along the rock, making dust and rubble fall at my feet like the crumbles of my stupid heart.
“Sinclair,” he tries again, but I just dig harder, making the screech of the pipe drown out his stupid, rumbly voice. “Just... Fuck,” he curses, before he turns and storms out of my cell, slamming the door behind him.
I keep digging long after he’s gone, my movements jerky and irritated. “Andy Dufresne never had to deal with this shit,” I mumble to myself, hating the heat I feel in my eyes. Nope. I will absolutely not have any emotion whatsoever about what just happened. I will not, under any circumstances, feel sad.
Fuck him.
And fuck me too for falling for it.
I growl, pissed off and needing to purge it as I slam the pipe down hard into the divot I’ve created in the wall. I use way too much force and must hit something super hard because the tip of the pipe skips away and somehow arcs over and slices deeply into my thigh. It hurts, and I grit my teeth against the pain. Blood immediately pools and quickly spills over my thigh. I try to pant through the stinging sensation and the tears that well up in my eyes.
“Fuck!” I shout, angrily chucking the pipe across the room. It bounces off the wall with a clang and then comes flying back at me.
Shit!
I dive to avoid getting impaled, and glare at the pipe as it clatters to the floor and rolls to the corner for a time out.
“I made you what you are today, and this is how you repay me?” I yell at it.
I hobble over to the blanket and press it against the cut on my leg. Like me, the blanket isn’t the nicest smelling thing anymore, but I scoff and shake my head. Who cares? I probably just got tetanus or fucking Ebola from the pipe. What’s a little blanket bacteria to add to the mix?
Blood soaks through the folds of the blanket quicker than I’d like, and I pack more against the wound and apply harder pressure. Fuck, that hurts.
I sit, angry, frustrated, and stewing in pain of the emotional and physical variety. What if I bleed to death in here? Iron isn’t good for shifters. It fucks with our natural healing properties, so who knows how much this thing will bleed?
I wonder how long it would take for anyone to find me if I did bleed out? Maybe my new food delivery friend, Selena, will be by to bring me some more stale cookies and find me in a puddle of my own rusted blood. Knowing me, my death-sprawl will probably be really embarrassing. I won’t be a pretty corpse, I just know it. I’ll be the cadaver with the drool hanging out of her mouth and a piss stain on her pants.
Sigh.
Continuing to dramatically think of my imminent death-by-plumbing-pipe, I stare up at the blinking fluorescent light, wishing I could just see outside. I need to feel fresh air on my face and smell things besides rotten desire and BO. At first, solitary confinement didn’t bother me, but I’m starting to go stir crazy now.
Lifting the blood-soaked blanket, I look at the cut on my thigh, noting that it sort of looks like the bleeding might be slowing down. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. I quickly tear long strips from the blanket of assholish origin—which is what I will now call it—and wrap the strips against my wound, tying it off tightly. I do that a couple more times until it feels pretty secure, and then I pull a knee up. I rest my elbow and forehead on my knee, and I just let my mind wander. It lands on Rook, but I flick the spinner away, trying to land on something else. Something pleasant. But my mat and pat come up next, so I flick them away angrily, only to land on Alpha Bowen next. Fuck you, mind spinner. Those are all terrible topics.
I need to get out of this cell.
I must doze off sometime between not thinking about one shitty person or another, because the next thing I know, a loud clang jerks me awake.
I pull my head up, alarmed, and swipe stringy orange hair away from my face. The door to my cell opens, and it takes my eyes a second to wake up and blur together who it is. I huff and look away from Rook, wiping the drool from my cheek