Razing Grace: Razing Grace Part 1 (6 page)

“You see this?” he murmurs against my inner thigh. “This is exactly why you’re here, nun. You like it, you crave it, and that is exactly why we are going to
ruin
you.”

MILLIE

“Day 4”

My skin itches from the grainy cobble underneath me and I pull myself up onto my elbows. The burn firing around my elbow is excruciating, and I know that I can sleep on the mattress, but I really don’t want to. My eyes drift back to the block of foam, seeing the dark red stains speckled across the fabric, and I wince. I’d bet money that more than one life was taken on that thing, so there’s no way I’ll lie on that.

I clear my vision. Four days. Four days and a deep part inside of me has snapped beyond repair. I find myself slowly beginning to realize that there may just be no coming back for me. The feathered wings that hang off my back are covered in dirt and scuff marks couldn’t be more appropriate for my current situation. The walls inside my mind are caving in on me as each second passes. Each fleeting minute of the silent clock takes away a piece of my soul with it, leaving me with the empty gaping hole from its departure. I don’t want to feel. Like a big gaping hole of black abyss. Shutting my eyes, I pray that this torture will end.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

The Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

This place is the circle of nothingness where time stands still. Nothing matters here—time, day, nothing. I shut my eyes and let blackness cloak me as I wrap my arms around myself protectively and hum myself to sleep.

A bloodcurdling scream echoes through the dark hallway and I shoot up from my sleep, standing to my feet.

“Please,” a man pleads. “Please, I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

The rushing blood pulsing through my body pounds heavily behind my ears as my breathing shallows. Tiptoeing towards my cell door, I place my hand over my mouth to calm my breathing. Reaching for the cell bars, I grasp the thin cold metal in my hand and peek out towards the ruckus.

“Please, I— I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know— “

“Shut up!”

I look towards Tripp to see his hands gripped tightly around the young man’s throat. Tripp’s hand comes up to the boy’s cheeks where he squeezes tightly until the boy’s mouth forms a tight O and his face turns purple. Shoving one of his fingers into the boy’s throat, he tilts his head, studying the boy closely. There is a dangerous shift in the air whenever Tripp is around. He makes my skin crawl and my knees tremble with fear, all while continuing to be able to ignite everything south to dangerous heat levels. I don’t want to feel.

Tripp’s hand launches down the boy’s throat and my eyes widen, my panic kicking up a notch. The gargling of his suffocating breaks through the quiet night as Tripp’s arm yanks back roughly, tugging something out of the boy’s throat. He gives it one more jerk and then blood spurts out of the boy’s mouth, all over Tripp’s mask and clothing. I gasp and step backwards, attempting to be quiet, but when Tripp’s head snaps towards me, I know I’m not as quiet as I hoped to be. A heavy thud hits the ground before the stomping of boots come closer and closer to my cell.

I drop down onto the cold concrete floor and draw my knees up to my chest. A large dark shadow blocks the dim light from the hallway of the cell. Knowing it’s Tripp blocking the light, I peer up slowly towards him. “I—I—didn’t see,” I shake my head, my voice closing in. I don’t want to feel.

“What?” he growls, throwing a long piece of… I narrow my eyes at the object he threw onto the ground and bile rises up my throat. “You didn’t just see me rip a man’s throat out?” Tripp chuckles, kneeling down on the other side of my cell door. My body begins to convulse, the smell of death seeping into my pores. “It’s one of the slowest ways to die, did you know that?” he asks, his head tilting. “You see that?” He nudges his tarnished thumb over his shoulder towards the empty cell opposite mine. “That’s where he will lie, and that’s where you will watch as his life slowly empties from his piece of shit body and eventually seeping into your cell where so many others before him have come to an end.” His hand comes up to one of the bars and I inch back, terrified that he is going to come into my cell. When he notices my jump, he laughs again. “You see what you just witnessed? That’s nothing if you don’t comply with what goes on here. Understood?”

I nod my head, swallowing the tang of vomit that is threatening to rise up my throat.

“Good.” He pushes off the cell and stand to his feet. “J? Bring him down.”

Red mask walks down, opening the cell opposite me with a heavy squeak, and throws the boy’s body onto the dirt-covered floor. Blood continues to pour out of the boy’s throat as he turns to his side, his face turning towards me. It’s then that I realize who he is.

“Oh my god,” I whisper, my lip trembling. Looking up to Tripp, I catch him staring down at me. His shoulders square, the rim of his dark hoodie shading around his mask. “That’s—that’s the cleaner from the church…”

Tripp taps his temple. “Ding dong, the snitch is dead.”

***

My leg being pulled wakes me up and my eyes snap open in the dark room.

“Wake up,” a deep voice sounds. “Kurr needs to talk to you and you have a visitor.”

I rub my eyes with the palm of my hands and get back to my feet slowly. Tripp is standing in front of me holding out a bottled water.

“Drink.” He points to it authoritatively. I reach out and take it from him before twisting off the bottle cap and taking a sip. The cool liquid soothes my parched throat immediately, so I continue to down the rest. I look into Tripp’s eyes and into the stormy blue clouds that shade around his dark irises before bringing the bottle back down and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Thank you,” I whisper, handing the bottle back to his outstretched hand. I look over his shoulder to see Ned, the twenty-year old boy who would clean the church, gone. Tripp follows my gaze before looking back to me. “Where is he?” I ask.

“Oh, he’s Soulless’ problem now.”

I’m not sure what that means and I’m not sure I want to.

“What did you mean by ‘snitch’?” I question.

