Persona - A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (21 page)

‘Son, tell me everything she’s done to you.’

‘I’m scared,’ he whispered.

Will gripped his shoulders and he winced with pain. ‘It’s finished, son. Karen won’t touch you no more. You have my word on that. Tell me…’

He told Will everything, reliving the torture he’d suffered from the age of three through to the present day. Every now and then Will’s face would contort with rage, but there was none of the compassion, hugging or comforting that he needed more than anything. Instead, when he’d finished, Will pulled him to his feet.

‘Son, you are the victim of an attack. The best form of defence is offence. The bitch turned you into a nervous wreck, so what are we gonna do?’

He said nothing, just watched Will’s blood stain the carpet.

Will grit his teeth. ‘Remember your training for fuck’s sake. Remember what I taught you. You forget, you go down. You stay down, you lose. Are you a loser?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a fucking loser?’ Will shook him.

‘No,’ he said more confidently.

‘Recite Commandment One!’

‘It pays to be a winner,’ he blurted.

‘And how do you win?’

‘By beating pain.’

‘What is pain?’

‘Pain is merely the sensation of weakness leaving the body.’

‘So how can you stop the bitch causing you pain?’

‘By being strong.’

‘How will that help?’

‘I won’t feel the pain.’

‘Why didn’t you do it then? Why did you let her fuck you? What’s Commandment Six?’

‘Fuck a fucker twice as hard.’

‘You can talk the talk, but you can’t walk the walk, can ya?’

‘I’m only eleven. I’m not developed,’ he protested.

‘You’re my fucking son!’ Will roared. ‘When you let yourself get fucked, I get fucked! You’ve got my blood!’ Will ran his fingers over a clotted wound on his son’s arm. ‘This is my blood! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Where was your fucking loyalty, son? Where was your fucking pride, your self-belief? I’ve spent ten years training you, a whole fucking decade making you perfect and for what?’

The truth was that he was too scared to ever fight back, but he couldn’t tell Will that. ‘You told me that women were weak and it was cowardly to hit them,’ he said.

‘Don’t be smart with me, you little fucker. What takes precedence over everything in life?’

‘The Commandments,’ he said humbly.

‘Was she a fucker to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you should have fucked her twice as hard. It’s the fucking rule! So what happens now, son?’

‘I don’t know.’

Will grinned and Ryan would always remember the lop-sided mouth, the missing teeth and intense stare.

‘You learn Commandment Nine. Come with me.’

They walked down the cold, damp steps that led to the basement and he could see the light was already on. His legs burned with pain, but as the room came into view, he forgot about it. Things were different inside, rearranged. The punchbag - usually suspended from the ceiling by a heavy chain and kept stable by another chain fixed from its base to the concrete floor - was missing… Karen was in its place. Her wrists were wrapped in chains, secured by a padlock which dug into her skin. The same had been done to her ankles, which were bound together at least a foot from the ground. She writhed in the air and made muffled sounds through a gag strapped around her head. She stared at him pleadingly. She didn’t take her eyes off him.

‘Commandment Five?’ Will asked him.

The words came out in a stutter. ‘Rest when and only when you have hunted down and killed your enemy.’ He was shaking.

‘Who is the enemy?’

‘Any man who marks you as a target.’

‘And what is a target?’

‘A point of weakness that can be exploited.’

‘Were you a target?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who marked you?’

‘Karen,’ he said quietly.

‘So she is your enemy.’ Will’s eyes turned fiery. ‘So what must you do?’

‘Hunt down and kill her.’

‘Yes, son! Yes! Well there she is. She’s been hunted down, so now you have to kill her.’

More muffled sounds.

He hesitated, feeling apprehensive, but at the same time released. He knew she wouldn’t hurt him anymore – she was going to die. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. She had an aura that sapped his strength and he had to stay away.

‘Tell her what she did to you and tell her how you felt,’ Will demanded.

He trembled as he stood staring at her, six feet away.

‘Get closer.’ Will took hold of his arm and forced his reluctant body up to her. ‘She’s totally disabled. She can’t get free. She can’t touch you no more.’

He could smell her perfume. It filled his nostrils and made him shudder.

‘Tell her, son! Tell her!’

‘You beat me almost every day that Will was away,’ he stuttered. ‘You punched my face until I collapsed to the ground and begged for you to stop.’ Tears trickled down his cheeks. ‘You kicked me as I lay on the floor. You kicked me in the head, in the face. You kicked my arms and legs until I couldn’t move and I wanted to die.’ He stopped crying. ‘My whole body turned black and blue and I had to keep tissues in my pockets all the time, because I never knew when you were going to attack me and I had to wipe up the blood before it spilt on the floor.’ He felt his fear recede.

‘I thought my head would explode. I couldn’t take the pain and I cried for hours. Sometimes I passed out, and when I woke I checked the floor for blood, terrified that you’d find another reason to punish me. When I was at school you left my face alone so the teachers wouldn’t know what was happening, but under my clothes I hurt so bad, and some days I couldn’t lift my pencil.’ It was easy now and the words flowed. He wanted her to know what she’d done to him. He wanted her to know how it felt. Anger swelled inside him and he wanted her to suffer. He wanted her to feel as he had. And he wanted to show Will what he could do. He felt invincible. For the first time, he felt powerful. Karen was immobilised and he could do and say what he wanted.

