The last time I saw her, Clara was all smiles. Her skin glowed, as it always did, and there was a sparkle that had never left her eyes. It’s gone now, just like her glow.
Clara was always thin, but her bones jutted out at all angles. Her hair, which I used to watch bounce as she walked away from me, hangs lifelessly down her body. My best friend has turned into a shadow, at least until she recognizes me.
“Cade?” She doesn’t wait for a confirmation. Running to me at full speed, she breaks away from the guards, face contorted and red. I catch her and hold her tight, burrowing my face in her hair while she sobs into my neck.
Rubbing my hands down the white silk dress clinging to her form, I whisper, “I thought you were dead.”
“I am.”
Pulling away, I grab hold of her face and stare into her eyes, searching for that spark. “No, you’re not.”
Her tears fall just as one of the men begins to speak, and then her stare glazes over. “Boss wanted to give you a treat. Anice little reunion!” They laugh as one. “What do you think about that, dog? You got your bitch back!”
Slow simmering pressure begins to bloom in my chest. It presses tightly against my sternum, creating fissures in the bones keeping me together. As their laughter grows, the tension inside me intensifies, building in waves. With each howl coming from their lips, the temperature of my blood boils higher. I feel like my mother’s kettle, ready to boil over.
“Well, what are you waiting for, dog? Fuck her.” I feel Clara tense in my hands. Chest tightening to the point of breaking and muscles tense, my heart races, and heat spreads through me, almost suffocating.
“Oh wait,” Culver, the fat one, pauses, “the cunt likes cunt.”
Clara’s tears cascade down the back of my hand, creating a river on my flesh. Shakes take hold of her. Before I can pull her behind me, shielding her breakdown from their view, Hannidy darts forward, spearing his knobby, chewed-up fingers into her tangled hair.
Their laughter is louder than the sound of hair tearing from her scalp, but it’s all I can focus on—that and the pained mewling coming from her quivering lips. Jumping toward him with the blade in my ready hands, I prepare to cut those fucking fingers off, but Ramirez and Culver know me well enough and anticipate my moves. The butts of their guns hit me before I could even reach for Clara, one in the gut, the other in my chest. I think Ramirez was aiming for my throat. He got my collarbone instead, shattering it on impact.
I go down on my knee, knife falling somewhere on the ground while I cradle my fragmented bone. I can feel pieces moving beneath my flesh, stabbing and threatening to break through my skin. Panting, with furious tears beading in my eyes, I attempt to stand, but Ramirez strikes me for a second time, right in the back of the head.
With the help of his boot against my neck, I fall face-first into the carpet, pinned under his weight. For extra security, Ramirez rams the nozzle of the gun into the back of my shoulder, digging it into my flesh until I feel it pressing against my broken bones. A scream tears through my throat while stars and black spots dance around my vision.
The sudden burst of pain sends vomit spilling past my lips, a little puddle forming before my eyes. Ramirez kicks the back of my head, pressing my face into it. Sour fumes sting my eyes, blurring my vision, but not enough to stop me from witnessing the guards folding Clara over the chair.
Hannidy struggles to hold her hands against the base of the seat, fighting to keep her still while Culver pulls a rope out of his pocket. When he begins wrapping the coarse fibers around her wrists, looping them beneath the chair and back up again, I attempt to throw Ramirez off. Bucking and flailing, I squirm beneath his boots, panic swimming through my veins when they tear the soft fabric from her body.
The horrors she’s experienced haunt her eyes and hang from the brittle ends of her hair. They dangle in front of a face I’m unfamiliar with. There was a searing hot iron that twisted my insides when the guards presented her to me, but none of it compares to the agony I feel when I see the barbarity sprinkled across her flesh.
Obsidian bruises, open wounds, and fresh bite marks sink beneath her skin. There are pathways of blood that have crusted over, leading to new lesions slowly bleeding down her slim frame.
I used to admire how milky her skin was—imagine what it would feel like to touch it—before she grew into my sister. I pictured her soft, but now all I can see are the hard angles of her bones, protruding and threatening to break through her delicate skin.
Clara’s mouth falls open as Culver spreads her wide, but I hear no sounds, only the blood rushing to my head as Ramirez lifts me off the ground. Dizzy, with vomit hanging off my lip, I can’t process anything other than my friend, the girl from home, who is looking for me to save her.
I try.
When Ramirez brings me to stand behind Clara’s bent-over body, I try to go for his gun. I know that if I get it, I can get out of this. I can get us out of this. With that gun, I can fucking kill them all.
I tried to get it, but he knew.
The butt of that gun flies straight into my eye, distorting my vision. His hands tangle in my hair next. It’s overgrown, so it’s easy to grab at my scalp and rip. That same sound spears through the air, my hair tearing from me.
“Fix her,” Ramirez laughs, shoving my face between Clara’s split legs. “Fuck her straight, boy.”
I curl my face away, physically trying to invert my facial features back into my body. With my eyes squeezed shut, I hold my breath. I don’t want to see her like this or smell the fear coming off her in waves. I fight as hard as I can, pulling away whenever there’s any slack in Ramirez’s hold.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Ramirez questions after I’ve done it three times in a row, shoving my face directly against Clara’s opening. Unlike the times before, there’s no slack, and Ramirez holds me against Clara’s skin until I have no choice but to open my mouth and breathe. “Aww, yeah! That’s it! Eat her up, boy!”
The men laugh while Clara screams and struggles against her restraints. Over the commotion, Hannidy’s voice rings out. I can imagine his scarred, pimple-faced leaning close, right in her face, because that’s the only way he knows how to intimidateanyone while spitting, “Keep screaming! I can’t wait until we can’t hear you anymore.”
At the same time, Ramirez is in my ear, laughing beneath his breath. “Is that how you treat a lady? You’re never going to be a proper lover like that, boy!” With one hand in my hair, the other drops the gun to take hold of Clara’s hip. “Let me show you how.”
Ramirez, with the grip he has on Clara, smashes her down onto my face, rubbing her skin across my lips. “Open your fucking mouth, boy. I’m trying to teach you something.”