His eyes narrow, the taut muscles under his shirt stretching as he tenses, but his eyes remain glued on mine, the intensity burning me from the inside out. Heavy footsteps approach behind him just as my cell door squeaks open and our stare-down is interrupted.

“Millie,” a smug voice who I’ve come to recognize as Kurr’s smirks behind Tripp’s wall of muscle. My eyes falter, so I pull them away from Tripp and back to the ground. When Kurr’s shiny wing tip shoes come into view, I swallow. “I have someone here who wants to see you. I believe you know him already.”

He steps to the side and a new set of shoes come into my view. My eyebrows knit together as I slowly bring my eyes up past the clean dark blue slacks, past the crisp white shirt, and then falling onto the fine wrinkles and face of my old priest, Father David.

I step back instinctively with my heart pounding against my chest. He matches my step, walking toward me and in the corner of my eye I see Tripp about to step in front of him before stopping and retreating back to his position.

“Remember me?” the priest questions, his hand flying up to my neck and squeezing. The crunching of the pressure he’s placing on my windpipe vibrates around my neck. “You think you can run from me?”

Air begins to come in slow, desperate waves as I tap furiously on his hand, hoping he will let up. I don’t want to feel. My checks puff and all the oxygen from my brain begins to thin out as a deep throbbing starts in my temples. He lets go and I drop to the floor with a thud, my ankle breaking my sudden fall as I land on my hip.

He drops down to his knees and I begin to retreat backwards until my back hits the wall.

“You’re lucky,” he starts, his light grey eyes lasering right into mine. His salt and pepper hair is slicked back perfectly away from his chubby face. “That you are an asset here, or I’d kill you right now for making me chase you for so long.”

“What do you want from me?” I say, my voice high on the fear scale but my blood kicking up a notch at being thrown around so much. You’re about to break, a high pitch voice giggles inside my head in a singsong voice.

“Me personally? Nothing. Not from you. You witnessed something you should have never witnessed though, didn’t you…?” he trails off, his eyes drifting to the side of the room before coming back to mine. “Do you know why that happened, Millie? Why I pulled the trigger which set off a bullet to pierce right between sister Avery’s bleak little eyes?” His head tilts to the side as he studies me carefully. “It was because she didn’t want to feed me information about you anymore.” He pauses and my eyebrows draw together in confusion. “You see, Millie, there’s so much you don’t know about yourself that you will come to learn in time, but this right here, this was written in your cards.”

He gets back up to his feet and I rub my hands over my cheeks angrily to swipe the tears which have appeared. With his back turned to me and his shoulders squared, he looks to Kurr and begins talking like I’m not right there. As if I’m a mere shadow of a being.

“When are you putting her up? The sooner, the better.”

Kurr nods his head, his hands diving into his pockets. His eyes find mine as a smirk crawls onto his mouth. “Soon. Three days, actually.”

I swallow harshly before drifting my eyes towards Tripp. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, dark blue jeans, and military boots that are loosely tied. His hair is shaved quite close to his scalp on the sides where tattoos are imprinted there, and is a little longer on the top, kinda like a slicked Mohawk. The energy that hovers around him puts up warnings like no other.

Kurr pauses before looking towards me. “But you’re right,” he begins, his eyes combing over me in a way that has my skin crawling. “This needs to hurry along.” A smile spreads across his mouth as he turns his body towards me completely.

“Tripp?” Kurr’s eyes remain trained on me as he gains Tripp’s attention. “Tell the boys that we will do her final training tonight.” His leather-like skin that covers almost all of his face crinkles when he smirks, then he and Father David disappear down the corridor outside the cell. My eyes remain on the spot where they departed before bringing them back to Tripp who’s remained in his same spot throughout the encounter. I can’t see his eyes from here, only the outline of the steel from his mask.

“Tripp?” I whisper through my clenched throat.

There is a long pause before he pushes himself off the wall and walks toward the cell door. He pauses once he’s reached outside the cell and grasps onto the door, his back remaining turned on me. The heavy lock of the cell door catching breaks the eerie silence from his departure and I drop back to the floor in a mess. I bury my swollen face into the palms of my hands. This will be the last time I shed tears, but this time I’ll shed these tears for the girl I once was, and the girl I was about to become…

TRIPP

I walk down the dark concrete corridor until I reach the old stairs which lead to the first level of the main house, away from the dungeon. The dungeon that sits in the middle of a sunken dead volcano is as ancient as the old Viking days. Its old concrete walls and its candle lighting leading the way through the darkness display its true age. It holds seven large cells and one chamber where we dispose of the corpses, to put it bluntly. On the first floor above the dungeon is a large armory and meeting area equipped with a kitchen. It’s where The 6 hold the majority of our discussions. There are stairs which lead to the upstairs rooms, also known as Kurr’s “home”. There’s also a large building that is built beside the main house, where the podium is built underground, and the top is where we hold the major meetings Kurr has every month. Kurr throwing a curveball by saying he wants Millie’s final training tonight threw me off. I was expecting it to be in a couple more days, so now I have to rethink what I was doing.

The way Millie looks at me is unnerving. And that’s not something I’ve felt often. I’ve survived twenty-seven years without having a bitch come in and tap into my feelings. That ain’t about to change today. I’m a bad man, and I haven’t just done bad things; I’ve done evil things. The number of bodies that have fallen at my hands are carved into my back in a tally. Each carving, a reminder of why I am the way I am, why I am machine, not man. Man couldn’t do what I do. The adrenaline that spikes through my veins at the mere touch of fresh blood fuels me. Nothing can change that. No one can—ever.