I shake my head, snickering. “That’s what this is for.” I raise the sledgehammer high above my head, waggling my brows as I swing it onto his thigh.
The thump comes before the stomach-curdling splintering.
A visceral scream rips out of his throat, bouncing against the concrete walls. Pain penetrates his expression, and my gaze fixates on his eyes. On the glassy sheen thickly covering them, the trembling lids, and the angry blood vessels webbing through the white. I can even see the agony in the irises. A window to a pain-laced soul.
Such a special, special thing, pain is.
A vulnerability that clouds the mind. The judgment.
It spikes emotions and turns you against even the people you love.
It’s a unique physical reaction. Because no other has such effects over the human mind, the body, and the soul.
Not just his—mine too.
His response to pain is a soothing song to my aching, explosive soul.
After raising the sledgehammer, I bring it down on Cohen’s knee in one clean strike, with much more determination in my swing.
Bones crack on vicious notes, sending a deafening vibration through my chest. His scream doesn’t follow immediately. An imploding shriek comes first—the rejection of defeat. For one second, Cohen thought he could do it, but when pain comes, it seems to erase their minds. Pain becomes all they know. All they can process.
But his screams are my focus now. They fill me with mad need.
It’s funny, really, how much these bellows and cries used to annoy me. No matter if I knew the theory of it all, there was a clear disconnect in my mind between the concept of pain and this irrational, pointless noise. It’s hard to understand, let alone feel compassion for something you will never relate to.
Years have passed since I began thistherapy, and their wails have become my soundtrack. I’m learning. Associating. Adjusting.
“Please, Lord, plea—Sav—” he begs, slurred words joined by more whimpers deeply etched with pain.
“There’s no salvation for you here.”
Raising the sledgehammer, I let the man see it for a few excruciating moments, right up there, about to crash down on his bones once more. You’d think that seeing what’s coming makes it easier. Gives you time to prepare for it.
Spoiler alert—it doesn’t.
His screams fall into a constant, defeated cry, head lolling to the side as he sinks into the agony of his broken bones. And just like that, defeat comes. Tears stream steadily from his eyes.
I rest the sledgehammer against the wall and grab the green glass vial from a nearby table. The vial is a pretty little thing, made of thin, delicate glass, narrow at the mouth and bottom, round and fat in the middle. It has a tall stopper, long and thin—it looks like an old perfume bottle.
I remove the stopper as I reach the man, holding his head to the side as I place the open vial at the corner of his eye.
He’s too blinded by his suffering to understand what I’m doing. Or even acknowledge it. He simply cries, body cracked open to make way for his broken soul.
And it will be broken.
Men like him deserve so much more.
“This is what happens, Cohen. This is the consequence of your crimes. All of them.”
His cries grow as he appears to register my calm words.
“You hurt the innocent. The voiceless ones. Hunt them for sport. Torture them. Parade them like trophies in narcissistic photos on social media. Then chop off their heads and display them on your walls.”
His body trembles as he tries to pull his head out of my grip. “It’s...called hun—hunting.”
“No, my darling, it’s called murder. Hunting is what animals do when they seek prey they plan to feed themselves and families with. Hunting is what human animals do when they have the same need, and they honor every part of that soul. Use it, so no part is wasted. So it didn’t die in vain. Animals are different from us, but we have a different type of intelligence—we understand suffering, both physical and emotional. We understand torture, and that a kill for a purpose like this must be quick.”
Satisfied with the amount of tears I collected from him, I close the vial and place it back on the table. When I return to Cohen, I grab the sledgehammer again, and without warning, I bring it down on his hip, grunting sharply when it shatters beneath my rage.
