David Dunwoody - Empire

Then, there was someone out there. A man in black kneeling in the bog. He had a big stick that he leaned upon and his skin was bone-white. Another dead man like the others? No, his eyes…his eyes were alive and they were fixed on her.

He approached the fence. Lily pressed her face to the bars. "Hi."

"What are you doing in there?" The man in black asked. She saw now that his big stick had a big knife on it. Maybe he was cutting grass too. "I live here." She answered. His skin was like clay, wasn't it? So perfectly smooth, even when he frowned. And his eyes were big and black and shiny. Lily thought that maybe that was what beautiful really looked like. "What do you mean, you live here?" He was looking past her at Aidan. "That's my brother," she explained. "What's your name?"

"I don't have a name." He said matter-of-factly. "I'm Lily." She told him. "My brothers and sisters all live here. Daddy doesn't live here anymore. I don't remember him much anyway. I'm not allowed to go outside the gates. What's it like?"

"It's not a nice place." Kneeling to bring himself face-to-face with the girl, the man in black looked at Aidan again. "Do they try to hurt you?"

"No, they're not allowed." She glanced at her wrists and was flushed with shame. The man followed her eyes. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know." Lily put her hands behind her back and stepped away. "I have to go." She ran into the manor.

Death studied the architecture of the house. If there was a human quality that he admired, it was imagination. For him, imagination had no purpose; his entire existence was laid out in black and white. But those idling in this life took wood and rock and metals and forged wonders merely from pictures in their minds. It didn't matter that they would one day depart the mortal coil, nor that their cathedrals and skyscrapers would one day be razed to the ground. Just to have created, that was enough.

The mowing afterdead had seen him. Death leapt into the trees with barely a whisper, back into the swamp, back to his white steed.

"Did you go outside this morning?" Confusion was a rare feeling for Lee. He usually kept everything in its place with little effort, especially Cheryl. But he remembered awakening from a drunken stupor at six A.M. and hearing the front door before blacking out again. Cheryl's guilty white countenance confirmed his suspicions. "Where were you?"

She only shook her head in response. Her clothes were filthy. Lee could tolerate her plump figure when she at least looked clean; he'd send her to the rooftop today to do laundry. Lee's head ached so he plopped down in his recliner, narrowing his glare. Bitch had better not relax thinking he was just going to sit there and nurse his hangover. "You're lying." He said flatly. "I can't believe it but you are. Where the fuck could you have been that you'd even think of lying to me about it?" Lee tapped his index finger against his cheekbone. "Maybe you were with that guy in the next building. Maybe you went over there to suck his cock."

Cheryl shook her head rapidly. "I wouldn't do that, Lee."

"The fuck you wouldn't. You've always been a whore. Keeping you in this apartment the rest of your life ain't gonna change you, I know that. Hell, I'm family and I've caught you staring at my cock, Cheryl. You don't care where you get it as long as you get it. You'd probably be on the street sucking dead dick if I didn't keep you on a leash. And…" He rubbed his neck, grunting, fished through his jeans for a couple of white pills. "And just like that, I pass out for a few hours and you sneak out. Break all the rules. I take care of you, Cheryl, why do you hate me so much?"

Cheryl didn't have the heart to tell her cousin that he'd been unconscious for a day and a half. Actually, it had less to do with her heart than her nose and the fear of having it shattered again. Even if she was the whore Lee said she was, no man would want her like that. He didn't just make her feel ugly, he slapped her around for good measure. How could he possibly accuse her of being hateful when she stayed for that? She wasn't afraid to fend for herself. She made regular trips to Midtown to get his drugs, didn't she? Lee was the one scared to leave the apartment. He only knew that a man had moved into the next building because he'd seen him from the window. And things had gotten worse since then. Lee wouldn't stop talking about the man — whom Cheryl had never even seen — and how she would almost certainly betray her loving cousin for him.

Loving. She shuddered involuntarily as Lee's glare bored into her. He had his hand down his pants. Lee wasn't a hard one to figure out. She knew what he was about. Why he kept calling her a whore. It had nothing to do with his so-called faith or her lack thereof. When Cheryl looked at him (and she NEVER stared at his crotch) all she saw was an ugly, possessive addict living in another reality. But when he looked at her, it was with dark desire.

"I don't hate you." She forced herself to say. "I didn't go out. Where would I go? I was here. I was watching TV- "

"Bullshit." Lee turned the recliner to face the television. "My DVD's still in there." One of his pornos. She'd never be caught dead watching that. Cheryl was busted.

Lee smirked at her. His DVDs were all he had left, the rest of his things traded away for drugs. As such he spent a few hours of every day jerking off in his chair, usually while high, and Cheryl would get a beating if she happened to walk into the room. He'd probably sooner trade her away than that smut.

Chewing the white pills from his jeans pocket, Lee swallowed them dry. "So, want to tell another lie, or just tell me who you've been fucking?"

"I didn't do anything. I didn't go anywhere. Why don't you believe me?"

Lee stood up. Trying the guilt card with him had been a mistake.

His eyes clouded over and he gave her a familiar, numb look. Then the backhand sent her sprawling.

Cheryl stayed on the floor while Lee yelled. Her ears were ringing but he was probably berating her for making him raise his hand. Tears stinging her eyes, she briefly considered telling him the truth. Fact of the matter was that Lee was all she had, the only one she could ever turn to — but he'd never buy the truth, not when she was a godless whore.

She'd been raped four months prior while on a run to Midtown. Her attacker had worn a moth-eaten ski mask over his face, held her facedown in the refuse of an alley. Had whispered while he was inside her, "Could kill you where you lay bitch, feed you to the rotters. Kill you." He came on the word KILL and repeated it feverishly, then he melted into shadow and was gone.

Cheryl hadn't known she was pregnant until that very morning, until the miscarriage.

Thank God Lee had been passed out, because she had screamed to wake the dead, even with a rolled-up towel clenched between her teeth as she lay on the bathroom floor. She'd screamed even louder and cried and beat the tiled floor when it was over and she saw it. Transferring the towel from her mouth to between her thighs, she used another one to clean the mess and then wrapped it — him, her? — in a dinosaur blanket. Then she'd gone out to the landfill.

What would Lee say if he knew?

"I knew you weren't just getting fat, bitch. Fucking whore. Rape. Rape! Ha." He'd punctuate every word with his fists. Things would be worse than they'd ever been.

"I…" She mumbled, though still unable to hear, "I heard a noise. A cat. I was just looking for it."

"You better not have given any of our food to a fucking stray." He snapped. "I didn't." She replied. "I couldn't find him…I wouldn't have fed him anyway."

"Goddamn right. I'd skin and eat the little bastard before taking him in. You better feel the same way, Cheryl, because I'm the provider here. I take care of YOU. You don't have a goddamn thing to be giving away to anyone." He dug his toe into her ribs, making her whimper. "Except that filthy cunt."