Chapter Twenty-Two
Ronan
“Your strength has progressed considerably,” Farrell observes.
I remain silent as I was taught to do. Head bowed, knees resting on a bed of broken glass. The same ritual the trainees perform every day.
The pain does not bother me anymore. After a while, it became second nature, just as Farrell said it would. My training is going well, according to him. He believes I’m stronger than the other lads, but it isn’t true.
I feel too much rage. That’s where my strength comes from. The rage. It builds up inside of me until there’s nowhere for it to go. I release it in small amounts when they let me. When they have me kill the men they send into the pit. It usually works. But I can always feel it building inside of me, and I’m afraid that one day the small amount isn’t going to be enough.
They’ve stopped giving us the pills. A test of our loyalty. They question us. Beat us. Try everything to get us to break. They tell us we can have a pill if we just give them what they want. I can’t stop shaking. Or puking. My skin is covered with sweat, and I’m burning up from the inside.
I want the pill.
But I refuse to break. Farrell moves to the lad beside me. Alex. He’s smaller than me. Thinner. His body is slumped forward and his face is ashen. He wants the pill too. But Alex is smart. Smarter than me. He knows more about the outside world. He makes me question what they are teaching us here. He speaks of things that I try to block out.
It confuses and angers me. Sometimes, I just want him to stop. I tell him not to speak to me. But he does. And now I understand why we aren’t supposed to talk. Because I worry what they will do to him today. How much more he can take. He’s not my mate, but I don’t want him to die. Sometimes, that happens in training. Sometimes, the other lads die.
But it isn’t me. And that’s why bonds are forbidden. They aren’t supposed to matter. We should not be bothered if another lad dies because that means they were too weak to be a soldier. When I look at Alex, I do not see a soldier. I do not see him ever completing training. But I don’t want him to die.
He's the only person who’s spoken to me other than Farrell and Coyne. Sometimes, I think I’m going mad with nothing but the sound of my own thoughts. Down here in the dark, hungry and thirsty and tired all the time.
Alex makes me think that maybe I’m not going mad. But he says that’s what they want. If I’m mad, then nobody will ever fuck with me. That’s what he says. That’s how they keep the compound safe.
He tells me stories. Stories from books that he remembers. And they take me away from this place. I like his stories. But he couldn’t tell them to me for the last week because he’s not well. He’s been two days without water already.
But they just keep interrogating us. Trying to break us.
Asking us the same questions over and over. They say that if we are ever captured, they need to know we won’t break. So they keep at it. The only time it stops is when they turn out the lights and put those screams on the speakers again. And then the rats. So many rats. They crawl over our skin. They crawl on me everywhere.
Today Coyne choked us until we passed out. And then woke up. And then passed out. I haven’t a clue how long it went on for.
They just keep asking the same questions. Trying to test our loyalty. No pills. And the same questions. Over and over. I won’t give them what they want. I won’t break.
I want to smash my head into the concrete. But if I do, they will chain me up again. So I stare at the wall instead. But I can feel Farrell. He’s looking down at me. And then Alex. He knows I won’t break, but Alex is close. I think he will break. Because he wants the pills too much. He’s shivering too. Sweating. And he’s covered in vomit.
Farrell looks down upon him with obvious disgust. Before I can worry over the consequences of my actions, I blurt out something to distract him.
“I am only loyal to the cause.”
His eyes dart to me, and they are filled with suspicion. He’s onto me, and now he’s going to make it worse. He reaches for his bamboo cane and walks behind me. I close my eyes as the cane cracks across the soles of my feet, and I don’t move for the duration.
“Would ye care to take the lashings for your friend as well?” Farrell challenges.
“He’s not well,” I reply. “So I will take them.”
Alex looks at me in horror, and I tear my eyes away. Farrell cracks the cane over my back and legs until I collapse into the shattered glass beneath me. But it isn’t over. It’s already too late when it occurs to me that I’ve only made it worse.
He drags Alex from the glass and forces him over the bench. Alex sobs, and I hate him for it. I hate those loud noises. Those cries. I want to cover my ears. I want to tell him to shut up. I don’t want to see or hear any of this. Farrell pulls up his shirt and starts to beat him. He watches me while he does it, challenging me to speak out of turn.
When I don’t, he hits him harder. And harder. The cane cracks across his head and face, and Alex collapses onto the bench completely. This is a test. Farrell wants to see if I will challenge him. But he’s going too far this time. Alex has been without water. He is weak and malnourished. His body cannot withstand much more. I’ve watched the other lads hold up under torture. And I’ve watched the ones who didn’t survive. But this time is different. Because Alex spoke to me. And I know him.
“Please,” I say.
