Sinful [malexmale]

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Gloria died last week.

After we had arrived at a new camp several miles north, two days after everything was settled and quiet, back in its usual routine, they'd found her corpse in Arielus's tent, a pencil sticking out of her throat. It was a suicide. They took her corpse out to the Cocytus and dumped her there.

I wasn't sure if I should feel sad or not. She was the only one who spoke to me like a person, the one who brought me meals and was a mild entertainment in a world so bleak and cold. I felt a twinge of guilt over her death, because I'd been the one who told her that only death was the way to escape this. She wasn't my friend, not really, but a companion? A kindred spirit maybe. We were both suffering and using each other as a buffer to escape that pain.

But now Gloria was gone. At least she wasn't suffering anymore.

I, on the other hand, continued to live and I wasn't sure why. There were times I debated clawing my throat open or biting off my tongue, but when I got to the point where I had the chance to do it, I didn't take it. I wasn't sure what kept me going. Maybe it was stupidity or insanity. I embraced either one.

It was spring by now.

There wasn't much grass, but a few green stalks had popped up in Julius's tent near the bed where I laid and it was nice to reach down and touch them. They were soft and silky against my fingers, which now lacked fingernails.

On our move, I had clawed a man to death because he tried to touch me in the back of the transport vehicle and while he had done it without even paying Julius, we were both punished. The man, of course, was killed, and my fingernails were torn out before Julius had them seared shut with a hot poker. They were disfigured and gross now. Instead of nails were blistered red welts. Thankfully, Julius had wrapped them in gauze until they healed.

But it was things like that that confused me.

Julius came to me during his temper tantrums. He'd broken my arm the other night during one of my gang rapes. He commanded everyone to leave so he could reset it and allow it time to heal. It was still sore, but it was good enough for the nightly "parties", as some of the men called them, to continue.

I'd stopped struggling altogether now. My skin still crawled, my stomach still twisted, my body still throbbed with unimaginable pain day in and day out. But it only hurt worse when I struggled. If I just laid there and complied, I was more likely to receive food and not be beaten.

It was pathetic and it was repulsing, but there was no denying that in order to survive, it was what I needed to do, what I needed to open myself up to.

I'm sure my past self would have retched at the thought of my acceptance, but my current self just wanted food, warmth, and sunlight.

And sunlight I would get.

I laid across the bed in Julius's tent, fingertips gently stroking the grass poking out of the dirt when Julius came into the tent, sweaty and exhausted from training his soldiers. His face was forever twisted into an angry, concentrated scowl that I had once thought meant he was angry, but I realized that was just how he always looked. Angry and analytical.

He went straight to his desk, sat down without touching his papers or files, then looked around the tent until his eyes landed on me. I just stared at the floor and went back to gently touching the bits of grass. Julius gave a heavy sigh, but I still didn't look up. I knew better than to make eye contact with him, or anyone for that matter. I just watched his booted feet as he stood up and made his way over to me. He sank his hand into my hair. Hair that was once curly and short, now the curls drooped and my hair was almost shoulder length. He ruffled my hair and I didn't react.