Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (23 page)

There was a clicking and a snap of static and before I realized what the device was that Jasper was holding I was on the floor screaming, electricity ripping and perforating my veins to the point where I thought I was going to die.

I remembered nothing else.

Another electric shock and another, by the time Jasper was done using the taser the boy was passed out cold, his red eyes glassy and staring off into nothing and his fingers twitching beside the dead corpse of the little slave Cooper.

Jasper spat on him and gave him a kick in the side, pursing his lips as the desire to kill him right there taunted him.

But he still needed someone to fuck, and someone to talk to.

Jasper went to the door and walked up the stairs, passing the piles of garbage and half-eaten body parts – and went to the barn to find his chains.

That boy will never see daylight – he will never look out that window again. He will be chained like the animal he is and will be fucked like one too.

Sanguine age 13

My neck was chaffed and sore from trying to get myself out of the metal collar on my neck. I couldn’t see how bad it was only that it was hot to the touch. In some areas it was rough and scabbed but in other areas it was leaking fluid and as sensitive as a busted open blister. It hurt to the point where I couldn’t move my neck at all, so I just sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the door.

Oh the colours I saw when I stared at that door, the images that went through my head. Sometimes I felt like I was floating in water, though I didn’t know how to swim; other times it felt like I was flying in the air… even though Jasper had clipped my wings.

Mostly I saw nothing because even my imagination had retreated inside of my mind after the horrific act I had done just two weeks ago. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, just darkness laid on top of darkness, a thousand and one strips of fine black carbon to which no light could penetrate.

Though there had never been any light.

My mind faded to black but I became aware when Jasper handcuffed my hands and legs and urged me to get up.

“Come on… we’re going outside.” Jasper’s voice sounded like he was underwater. It was a thin, wobbly voice and it took awhile to reach the back alley in my brain where I was hiding.

“Sami?”

Finally I looked up at him. He was staring at me with my neck chain in his hand, cold metal was felt on my wrists and legs and I looked down to see the chains. Everything was chains and darkness, there wasn’t much else anymore, inside and out.

“Sami?”

He roughly smacked the side of my cheek and I blinked away the last of my inner delirium.

“What?” I rasped.

“Pick up the boy rotting in the corner and come up the stairs.”

I looked over and was reminded of the smell of rot so heavy in the air it seemed to physically weigh me down. Tinged with blue I saw the corpse of Cooper, green now, and surrounded by brown stain.

Without complaint I got up and took a step. My legs buckled underneath me from not walking or standing in weeks.

I held up my hand and steadied myself by the boarded up window, and took a moment to get my balance.

I saw that even the cracks of the window had been boarded. I had no light whatsoever, not even the little slivers that streaked across the dirty, stained floors. Everything was in darkness but… but I had already known that. Perhaps my awareness was having trouble catching up with the world still turning around me.

Life was going on outside of this basement and yet I felt like I was stuck in an eternity of limbo.

My next jolt of awareness came when I reached the top of the stairs. It was the smell that brought me back, leading me to look down and see the small boy I had in my arms.

He was so light… and he was missing his eyes, his cheeks… he was missing large chunks of him that made him look more like a zombie than a little blond-haired child.

I think someone had been eating him – I don’t know if it was me or Jasper.

Maybe both.

Yes, look at all those bits missing, he did indeed look like a zombie. Though in all respects the zombie was me – I was the dead one, even in death Cooper was more alive than I had ever been.

I froze at the top of the stairs and looked around, shocked as I realized I was on the surface… I hadn’t been above ground in years.

Immediately I felt apprehension. I turned to walk back down the stairs when Jasper grabbed my arm.

“No, outside… you’re burying him. You killed him, you bury him,” Jasper said in a biting tone. “Are you telling me you’re scared of being outside?”

I looked around the filthy house, stacks of boxes with old appliances sticking out, worn-out furniture and counters covered in garbage. In the kitchen I saw a leg of a rat, its skin leathery brown but for the fat poking out of the sever marks. I wasn’t hungry; I wouldn’t eat that I don’t think.

