AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Please, I— I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know— “
“Shut up!”
I look towards Tripp to see his hands gripped tightly around the young man’s throat. Tripp’s hand comes up to the boy’s cheeks where he squeezes tightly until the boy’s mouth forms a tight O and his face turns purple. Shoving one of his fingers into the boy’s throat, he tilts his head, studying the boy closely. There is a dangerous shift in the air whenever Tripp is around. He makes my skin crawl and my knees tremble with fear, all while continuing to be able to ignite everything south to dangerous heat levels. I don’t want to feel.
Tripp’s hand launches down the boy’s throat and my eyes widen, my panic kicking up a notch. The gargling of his suffocating breaks through the quiet night as Tripp’s arm yanks back roughly, tugging something out of the boy’s throat. He gives it one more jerk and then blood spurts out of the boy’s mouth, all over Tripp’s mask and clothing. I gasp and step backwards, attempting to be quiet, but when Tripp’s head snaps towards me, I know I’m not as quiet as I hoped to be. A heavy thud hits the ground before the stomping of boots come closer and closer to my cell.
I drop down onto the cold concrete floor and draw my knees up to my chest. A large dark shadow blocks the dim light from the hallway of the cell. Knowing it’s Tripp blocking the light, I peer up slowly towards him. “I—I—didn’t see,” I shake my head, my voice closing in. I don’t want to feel.
“What?” he growls, throwing a long piece of… I narrow my eyes at the object he threw onto the ground and bile rises up my throat. “You didn’t just see me rip a man’s throat out?” Tripp chuckles, kneeling down on the other side of my cell door. My body begins to convulse, the smell of death seeping into my pores. “It’s one of the slowest ways to die, did you know that?” he asks, his head tilting. “You see that?” He nudges his tarnished thumb over his shoulder towards the empty cell opposite mine. “That’s where he will lie, and that’s where you will watch as his life slowly empties from his piece of shit body and eventually seeping into your cell where so many others before him have come to an end.” His hand comes up to one of the bars and I inch back, terrified that he is going to come into my cell. When he notices my jump, he laughs again. “You see what you just witnessed? That’s nothing if you don’t comply with what goes on here. Understood?”
I nod my head, swallowing the tang of vomit that is threatening to rise up my throat.
“Good.” He pushes off the cell and stand to his feet. “J? Bring him down.”
Red mask walks down, opening the cell opposite me with a heavy squeak, and throws the boy’s body onto the dirt-covered floor. Blood continues to pour out of the boy’s throat as he turns to his side, his face turning towards me. It’s then that I realize who he is.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my lip trembling. Looking up to Tripp, I catch him staring down at me. His shoulders square, the rim of his dark hoodie shading around his mask. “That’s—that’s the cleaner from the church…”
Tripp taps his temple. “Ding dong, the snitch is dead.”
***
My leg being pulled wakes me up and my eyes snap open in the dark room.
“Wake up,” a deep voice sounds. “Kurr needs to talk to you and you have a visitor.” I rub my eyes with the palm of my hands and get back to my feet slowly. Tripp is standing in front
of me holding out a bottled water.
“Drink.” He points to it authoritatively. I reach out and take it from him before twisting off the
bottle cap and taking a sip. The cool liquid soothes my parched throat immediately, so I continue to
down the rest. I look into Tripp’s eyes and into the stormy blue clouds that shade around his dark
irises before bringing the bottle back down and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Thank you,” I whisper, handing the bottle back to his outstretched hand. I look over his shoulder to
see Ned, the twenty-year old boy who would clean the church, gone. Tripp follows my gaze before
looking back to me. “Where is he?” I ask.
“Oh, he’s Soulless’ problem now.”
I’m not sure what that means and I’m not sure I want to.
“What did you mean by ‘snitch’?” I question.
His eyes narrow, the taut muscles under his shirt stretching as he tenses, but his eyes remain glued
on mine, the intensity burning me from the inside out. Heavy footsteps approach behind him just as my
cell door squeaks open and our stare-down is interrupted.
“Millie,” a smug voice who I’ve come to recognize as Kurr’s smirks behind Tripp’s wall of
muscle. My eyes falter, so I pull them away from Tripp and back to the ground. When Kurr’s shiny
wing tip shoes come into view, I swallow. “I have someone here who wants to see you. I believe you
