" i hope i stay close "

*

⚠️ [ WARNING! ] ⚠️
- minor graphic scenes
- indication at death

***

A week passes by, then another.

My body wracks in pain from the ceaseless abuse, the ceaseless 'love' I am receiving from two psychopaths.

I'd rather it be me than somebody else, however. I can take this pain. I can take this torture. I can take anything in the world that may befall me because of Jae and Brian, because I adore them. I love them, and it's breaking me apart.

Yes, it's all becoming harder and harder to bear.

They claim they're keeping me around because they love me. Because they care for me. My thudding head and spinning heart help me believe them, but a spark of reason is beginning to form from the embers of this tortured love.

Perhaps they're just keeping me for personal pleasure. No, not perhaps. It's obvious this is so. And yet, my heart keeps screaming love through wheezing lungs.

The smell of iron lingers. The taste of damp pages sifts my mind until I'm mad with desire.

Hunger.

Lust.

I lust for food and drink. The scraps I'm given do me no good — I can feel my ribs poking at the scarce meat surrounding them without even using my fingertips. The way the skin is taught there lets me know as much. I'm there... but a good chunk of me is missing.

The strip between life and death is a strange place to be. It's dizzying, but also stabilizing. I'm obviously rooted in my routine chair when I'm not being washed in the tub, laid down on the couch, or used on the bed, but the way the chains curl around my wrists and ankles so that my body is limited to only a handful of positions has me prickling in numbness.

What a strange position I'm in. I can't even cross my legs like I used to, back when I'd sling my arm over Jae's shoulders at his friend's house, when he'd try to push me away — but I'm too irresistible for that, I'd get my way back then — when we'd end up locking lips on the dusty couch while his friends chugged booze and jeered at us. Or like when I used to draw my legs up sideways so I could feel more comfortable when Brian held me on his lap and pressed his mouth to the curve of my neck, a sigh, a warm breath, a chuckling whisper of "I love you..." It's all done for. There's no past, now — I'm erasing it as best I can for the sake of the present, so the pain can become more bearable.

My shins are hanging down alongside the chair legs, ankles pressed to the coolness of the splintered wood, toes tracing circles onto the icy cement. I'd try for pentagons — those always calmed me the best — but it's too difficult, too risky. If I concentrate too hard, my head will cave in with pain or I'll fall sideways with the chair. Or backwards. Worse, forwards. 

The door bangs open, an angry silver light flooding in along with the long shadow belonging to Jae's body. Jae walks in calmly, his converse-covered feet bathed in a red substance I've become well-acquainted with recently. My gut wrenches at the sight. Brian follows suit, dragging along something — no, somebody — with a scowl painting his face.

It takes one look for me to recognize the somebody as Jaebeom.

My heart thunders in my chest when we make eye contact. His eyes grow wide for a while long enough for me to know that I didn't imagine the action, but then they return to their normal squint of pain. Jae has him by the hair in an instant, lifts up his face to better show it to me. "Do you know him?"

The trio are a meter in front of me, Jae and Brian towering over Jaebeom's kneeling form. Brian seethes. Jae holds his usual lazy composure, but his hand grips more tightly onto Jaebeom's hair. Jaebeom squints more meaningfully. Don't expose me—

I shake my head.

"I... see." Jae knees Jaebeom in the nose, and the anguishing cRAcK the produces resounds through my brain like a gunshot. I stifle a sob. Blood paints itself over Jaebeom's features as I hear his wheezing grunt of pain. "Then you won't care if I take his life in front of you?"

I whimper in want of mercy, in need of a savior for my workmate. Yet there is nobody around except us four and the knife Brian now holds. It's gone too far — even my suffering doesn't keep others safe like I used to fantasize that it did.

It's only causing more trouble for Jae and Brian's victims.

Jaebeom's tortured breaths angrily rattle his chest up and down, up and— Jae kicks him in the lung area, and I stifle a yell with my teeth over my lip. My mouth fills with the vile taste of iron.

"Target found," Jaebeom whispers out.

And then the mutilation begins.