and that was just how it had been and always would be. I wasn’t having sex with him, I’ve never had sex with him… he just did what he came for and I didn’t fight it anymore.

I had fought… the first time… fuck, had I ever fought.

But he overpowered me… an eight-year-old had no chance against a full-grown man.

So he kept beating me, his breathing heavy under his rage and his blows sound and with a good amount of force. I stared at the concrete wall as his hits, now just numbing thumps against my raw skin, hit their mark. Blood sprinkled on the concrete to match the other designs my own masochism had painted. I had quite the murals over these concrete walls, even the floor was my canvas.

When he was tired my eyes were stinging from the blood, and my mouth was so full I had to spit onto my blanket just to be able to breathe.

“If that ever happens again… I’m cutting it off,” Jasper panted, exhausted from beating me. I heard him get up and walk away. “I’m going to Melchai.”

“You didn’t bring me any food…” I rasped. “It’s been three days.”

The door slammed.

To help distract myself from the gnawing discomfort inside of my stomach I painted crows on the walls. I had run out of room about two years into my imprisonment here so I had started washing some of my paintings away with saliva. I had kept a couple paintings from when I was little but I was much better at it now.

I hummed to myself as I used the stiff wire as a quill and slowly and methodically painted the feathers on the crow. I sung one of the only songs I knew,
Daisy Daisy
, a song that had been with me since the beginning.

I glanced over at Barry, laying on his side beside my pillow. I hadn’t wound him since Jasper used to give him to me to stop me from crying too hard when he fucked me. The sound of his musical box made my throat tight and I broke into a sweat. I was sad I had that association now but it was what it was. Maybe that was why my mind made him blow his brains out.

And bludgeon Sami.

My gut growled. I looked down at my stomach, so empty that it sunk in. My ribs and bones were sticking out of me, thin outlines of bones that tried to push through my skin like they themselves were trying to escape from me. Everything on my body was pencil thin though I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror in over five years, I knew my face must look ghastly though but… it wasn’t like anyone saw me anyways.

I was hungry… really hungry. Jasper had gone to Melchai yesterday so now it was day four of me not having any food whatsoever. Even painting was starting to make me feel faint, so I laid down on my bed and tried to get some sleep.

The next day Jasper didn’t come back… and the day after he didn’t come back either.

Today was a bad day for me, today I wasn’t in a good space.

Weak and unable to move I lay in bed staring at the blood paintings of my crows that I had made. Though I had been strong enough to withstand starvation he had never left me without food for this long. This was day six and even my water was starting to run dry, all of my resources were disappearing.

I reached over and grabbed the water bottle with shaky hands. I brought it up to my lips and drank the warm liquid down. It was hot outside today and my basement was stifling. It was going to be fall soon and once spring came again I would be fourteen years old. I was a teenager now though something told me I wouldn’t live to see my voice stop cracking. If Jasper’s anger and frustration over me growing hair was any testament it was that my days were numbered.

Who cares.

I put the bottle down and closed my eyes, though I didn’t see the bright colours or the detailed adventures with Nero anymore. I only saw the black feathers of the crows that I was too weak to talk to, and behind that just darkness. My good memories had faded into the abyss and with them my hopes for a life that wasn’t this. Sanguine was depression encompassed, sometimes I wish I hadn’t killed Sami.

Sami had fight in him; he had the arrogance of a child who still had hopes and dreams. A child who didn’t know just how unfair life was… I wish I still had that outlook on life. Now… it was what it was.

Sanguine, Sanguine… give me your heart to eat.

My eyes opened slowly and I looked around the dark room, wondering where that voice had come from. I swear I had heard it… I know I had.

I blinked the crusted sleep from my eyes and, to my shock, my eyes immediately focused on a man.

A different man, this was no man that I had ever seen before or would ever expect to be here. He had brushed back black hair, burning red eyes and a grin as wide as the Cheshire cat’s. His teeth were pointed and he was dressed in a black long coat.

This man couldn’t be real…

“Who are you?” I asked him cautiously. I sniffed and tried to move around.

“I am Crow,” he replied.

“Rip out his flesh, Sami,”

There were so many things I forgot over the years but there was one thing that always lingered in my mind. One thing that I had copped up to insanity or my dire need to finally break free from my submissive chains – and that thing was that dry and raspy voice I had heard that first time in the farmer’s field. The voice that commanded and gave me the tools to finally fight back against Jasper.

That voice had disappeared as quickly as it came, and I had never heard him again.

The man named Crow kneeled down with the same grin on his face and I saw his eyes take me in with a glimmer of desire.

“You’re not real,” I said to him dully. I sniffed and with all my remaining strength I rolled over so I wasn’t facing him anymore. Barry had never existed and he was dead now and, like Barry, Crow would eventually die too. Though now I was old enough to know Barry had always been in my mind.

The room was silent so I closed my eyes. Though as I tried to force my brain to accept sleep I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

I opened my eyes and let out a small gasp of shock.

Crow was laying down beside me, his back pressed against the concrete wall. He was looking at me with his blood-red eyes glistening and his mouth still spread in a smile that showed off his serrated pointed teeth.

“I have no friends, and you are not my friend,” I said to him. Though to my shame saying those words made the space behind my eyes burn. “I am alone; I have always been alone.”

Crow shook his head and raised a hand, then gently brushed it against my cheek. I could hear his dry breathing near my ear. Inhale and exhale, sucking in the musty air of the basement.