“Sami?” Jasper made a frustrated noise. “Are you even still in there? You’re a fucking wreck… go outside. Go on, I’m having a hit.”

I shuffled over to the door but stopped again. It was dusk but the dark blue hues were still too bright for me. I wasn’t used to not seeing the world without the night bright I had had since I was born.

Everything was so… open.

Vast without walls or boundaries.

It made me anxious, I once again turned to go back to the basement.

And again Jasper grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the open door to the outside world.

My breathing started to catch in my throat and desperation sunk into every crevice of my mind, unravelling the tight coils of my brain and exposing the soft membranes to the cold greywastes air. I didn’t want cold air… I wanted my closed-in basement.

“Go!” Jasper snapped. I heard a lighter flick and the smell of the meth as he took a hit. “Hurry up, he fucking stinks.”

“Basement…” I whispered.

“No!” Jasper pushed my back, my chains clinked around as I stumbled forward. “Go!”

I was a broken man and this was proven to both Jasper and me when I took a step forward and walked onto the porch. Swallowing down the anxieties screaming and shredding my damaged mind I walked onto the greywastes ground and tried not to look at the open world, now so threatening it made me wish for the white door to stare at.

So I looked at the ground, hearing nothing but my own desperate breathing and the crows in the distance.

My crows?

I looked and saw them tinted in a ghostly white, their red eyes now bright stars that had fallen from the inky heavens above me. Beautiful twinkling stars.

I started walking towards them, this rotting body still in my arms. My chains chimed and rattled as I shuffled over past the opening in the fence.

“Sami?” Jasper called but I kept walking towards my crows.

I got down on my knees, for a moment the crows hopped away from me but as they prepared themselves to fly away… they started to come back.

My crows surrounded me, tilting their heads back and forth, wondering if I had food for them. All I had was Cooper, the boy in my arms, dead and long gone.

“Come here, Crow.”

My arm outstretched to touch them. “Hello, Sanguine,” I whispered.

“Hello, Sanguine,”
one said.

Red eyes, black feathers… just like Crow. The Crow who talked in that dry, raspy voice.

And me, just like me. They would be my friends; they were only animals but yet they were all I ever had.

“Come here, Crow.”

“SAMI!” Jasper snapped.

I looked up at the sky and saw stars peeking through the grey haze above us. One day I would grow wings and fly from here… though perhaps not.

I was a celldweller hiding from those who would hurt me and unfortunately – the entire planet wished I was dead.

Everyone except the crows.

The sound of a shovel striking dirt filled the night air around me. I looked and saw Jasper striking it into the ground.

“Start digging,” he commanded. “Put the boy down.”

I looked back at the crows and wished I could ask them what it was like to be able to fly. But I was defeated and had been broken, so I put Cooper down for the crows to watch over and took the shovel from Jasper.

Jasper’s movements were twitching and his eyes jutting off in different directions. He sat on a stained, old lawn chair as I started to dig and drank from a flask in his jacket.

He watched me dig and then he started to talk, rapid speech that said everything and nothing at the same time. Rambling words of legion soldiers, crows with cameras, and the belief that the world was after him.

“The Legion has been nosing around Melchai, nosing around the area for the past year,” Jasper said taking another drink. “They stay on the edge of my property. I saw claw marks on my fence an acre away. Near the bones of that greywaster I found when I first brought you.”

I kept digging and I didn’t answer him back, but every few minutes I had to stop and rest. I had no energy, no strength. I was grey skin stretched over brittle bones.

After awhile though he stopped rambling on about the Legion and turned to talking about me.

“You’re growing quickly,” he commented darkly. “Too quickly for me. I bet you feel like a big man now that your cock is bigger than mine, eh?”

“No,” I said back. The hole I was digging was almost up to my waist, though I still had to make it wider.

“Yeah, I know that. You’re beaten down, the perfect slave. Shark teeth, blood-red eyes, and handsome as all fuck but inside your brain you’re just a mental piece of shit.”

