I had hand-written this entire chapter at work on the back of several old, thrown away receipts that i had fished out of the garbage, when I should have been actually working.

it was very late at night and i had a fascinating idea to tell the POV of our boy but in third person

the truth is, i don't think it would be fitting to know cousin's exact thoughts, and so i figured first person POV would not work with him. 

anyway thank you for reading. 

Chapter Thirty

He coordinates his own movements. His body is a walking accident. Grim are his bones that pierce the air with every move.

He wonders just how long it will take for him to maneuver down the hill, or why at all he is even trying.

Nothing good comes from him. If he anything to say about it, nothing good will ever come from him.

Bexley should have never removed him from the grasp of his imprisonment. She has no idea the wrath she she has ignited in him. The longer he is free, the more selfish he has become.

Misery had been his default, self-hatred was in his blood, now it is his fuel. 

He's near the river. He's not sure how long it took him to get to the bottom of the hill. 

The rushing water unnerved him. It was reminiscent to his thoughts from when he was shackled on a stage. The sounds of the large crowd, laughing, gasping, and excitedly cheering his own deprecation. It was all one big rushing noise to him.

Like water, they took his breath away. They were so goddamn loud.

He hated them for that.

He walked along the water edge. His feet sunk into the mud with each step. The wetness of his shoes made him shiver; he never could get used to the suffocating feel of shoes on his feet.

He bent down, and took them off.

His eyes scanned his surroundings. The sound of the swaying trees went all through him. The screeching of the flying birds made him cringe. The crunch of the leaves on the ground as he stepped on them seemed to get louder and louder with each crunch, until he had to deliberately watch where his feet stepped, to make sure that his foot never came in contact with anything louder than the sludge of mud. 

There was not a noise in this god forsaken place that put him at ease.

He had no educated concept of time. An hour to him, was only a statement made by Mr. Father, as he'd spit at him to get ready. A minute was the heart-pounding moments he had before he was subjected to the eyes of his mental abusers.

He counted each passing moment by each footstep he took.

Of course, he really only knew how to count to seventeen, so it took seventeen seventeens (and over and over again) to get to Bexley.

Except, it wasn't Bexley.  Protruding with half it's body out of the water, was the dog. It's brown coat blanketed with mud and moss, and whatever other shit that came out of the filthy water.

It was whining, clearly in a state of pain as one of it's legs were bent to an angle even Cousin knew to be unnatural. Blood was seeping out of the dog's mouth, and that is when he noticed it's jaw wide open, the bottom of its mouth laying crooked on the earth. 

It's jaw had broken to such an extent, its tongue fell out of its mouth. The animal's panting would seize for a moment, and large heaves of air would abruptly motivate it to begin panting again.

Cousin stared at the suffering creature. Bexley was nowhere in sight.

This angered him.

Dropping to his knees beside the animal, he could not fathom touching it. The horrific feeling of fur made him close his eyes and think of anything else that would feel better against his skin. He hated fur. He hated the feeling of any animal at all.

The touch of an animal reminded him of the cats that would force their way into his train car when the door was left open. He once watched a mother cat give birth to kittens right in front of him.

The sounds of its haunting moans of pain fascinated him. It was a good memory to him, at one point, back when he had little experience in the operation of producing life.

Throughout his time free from the circus, he has become bitter about it.

The mother cat was disgusting, birth is a repulsive act, and the way it would rub itself against his legs made his stomach twist in the most horrific way. 

He swallowed hard. His breath becoming rapid, he could feel his blood rush through his body.

Was this a product of his abhorrence to the thought of touching the animal, or because Bexley was not beside it?

The thought of what happened to Bexley was because of this animal angered him even further.

The dog was crying out, clearly distraught about its situation. It was in pain.

He was fucking glad it was.

The dog looked up at him, as if it just realized he was only inches away from it. It attempted to move at him, as if it'd bite him, but of course it couldn't.

It will never bite him. He felt the power of that thought alone. 

It will never bite him, because it was dying, and he was not.

His actions are thoughtless as he wrapped his hands around a rock, and lifted it. When he looked down at the creature he did not see a dog, he saw Mr. Father.

He swung the rock down, hard, as hard as his thin arms could muster. He lifted it, and swung it again, and again, and the blood splattered all over his arms, and face, and shirt and he kept going.

Mr. Father's face was smashed in, no longer resembling the man who withheld him from any form of decency. He no longer looked like a man at all.

His heart was pounding, his fury refused to retaliate.

He will kill the bastard. He will make it hurt.

He lifted the rock again, thrilled to see the smashed face become more and more distorted, but this time, the image of his former captor was replaced with Bexley. 

He gasped, the rock slipping from his hands as he staggered back. This was not possible.

He blinked several times, but she wouldn't go away. Her face was beaten so badly she was hardly recognizable. 

He could not grasp the fact that he did that.

No, he didn't do that.

He did. He absolutely did.

His hands shook as he backed away from her body. His chest ached in a way it never had before. He could not seem to breathe.

Slowly, he inched back towards her body, and reached out. He knew he had to confirm it. He touched her arm gently, and his senses told him it wasn't human skin he was touching, but wet, matted fur.

He blinked once more, and Bexley was gone.

That did not wash away the vile scene before him. It wasn't just the face of the dog that he had crushed to red, bone fragmented mush; it was its chest as well. 

He could see its organs, protruding out of its body. 