Farrell snarls at me and raises his arm again, striking out in rage across Alex’s head. Alex stops moving. He stops making noise, and I’m holding my breath, silently pleading for Farrell to stop. He doesn’t.
He continues to hit him. Again and again and again. Until blood sprays across his shirt and his arms.
Something about the sight of that blood makes all of that rage inside of me boil over just as I feared. I don’t know where it comes from. I haven’t any idea what I’m doing. But I’m moving towards Farrell, and he tries to turn his cane on me. He’s unprepared for me to fight back, because I never have.
I take the cane easily from his grip, and I hit him with it. Again and again and again until all I see is red. Beautiful, glorious, red.
***
For as long as I can remember, women have always flocked to Crow.
Even as young lads in school, the girls were always coming up to speak with him. He told me how it worked and tried to get me to speak with them too. But I knew they didn’t like me.
Nobody liked me. Except for Crow and his mammy.
I wasn’t very good at school. By the time I finally went, I was already fourteen. I knew how to read and write, but I didn’t know any of the other stuff. The other kids were always whispering that I was a freak. So I kept to myself. It didn’t bother me.
When we came to the states, Crow offered to help me get a woman. Told me it was an important rite of passage for a man. He was always with a different woman. Said he didn’t want to get attached. So I told him I was the same. I didn’t need him to find me a woman, and I didn’t want to get attached.
I’d followed Crow all my life. Did the things he did and tried to blend in. I thought it was all going okay, and I could have kept on with it for my whole life. But then I saw Sasha. It was her voice that caught my attention before I ever saw her face. I didn’t usually look at a woman’s face, unless I needed to. But Sasha had a gentle voice. I liked the way she spoke. She wasn’t loud like the other women at Slainte, but always soft.
That night though, she was waiting tables in the diner where we ate breakfast. Her arm brushed mine as she filled up my coffee cup, and she looked right at me and smiled. Most women were afraid of me, I think, and they never looked right at me like that. But she did. And she wasn’t laughing. She didn’t treat me like I was different or make me feel uncomfortable. My arms were shaking, and my heart was beating fast. It reminded me of the pills they used to give us at the compound. And I hated that feeling. Hated her for making me feel that way again. But for the rest of the night I couldn’t stop staring at her.
I wanted her.
I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted her. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted to touch her. For weeks, I couldn’t stop jerking myself off thinking about the way she smiled at me. Wondering what it would feel like to have her beneath me. To be inside of her.
These sort of thoughts were doing me no good. I knew I couldn’t have her. I was a murderer. Even though it was the only thing I’d ever known, I’d learned after I left the compound that it wasn’t normal. And Crow explained that most women, they didn’t like it. We had to keep that part of our lives separate, for obvious reasons. But I didn’t know how to separate myself. I only knew how to paint the floor with blood and I could do that exceptionally well.
But I didn’t know how to speak with her. What to say. When I imagined letting her touch me, and the things I was supposed to do to her, I didn’t know what they were. There were some women at the compound. I remember Farrell told me they were whores and they were only there to bed the soldiers when they needed it. He said when I was sixteen, I’d bed one too. After I graduated training. But I never did. And I never wanted to.
But I couldn’t get the notion out of my head when I saw Sasha. Only before I could sort any of that out, Blaine started grabbing her like he had a right to. Touching her and asking her out. She brushed him off, but I knew he kept going back. Because I followed him. And I followed her too.
I couldn’t stop. At first, I just wanted to see where she lived. But then it wasn’t enough. I broke into her apartment. Went through her things. Watched her whenever she came to the club with Blaine.
I wanted her. And I hated that I couldn’t have her. Even when I saw Blaine hurting her, and I killed him, I knew I still couldn’t have her. I was too fucked up. She’d never want me. A murderer. A freak. A mobster. The only thing I knew how to do was kill.
But I took her anyway. And I’ve never stopped thinking about it since. The first time I sank inside of her, I embarrassed myself. I was out of control with how badly I needed her.
I didn’t like those feelings. So I kept away after that. But now, everything is changing. Sasha wants to leave. I don’t want her to go, but I have nothing to offer that would make her stay. I’m well aware she hates this life. I see it on her face every day. She wants to escape.
I should let her.
But I don’t want to.
When I walk into her apartment tonight and see the boxes packed up, it hits me hard. She really is going.
And now I know, I can’t let her.
I walk down the hall to her bedroom and find it empty. She isn’t here. My heart beats funny like the first time I saw her. Only it isn’t good this time. There’s nothing good about this feeling.
She’s leaving. And I can’t let her.
With that thought in mind, I do the one thing I despise more than anything. I sit down on her bed and try to work out the perfect lie. And when I spot the drawer across the room that has her knickers in it, I know exactly what it is.
I know how I’ll get her to stay.