Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (18 page)

Jasper pulled me back into the house and because I didn’t know what else to do and I was freezing cold and naked, I screamed for help. For anyone, even if it was a greywaster, even if it was Gill, or a bad man like Cory who would eventually try and kill me. I didn’t care, I just needed an adult to help me kill Jasper so he would stop doing…

I… I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t know why he was naked or why I was, I just knew the panic rolling through me was telling me I had to prevent him from doing it.

“What are you doing!” I screamed. He pulled me through his trash-filled apartment and started dragging me down the stairs. “Fucking let–”

He was pulling me too roughly and I tripped over the stairs. I fell on top of him and he let go of my hand.

Immediately I jumped up and started running up the stairs but my fleeting moment of freedom was short lived. Jasper grabbed my ankle and threw me off-balance.

My face landed hard on the steps and blood filled my mouth. I took in a gasping breath and felt his cold, rough hands pull me up by the shoulders before dragging me back to the basement.

Jasper threw me onto the bed and I edged to the back wall expecting him to leave me alone. I pulled the blanket over me and put a hand over my mouth to try and stem the blood.

Jasper was looking at me, naked with everything exposed and swollen-looking. I sniffed and waited for him to leave me alone but he just stood there, staring at me.

Then Jasper walked over to the foot of my bed and he picked up Barry and tried to hand him to me. When I wouldn’t take him Jasper wound him up and put him at the foot of the bed.

I heard Barry’s song, and I felt Jasper’s hands on me. Cold and uncomfortable, going places they shouldn’t go.

I screamed at him and kicked. Jasper hit me again and I fell back on the bed with a cry.

His hands were everywhere. I whimpered and asked him to stop.

But he didn’t stop.

Barry was looking down at me, his eyes were wide and his body frozen solid. He was looking at me in shock. I could see his jaw tight and his hands kneading his sides.

“Barry?” I whimpered. I couldn’t move. My entire body was raw and painful and I had stayed where Jasper left me. A heap of meat and in unbearable pain; he had left me to rot where I lay.

My insides were empty, everything was draining out of me like the wetness I could feel whenever I moved my body. Jasper ripped a hole in me and now everything was leaking out, though Barry was here… at least Barry was here.

I tightened my arms around me and let out a low cry. Everything inside of me was hollow and empty, I felt disgusting and gross and I wanted to go use the shower again but Jasper had left. I wanted to try the door but I couldn’t move. My backside hurt so much and my hands from him slamming them when I tried to scratch him.

I wanted to get clean… no, I just wanted someone here to stay with me. Just be beside me so I could cry and maybe give me a hug.

I missed hugs.

“Barry?” I said to him again. Barry wasn’t saying anything; he was just staring at me in horror. A look of surprise and terror on a face that was once always smiling.

Barry had watched everything.

“I… I’m sorry but…” Barry whispered. He looked behind him towards the door, before his eyes shot back to me. “I don’t… this isn’t what I… I signed up for.”

Tears started to well in my eyes, a deeper pang of loneliness went through me as he started walking towards the door.

“Barry? Don’t leave me,” I whimpered. “I’m sorry.”

Barry looked down and he picked something up off of the floor. He had in his hands the gun, the handgun I had left at home many miles away.

I sniffed and tried to get up but a vicious pain tore through my backside and I collapsed back onto the bed again. “Will you shoot Jasper for me?”

Barry looked at the gun, before putting it into his mouth. His fuzzy ears pressed back against his head. He looked at the ceiling before closing his eyes.

And he blew his brains out.

“No!” I shrieked. I jumped up from the bed and ran over to him. I crouched down in front of my dying friend.

His head was a ruin of blood and brains. The left side of his skull was missing and his left eye was out of its socket and staring into nothing. Blood was running and soaking into the concrete, joining the other brown stains.

“BARRY!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I jumped to my feet even though it hurt more than anything and grabbed onto my hair. “BARRY!” I pulled my hair until it hurt and I grabbed onto more so I could pull harder.

Pain helped; Barry always said pain would help.

Pain will help.

I looked around but I didn’t have a knife anymore. I looked with my eyes wide for something I could hurt myself with and grabbed the leg of the chair Barry and I had played legionary with.

“Kid… what the fuck is…” Jasper was at the door. I could hear surprise or maybe confusion in his words.

I turned around with the table leg in my hands. Jasper took a step back with his face creased and his hands hovering by a knife he had on his belt.

