9
A year passes by, and he doesn't know how many souls that amounts to. Despite what Medusa says and Ragnarok gleefully confirms, it hasn't become easier. The screams that he forces from his mind during the day come back in the quiet of night, and he sees the look in their eyes.
He begins wetting the bed.
The first night it happened was the first time he froze under Ragnarok's abuse, which was unparalleled. Soon it becomes habitual. Night after night, he creeps into the bathroom like a bandit, fills the tub with the hottest water he can stand to touch, and pushes his sheets and sleeping attire to the bottom, where they billow up and swell like mushrooms. Night after night, he cleans himself until the cloth stings at his skin, and listens not only for the sound of feet in the hallway, but scales on the walls.
After two weeks, he has become accustomed to the ritual of damage control. Good at it, even. He's almost willing to believe that maybe, just maybe, Medusa will never know...which would in itself be worth the dark rings beneath his eyes, the itch of sleeping on wrung out sheets still spotted with soap.
But she always knows.
"I hope you realize what a disgusting child you've been," she tells him, standing in the doorway as he tries in vain to cover himself. "If you can't sleep in a bed like a civil person, you'll spend the night outside."
One glance at the cold mist outside the window has him curled at her feet. "Please, please Lady Medusa, don't send me out there, I promise I'll never do it again and I cleaned them really well and – "
"One more word and it will be three nights."
Knowing she'll make good on it, he ducks his head and whimpers. "Please! I can hear them screaming out there...they'll eat me..."
The upper portion of his arm is manacled in her grip then, and he knows it will do no good to scream, to struggle, to scrabble at the smooth floor with uselessly bare feet. "After what you've done? I hope they do."
He screams anyway.