‘You fucking cunt,’ he shouted and inched closer to her. ‘You glued my lips shut, you fucking bitch!’ He rammed his right fist into her stomach and felt a surge of adrenaline flood through him. He felt himself grow when he heard the thud. Her eyes squeezed shut and he knew he’d hurt her.

He heard Will laugh, but was so engrossed in his euphoria that he couldn’t bring himself to look away from her.

‘You thought you were clever! I knew it was you poking me at night.’ The truth was he’d realised this only recently, around the time that he’d understood what she was doing with the glue, but right now he wanted her to think that she’d failed, that she hadn’t scared him. He was delirious and wanted her to fear him. He felt power and omnipotent, like he could tailor the world to his needs. He needed this bitch dead!

‘You are the enemy, you fucking bitch!’ He rammed a fist into her ribs and she reeled away. An uncontrollable fury possessed him and right now only the two of them existed. He punched her in the chest and felt her breast cushion his fist. Then he punched her fat thighs, and then stopped aiming his punches and swung his fists randomly. He got faster until he was punching like a tireless machine - Left, right, left, right. He kept going, encouraged and excited by her muffled screams, and he felt almighty, overflowing with energy. Adrenaline carried him, and he didn’t register the weakness in his muscles. When his arms involuntarily dropped he didn’t notice, and kept on punching her hips and then her calves and didn’t stop until he was panting on the floor. He heard Will laughing.

‘Good effort, son! Excellent! You’ve redeemed yourself, but you’ve failed Commandment Five. Not your fault – you’re young and gave it your best shot. Which leads me to Commandment Nine. D’you wanna know what Commandment Nine is?’

‘Yes,’ he croaked. ‘I do.’

‘Commandment Nine – If the enemy is stronger, you improvise until you have the advantage!’

Will ran up to the wall and picked up an iron bar. With madness in his eyes, he sprinted up to Karen and beat her around the head and body.

He watched Will in awe. He watched her body swing from the blows, grinned when it went limp and cheered when the muffling stopped. Will swung the bar so hard that the basement rang with echoes. He heard bones crack. He heard the thuds turn soft. Eventually Will dropped the bar on the ground and went down onto his knees.

‘Never forget the commandments, son – they’re all you’ve got...’

Ryan smiled at her. ‘That’s my childhood.’

Stacey shook her head, closed her eyes, then took a deep breath to calm her nerves. ‘You’ve never had anyone
care
about you, Ryan.’

‘So what?’

‘People need to be loved. No matter how tough you are, you can’t survive alone.’

‘I’m not alone. I have friends.’

‘It’s not the same, Ryan,’ she said softly.

‘So you’re saying that orphans have no hope.’

‘No, they get adopted.’ She looked curiously at him. ‘What happened after your father went to prison?’

‘I stayed with Dave’s family until I left school. Then I got my own place.’

‘And how did they treat you?’

‘Very nicely. It was some transition.’

‘Did you have to give evidence in court?’

‘Yep.’

‘So there were no repercussions about your actions? I mean, you hit her too.’

‘Will knew there might be and he didn’t want me to be punished in any way. He wanted Dave’s family to look after me, so he told me to tell the jury everything as it had happened, except for the part where I’d hit her – I was to omit that. He wanted to take full responsibility for her death.’

‘So he showed some compassion towards you in the end,’ she whispered.

‘Not really. He’d still have got life if we’d told the truth, but I’d have been put inside some young offenders’ institution. There was no point in that if it could be avoided. Will wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Once he’d killed her, I was to keep his memory alive. All his hope was channelled into me. He didn’t care about being banged up. When he’d come home that night he’d just been discharged from the army for beating up an officer. It was his life. He loved the army, and he wouldn’t have survived outside it.’

‘Have you seen him since?’

‘Yeah. I visited him a few times in the first year, but after that I sort of got brainwashed by Dave’s family and realised that Will wasn’t doing me any good. They were good people and helped me recover. Seven years is a long time to indoctrinate a child.’

Stacey wondered what had happened since. Or did he call
this
recovered? He definitely hadn’t got over it. She had things to say, but wasn’t sure how far she should go. He’d just opened up so much to her and she was so pleased about that. She didn’t want to antagonise him.

‘So you have recurring nightmares about it?’ she asked.

‘They used to be rare, but recently they’ve been quite frequent.’

‘Ryan, I’m in love with you...’ Her gaze didn’t break, but he flinched away.

‘Really?’ he said nonchalantly.

‘Yes,’ she said decisively and took hold of his hand.

She stared at him. He felt embarrassed and awkward. He could see she was waiting for a response, but he just wanted to be somewhere else. He felt himself turn red, something that never happened. This was an unpleasant experience.

‘Look at me, Ryan.’

He sighed and caught her eye. Her face was warm and appealing, like a distant light in a storm. She locked into his eyes and he felt like he was slipping. It took all his concentration to keep afloat.

‘What did I say?’ she asked, squeezing his hand tighter. He was shaking.

‘That you love me,’ he recited, without feeling.

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘Confused.’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t make sense. I think you’re mistaken. Why would you love me?’

‘Because I can see the good in you.’

He laughed. ‘There’s no good in me, Stacey. You’re misjudging me. I’m a selfish person.’