“Barry’s dead! Barry’s dead!” I screamed. I held onto the table leg and swung it up, and it hit me in the face.

“Shit!” Jasper ran and ripped the table leg out of my hand. I screamed and tried to grab it from him. When he wouldn’t give it back to me I closed my eyes and screamed. I screamed and screamed at the top of my lungs and felt my legs give out from under me.

I felt nothing and heard nothing but my own voice ringing inside of my head. When I opened my eyes I saw the door closing and the table leg gone.

I stood up and ran towards the door and kicked it, kicked it until my toes became bloody. It left small prints against the brown and black stains that painted the door with the torment this basement did little to conceal.

Then a single thought crept into my mind, a mad thought but in my own turmoil it was the most sober one I had. I rose to my feet and picked up the other table leg and turned to the bed.

I saw Sami laying on the bed. A small boy with tangled black hair, welling red eyes and a mouth pursed and bloody. He was laying there whimpering, naked with blood smudges on his backside.

I walked over to this boy and stared at him, stared at the pure creature that had so innocently caught himself in the web of the most depraved of spiders. A poor little soul who had no idea just what awaited him in the future.

Sami, Sami, give me your heart to chew.

You’re now fully crazy, your mind is finally through.

I left you torn to ribbons, you really should’ve listened

Now you are dead, I’ll smash your head.

And Sanguine will step on through.

I raised the table leg and swung it down on the boy’s head and, like Barry behind me, I painted the walls with his blood and brains and left him nothing but the shell of the boy he once was. He didn’t even struggle – he didn’t beg for mercy. He let me kill him and as the thick, copper smell of blood filled the small musty basement I knew he wanted this just as much as I wanted to do it.

Tonight was the night, a night where I had to perform the necessary evil.

I had killed Sami.

Sami was dead.

Sanguine age 8

When the door opened days later, I looked up and saw Jasper step inside my musty, dark basement. Though he didn’t command me to get on my hands and knees or stay on my back, this time Jasper had a bottle of water in his hand.

I shrunk back when he took a step closer to me and looked away.

“I have water for you,” Jasper said. His voice sounded odd, high strung, and as I looked at him a bit closer I saw his pupils were dilated.

And he smelled weird… like chemicals.

“Come here and take it,” Jasper urged. I saw his hands were trembling and there was something glassy and shiny tucked behind his ear.

I didn’t answer him, it was probably a trick to get me to do things to him, like last night. He had promised me food but he would only give it to me if I did things to him I didn’t want to do. I said no and he said I wouldn’t have food until I did.

My tact was gone and everything in my bag but I still didn’t do what he wanted.

Jasper shrugged and closed the door, he put the bottle beside the bed and sat on my mattress. I watched him, an unsteady, off-kilter feeling rolling through my body. I was confused and I didn’t know what he wanted from me today. It was usually at night that he did his thing to me and I could still see light coming through the boarded up window.

Then he reached behind his ear and withdrew a glass tube with a bulge on the end. He put a clear rock inside of it that he got out of his pocket and lit it with a lighter. He inhaled it like he was smoking a cigarette and blew the chemical smoke out of his mouth.

My nose wrinkled but I still said nothing and I still didn’t reach for the water. What Jasper wanted with me I didn’t know and I wasn’t going to ask. Though he had no issue getting what he wanted out of me I still was worried that if I planted the idea into his mind he would do it.

“Do you know what I saw while I was patrolling my farm, Sami?”

I looked at him, in my own desperate sadness I was surprised at how rushed and fast paced his voice was. The shock continued when he got up and started pacing around my basement.

“My name is Sanguine,” I said quietly to him. “I killed Sami.”

Jasper ignored me, he walked over to the small cracks of light in the boards on the windows and peeked outside.

“I saw the carcass of a greywaster, picked apart by my crows. I think it was a warning, Sami, a warning to me from the Legion,” Jasper carried on. I saw his hazel eyes, still dilated and wide, staring out the window and shifting around as he looked for something. I didn’t know what though.

“They send me these signals, small little signs that they know I will pick up on. Only I am smart enough to figure out their signs. The dead greywaster as a distinct message that they know I have you.”

I looked up. “They know you have me?” Does that… does that mean Nero and Ellis would come?

“They know what I’ve been doing; they know who I’ve killed. They’ve been putting cameras on the crows and sending them to perch on my railing. They’re putting cameras in the fucking crows now, can you believe it?” Jasper shook his head. He stared out the window for a moment longer before tearing himself away. Though he only started pacing around my room again, his mouth pursed and his staring eyes wide with concern.

