Monster - Gadziala Jessica - Страница 6

Why was he wasting time keeping me in someone else's custody? That just didn't make any sense whatsoever. He had to be itching to get his hands on me. If for no other reason than because I'm a woman. Because he really didn't need any other reason to brutalize someone.

Was it some kind of scare tactic? Sic the big, scary (but hot in a dangerous way) guy on me, make him hold onto me, let me worry myself sick about what would happen to me before he showed up?

That might have worked. If there wasn't something about Breaker that said he was just as unhappy as I was about the whole situation. Given that he was like... contract muscle, that said something. It said that maybe he wasn't down with the way Lex operated. With what he did to girls.

Breaker had obvious issues with his assignment.

Which scared me (marginally) less.

He was still going to go through with the job. Leaving me to wonder if maybe Lex wasn't just paying Breaker. Knowing him, Lex had some kind of backup plan. Lex always had things lined up. If plan A didn't work, there was a B, then a C. So on and so forth.

Maybe Lex had something on Breaker that was making him compliant.

But he was still going to help me off myself.

So he had my everlasting gratitude. Even if he was keeping me in a filthy, bloodstained train car that was freaking freezing. I cursed my choice of pajamas savagely as the shock wore off and I felt the cold sink in through my bare feet and into the thin material of my yoga pants and tee. If this was the worse torture I was going to go through at Lex's command, well hell, it wasn't that bad. I would live through it. Or catch a cold and die. Either one was fine by me.

No matter what, I was going to die.

I wish I could say this revelation was met with heartbreak. That I had so much to live for. That I had hopes and dreams. That I wanted to meet a man, fall in love, have two-point-five kids and live in a safe neighborhood. That I wanted to see Paris at night. That I wanted to have espresso in a cafe in Italy. That I needed to dig my toes into the sand of a tropical island. That I wanted to publish a book. Or create art.

But that wasn't me.

That wasn't the life I led.

My life had been taking care of my mother. A mother who had always been fragile. Delicate. Emotionally unstable. A mother who cried if I was five minutes late walking home from school, terrified that something horrible had happened to me. A mother who had never been well enough to hold down a steady job. So our cabinets had mostly been empty. Our lights went out every other month- leaving me doing my homework outside sitting under a streetlamp.

There had been no such options as dreams. Just the promise of never ending hard work.

I vaguely remember when I was young having a wish to sing. Always secretly wanting to learn to play guitar, but knowing I never could because we could never afford lessons.

But that desire got squished when I walked in from school that afternoon and found that my mother had finally given up whatever battle she had been fighting my whole life.

Then the desire got replaced with a need for vengeance when I learned the truth.

Every second of my life since that day was full of that goal. To avenge my mother and the hell she had been forced to live through.

So my only regret in life was not accomplishing that goal.

But it was a hollow kind of disappointment.

In the end, I might as well have not even existed.

That sounded depressive and pitiful, but it was the god's honest truth. No one would miss me. No one would grieve because I didn't share their air anymore. Death was only sad when there were people left behind that cared that you once lived.

No one cared about me.

And no one had for over a decade.

There was really nothing to be sad about.

I'd take whatever drug Breaker promised to bring me, suffer through whatever kind of experience an OD was... then drift off into nothingness.

I wasn't of the mind to believe in a after life. To put faith in the idea of floating up into a place of no pain, only peace and happiness. It seemed the stuff of fairy tales. Something to spoonfeed scared children. Something to use to convince people that life was some magical experience dreamed up by some all-seeing God.

But life was shit. Life was pain and sacrifice and disappointment. It wasn't a test to pass or fail. It was a swirling mass of time where the lucky few knew a little happiness, but most lived in fear and pain and emptiness.

No God would allow that.

At least no God I would choose to believe in.

Soon, and there was no telling how soon, but soon... I was going to not exist anymore. There would be no afterlife. There would be no reflecting on the life I led. Or reincarnating to try again (what a cruel freaking concept that was).

One minute, I would breathe and think and feel.

The next, I would stop breathing, stop thinking, and stop feeling.

Case closed.

But there was no reason to sit and wallow about that.

I got slowly up off the floor, my bones aching from the cold. I moved around, trying to shake some warmth into my limbs. Trying to shake the cold out of my soul.

It was hard to live with the weight of knowledge on your shoulders. To know what was really going on around all of us daily. To know that there were men out there who stole girls off the streets, good, sweet, innocent girls, and raped, mutilated, and discarded them. And never got caught. Never got punished. It was impossible to not feel your shoulders slump with that. Or to know that there were men who stole a man's family, slicing off fingers of children to get his way – and not feel like the world was an awful, twisted place to live.

I didn't get the chance to see the sun. Because I lived in the fucking gutters.

There were times that I wanted to leave it behind. Nights when I would lay in bed, staring at my wall, feeling tears stinging my eyes. Wanting nothing more than to pack my stuff and take off. Go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Get a real job. Find a good man. And maybe he would ignore me during football season and I'd have to bitch at him to bring out the trash. But he would call me pretty and kiss me like he meant it.

I could wash the filth of my twenty-six years away. I could be clean.

But that wasn't an option for me.

Some people needed to wade in the muck so that others could live untouched by it.

My life was a sacrifice to a greater good.

I had no right to be sad about that.

“Cold?” Breaker's voice said behind me, making me jump, my heart flying upward. God, he was good at that. I guessed that was what made him good at his job.

“Yeah,” I said, turning toward him.

To find him standing there with clothes. Clothes. And blankets.

“Here,” he said, holding out a pair of men's socks to me and I practically lunged at them, slipping my feet in and pulling them up my calves. Next he handed me a pair of sweatpants. Men's. Blue. Way too big. But warm. I slipped into those as well, reaching for the dark blue sweatshirt and pulling it over my head. “Better?” he asked once I was swallowed up in the new material.

“Yes. Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

“Don't thank me, doll,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why not? You did something nice.”

He exhaled his breath, running a hand down the side of his head. “After kidnapping and holding you against your will. You can't say this was nice.”

“How many other hostages have you brought clothes and blankets to?” I asked, watching him. His head shook and I had my answer. “Exactly. So thank you for caring about me not dying of pneumonia. You know... before I OD on heroin.” I meant it to me kinda funny. In a morbid way. I even smiled as I said it.