“You can,” Antonio says, his voice flat and final. “Or you will join her in the dirt.”
This is the choice.
This is the line.
There is no pretending anymore.
This is the brutal, bloody reality of making a deal with the devil. My survival, the fragile hope I’ve been clinging to has a price, and that price is my soul.
Julie’s screams echo in my ears but beneath them, I hear another sound. Felice’s low, mocking laughter. She’s enjoying this. She’s savouring my torment.
That laughter does something to me. It hardens something soft inside. It’s not about Julie anymore, it’s about the brutal calculus of this world. Antonio is right. It’s the wolf or the sheep.
Felice is a wolf. Julie is a sheep.
And I… what am I?
I look at Antonio. I see no pity, no hesitation. This is the test. Fail, and I die. Pass, and I become a monster.
A strange calm descends upon me, and the tears dry up. The trembling stops. My hand tightens around the knife’s hilt. I look down at Julie. Her eyes meet mine, and she sees the change. She sees the life drain from my face, replaced by a terrible resolve. Her begging turns into a wordless wail of terror.
I don’t think. If I think, I will fall apart. I step forward, grab a handful of her hair to steady her and in one swift, brutal motion I draw the blade across her throat, hacking at the flesh.
The sound is wet and thick, and she makes an awful gurgling sound. Her eyes fly wide open, shocked beyond pain. Blood, shockingly red and hot sprays across my arm, my chest, my face. She collapses forward, her body twitching, making awful, wet noises as she drowns in her own blood.
I drop the knife, and it clatters on the stone floor. I feel nothing. I am numb. Hollow.
Antonio watches me, his head tilted. He doesn’t look pleased or disgusted, he looks satisfied. Like a teacher watching a student finally grasp a difficult lesson.
“Good,” he says softly.
Then he turns to Felice.
Her smirk is gone. She’s pressed against the back wall, her eyes wide with an emotion I’ve never seen on her before. She thought I was the sheep. No, not a sheep, a pig, - a big, fat pig. But she was wrong.
She doesn’t go quietly. She fights, scratching and biting, screaming curses. “You bastard. Let me go. She’s a stupid whore, She’s nothing! You’ll see. She’llslit your throat in your sleep. I’m the one you want. I’m the one who knows you best, who loves you the most…”
He subdues her easily, his strength absolute. He drags her out and throws her down next to Julie’s still-twitching body. Felice scrambles to her feet and her eyes are wild, fixed on me.
“You think this makes you something?” she spits, her voice cracking. “You think he’ll love you? You’re a fat, useless whore. He’s just using you. When he’s done, he’ll throw you in a cage like the rest of us. You’re nothing. NOTHING!”
Her words are meant to wound, but they bounce off the numb shell I’ve become.
Besides, she’s right. I am nothing, but she is about to be less than nothing.
I bend to pick the knife back up but as my fingers close around the hilt, slick with Julie’s blood, Antonio makes a sound, stopping me.
“Wait.”
He walks over to a shadowed corner of the cellar and picks up an object, bringing it into the torchlight. It’s the broken candlestick, the one Felice used to rape me with. It’s still stained with my blood.
He holds it out to me. “Use this.”
The symbolism is not lost on me, or on Felice. Her bravado finally breaks. She sees her own weapon, the instrument of her triumph, being offered as her death sentence.
“No,” she whimpers. “Please, Master, I was good. I was so good…”
I take the candlestick from him. It feels cold and heavy, a totem of all the pain and humiliation she inflicted on me these last few weeks. The memory of the searing pain, the darkness swallowing me, the feeling of utter helplessness, it all rushes back.