He stood up, his racing heart screaming in his chest, and with not another glance at his victim, he walked away, returning to the edge of the water, to resume his search for Bexley.

He will not let that moment haunt him. He refused to ever remember it again.

The sun had began to set in the sky and it was becoming a lot harder for him to see. Bexley could be anywhere.

She could even be still in the water, which means she would be dead.

There are no explanations he can conjure to justify why that unsettles him to the extent that it does.

He has never felt impatience before. Or if he has, he had never felt it so strongly that he could recognize the feeling.  Right now, not only does he recognize it, he is swimming in it. Impatience, and above all, loneliness. He has never been alone this long before. Not even at the circus. It was a foreign feeling. 

He tries to think of something to occupy his mind while he searches. Often, he would think of his favorite memories to pass the time. He would replay them over and over in his head.

Back in the circus, he would lay awake all night, and think about memories that he cherished, like a time where the door to his train car was left open, and it gave him perfect view of two men, painting a mural on one of the building walls. He was fascinated with process. How the lifeless paint became an image. 

Another memory was when Mr. Father left the radio on behind the stage while everyone was getting ready for a show. There was a song on, a lonely violin singing a tune. He didn't care much for music, and this was no exception, but the way one of the dancers heard the song, and began to spin to it, captivated him.

Those memories do little for him anymore. In fact he would consider them pollution in his mind.

He now thinks of different things, things he isn't sure if they are good or bad memories, only memories.

He thinks of the night Bexley sat beside the tub as she forced him into the water. The warmth of the water was unexpectant to him, he had never had a warm bath before.

The smell of the soap was intoxicating and made him nauseous, and the feeling of the cloth against his skin made his jaw clench. He hated it. He hated the rough texture of the wet cotton pressed on his flesh.

But Bexley did not stop. That infuriated him.  He remembers at that moment, how badly he wanted to pull away from her touch. He remembers he wanted it to such an extreme extent, his eyes were wet with humiliating desperation. He could not stand the cloth on his skin. He could not stand it slowly being trekked around his body.

It is not that moment that he always thinks about. It is the moment after, where she stared at him so intimately, he should have looked away. 

That is what he thinks about. Not the horrendous touch of the rag, but his foreign confidence to battle her stare. With what other person, could he have mustered the courage to refute?

Another memory he often considers is the first time she had kissed him on stage.

He refuses to allow himself to dive deep into the expanse of that moment. Nothing good would be concluded by doing so.

Still, he does dwell on it. Often.

He stops. His gaze catching something unusual farther up the creek. At first, he is certain it isn't Bexley. He isn't sure how he'd feel if it was.

When he starts to move again, and get closer to the object, it wasn't an object at all.

She was right here. Somehow, he had found her.

Bexley was laying before him, with blood smeared over her forehead. Her entire body was soaked in water and filth, and he dropped to his knees beside her, because he is certain she is not awake, he presses his finger against her lips, and feels her warm breath against his skin.

She is breathing. She is alive.

He knows he doesn't have to, but still, he presses two of his fingers against her neck, checking for a pulse. He knows she is alive, the dead are not capable of breathing.

That doesn't stop him, though.

He checks for the pulse anyway, and when he finds it, despite already sure he would, he keeps his fingers gently pressed against her warm skin. He is enchanted by the feeling of the soft pulsating of her vein, and he doesn't care for the idea of moving his fingers away.

He has never touched another human being like this before. It is unusually bewitching.

If she were to wake up right now, how would she react? If she were to wake up right now, would he be relieved, or bothered? 

He already knew the answer to that question.

She begins to stir underneath him, and it startles him. His own heartbeat is so erratic, and he pulls away from her so fast one would assume she burnt him.

Her eyes open, and he stares down at her. She doesn't notice him at first, and then she does. 

To his surprise, her filthy, dirt-ridden hand slowly lifts from the earth, and reaches out towards him. The movement clearly causes her pain, he sees it on her face as her eyes wince, and her lips tremble. 

Why is she trying to reach for him, when it so clearly hurts her?

He wants her to stop. He wants her to stay still. 

She suddenly drops her hand back into the dirt, and her eyes close. She's unconscious again.

This time he restrains the urge to reach out and touch her. He takes note of her matted hair and her torn clothing. Her limbs are not twisted, they don't even look broken. 

He has seen worse. 

One of the acrobats during a show had missed a move as they were swung into the air. The image of their twisted body and mangled limbs was etched into his brain. Not because it was horrific, but because, though an accident, and only for a few moments before their body was taken off the stage, someone shared his deformed image. He was not the only one with the skeleton that brought the crowd to a unified awe.

No. Not awe. They stared at him with contemp. Hatred. They seethed at him with pure, unrefined, shameless repulsion.

Bexley does not look like that.

She is dirty, her hair is a mess, her clothes are viciously ripped.  But she is not a spectacle. She is not a terrifying scene.

He stares at her arm, and then at his own. Her tan skin was such a violent contrast to his own paleness. The color of his body and the color of hers looked strange together. 

Her skin was normal. 

His skin was so absolutely not. 

Not because he is whiter than the clouds he would stare up at as a child, but because his skin unnaturally wrapped around his bones, stretched around his ribcage, and torn easily around his wrists and ankles due to years of being chained.

The difference between the two of them had the simplest explanation; He was contaminated with a lifetime of degradation. She was not.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, and stared down at the only person who spoke to him like another person. He watched her chest rise and fall, over and over, and the movement satisfied him in a way he could never make sense of.