My Maddie (Hades Hangmen #8) - Tillie Cole Page 0,62
dick. Someone laughed again, but the flames were about to leave me. When they left me I could breathe. Until they came back. But I’d be able to breathe, and Isaiah would be safe.
“More,” I pleaded when the blade left my skin. “More, Poppa… please…”
Poppa started slicing into my skin, over and over again. Deeper and deeper until my muscles began to tense at the pain. My hands curled into fists, and when he stabbed the knife deep in my forearm, I screamed as the release left my cock and the flames drained from my blood.
Laughing. They were laughing. I didn’t know why they were laughing so much. Maybe it was because I was healed? Maybe it was because I was good. Maybe they were happy with me. Maybe I’d done well.
“And you?” Poppa said, pointing the knife to Isaiah. “You a sick fucker too? You gonna come in your pants if I cut you too?”
My eyes snapped open. “No!” I ordered and tried to push away from the tree. “He’s good. Please, Poppa. He doesn’t have the flames like me. He’s blessed by God. Not the devil.”
Poppa turned to me. “But we think he just might belong to the devil, like you.”
“No!” I called and my heart began to pound. Isaiah was good. He wasn’t like me. I killed him because I was bad. But he came back because he was good, like Jesus, he came back from the dead. He wasn’t evil. I didn’t want him to die again. I wanted to have him back with me. Mama said I had to always protect him. She made me promise her. I didn’t want to break my promise to her again. “Don’t. Please,” I begged.
But Poppa ripped off Isaiah’s leather jacket and threw it to the ground. He took hold of his bare arm and sliced the blade along it. Isaiah hissed in pain, but he didn’t scream. “No!” I shouted instead, trying to get free from my restraints. “No, no, no!”
“No hard on? No fucking coming in your pants like your friend here?”
“Back the fuck off. Leave him alone,” Isaiah said.
But Poppa kept cutting my brother. Kept slicing his flesh. When Poppa and Pastor Hughes were finished, Isaiah was covered in blood. They weren’t meant to hurt him. They hurt me, not him. They were meant to cut me, not him. Not my brother. He was good, not evil like me. I didn’t understand why they were hurting him.
“Enough,” Pastor Hughes demanded. He turned and smiled at me. I relaxed a little. Was it over? Was it time to leave Church and go home?
But then he bent down and took a snake from a cage on the floor. My body froze. “It was this that made him drop to the floor like a fucking pussy.” He brought the snake closer to me. I could feel my blood dripping from my arms. Poppa had just made me release the flames from my cock. But I could feel the flames quickly coming back, could feel the demons crawling under my skin, taking over again. The snake hissed and Pastor Hughes stroked its head. Poppa came forward, slicing off my shirt and cut. Pastor Hughes stepped round him and brought the snake to my bare chest. “You don’t like snakes, huh?”
The snakes body began crawling over my skin. I held my breath. I didn’t want it to feel the flames in my blood. I didn’t want it to bite me. I wanted to be free of the flames. I wanted to be saved. I wanted God to save me, then my poppa would like me, would want me. Maybe if they went, he would love me, and he wouldn’t have to cleanse me with his seed anymore. It hurt so much, and I didn’t like the cellar. It was so cold.
But then the snake struck and sank its teeth into my chest. I roared out, as it moved along to my stomach and bit me again. My cheeks were wet again. I squeezed my eyes shut as the snake kept on biting. My body went numb and I wasn’t able to fight the truth anymore—I was still evil. I was still filled with the devil’s flames. Poppa still wouldn’t like me. He would still hurt me when he cleansed me. The snake bit me more and more, but no longer felt it.
I didn’t notice they had removed it from my body, until I heard Pastor Hughes say, “Now him.”