Part Two: Chapter Four

Part Two: The Tiger

“Favorite ice cream flavor?” Danny queried, leaning his back against Charlotte’s. Over the past few weeks, this had become their routine. He faced the wall on his bed.

She faced the door. “Rocky road, but I bet you’re one of those weirdoes who likes mint chocolate chip.” Her glasses rested on her nearly healed nose.

“Lucky guess,” Danny grumbled good-naturedly. “Let’s see…” He struggled to find a question he hadn’t asked her. “Favorite memory growing up?”

Her grin faded and she thought. “Um, when I was eight, my parents took Robbie and me to the cape. Just about everything went wrong. Our car broke down on the bridge. It rained. We got locked out of the house we had rented, but there was one day when it didn’t rain. The temperature was perfect. And at the beach, Robbie had poured sand on me. He just looks at me and he goes, ‘now, you’re a real beach babe!’ And my parents just laughed…and I did too once I was done crying because the sand fell in my contacts.” She grinned again. “And it was just so perfect that none of the other days had mattered. I know it sounds really stupid to you, but…” She stopped. “What about you?”

“When my mother taught me to play chess. Yes, we have chess where I’m from. She was very good at it and after so many rounds of losing to her well, she finally let me win. Still, she looked so proud of me. And I wanted to make her that proud from that day forth. Of course, that never quite happened.” His tone had become dark. “Could I trust you?” His voice quivered. He tensed his entire body.

“What are friends for?” Chuck beamed and relaxed hoping Danny would too.

He exhaled. “All shifters are lumped together in one region of the world. In such close spaces, rivalries are bound to form. That’s what happened between my people and a smaller clan, the lions. Things got messy. Really, really messy. And Chuck, I’m like royalty…not like, I am royalty. I’m supposed to head my clan when my father dies. And this rivalry, abducted me…” He trembled. “I’ll never forget their exact words. ‘Let’s give you stripes, tiger boy.’ And they did. Thick gashes hastily stitched together so that the scars would be nice and big, they said. When I escaped, I couldn’t let anyone I know see me so weak, so vulnerable. So I asked a witch to make me a portal to run away. He did.”

Chuck’s heart thumped throughout his tale. Compassion and disgust were in her expression. “Danny, I…” She was at a loss. Impulsively, she spun him around and dropped his hood. She drank in his features.

His hair was a dark orange color, straight and chopped just above his eyebrows. His skin was tanned despite his constant cover. The long thin nose contrasted his broad jaw lined with a few hairs on it. Brown irises watched Chuck until he recoiled.

Chuck took no notice of the jagged trenches of skin across his face as she leaned.

“Chuck, I’m disgusting.” Charlotte’s tender hands lifted his face, straightening to hers. “Please, you don’t have to stay if…” Her hands still cupped his gentle face.

Charlotte kissed him, so brashly and quickly that she melted into it. When she stopped for a breath, she only said, “You’re the most handsome boy I’ve ever met.” She pressed her lips against his gently this time.

In shock, Danny had drawn back at first. At that moment though, his heart raced. “You flinched though. They all flinch. You couldn’t…”

“You flinched, Danny.”

His grin was wide and white and dimpled. “You’re so much more beautiful without my hood on.” He touched his lips to hers once more.

By her ponytail, a hand yanked Charlotte backward. “Look at this little s**t! I warned you, Daniel. She’s a w***e. She’s full of STDs, and crabs, hell, probably AIDS.” Eve punched Chuck’s gut. “Just to make sure that you’re not pregnant, w***e.” Another fist met Chuck’s abdomen.

“Stop it!” Danny yelled, prying Eve off of her; the woman shoved him back.

The girl fell clutching her stomach, but kicks replaced the punches. “Stop…” she moaned. A swift foot in the neck caused strangled noises to erupt from her throat.

“Shut the hell up!” Eve tugged Chuck up by her hair and dragged her to the basement. Instead of beating her, Eve opened a hidden door in the cement back wall. The room was small, a prison cell. Chains hung high on the wall. “Drink up.” She snarled, shoving a syringe into the girl’s arm.

Almost immediately, Chuck’s eyes fluttered, fighting to stay open. “Wha-What are you…” The girl’s eyes closed. Her limbs drooped, nearly lifeless. Her glasses clattered to the floor when her head flopped forward.

Eve locked the girl’s wrists into the chains, making sure her feet were nowhere near the ground. A demented smile twisted her lips. “This is how I’m going to preserve my trophy. And what a lovely trophy she is.”  Gingerly, she stroked the pale cheek. “What a lovely trophy, it’d be nice to show it off, but if I must keep her down here to protect her, I suppose I ought to.” Eve picked up the glasses and pocketed them. She watched the twitches of her legs in tight denim jeans, the shudders of her torso in her snug white tee shirt, and the serenity of the pallid sleeping face. “It would be so much easier to train her if she would only listen. Why don’t you listen?” She shrieked.

The girl slept on, unaware of what went on around her. She wiggled her shoulders, uncomfortable, but unable to awaken to readjust herself.

Eve sat on a chair that she dragged in and watched the girl sleep, a witch, a witch that her mother and her father were, a witch that she wasn’t. Perhaps that was where her obsession with power began. Her need to show that all these powers made a person weak and she as a normal human held more power than all of them, especially this girl, her parents’ embodiment. Her parents, her first sale on the black market, hopefully tortured to death for being freaks. “Witches need to be shown their place, Charlotte. You are no exception. You are the prime example. F*****g, disgusting, w***e!” She sprang up from her chair and kicked between Charlotte’s legs.

The girl released a small gasp of pain, but slept on.

This satisfied Eve enough. She drummed her fingers together. “My trophy. What else more can you be? Nothing. You’re nothing, Charlotte. Only a small frail little girl with all these powers that she doesn’t know how to use. Disgusting. I would be better off with such power.” On a table on the sidewall, she plucked up a needle. Eve thrust it into the girl’s arm and drew her blood. After squirting the blood into a glass, she mixed in some rum and ice from the freezer next to the table. “Ah, nice.” She swirled and sipped the drink. “When oh when will you learn, Charlotte? Once you awake, we will have an excellent lesson. Yes, you’ll be a good little trophy. After all, you’re my prize. Such power in such a small package.” Eve watched for hours.

The girl stirred. Her voice was hoarse. “Where am I?” Her shoulders ached. She could barely move them to relax them. She stretched her legs and began to flail them. “Eve? Eve! What’s going on?” She felt dry crust on her arm. When she spied the crimson color, she queried, “What did you do to me? Let me down! Please let me down,” she begged, thrashing. “Let me down.”

“I’ve been waiting, Charlotte. Why would you keep me waiting?” Eve picked something off the table, unclear to Chuck because of her lack of glasses. As she got closer, the object showed to be a knife. Eve let down Charlotte’s hair, letting the curls flow over her shoulders. They stared at each other. Eve’s expression was indecisive; Charlotte’s was horrified. “It’s time for a lesson, Charlotte.”

Author's Note

I did not intend for that to be as gruesome as it was.

Reviews

[Ardeth Lane]

What a disgusting woman. What a horribly disgusting woman. Chuck needs to cast a spell to make her rot in Hell. Now. But I like the part with Danny.

W***e? STD's? Crabs? AIDs? Pregnant? Really? All she did was kiss him why do people have to be so mean? I can't believe all the things she did to her. I hate Eve. What does she look like? I know you probably already described her but I don't remember.

As horrid as it was, it was indeed, a good chapter.