“You said she was drugged. She wouldn't even feel it.”
“Wrong.” The sudden addition of her voice makes excitement crash inside my chest.
I turn to see her with blood all down her dress. I think, for a moment, that I should have brought the black one. But the blood is vivid against the pale blue, and it adds a nice touch to the whole thing.
Her wild hair looks like it does when I've spent hours fucking her, dragging my fingers through it. Everything about her is glorious... including the way she throws Browen to his knees before her. He falls silently against the ground, but I can tell he’s not dead yet.
“You think I wouldn't know cause I was asleep? You think I wouldn't feel it the next day? You think I wouldn't notice the fingerprints?” She chuckles. “Jenko, right? You know, you're the one I was most looking forward to playing with.” Her smile is coy... frightening. “I had a brother. Did you know that?”
“I don't fucking know you.” Jenko sobs. “How the fuck would I know that?”
“Because you killed him.”
She says it like it's funny. Her voice is edged in hysteria, and it feeds the chaos that swirls inside of me.
While I know she's teetering on the edge of delirium, Jenko doesn't understand what's funny about that.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I'm not a fucking killer. I don't kill people.”
“Oh?” She looks at me in mock surprise. “I guess that makes him better than us, doesn't it?”
I shrug, peeling my jacket off and letting it drop to the ground. I roll my sleeves slowly, careful to push them over my forearms. The feeling of starched fabric soaked through with anything is unappealing. I don't want his blood saturating my shirt.
“I guess, depending on who you ask.”
“Hmm.” She thinks for a second. “Not according to me. You think you aren't a killer because you've never pulled a blade across someone's throat? Never buried a bullet in someone's skull, and you think that makes you superior?”
His eyes are full of desperation as they dart between the two of us, like he thinks he stands a chance of appealing to either of us.
“You're a child killer, Jenko. You fucking killed that little girl when you started loaning her out to your friends. And you killed her again when she realized you were responsible, too, didn't you?” She shakes her head slowly.
Browen kneels on the ground, his face pressed against the concrete.
I wonder what the fuck she did to him to turn him into such a sniveling bitch when he appears mostly unharmed.
“I was just a kid, too.” Jenko argues. “I had to fucking figure out how to keep us both fed. I had to keep a roof over our heads.”
“You thought you could just sell her body one fuck at a time, and she'd be okay with it because you kept heralive?” Amber laughs coldly. “Do you know, there are things worse than death? Things that woman would ratherdiethan endure because there's no instruction manual on how to move past them when they're done. There are things that shape children for their entire fucking lives, things that you can't justify because you didn't want to go to the goddamn soup kitchen every day.”
“You don't know shit.” Jenko snaps, his comedic persona from earlier entirely gone. He's no longer carefree and unburdened.
“I know that you killed my brother.” She says again.
There's enough conviction in her voice that I am sure she believes it. I, on the other hand, am confused.
She told me she thought her brother died when she was taken.
“I told you, bitch.” He snaps, the venom in his voice rising as we cage him in. “I didn't fucking kill anyone. I'veneverkilled anyone, so I don't know what you're getting at.”
“Like I said,” she sighs. “You don't have to physically stop a person's heart to kill them. But rest assured, you did. You killed the man who worked so hard to heal us both from what we went through as kids. You killed the man who used to come to my room and hold me after my foster father left my room.”
Jenko stares at her, unsure of what to say. I stare at her, waiting for the pieces to fall into place, for the information I won’t ask her to give but will gladly share the burden of knowing.
“He sneaked in the first time when I was asleep, and I was too confused to figure out what was going on or fight until it was too late. He fell asleep in my bed, left me trapped under his sweaty body so that when my brother came in to see why he heard me crying, he found me like that. He pushed him off, and they fought, but I begged him not to tell anyone because I was so ashamed. Ashamed that I’d lost something, ashamed that I didn’t fight harder. My brother stayed quiet because I begged him to. But it didn't stop, and eventually he learned all he could do was come hold me when it was over.”
My stomach twists in fucking agony as I imagine my little doll suffering so cruelly.
“That's when the first person I ever loved died... hours after I did for the first time. I died a little every time it happened after that, but eventually it stops hurting. Eventually, you just get numb to it. We healed together. Moved away from that hell.”
