TWELVE - ROCK
As soon as she says that I am hard as rock. I cannot help it.
I hate my body for reacting the way it does. I did not know mother was here. I thought she was dead. In many ways that would have been better. To see her like that, it is too much for my mind. The gut wrenching sorrow shifts to anger as father grins at me. I will kill him. I have no choice.
I have no plan, I just know I will do it. She is barely recognisable, I clench my fists at the thought of the way she has been treated.
And then from behind me I hear a voice shouting out.
I turn and she tells me to take her, she puts my hand to her breast. I can feel her nipple go stiff under my touch and I am such an animal, all thoughts but her go out of my head.
"Kiss me," she hisses through clenched teeth.
I lean down, hardly able to believe she said it. Her lips brush over mine and I hear the door closing behind me. As soon as it is closed, I jerk away.
She pulls me back towards her. "Do it," she says, taking my hands and moving them around her back.
I bite on my lip to keep it from coming out but I can't stop it. I open my mouth and roar in rage. I know he can hear it, I know he'll be laughing but I can't stop myself. I am so angry.
She takes a step backwards, looking afraid. The fight goes out of me and I sag downwards, slumping to the floor. Her arm is immediately around my shoulder. She says nothing. I wait for my breathing to slow before speaking. I have to tell her. I have to tell someone.
"I am in here because I'm bad," I say.
"No," she replies. "You're not bad."
"I am. I killed my sister. I did that to my mother. I'm evil. I'm a monster."
"You're not a monster," she says, shaking her head. "A monster would have raped me when he had the chance. You freed me."
I hear the words but they do not sink in. I keep seeing mother's uncaring face. I feel something on my cheek and realise she has torn more cloth from her night gown. Dipping it in the water from the shower hose, she wipes it over my skin, cleaning away the blood and dirt as I sit motionless.
"There's a fighter under here," she says, tearing away another strip. "Not a monster."
"I fight because he makes me."
"Why not say no?"
"You see the cameras?"
She nods.
"There are more rooms with more cameras. If I don't fight, the women he brings me go there. People pay a lot to watch what he does to them."
She grimaces. "They're the monsters, not you. Don't you see? You're good, Rock, you're a good person."
I shake my head. "A good person would have been able to save his mother."
"You didn't know she was here, I could tell that. I'm guessing he kept that a secret?"
I want to cry but the tears won't come. I don't know how to make them.
"How long have you been here?" she asks.
"I don't know. Since I was small."
"What? Just in this cell?"
I nod my head. "In here and a few other rooms. But when I got bigger, he made me stay in here, he says it keeps me safe from the world, that the world is as bad as me."
"The world isn't bad," she says.
"It has people that watch me fight, that watch what he does. It is as bad as me."
"There are bad people out there, sure. But there are also good people and there's a lot more good than bad in the world." She sighs, tying the stretch of cloth around my knuckles as she does so. "Not just people either. There are oceans and trees and forests and rivers and so many beautiful things and one day you'll see them all, I promise."
"I've never seen the ocean."
"You will," she says, squeezing my bicep. "I promise you will."
"I don't deserve to see it."
She looks at me, her face inches from mine. She is sitting on the floor beside me, her body leaning towards mine. Her hand is still on my arm. Her lips look so soft and as she closes her eyes, I can't resist kissing her.
She kisses me back, her head remaining in place. The pain in my heart fades as I lose myself in her kiss. The hunger I thought I had is there but it is different, it is softer. My arms go around her and as we kiss, I lift her into the air. She gasps into my mouth and as she does so, I plunge my tongue in.
I have never known anyone who talks to me like her, like I matter, like I'm important. I know she is lying to make me happy. I am not good. A good person would help her escape, not lower her onto the bed and continue kissing her, crushing her underneath him.
I feel the heat of her body on mine and I have no thought for helping her escape. I only have thoughts for doing what I have wanted to do to her for as long as I can remember. I kiss her again and again, moving my lips to her neck, grazing it with my teeth, tasting her sweetness as her hands reach up and around my back. I break away at last, taking a breath while she stares up at me, looking dazed.
"Take me, Rock," she says. "I want to know how it feels."
I am already hard, I can feel it throbbing as I look at those lips, wondering what it would be like to fill her mouth with my length. I get to my feet and tear my clothes off while she looks at me, half afraid, half smiling. It is a look that drives me wild.