“I know,” I replied. I dug the shove in again and threw the dirt over my back. I glanced to my side and saw the crows were pecking at Cooper but I let them. That was the only food I had to offer them.

“You know you should thank me for taking care of you. The people of Melchai would’ve found you with torches lit and crucified you on the spot.”

I paused and stared at the hole I was digging, half grey ash but underneath I was seeing bits of brown soil. His words meant more to me than he thought – I had never told him what Gill had done to me. Maybe he had seen the scars on my palms?

“Thank you,” I said dully, not knowing what else to say. Jasper laughed at this and started pacing around the field, his flask rarely leaving the tight seal of his lips.

“Why should I keep you alive, Sami?” Jasper suddenly said.

I looked at him and saw he was looking down at Cooper’s corpse. “You killed a cute, pure little boy I paid a hundred and fifty dollars for.”

My eyes once again fell to the hole I was digging, and I wondered if this hole was meant for me all along.

Then I heard a click.

I turned around and stared down the barrel of a rifle.

“Well, Sami? Why don’t I just kill you right now?” I could smell the whisky on his breath and the overpowering smell of meth. Though that was all that I felt, I felt nothing else.

And perhaps that was my answer.

“Because you know I want you to,” I said to him and I turned around and went back to my digging.

Jasper stabbed the back of my head with the barrel of the gun. I had to steady myself on the ground to keep myself from falling down. He hit me again, twice, and a third time until I had to stay hunched over to keep steady. Satisfied with whatever point he was trying to prove Jasper growled before spitting in the hole I was in.

But he didn’t shoot me; he just yelled at the crows and sat back down.

And I kept digging.

Then there was a scraping of the chair and a light caught the corner of my vision. I looked over towards the barn, where Lenny was buried, and saw two pairs of headlights coming down the dusty greywastes, in the same direction I had come from.

Jasper swore. “Get out of the hole!” he snapped but as soon as he said that he swore again and said instead, “No, get into it. Lay down and don’t say a fucking word, there ain’t time to hide you. DO IT!”

Obediently, or perhaps I was too tired to argue, I lay down in the hole and curled myself up with an indifferent feeling. It felt nice to be laying down some place dark so I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation of being closed off in something.

Though as soon as he started putting dirt on me I got nervous.

And on its heels a feeling I didn’t think someone like me could feel: claustrophobic.

“Shut up! I’ll dig you out when they fucking leave, just brush it from your nose and stay still,” Jasper hissed when he noticed my breathing start to quicken.

“Basement…” I said in a broken voice. I blew air out of my nose to clear the dirt from my nostrils as more cold dirt started piling on me.

It was going in my ears… it was going in my eyes. I shut my eyes tight and put my hands over my head, shielding myself from the worst of the dirt and giving me a big enough gap that I could still drawn in breath.

“Shh!” Jasper hissed again then suddenly a slew of curse words fell from his lips. “That’s the fucking Legion. I told you, didn’t I tell you!? They’ll kill me and then kill you so shut up.”

“Put the shovel down!” a muffled voice suddenly called. I tried to shift and move but the layer of dirt around me was thicker than I thought. My bottom half was paralyzed and all I could move were my hands, but no, I couldn’t move my hands because every time I did more dirt fell on my face making my claustrophobia even worse.

Then one last pile of dirt on my head and the voices were nothing but muffled vibrations to me. I couldn’t hear if I wanted to and it wasn’t just from the cold dirt on top of me, it was because my breathing was bordering on hyperventilating and my mind circling around an anxiety attack.

With my eyes closed I tried to push myself out of my body. Fly away with the crows, fly away to the stars with my friends.

No… I didn’t need friends.

The uncomfortable feeling of being closed in was starting to drive me mad but the voices only continued. So desperately did I want to burst out of this grave just to get a breath of fresh air but I couldn’t… I couldn’t do it. I stayed absolutely still as Jasper got interrogated by the Legion for reasons I didn’t know.