The Art of Mending Memories

Chapter 46

The Art of Mending Memories

Chapter 46

I spit out the blood from my mouth.  The sharp pain in my abdomen made it difficult to breathe.  I figured I had a cracked rip, maybe two.  My wrists were burning raw from the rope binding them together.  I could feel my jaw swelling from the slaps registered to my face.

“Aw, look,” the sarcastic voice said, “the little whore’s bleeding.”

I concentrated on breathing from where I laid on the ground by the grown man’s feet.  I refused to cry.  I cried in front of him nine years before; I cried all the tears I could, until there was nothing left to cry.  It was nothing but food for his cruelty.

Mortaziar was always known to find humor in other’s pain.

He knelt down in front of me.  There was a long scar running along the side of his face, somehow less terrifying than it had been all those years ago.  His hair was streaked with grey, greasy, and had an air of uncleanly unmanagedness.  The tips of his teeth were showing in his grin.  Drops of blood were on his cheeks and chin.  The whites of his eyes were nearly taken over by black eyes, only the edges of his eyes showing the yellowy-whiteness.  Scars covered his shoulders and chest.  Fur covered the bottom half of his body, a sign of his partial change.  If he were attacked, he would be able to change into a wolf quicker than in his full human form.

Mortaziar grabbed my chin, the sharp nails of his half claws digging into the soft underside of my jaw.  I felt blood trickle down my throat.

“No tears?  Come now, little girl, cry for me.”

I shook, trying to contain it.  I was trying so hard not to show the fear that was threatening to take hold of me.  Aaron, where are you? my mind shouted.  I clenched my jaw, begging myself not to cry.  I had to hold out, long enough for Aaron to arrive.  He would be here soon, wouldn’t he?  It was past noon.  I had no idea where I was, but I had to hope Aaron would be able to find me somehow.  I had to believe that.

I looked away from his face.  It was the same face that had haunted my dreams, but there was less emotion in it and more cold calculating.  He had no emotion, but was instead nothing but revenge.  I stared at the ground in front of me.  My blood sprinkled the dirt, but I knew it would only become more drenched.  I took another breath and felt a sharp pain in my chest.

Mortaziar stood. “I said: cry.”  His foot jammed into my abdomen, his sharpened toe nails cutting through my shirt and ripping holes him my skin.  I hardly felt my skin ripping over the painful crack of a rib.  I cried out in pain, just for an instant.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Mortaziar muttered. “Let’s see how much you take before you beg me to spare you just as your bitch of a mother did.”

I bit my lip to stop myself from shedding a tear.  I curled up, trying to lessen the pain in my abdomen, but nothing seemed to help.  I coughed and spit out more bloody saliva.

“Fuck you,” I croaked.

He laughed. “In time, little whore, in time.”

Suddenly he stopped and was silent.  Through the ringing in my ears from the pain, I heard it too: a distant wolf’s howl.

I smiled.  Aaron was here.

Mortaziar knelt down and brought our faces close together.  I smelled his rotten meat breath and the smile disappeared from my face and reappeared on his. “Don’t be so hopeful, little girl.  He has to go through all my boys.  He won’t.”  He stood up. “And if by some miracle he does, he’ll be too beat to fight me anyway.”