the sight of someone kneeling beside me, a small flashlight positioned against the wall opposite me in the tight space, illuminating Lucifer from behind, that hood over his head casting his features in shadow, a bandana around his throat.
He has demon eyes.
Just like his father.
The cherry of his cigarette glows orange in the dark, and I tense with his nearness as he exhales through his nose, my hand shaking around my shins as I curl tighter into a ball.
“Hi, J,” he says in his hoarse voice, raspy even though he’s younger than me. It’s the cigarettes. I wonder when he started smoking.
“H-hi.” My face warms as I stutter, but years spent being isolated made words difficult, even with my language classes. Sometimes I swear I speak German better than English, even though English is my first language. I wasn’t degraded in German, and when the voices in my head started to speak, they never spoke to me in English.
I learned German because of her, and I force myself not to think about it.
About that whispered bullshit she gave me. “Sicher.” Safe.
Lucifer inhales again, sits with his back against the wall. There isn’t much space between our feet in this cramped crevice of the cave.
“You doing okay?” he asks me, his voice full of a strange cheerfulness. As he turns his head to exhale again, I catch sight of his eyes in the glow from the flashlight, still leaning against the rocky wall.
His pupils are huge.
Far too enlarged to be…normal.
My skin pricks at the sight of it.
“Y-yeah.” I swallow, try to think of something else to say. To ask. “Are you?” I finally croak out.
He turns back to face me, brushing the hood off of his head, running his hand through his black hair. He holds the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, and glances at my shaky hand.
A smile curves his pale face.
My stomach flips.
“Your hand is shaking,” he points out.
I think about the rope biting into my flesh. About him, prowling around my cage. How I begged him. Pleaded.
There was a lock on the crate, always. But he could’ve helped. If I could do it with that fucking bobby pin, he could’ve done it.
I close my eyes, swallow down my fear and curl my hand up tighter, putting it on my lap, between my legs and my stomach, hiding it from his view. “Y-yeah,” I say softly, “i-it does that s-sometimes.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long while and I feel pressure building behind my eyes, my nostrils flaring as I try to breathe normally. Try not to cry in front of him. I’m older than he is, but he’s the leader.
I want him to like me, and I hate that. Because I know what he did to me.
I haven’t fucking forgotten.
I hear his shoes scuff against the dirt, sense him lean closer to me, but I don’t dare open my eyes.
“Does it?” he asks softly, and for a moment, I forget what we’re talking about. All I know is that he’s too close, the smell of nicotine too much. Nicotine and pine, and I can almost feel his breath against my mouth.
I don’t open my eyes, breathing hard, my pulse going haywire. I bring my knees closer to my chest, crushing my hand in the process but I don’t care.
I don’t want to show him that weakness.
“Yes,” I whisper, that pressure behind my eyes growing stronger, that lump in my throat bigger.
“What did you do to those girls, J?” he asks softly, and I feel his legs bump against mine.
Feel a cold sweat break out along my neck.
“Did you fuck them, buddy?” He laughs, but it’s cruel, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. “You come inside of their tight cunts, listen to them scream for you to stop?”
My stomach hurts. He can’t know what I did. How would he know that? The papers said I shot them. I shot them, and my attorney took care of the rest. My lawyer, and the money, and Lazar…
Suddenly, his hand goes to my throat, knocking my head back against the wall of the cave. My eyes fly open, but I don’t move to defend myself and I see the burning tip of the cigarette held just above my face as Lucifer looms over me, on his knees, his fingers biting into my flesh.
“You wanna scream for me now?” he growls, his hand going to my jaw, fingers splayed along my cheek, his thumb on