The Flesh Cartel - Episode #7: Homecoming

promise.”
    Douglas sobbed afresh and wrapped both hands around Nikolai’s forearms, holding him close. No telling if the boy believed Nikolai’s promise, but it was clear he wanted to, and that . . . well, that Nikolai could work with.

Mat had been a fighter long enough to know that bruises faded and fractures knitted back together, but some injuries never went away. Like brain damage that got worse and worse and worse until there was nothing left of you but a shell.
    And this pain? The one he was feeling now? Was the kind that festered and grew by torturous inches until it killed you.
    Well, fuck that. Because Mat didn’t have to stick around for it. He was a monster anyway; the world would be better off without him. Dougie would be better off without him. At least then Nikolai couldn’t trick him into hurting Dougie anymore.
    He opened his eyes and turned his face away from his pillow for the first time in what felt like weeks.
    Couldn’t be weeks, though, because he wasn’t dead of starvation yet.
    A tray sat on the mattress beside him. Toast. Broth. Bland food meant not to upset a long-empty stomach.
    He pushed it to the floor. Let it clang and splatter. Roger would come in and clean it later—had done it a dozen times before. The fact that Mat couldn’t bring himself to care enough about making the poor SOB clean up unnecessary messes to actually stop making them in the first place was just one more sign of what a terrible person he’d become. How useless he’d become. How callous and empty and awful.
    He couldn’t understand why Nikolai wasn’t punishing him for it. Wished he would. Maybe then he’d feel better after. Maybe even during, if it would take his mind off the betrayal in his brother’s eyes, the hurt he’d let happen, the screams he hadn’t lifted a finger to end, even for a single second. Better the serum than the knowledge of what he’d done to the one person left in this life who’d loved him. Who’d trusted him. Whose heart he’d snapped clean in two.
    But no. Only one thing would put a stop to that particular highlights reel.
    Lifting himself up onto his elbows made his arms shake with exertion, and actually sitting up and getting his feet on the floor was even worse. But he was determined, and nothing stopped him when he was determined. Bracing himself on the wall, he stood, and stumbled to his exercise shorts hanging over the handrail of his treadmill. Gritted his teeth and pulled them on. He wasn’t going to do this nude. Roger wasn’t going to find him naked. That was the best he could hope for now.
    The jump rope, next. The heavy leather one.
    He wondered why he’d never thought of this before, why he’d spent all this time fantasizing about fucking safety razors and self-starvation. Maybe because he hadn’t ever wanted it this much before. His shaking hands made tying the knots particularly difficult, but he managed it somehow.
    He threw the noose over the chin-up bar and thought, Good-bye, cruel world. Then snorted—truer words, etc. etc.—and forced trembling fingers to tie the final knot.
    There was that determination, again. Too bad he couldn’t apply it to getting himself the fuck out of here.
    Well, he supposed he was, in a way. Just not the exit he’d been hoping to make.
    Oh well.

Bookended
    Giving an Inch (Professor’s Rule, #1), with Amelia Gormley
    Apple Polisher (Rear Entrance Video, #1)
    With Violetta Vane :
    Mark of the Gladiator
    Galway Bound
    The Druid Stone
    The War at the End of the World
    Hawaiian Gothic
    “Salting the Earth,” a short story in the anthology Like It or Not
    Cruce de Caminos
    Harm Reduction
    The Saturnalia Effect

    Power Play: Resistance, with Cat Grant
    Power Play: Awakening, with Cat Grant
    Master Class (Master Class, #1)
    Sublime: Collected Shorts (Master Class, #2)
    Counterpoint (Song of the Fallen, #1)
    Crescendo (Song of the Fallen, #2)
    Anchored (Belonging, #1)
    Where He Belongs (Belonging, #2)
    Break and Enter, with Aleksandr Voinov