Pepper Winters - Destroyed

Zel leaned forward, bringing a cloud of floral air. “You’re forgetting that by sharing a bed with me, I’ll have full access to you while you sleep.” Her voice dropped to a husky whisper, “Sleeping with someone is a huge admittance of trust. If I wanted to hurt you I’m the only one close enough when you’re at your weakest to do so.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

How did she know I’d avoided sleeping with another because of that same fear?

I wanted to wring her neck for her implied threat all while contemplating how to avoid such an inevitability. Lowering my head, I growled, “Thank you for pointing out yet another hole in this arrangement. I’ll make sure to rectify it.”

Her eyes popped wide.

Focusing on the keypad lock, I stabbed the combination. “The code is 11453. You’ll need to remember that if I send you back here without me.”

She nodded. Her heart-shaped face and flawless complexion glowed beneath the corridor lights. Her lips moved silently, committing the code to memory.

Swinging the door wide, I let her enter first.

Automatic sensors switched on, spilling illumination from two bedside lamps and subtle lighting around artwork and sculptures. Just like my office, the entire space was black. Again, not a matter of choice, but necessity. Drilled into me by a past I couldn’t shake. It was ironic that I hated the dark, yet surrounded myself in it.

Zel gravitated toward a sculpture. Reaching out to touch it, I held my breath as her inquisitive fingertips caressed the brutalized metal. I’d finished it only a few days ago. It wasn’t anything special. Just a hunk of metal that I’d welded and twisted and deformed.

Along with the iron, bronze, and silver, it also held my blood and sweat.

I fed my designs with everything that I was—including the stuff flowing in my veins. In a way, it made me immortal—morphing me into pieces of metal—hopefully finding peace by hardening my heart just like the statues.

“You mentioned Oscar did the fox mural. Who did the sculptures?” Zel twisted to look at me, her eyes green diamonds in the gloom. “Whoever did these has a heart-breaking story to tell. They’re full of pain.” Her voice dropped to a murmur. “Did you do them?”

My spine tickled with equal parts gratefulness and utter rage. Grateful because I’d finally found someone who saw past who I portrayed, and rage because she made me frustrated and weak— showing just how fucking messed up I was.

“If you can see all that; do you really need an answer?” I snapped, stalking toward the bed.

Zel followed me with her eyes, stroking the twisted piece. “No. I don’t need an answer.” She removed her fingers, looking at the hunk of metal wistfully. “It tells me more about you than you ever will. It redeems you in a way, enough that I can overlook your surly assholeness.”

I ignored that.

Watching her carefully, I kept my muscles on a tight leash, just in case she triggered another relapse. Drifting from one statue to another, she kept surprising me by only showing interest in the deformed pieces. Humans were taught to run from imperfection. She should've been interested in the perfectly designed and flawlessly executed wolf sitting on the sideboard, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t care less, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

She turned to face me, taking in the room as she did so. She didn’t look like she wanted to run or try to fix me. She accepted the scar as if it hadn’t damaged me, as if it just…was.

Acceptance.

Something wrenched painfully in my chest, dragging foreign emotions from depths I didn’t understand.

I was right about her. She was magical—casting a spell over me, entwining me deeper into her web.

I suddenly had an overwhelming urge for pain. I needed it. I thirsted for it. Only pain would help me see clearly again.

Giving me a small smile, she moved silently toward the bed. Black sheets, black covers. Everything black. I wasn’t comfortable in any other colour. I deserved no other colour. Black was the colour of evil, of death. Black was me.

The room was large. A seating area existed to the right, a bathroom to the left, and a huge bed on a raised platform in the centre. The bed looked like it’d come straight from a haunted forest. Wrought iron and bronze had been hammered into the illusion of branches and twigs, cocooning the bed in eager ghostlike trees.

The instant Zel sat on the mattress and looked across the room, I knew I’d made a big fucking mistake.

I couldn’t sleep next to this woman. I would kill her.

I couldn’t let her touch me. I would maim her.

I was a fucking idiot to think otherwise.

It wasn’t a matter of if or how or maybe. It was as certain as the motto engraved on my doorstep. As rigid and unyielding as the conditioning I drowned in.

Thou shall steal life because that is thine only purpose.

My only purpose. The only reason why I was still alive.

Curling my hands, I backed toward the exit. “Stay there. Don’t leave the room.”

Zel sat up, her mouth opened in question, but I didn’t wait.

Striding out the door, I left, locking her inside.

My haven was a bunker buried amongst the foundations of the house. Here I could relax—as much as I could—and generally pretend the rest of the world and my problems didn’t exist.

I breathed deeply as I unlocked the door and entered the familiar space. Smells of metal shavings, tools, and the stench of grease and paraffin welcomed me back. It was basic, rudimentary, but it fit me better than any of the grandeur upstairs.

I wasn’t carved from money and gold. I was carved from ice and stone. I’d slept in a pit more nights than I slept in a bed all because I’d been chosen.

They say chosen. I say stolen.

Having a place like this underground with its unfinished walls and low ceilings gave me a respite—gave me a den.

Shoving aside a half-finished statue of a decapitated woman, I tried to remove Hazel from my mind.

Her dark hair, her knowing green eyes, her air of courage. I couldn’t stop thinking about her—moving around my space, touching more statues, figuring out more of my history that I wanted to keep buried.

She might leave. You’ve left her all alone.

I didn’t trust the locks would keep her in if she truly wanted to go. The steel inside her matched the steel inside me, and the knowledge I couldn’t force her to stay fucked with my head.

My vision faded a little on the peripheral, warning me tiredness and stress were starting to take their toll.

Shit, what was I doing? I should be up there taking what I’d paid for. I should be plunging deep inside her and searching for some resemblance of happiness. I shouldn’t have run like a fucking pussy.

I picked up hammer, squeezing the wooden handle in my fist.

Do it. It will help.

The enabling voice inside coaxed—like it did every time—promising sweet relief.

Splaying my hand on the bench, fingers flat against the well-used surface, I stared at it for the first time in a while. Crisscrossed with tiny scars, punctured with small holes of silver, my hand looked ancient and brutal. The urge to slam the hammer onto one of my knuckles consumed me until I shook with need for pain and a droplet of sweat rolled down my temple.

Breaking the spell, I slowly lowered the hammer and turned my hand over to look at my palm.

The moment I found freedom two years ago, I spent days with a scouring brush and abrasive soap washing off the mark.

Washing, sandpapering, scrubbing to remove the three small symbols of what I was. Only a fellow operative would know what they meant; would know I was a creature whose only purpose was to fight and destroy.