“You’ll burn in hell for the things you’ve done to her.”
“I haven’t done anything but give her love,” he says. I quietly creep down the stairs to hear them better, careful not to be seen as I flatten myself against the wall and peek around the door. Mummy is on her knees on the floor, holding Banjo to her chest as Daddy circles her like a shark. He’s carrying the axe we use to chop wood, and I watch the way the sharp silver blade swings as he walks. “It’s not sick, or unnatural; it’s just love.”
“I’ll be dead before I let you touch my daughter again.”
“Yes, you will,” he says, and he raises the axe in his hand and swings. My mother makes a single keening cry before the sound is cut short by a sickening thud, and her head rolls along the ground towards me as her body slumps forward in a heap.
The screams echo in my head. My screams. Daddy drops the axe. It’s no longer shiny silver, but is painted red, with little gobs of stuff that looks like minced meat. He staggers towards me, his face spattered with her blood, a mask of death. I take a step back, but before I can turn and run, he’s bundling me up in his arms and carrying me out of the room as I stare back at my mother’s head and the blood that oozes across the garage floor towards us.
I’m still screaming as my father puts me to bed and tucks me in. I’m still wearing my blood-stained clothes. He whispers over and over that he’ll never let anyone try to take me from him again, and that we’ll always be together. No matter what. He’ll always find me and bring me home.
And he always did.
I tug at the cuffs binding my hands together. There are a few ways out of this. One, by some miracle Ivy gets her restraints undone, finds a pin, a paperclip, or a fuckin’ bobby pin and I talk her through sliding it into the keyhole of my cuffs and jamming the shiv. Two, she breaks my thumbs. Not ideal, and it’d certainly make taking that fucker down more difficult than it should be, but it’s not entirely impossible—though I would like to avoid it. Three, the fucktard grows a conscious and lets us walk free. Or four, I wind up with a knife in my skull and Ivy’s stuck down here forever.
Also not ideal.
Prez thinks I’m out on a job. If I don’t report back soon, he’ll know something is up, and if he finds Ivy gone he’ll know where to find us, but all this is a really big fuckin’ maybe. The van would have been reported already. The plates are fake, and we’re always careful not to keep anything in there that might lead the Feds to us, but I hadn’t planned on getting abducted and leaving it parked on some rich cunt’s front lawn. Which means if the Russians didn’t already capture that dickhead, Ivan fuckin’ Milat here shanked Crazy in that driveway, and we left evidence behind. They lift a clear print from the steering wheel and I’m goin’ to prison for murder, forced entry and druggin’ an elderly woman and her maid. They’ll likely throw in attempted theft or some shit too, just because I’m bikey scum.
I guess I’ll worry about that shit when and if I get outta here. Prison would be a fuckin’ vacation when compared to being in this room and watching that fuck shoot her up right in front of me. He didn’t even fuckin’ do anythin’ once she was high as a kite, just laid her back on the bed, grinned at me like a cunt who knows he has the upper hand, and left the room. It was a small fuckin’ mercy, but I know he’s biding his time. He’s toyin’ with us, waitin’ for the right moment. And I feel it comin’.
He thinks he’s safe because I’m locked up, and now she’s hopped up on junk. That motherfucker isn’t safe. Right now, he’s lucky. That’s all. But Lady Luck is a bitch and has a way of turning all your best-laid plans into a pile of shit at your feet. Before long, that’s all he’ll be. Shit and guts and blood underneath my boots, and I’ll fucking dance in it. I’ll revel and rejoice and wear his innards like a crown.
I clench my fists. My fingers itch to claw my way into the softest part of him and squeeze until he explodes in a rain of death and blood, until he feels the weight of the pain he caused her over the years, the weight of the grief and the result of what she’s become.
“Tank,” she murmurs in her sleep, and I watch on as she twitches and lashes out at some unseen demon.
“I’m here, Princess,” I whisper back. Ivy jolts awake. Her eyes blink sleepily at me and then they open wider, as if she’s afraid closing them will drag her under again.
“You’re okay.” She gasps, and then covers her mouth because it was far too loud. I can see the soundproofing foam on the walls, but it hasn’t worked, not entirely. I can still hear the sick fuck when he walks around upstairs, and the muted noise of the TV, but best of all I hear it when he leaves.
“I think he’s out. I heard the front door.”
She sags against the mattress with a sharp exhalation and scrubs her hands over her face. “Babe, listen. I’m gonna need you to find something to help me out of these cuffs.”
She just shakes her head and then her tears start, and these great howling sobs echo through the room. She sounds like hell; her voice is croaky from crying and screaming and the drugs he syphoned through her system. She’s likely dehydrated too, and the wound on her abdomen is seeping plasma from its scabs. It’s infected. If the puss and the angry red swelling around it didn’t tell me that, her fever-flushed cheeks and glassy eyes do.
“Ivy, I’m gonna get us out of here, but I need your help.”
Her sobs turn to tremors, and they frighten me more than her infected abdomen. One hit. That’s all it took to undo all of the progress she’s made. It might not be cocaine, but heroin is so much worse, and so much harder to kick. I’ve seen more people die from that shit than I’ve seen buried with bullets. Nothing’ll put you to ground quicker than a bad batch of BTH. And if you’re an addict, there’s no comin’ off that shit. You can fool yourself into thinking you can quit, but she’ll always be there, tempting you.
“Babe, listen to me. Can you stand?”
She draws in a deep breath and exhales slowly. Her whole body trembles as she rolls over and carefully manoeuvres around the rope that tethers her leg to the bed as though she were a dog tied up in the yard. She takes a few shaky steps towards me and almost collapses on her rail-thin legs. “Careful.”
She nods and takes another few steps, and then when she’s almost within touching distance she reaches the end of her tether, and I reach the end of mine. “Fuck,” I hiss, and her face crumples.
“I can’t do this, Tank.” She sinks down on the floor, curling into herself and staring at the wall beside me.
“Hey, we got this, Warrior Princess. You and me are gonna get outta here, and before you know it we’ll be knockin’ back beers on my front porch.” She shakes her head, and in all the years I’ve known her, through addiction and withdrawals, drying out, and hurting so much her body looks as though it wants to shut down, I’ve never seen her look so helpless. I’ve never seen her defeated, but that’s what she is in this moment—defeated. Because of him. The one person in the entire world who is supposed to build her up and love her unconditionally. He tears her apart piece by piece, and then he tapes her back together again, only to slash through the bandages and rent her soul to ribbons.
“I want to die. Why won’t he just kill me already?” she asks, and there’s no emotion in her voice. No light. No pain. It’s inhuman, and it’s heartbreaking. “Hasn’t he done enough?”
And when she looks at me, there’s nothing in her gaze either. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone so bad in all my life as I do right now.
“No one is fuckin’ dyin’ down here. You got me, babe? You don’t get to die down here. You’ll die happy in our bed when you’re fuckin’ ninety-eight, and I can’t breathe on my own any more. You’ll go peacefully in your sleep, holdin’ my goddamn hand, and I’ll follow you. But before any of that can happen we gotta get the hell out of here. I’m gonna need you to help me. You don’t want me to die down here, do you?”