Chapter Fifteen: Escape
Hurt.
Everything hurts.
There wasn't a place on Misaki's body that wasn't aching and there was absolutely no way for him to get comfortable. Every movement he made reopened a dozen tiny weeping wounds, the results of his last punishment.
Misaki carefully raised a stiff arm to rub the dark chocolate fuzz that had grown over his scabbed head: his scalp itched unbearably as things were healing. It was the first time in his life he didn't have the protective layer of his thick dark mop. Without it he'd never felt so exposed, never more naked than he did now.
Misaki cautiously shifted his cast legs awakening their terrible ache again. The youth berated himself for being so stupid. He should have known there was no way he was ever leaving this place alive. And yet he'd been foolish and selfish enough to try to escape with Jadir.
In the pitch black of his cell, Misaki pulled the blood soaked strip of sheet he'd had wrapped around his mutilated torso tighter. He would have wept if he'd had any tears left, but they were finally all gone it seemed, a result of dehydration and constant crying.
Even if I was rescued, Misaki wondered, disfigured as he was, would Usagi-san even still want me?
What could he possible offer his lover now that his soul had been shattered and his body broken? Despite how often Usagi-san had told him he would love him "no matter what," Misaki couldn't believe the man would still say that.
After Korovin had finished with his punishment, the man had held Misaki up and had made him look at himself in a full length mirror. Hobbled as he was and so weakened from blood loss at that time Misaki had no power to stand on his own. This experience had been as psychologically painful as the physical torture he'd just endured. Misaki hadn't even recognized himself: the shaved skeletal creature with huge, fear-crazed eyes, soured-milk skin wherever it wasn't crusted with blood, bruised, or scabbed.
His flesh was now the diary of a madman's writings, not the journal for the worshipful, erotic poetry of his beloved Usagi-san.
I look more like a ghoul than a human now... And that is just what I am...
A loathsome being.
Misaki accepted this without question; he was a miserable creature whose foolish actions had caused another boy's death. That made three people he killed now: his parents and Jadir, each one because of his own stupid selfishness.
Misaki managed to find one more tear in his desiccated body. He felt it trickle slowly down a gaunt cheek. For the first time since he'd been taken, he truly hoped Usagi-san would forget him, leave him and just get on with his life.
It would be better for both of us if he did.
Despite his best efforts, however, Misaki's heart still broke at this thought.
As a small child, when his parents had first died, he had wished for a time that he were dead too, just so he could be with them again. He had confessed this thought to Takahiro one night when his older brother was tucking him in bed. Misaki could still remember his brother's sad loving gaze as he'd told him that more than anything his parents would want him to live; that it was his duty to carry on and have a wonderful life; that this was the best way he could show them how much he loved them.
Following his nii-chan's admonition, Misaki, despite his sorrow, had committed himself to this goal whole-heartedly.
But now?
Misaki wanted to just curl up and die, not to join his parents or Jadir, but simply because he didn't deserve to live and what's more, he had no desire to even try any longer.
Misaki gripped the rest of the torn sheet tightly. Despite the excruciating pain of his every movement, he had, using his teeth and stiff hands, managed to tear the thin fabric into strips as quickly as he could, hoping that Korovin wasn't watching, or that if his captor was; he still would have enough time to carry out this last crazy attempt at escape before the man got there.
Misaki lifted the edge of the mattress and with shaking fingers (fingers that had also, however, become quite adept at preforming their tasks without sight) and tied the strip of fabric to the bed frame. Then he slipped the noose he fashioned at the other end over his head.
He had blindly measured the length. Unable to stand on his broken limbs and despite the agony his movements caused, he slipped off the bunk and onto the floor and lay down. The makeshift rope was short enough that his head couldn't reach the floor. Despite the terrible pain of his stiff neck and the pressure on his throat, Misaki allowed the weight of his prone body to pull against the noose.
He knew if he could just bear with it long enough (and at this point it certainly wasn't the greatest pain he'd felt), with the way it restricted his airway he would soon pass out. The collapse of his unconscious body and the height of the noose tied to the staunch metal bed frame above him would do the rest.
Despite how hard his heart was pounding, Misaki soon felt the edges of his consciousness begin to blur. He only hoped that whatever lay on the other side of this life wasn't so black.
He closed his cave-blind eyes and behind papery lids a dozen surreal colors danced. Misaki tried to focus on the most lavender-like among them and hoped Usagi-san would forgive him as he began to slip into his breathless slumber, waiting for death's dream to overtake him.
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