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Nik holds Muscle’s head up by it’s jaw, dropping his own head to meet him at eye level - his forearms on the table. “Sorry about that, I get a little protective, you know how it is… now I… hey!” and he slaps Muscle’s bloodied face a few times “… as I was saying, I don’t like it when people try to damage what’s mine. It makes me a bit… cross. Now I can guess the kinds of things you said, but I don’t like to guess… so I’d like one of you to enlighten me, but I should warn you… it’s going to hit on my one remaining nerve just a little if I hear it from her mouth whilst your head is still in my hands…”

“I was just kidding…” he starts, before he is ruthlessly interrupted with another introduction to the table, this time his head remains pinned down, him facing me

“I don’t like that language” Nik asserts “it’s always ‘I was just’ and I don’t like it because it does this clever linguistic trick, it implies that her threatening to end your life was somehow an overreaction… and that overreaction is somehow on her, instead of where it righteously belonged… which is on your inciting behaviour… so let’s move on from what happened, let’s move onto reparations…”

Gradually applying more and more pressure to the side of Muscle’s head, Nik offers some guidance “I’m sorry…” he leads

Through groans of pain Muscle starts trying a babbling apology

“You’ve got about five seconds of functioning jaw remaining… make your last words count…”

“I’m sorry!” he’s bawling now, suddenly infantile in front of me. The man who made me reach for a knife reduced to a blubbering mess is doing all kinds of things.

“Three…” Nik is counting down, apparently thus far unsatisfied with the apology

“I’m sorry I said that stuff, I’m sorry I grabbed you, and slapped you” apparently the impending non-consensual contact with the table from his head, being suspended just a few inches from the table just opened up his conscience.

“I just don’t know if I believe you” Nik nonchalantly adds, moving his hands to Muscle’s armpits he pulls him straight over the table. “Do you believe him?” he asks me, sat speechless and breathless.

“Sorry mate, no dice” and he pulls further, dropping him on the floor with a thud before giving a swift kick to his ribs. Muscle writhes on the floor, groaning and barely conscious “Stick with me, nearly done… I think we just needed a bit more convincing, a little conviction… try on your knees”. It takes every ounce of strength he has, every drop of will to survive, but he manages himself up on all fours, with some help by the scruff of the neck. “Here, try now” Nik offers, with faux-helpfulness.

For a second the world comes into focus. Nik standing over this man, a man who reduced me to a pile of shame and self-preservation, now battered, bleeding out, fighting for consciousness and his own life. My lack of reaction seems to incite something in Nik, who drops him straight on his face. Looks me dead in my eye, and unflinching lifts his knee almost to his own chest.

Realising what he’s about to do I screw my face and squeeze my eyes closed. The crunch and slight squelch informs me I was, in fact, correct about what was going to happen next. My stomach turns, I can’t open my eyes. I can’t look. No matter how vindicated I feel, no matter how many red flags I’ve ignored that led me to this point.

He just killed someone. A man just died in my dining room. I just witnessed, even incited, a murder. Dead nothing. Flat. Zilch. Feel something, Sawyer. Girl, this is not normal. What the fuck. The only thing I’m avoiding is the gore, not the consequence. I don’t even think I feel guilty.

“Hey, little darling, hey…” I feel his hands either side of my legs on the base of the chair, I’m apparently trembling “What just happened, was not your fault. None of it. Not whatever he did to provoke you, not my righteous infliction of vigilante retribution. Your conscience can stay clear - you did well”

He stands himself up, still leaning on the chair, and kisses my forehead. My stomach swirls a whole bunch of feelings. He looks my face up and down once more covered in the blood of another man, hair all fucked up. “Blood looks good on you” and I see the first real smile, sick and twisted, eyes on fire, burning into my soul.

I brush my hair behind my ear and blush. Sawyer, sweetie, honey, little darling, this is a murder scene. You cannot sit and swoon because he called you beautiful before making dead guy dead, and because he said dead guy’s blood looks good on you. Get a grip of yourself. I look back up to Nik, whose devilish smile is now accompanied by him licking his own lips.

“I’ve… got work to do” he continues, eyeing me entirely differently now “And you, but I’ll do you later.” That sounded entirely more like a threat than a flirt, but that’s probably hotter.

Seventeen

Young Sawyer (Age 7)

Daddy hangs his scarf on the hanger. He ignores me and walks straight into the kitchen. I follow him.

“Daddy… what’s happening?” He pushes me into the doorframe on his way to the sofa, I bang my head, but I don’t cry.

He sits in his usual chair, and kicks his feet up. I kneel at his feet, and untie his shoes before taking them and his socks off.

“Daddy… please… is she okay?” my bottom lip trembles no matter how hard I bite it.

“No…” is all I get back. Why won’t he talk to me? My heart is thumping in my chest but I’m scared to ask, and more scared to not know.

“When is she coming home?” I ask.

“She’s not. Did you do the things I told you?” I don’t like being home on my own with Daddy, he pays me more attention when Mummy isn’t being naughty.

He knew she’d had her naughty medicine. He knows she doesn’t stand up very well when she’s had her medicine. He calls her an addict, and says that’s why she was a whore. I don’t really know what those words mean. I did what he told me to, I cleaned the house. But I didn’t touch the burnt spoon or the needles.

She takes her medicine after he’s been unkind to her. When he tells her off because she’s been bad. I think the medicine makes her feel better, but I know I’m not allowed to touch it. I touched the spoon by accident once, it burned my fingers and I had to tell the teachers it was a saucepan.

“Why isn’t she coming home? Is she going to the rehab again?”