“No,
mihi
, you’re not alone.” Crow’s voice, dry but at the same time smooth, wrapped itself around my heart like a cold ribbon. Out of loneliness or perhaps just desperate sadness I found myself drawn to his words. “My little thing… my poor poor Sanguine. You are not alone, no.”

I looked at him and so badly wanted to pull away.

Sensing my hesitation his smile faded until his lips pursed.

Then his eyes squinted under his closed mouth smile; he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. I could feel the pressure against my skin.

“Are you hungry?” he asked gently, running his cold fingers up my chin and down the nape of my neck.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice rising several octaves at his touch. I didn’t feel nervous having Crow touch me it… it almost felt natural.

Crow nodded and kissed my forehead again. He started to sit up and as he did he put a hand on my shoulder directing me to sit up too. Though I was weak and it was difficult, I pulled myself up to the sitting position.

Still naked from Jasper’s last time with me I sat cross-legged in front of Crow and watched him.

The man put his hands up to my face. He leaned in and kissed me before, oddly, he put the soft underneath of his forearm to my mouth.

“Eat.”

I looked at him puzzled and shook my head. Crow only squinted his eyes like a content cat and urged me towards his arm.

“Eat, Sanguine.”

Hesitation froze me but the gnawing hunger inside urged me to open my mouth. I put my lips over the flesh of his arm and looked up at him.

Crow nodded and petted my hair back. “That’s right, sink your teeth in, eat enough to sustain you. He will not kill you, my beautiful
amor
… my mihi so sad in his basement. Eat and grow your strength.”

I looked down at the arm and started to bite down, as soon as I tasted the coppery blood a groan fell unbidden from my lips. The flesh was ambrosia and the blood the life that I needed to sustain me. Suddenly, unable to hold myself back, I bit as hard as I could and ripped a chunk of flesh from Crow’s arm.

Meat… fresh arian meat, still warm. My body trembled as the sweet meat kissed my lips, letting rush after rush of pure ecstasy take me as its willing hostage. In a fleeting moment the atmosphere of the room had been transformed, from my dark depression to a brilliant light all centered around the food I was devouring like a starved animal.

I took out the chunk and devoured it. My mind was telling me to savour it but my mouth was chewing and swallowing without care. Instincts taking over me and tossing aside any human need to prolong the pleasure. Getting it inside of my stomach was more important.

When I was finished I so dearly wanted more but Crow’s arm was bleeding heavily and I could see I had chewed off a big piece of his arm flesh. Instead he pushed my head down onto the wound and I fixed my mouth over it and started to drink.

My throat burned with desire. I leaned down to take in more and as I shifted I realized some of that burning was coming from my groin area. It was stiff again, the blood and the flesh I was devouring was doing more to me than I had expected.

But I didn’t care. I closed my eyes and drank the coppery elixir of life and let myself slip into the delirium that came hand-in-hand with isolation, starvation, and almost six years of abuse could bring.

“That’s it, drink…” Crow whispered. I felt his hand on my head gently pet my hair back. I relaxed under his touch, something I knew I would now do only for him. “Get your strength back – he will not kill you. We will not let him.”

He already killed me…
I said to myself, sucking on the shredded wound of his arm like he was my pacifier.

“Then we shall resurrect you.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him and he tilted his head to the side. Crow leaned in and kissed my forehead.

The door behind me opened.

My neck jerked towards the dirty white door and I saw Jasper step through. I hadn’t even heard him come in, I had been in this daze for longer than I…

“What the ever-loving… fuck…” Jasper stopped dead in his tracks. He was travel worn and covered in ash, his goggles resting on top of his head. He wasn’t looking at me though, he was looking at… at…

I looked down as the haze started to drip from my mind like water rolling off of the windowsill.

My mind refused to acknowledge what I was seeing.

A large chunk of flesh was missing from the underside of my forearm, the thinnest layer of yellow fat before a crater of red, still bleeding muscle. The blood was so dark compared to the pink meat, already it was pooling in the crater and spilling out the sides like an overflowing lake.

I had eaten my own flesh, not Crows.

“You… you fucking crazy…” Jasper’s tone dropped and he took a step towards me before he paused and looked behind him. “You… you need to get a hold of yourself, kid.”

My flesh, my blood… it was Crow’s and yet it was mine and because of this in my own lingering madness I lowered my head and snapped my jaws back over the wound. I tore another bite away from my flesh and when Jasper ran over to me… I growled at him.

“You would do best to stay back,” I said in a low raspy voice. “I am rather hungry.”

Jasper took another step towards me and I hissed; my mouth full of warm meat and the nutrients from the food I’d already devoured filling my body with a rush of energy.

This time Jasper didn’t come closer, he just stared at me. I wonder what he was thinking, I wondered what he was going to do.

I wondered if he would dare come closer to us.

“Can I meet him?”

Shock hit me like a splash of cold water. I looked behind Jasper and saw small little fingers grasping the door frame.

No…

“Jasper? I can hear him… can I meet him?”

Jasper started at me and his lips tightened. He turned around and picked up one of the dirty, bloody blankets and threw it over my injured arm. I was too busy staring at those soft, nimble little fingers to do anything else.

Horror gripped me and not even Crow on my shoulders could mask the foreboding, terrible feelings that were being stirred up in my chest.

“Yes… come in here, boy.” Jasper’s tone changed. It changed like a switch, the same one I had seen flick on and off. The one that made him sound cheerful. The façade of the happy depraved monster, who wore a mask on his face that held so many people underneath it.