Page 159 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘I’m proud of you, boy. I know it’s a hard thing, but I really am—’

‘Please just get out.’

Troy leaves.

Riley draws himself a bath and adds not a drop of cold water.

It scalds his skin, but he barely even feels it.

He doesn’t feel anything anymore.

✴

Riley starts chaining himself up inside his room.

He shortens the chains so he can’t leave the bathroom. He refuses to go up onto the roof, hides from the moon. Riley wants his senses dull. He doesn’t want to hear, or smell, or see anything.

That bad time still comes around every third full moon, but when it does, he chains himself to the bathroom wall for safety, gives Troy the manacle key and trusts he’ll give it back when the time has passed.

No one comes up here now and that’s just how it’ll be forever, Riley expects. Only Troy. Only fucking Troy. His jailer. His saviour.

Away from the moon, Riley’s temper reaches a plateau where he can reasonably control it. He finds that losing his temper over anything small will often lead quickly to a huge, ugly blowout, so he learns to control himself as much as possible. His hormones are still violently churning inside. Sex and violence. Riley wants neither, but his body… his traitorous fucking body wants it all and more.

He loses time, knows only the seasons when he feels them. If he avoids the full moon, his heats are much shorter, so he does that even though it isolates him even more. Without the moon, he slowly loses his dreams.

Riley loses his brother and the little girl and the bodyguard.

It’s like forgetting a book you love.

Losing touch with the world.

All is slipping away.

It’s only Troy who seems bound and determined to bring Riley the days of the week, the months, seasons. Birthday, Christmas and Thanksgiving. Special food to tempt Riley into eating more than the bare necessities. It’s only Troy bringing Riley books and new clothes and then, one day, boots.

‘Don’t bother,’ Riley says one day, handing the boots back.

‘Wrong size?’

‘No. I just don’t need them.’

Troy blinks, refuses to take them back. ‘You need them, Riley.’

‘Boots are for outdoors.’

‘You… you’ll go outdoors soon. You’re almost twenty-one.’

‘Take them back.’

Troy leaves the boots anyway.

Riley ignores them just as he ignores the three additional pairs that appear silently beside his bookshelf, all different kinds.

Being cut off from the parts of himself he hates means losing what little he had to love from afar, but it’s a price he must pay and after the slaughter he woke up to in the warehouse, he’s not setting foot outside ever again.

Not now, not ever.

Some nights he can’t sleep, so he doesn’t even try.