SICK HEART by Huss, JA (nice books to read TXT) 📗

cup, fills it with water, walks back over to me, brings it to her lips.

I take the cup, dump it out, throw it on the ground, and point to her jump rope.

She picks up the cup, fills it with water, walks back over to me and throws it in my face.

Cold water hits me in the eyes and runs down my chest. I look at it. Then back up at her. She is still defiant. No expression. Just a flat line of a mouth.

I grab her arm. Hard. Hard enough to make it blanch. She tries to pull away, but there is no hope of that. Her arm is a spindly thing and my hand is so large in comparison, I almost completely encircle it. If she wants me to leave fingerprints on her skin, I will. And there’s no one here to stop me.

I pick up her rope with my other hand and shove it at her.

She refuses to take it.

You get one chance with me. If I were talking, I’m sure this little rebellion of hers could be squashed with one or two harsh threats, but I’m not talking, and she never talks, so the easy way isn’t an option.

I drag her over to the stairs. She resists, of course. But now I’m fucking pissed.

I drag her down one level, throw her on the ground, and then shut the squeaky chain-link gate and clamp the combination lock closed on the latch.

She just looks at me from the floor. Unmoving. Disbelieving.

I sign at her, my hands and fingers moving quickly. Believe it, princess. This is happening. And I’m only going to do this once. Do it again, and you will go in the ocean.

She doesn’t understand the signs. But she gets it. Because she stands up, rushes over to the gate, wraps her fingers around the chain link, and rattles it.

I turn my back.

One chance. That’s all you get with me. I’m not fucking around.

I leave her there, climb back up the stairs, and start my workout.

And you know what the nice thing about her is? She’s silent.

There is no screaming, there is no kicking, there are no hysterical threats.

She is easy to forget.

So that’s what I do.

I forget her.

CHAPTER NINE - ANYA

 

 

All night those birds bothered me. They nipped me with their long, thick beaks, they flapped their wings at me, they stretched their necks and threatened me, eye to eye, until I rolled over, covered my head with my hands, and just didn’t move until morning.

I know how this sounds. Birds are out to get me. I am insane.

But these aren’t just any birds, they are one meter tall and four meters wide when they open their wings. And when they decided that they didn’t appreciate the fact that I was sleeping in the middle of their nesting grounds, they held it against me.

Stupid Sick Heart couldn’t even wake up once to control his flying beasts. And they wouldn’t let me get close enough to shake him awake.

I didn’t sleep. Not a wink all night.

And when I figured out that he wasn’t gonna feed me breakfast, well—it was a breaking point for me.

Call me naïve. Fine. I guess my expectations for being one of Sick Heart’s concubines were unrealistic. Because I thought that position would come with an actual place to live. A place with a bed, and a roof, and food.

That dinner last night was pathetic. Barely a cup of rice. Probably more like half a cup, if I’m being honest. And a few meager scraps of rehydrated meat? Are you fucking kidding me? After I burned… what, two thousand, three thousand calories jumping rope yesterday?

And then no breakfast? Just, Here’s your rope, Anya. Get busy.

Well. Fuck you.

I rattle the chain-link gate. But he’s gone. Cort van Breda is already skipping his stupid rope. I can hear it on the concrete above my head. Snick, snick, snick.

It has been a long time since I had the urge to scream, but I have that urge right now. I want to open up my throat and wail. But I can’t.

Because I’m silent. And I will stay silent, goddammit.

My voice is the only thing on this body that is mine and mine alone. Even my baby toe has been claimed with this monster’s mark.

He will not get my voice. Ever.

I look around the platform and realize it’s a lot like the one above. Except there are a lot more containers. In fact, there are so many containers, they form a steel-box perimeter around the entire level. Front-facing and locked up tight, with no space between them at all. So I have no view of the ocean. But I don’t need a view to understand that it is very close.

The stairs go down another level at least, but from the sound of the ocean, I decide it’s probably not a level. More than likely, it’s the base of the topside.

The wind is strong today. Even with the containers forming a makeshift seawall, it finds a way into the space, whistling and whipping my hair around my face. And every once in a while, the waves are big enough to splash against the containers and a puddle of seawater seeps underneath them and stains the space around them with dark wetness.

I try to open the containers, but they are all padlocked. Then I go back over to see if there is a way to climb over the gate. I’m not at that stage yet, but it’s good information to have.

The gate is not scalable. It fits snugly to the top of the frame. Not even room for a finger to squeeze through.

So I slide down a steel beam in the center of the space and wait.

I sit. Quietly. Straining to hear the workout going on above my head.

I am good. I am calm. I am silent. I am compliant.

But Cort van Breda doesn’t come back.

It’s times like this that I wish I did speak. Because I could call