Into the Heart of a Killer: Memoirs of an Assassin

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The whip cracked.

For what seemed like the thousandth time, the thick leather made contact with my back and broke skin. I sat curled on the ground with my jaw clenched until it hurt, my back laid bare to Ceseth's anger. I could feel the cuts and the blood. Each time the whip fell, I keenly felt it cutting newer cuts into the once-delicate skin. The scars would remain for a lifetime, I was sure. It wasn't as if Ceseth would mercifully allow me to tend to the wounds, either. Perhaps once they were infected—if they got infected—but not a moment before then.

I found that whenever I screamed, he hit me harder. And though it took an enormous amount of willpower, I forced myself to remain silent, giving him nothing more than pained grunts every now and again.

It had been a week and a half. At first, I'd expected immediate beatings, but Ceseth was more focused on survival. We left his house after ransacking it for anything of use. Four packs later, we had packed as much as either of us could carry and were out of town on black horses in the middle of the night. On our way out, even though it was merely a day after Amirah's death, there were already wanted posters depicting both of our faces. Oddly enough, my poster was highly inaccurate. I wondered why. Ebenezer had been close enough to my face to know exactly what I looked like. But then again, perhaps he wasn't the one who had set the ransom on my head.

We had ridden for four days. Four grueling days where Ceseth had refused me food, and only given me the barest amount of water. He had slept under a tarp, while I had slept on the ground with nothing but a threadbare blanket and my arm for a pillow. I didn't complain. I knew much worse was coming.

On the fifth day, six days after my mother's murder, we finally stopped. As far as I could tell, we were still in the middle of nowhere, but there was a ramshackle hut standing amidst some trees. It was tiny: only two rooms. A multipurpose room that served as a kitchen, living room, office, and bedroom, and an even tinier bathroom (it held the shack's only water basin).

The beatings hadn't commenced until a day later. And now, I had been suffering through these lashings for an hour a day for the last three days. I found that any tears I might have shed were long gone. I felt no desire to cry, no desire to scream, no desire to beg him to stop. So instead, I simply took the lashings. I passed out a handful of times over the last three days, but Ceseth made sure not to beat me until I was fully conscious again. Out of the ten years I'd taken his beatings, none had ever been this bad. However, he'd never been this angry with me, either.

When he finished, he dropped the bloodied whip beside me and stalked into the house.

I picked myself up, leaving the whip where it was, dirtied on the ground, and made my way towards a river. It was a ten-minute walk, and each step was shorter than the last. The corners of my vision were red and black, and I stumbled multiple times in my hunchbacked walk. I couldn't force myself to stand up straight, or the pain increased a hundredfold. So I shuffled, taking frequent breaks to lean against a tree and center myself. So the typically ten-minute walk turned into a thirty-minute walk of me shuffling, stopping, and shuffling again. When I reached the water's edge, I inched towards it, shaky without the support of the surrounding foliage.

Without removing my pants or my shoes, I waded into the water slowly, sucking in a breath as the less-than-clean river-water flooded into my newly administered lacerations. It might not have been the best idea, but it was the most "washing" the wounds would receive until they were about to kill me. The coldness of the water and the sharpness of the pain nearly knocked me out right there in the water, but by some miracle I remained standing. But I couldn't force myself to move. All I did was stand in the water, as close to the shore as I could get while still covering my entire back with water.

I'd figured Ceseth would hate that I was attempting to soothe myself, but something inside me told me he didn't care; he was just as aware as I was that this water wasn't going to do much for me.

I let out a groan through my teeth and stared up through the trees.

I had once wondered if there was such a thing as a god who cared, I thought distastefully. If there is, he is a malevolent god. But I'd already decided that, hadn't I?

There is no god coming for me.

In fact, no one is coming for me now.

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