Jersey Six - Jewel E Ann Page 0,93
drew into a painful mask of regret as he shook his head.
“Stop denying it!” She threw one of the knives.
His hand flew to his ear, blood rushing down his neck from the missing piece she expertly sliced with the knife.
Ian grimaced, removing his hand from his ear, letting it bleed out. “You dropped it—the bunny.”
She didn’t give a fuck about the bunny and how he knew she dropped it. Nothing made sense anymore, and she just wanted her senseless life to end … but not before his.
The second knife landed squarely in his thigh.
“Fuck!” He seethed, bending at the waist while stumbling forward a few steps.
Jersey retrieved her last knife from the back of her jeans as tears ran down her face. “The next one is going in your heart,” she whispered.
“Bunnies…” he grunted, grabbing his leg just above the knife “…still hop with one ear.”
Jersey shook her head, gripping the knife firmly in her hand as his image blurred behind her tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sixteen years earlier …
“Jersey! Don’t make me come get you,” Mr. Fisher bellowed from upstairs.
She retreated to the farthest part of the fort maze, hugging her bunny, chewing on one of its ears as nerves gobbled her up inside, making her feel sick to her tummy.
G stared blankly at her from a few feet away, curled into a ball, one eye swollen, her lower lip cut at the corner. Mr. Fisher kept her upstairs longer than usual. Jersey thought it meant she’d be spared that day. G always tried to take the brunt of Mr. Fisher’s sick needs in an effort to keep Jersey untouched.
That day, Mr. Fisher spared no one.
“You little bitch, I hate it when you make me come down here for you.”
Jersey chewed harder on the bunny’s long ear as her body shook and her gaze pleaded with G. But G had no life in her single-eyed gaze. She looked dead, except occasionally her whole body would jerk and she’d groan like something shocked her—pained her.
“Fucking little cunt!” Mr. Fisher ripped off the blankets over the fort and grabbed Jersey’s arm, yanking her to her feet.
Smack!
He backhanded her, his tarnished class ring cutting open the skin high on her cheek. Jersey cried, hugging her bunny to her with her free hand.
G made a noise, like an animal caught in a barbed wire fence, as she stumbled to her feet, lunging at Mr. Fisher.
Smack!
He dished out the same punishment to her, sending her abused body back to the ground. That’s when Jersey noticed the blood along the backside of G’s light gray sweatpants.
Mr. Fisher hurt G … he hurt her badly that day.
“I hate this fucking bunny! Stop chewing on its ear like a goddamn dog!” Fisher jerked on the bunny, but Jersey held it tightly. When he jerked it harder, she was left with nothing but the wet ear. He tossed the bunny’s body off to the side and dragged Jersey up the creaky wooden stairs. His breath reeked of booze, and a foul body odor clung to his clothes.
Hazel lucked out that day. Mrs. Fisher took her to the doctor after Mr. Fisher complained about her incessant cough. Jersey envied Hazel’s illness. Of course she didn’t know what it was, maybe it was something awful that could kill her, but still … she envied Hazel that day.
Mrs. Fisher never abused them, but she never helped them either. She feared her husband as much as everyone else.
After Fisher tied Jersey’s hands behind her back, exposed her most private parts, and stroked himself for what felt like an eternity in Hell, he forced himself into her mouth, stroking her hair, making her vomit. Then he fisted her hair and smacked her several more times for vomiting on him.
She stumbled down the stairs, blinded by her tears, throat bruised and burning, running straight to her bunny missing its ear, and she wept … not because of the abuse to her. Jersey wept for her bunny.
When her tears stopped, G picked her up, swaying a bit on her unsteady legs, and carried Jersey upstairs to the bedroom. G laid her in the bed and knelt beside it, brushing Jersey’s hair from her face, inspecting Mr. Fisher’s brutal work.
“M-my bunny …” Jersey hiccupped. “Only h-has one-one e-ear.”
G’s mouth pulled into something resembling a crooked smile and a grimace, probably because of the cut on her lip. “Bunnies still hop with one ear,” she whispered.
It was the most she had ever heard G talk. A whisper. Five words to