My mouth is full of blood, the taste of it nauseating. I spit a mouthful to the side and my uncle grins.
“Get a small taste of your own medicine, did you?”
“My medicine? What the fuck did I ever do to you?”
His fist smashes into my ear before I even see it coming. No time to move. No time to soften the blow.
Pain explodes from the side of my head, my right eye flooding with tears like it can wash away the sharp ache if only it produces enough.
He bunches the front of my blouse and drags me closer. Close enough his foetid breath wafts across my cheek. Close enough to see the ravages that time has clawed into his skin. Close enough to turn my stomach as I smell his scent, the same stench that haunts my dreams.
“You think you did nothing to me? Because you got the police and the courts to do your dirty work. I still rotted in that jail cell. I still had the living shit kicked out of me every time the guards turned the other way.”
My body’s already twisting in so much pain. A little more won’t kill me.
“Sure, and I’m the one who forced you to break the law, is that right? I forced you to do all the disgusting perverted things you were doing. A man so low the only people he could find to believe his shit were kids.”
He laughs, pulling me near and licking me from my ear to my eyeball.
The rush of nausea is immediate. I clamp my lips shut, bite down even though my tooth shrieks with renewed pain.
I will not throw up. Not here. Not now. I refuse to show this man any further weakness.
“Is that what you tell yourself? That it was something I did to you.” That laugh again, drilling into my aural memory with all the elegance of a buzzsaw. “We both know how it really worked, you little tease. Dancing around with your short skirts and your bare midriff showing. Who’s the one who couldn’t wait to bounce on my knee, who was panting for everything she got, you fucking slut?”
“I was a child.”
“You were a whore. It’s baked in your DNA. Don’t expect me to shed any tears when you got everything you wanted.”
“And you got everything you fucking deserved. Did someone make you their pet in prison, hm? Someone like curling up with you at night. Someone like fucking the shit out of their good old paedo mate, Jerred?”
He roars and stamps his boot on my foot, so many bones snapping under his heel that I can’t count.
Waves of hot pain radiate from the injury. I try to move it, lift it, get it to a safer position, but the agony reaches into my core, bringing my organs to a screeching halt, nothing moving, nothing working, until the first wash recedes, and I can gasp in a breath, still reeling.
“Get her inside,” he barks at Edwin. “Onto the bed.”
He grabs my chin, tilting my face towards him. “I’ve got one last starring role for you, my dear. One last shot at earning a reward for every piece of shit you put me through.”
“Let me guess. You’re going to dig up your dead son and make me fuck him.”
His fingers dig into my jaw, twisting my face until my gaze locks to his. Holding me steady while the contempt filters into each line of his expression.
“You’re not good enough to fuck my son, even when he’s dead.”
I think that’s it, that he’s about to move on to whatever’s next in his horrifying plan. But he stops, the fingers holding me soften, become gentler.
A trap. One I know from the good old days. His good cop side, always coming out to rescue me from his bad cop. Except they’re all the same, flip sides to a singular coin.
“Maybe if you’re good, I won’t kill you at the end of this one. Maybe I’ll keep you until you’ve got my child in your belly. Would you like that, sweetheart? Want to give me a replacement kid since you stole the first one away.”
There’s something more deeply terrifying about that suggestion than any other he’s put forward. That he could replace his child so easily. That Andy didn’t mean enough for him to even truly care.
His only son, just more grist for his mill.
“He couldn’t even get it up,” I tell him, eyes narrowing when I see the twitch of his cheek muscle. “That’s what you taught him. I seem to remember you having the same problem often enough.”
Jerred turns and grips my throat, squeezing, his face contorted into a snarl.