Cameras on the crows? Does that mean if I see one they’ll send the image of me to the Legion? If I saw the crows enough maybe eventually Nero and Ellis would see me.

“First the dead greywaster and now all these crows turning against me. My own crows, Sami. My own crows turning against me and letting them put cameras on their bodies. I think the cameras are inside their mouths. They’re only visible for a split second as they caw.” Jasper’s voice was a speeding train; he wasn’t talking the way he normally did.

Then he turned and looked at me. “Drink your water. I’m going to… I’m not going to kill you, Sami. I only killed Lenny by accident, I was too rough… he ended up torn inside, and it rotted his insides. I ate his body but I didn’t find any cameras on him.”

Jasper’s eyes narrowed and his head jerked back to look at me.

“Take off your clothes!” he suddenly snapped. He threw his glass pipe onto the bed and stalked over to me.

I scrunched back and whimpered. “But it’s not night…”

“Now!” Jasper barked; his mouth smelled like the chemicals. “You have a camera on you, don’t you, you little shit?”

“NO!” I yelled. I didn’t have a camera on me; if I did and the Legion saw that I was down here, Nero and Ellis would’ve rescued me.

“Prove it!” Jasper’s booming voice sent a shock through me, it seized my bravery and dissolved it to nothing. I got up and took off my jacket and then my faded blue shirt. Then my pants fell to the ground.

But he didn’t make me take off my underwear. He put an unlit cigarette into his mouth and started squeezing and touching my body; he even made me open my mouth to look inside and then my ears and under my arms.

When Jasper was happy he stepped back and lit his cigarette. “You’re clean… nothing on you. Figures, no one really cared about you did they?”

His words cut to the quick and I felt my head lower. My eyes burned and I shook my head because he was right – no one did care about me.

Jasper took another hit of his pipe and looked out the window again. A small billow of yellowy smoke falling from his mouth as he checked the outside for something… cameras maybe, or the Legion.

“They have this place surrounded at night, sometimes I can hear their vehicles,” Jasper commented. “My own crows… selling me out. They can talk, you know – they can talk. If it’s not the Legion harassing me it’s the damn townspeople in Melchai. All of them, always watching me, always stalking my steps, telling me to keep away from their little boys. Most don’t care though because only I can create this stuff. The town doesn’t care because if they lose me they lose the goods. A few of them even gave me tips on where to find boys in exchange for a few rocks – I had a man sell me his own son. Drugs talk, Sami, never forget… drugs talk.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. Finally my thirst got the best of me and I reached over and grabbed the bottle of water. I unscrewed it and took a drink as Jasper continued to ramble. I had been drinking my own blood to help me get rid of the burning in my throat but all of that drinking was starting to make me feel dizzy when I stood up.

Jasper looked at me and swept his gaze up and down my body. “Once I can trust you I’m going to start making you check the crows. I know you’ll try and run now and let me tell you, Sami. If you try and run the alarms will go off and I’ll find you right away.”

His words stunned me. I lowered the bottle. “Alarms?”

Jasper nodded and quickly walked back to the window again, sweat was starting to bead off of his forehead. “That’s right. I have invisible sensors here, if you try and leave I’ll know. So it’s your job to catch the crows. I want you to catch them and check their mouths then you can let them fly away.”

Suddenly he whirled around and glared angrily at me. I gasped and shifted further into the brick wall. “Don’t you dare fucking eat my crows,” he said threateningly. “That’s what you were thinking wasn’t it? WASN’T IT!”

“NO!” I yelled shaking my head. “I won’t – I won’t hurt the crows. I won’t hurt the crows.”

“Good!” Jasper snapped. He paced around for several more minutes until he took another hit from what I realized must be drugs. I wasn’t sure what drugs though, but I guessed it was the drugs that he sold to the town. Drugs were the reason why he was able to get little boys like me, because the town wanted them. I forgot the drugs name though, or if he had even told me.

“I’ll send you out… not now. No, not now…” Jasper dropped his voice and sat down on my mattress, only to get up again and walk around. All he did was pace, it was making my head hurt and I just wanted him to leave me alone. If he wasn’t going to do the gross thing when why was he here?

Just as soon as he came he disappeared and re-appeared a half an hour later with a portion of arian steak. I was starving so I ate it quickly. I hadn’t eaten fresh meat in a really long time but it was hard to savour it when I was swallowing it whole almost.

I was still hungry though. I looked at him and was tempted to ask for more but he was looking out the window again.

“Can I go outside?” I asked quietly. I sniffed and tried to sit on the edge of the bed but my bottom was too sore. I sat on the side and used my hand to prop myself up.

“No – no, not yet… I think… I think I see Legion out there,” Jasper murmured. My heart jumped as he said this and I ran to the other boarded up window to peek outside, just to see if I could see them too.

But there was nothing. I didn’t understand what he was saying or what he was seeing and it frustrated me that I didn’t. I limped back to the mattress and curled up on it. I threw the blanket over top of me and waited for him to leave.

I hated Jasper but I was scared of him too. I was scared he was going to do that thing to me again; he had done it three times already and it hurt. I hated having him so close to me, I hated how he breathed on me and groaned on my ear. And I hated digging out of me the stuff that he left behind.

I also hated that I got stunned whenever he did it now. I wanted so badly to bite him and kick him like the first time, but now when he was doing it I laid there and stared at the ceiling. Going inside of my head and finding fun things to think about like Nero and me on adventures.

All the times I should have been biting and being an evil demon I was just laying there and thinking about my friends.

And Barry… I thought about Barry a lot and how he died, and how Sami died too.

Everyone was dead, I was just Sanguine now… I had always been Sanguine. It was Jasper that made me kill Sami and now that he was out of the way I was just Sanguine.

Defeated, sad Sanguine.

Jasper left sometime later, leaving his gross chemical smell behind. I got up and dug out my thesaurus and my dictionary and read it a bit. Maybe if I caught crows for him he would find me some books to read.

My thoughts travelled to the words he was saying and inside I felt a sting dig into my heart. I wanted so badly to believe his words, that the Legion knew he had me and his crows had cameras… but I think he was just crazy. I didn’t see anything out there and…

I got up and peeked out the small slit between the board and the window frame. I saw a black blur in the distance and knew it was Jasper. He was walking around free and without anyone coming to kill him so I knew the Legion wasn’t there or sending him messages either.

Looking outside through the window and into the fresh air made me more sad, so I turned away and laid down again. I had slept a lot this week and I think I would sleep some more.

As I fell asleep I dug my fingernails into my skin, flexing them until I felt wet beneath my nails. I clenched them harder and let the pain numb what I was feeling inside, the dirty feelings, the sad feelings; pain was my only medication, one I would never have to worry about running out of.

Two weeks later

“If you go past the fence, the alert will go off,” Jasper reminded me. I walked behind him and went up the stairs slowly, my legs cramped and sore and my bottom aching. It was hard to walk and running wasn’t even on my mind because I knew I wouldn’t get far. It was flat land everywhere and I could barely walk as it was. I didn’t know how I was supposed to catch crows.

“I won’t,” I said in a hushed voice. I didn’t want to make him mad. I wanted to go outside for a little bit at least to have some fresh air on me.

We walked outside and I took a deep breath of the cold air. I squinted my eyes as the light stung them and started looking around my surroundings. Immediately I crossed my arms and felt sad. I wanted to go back to my house; I wanted to go to my home.

“When can I go home?” I asked Jasper in the same small voice. I sniffed and felt my eyes burn.

“You belong to me now, you can’t go home,” Jasper said back. He gave me an icy look and walked past me, his head turning back and forth.

“You don’t own me…” I said slowly. I walked behind him and swallowed the bitterness in my mouth, it sat in my stomach and made me feel queasy. “You just kidnapped me… you don’t own me at all. When can I go home?”

“How old are you?” Jasper said with the same icy look.

“I’m almost nine,” I said quietly. I shrunk under his gaze and inside I felt shame at my submissive state. I don’t know where the demon went… I felt like a wimp – I was a wimp. I don’t know what he did to me, what he took from me, but I had no fight inside of me anymore.

I was an easy target and I gave myself up to him as soon as he did that stuff to me. I didn’t feel right after that; I didn’t feel right after Barry and Sami died. Inside of me just felt like puzzle pieces that no longer fit together, pieces that didn’t even come from the same box.

“You’re just a kid, and you’re a kid with no parents. So I own you.”

I sniffed. “Can I leave when I’m grown up?”

“Depends on if you do everything I ask of you. Just like what you need to do to get food and water, if you’re good you’ll get benefits.” As if he was expecting this speech he threw me a tact cracker. I caught it and took a small bite. “But if you’re bad, I’ll leave you in there until you starve, got it?”