I walk over to the crumpled bitch, fist her hair, and jerk her back against my legs violently.
“Surprise,” I snarl at her as her eyes flutter from the new pain I’ve added to her already beaten body.
“Tieran?” she gasped out.
Her eyes try to focus as I jerk her head again, this time ripping out strands of her hair as she slides down my legs.
“Hi,Mom. Did you ever think you’d see me again?” I ask, crouching down to look into her eyes.
“Or meeeeee …” Hens sings out as she enters the kitchen, her fingernails scratching along the exposed wooden parts longer covered with wallpaper.
“I told you to—”
“I said,I’m fine!” she screams at me, pounding her fists at her sides. And even though I know she’s not, I’m going to play along so that she feels like she’s helping more than I know she’ll probably hurt the situation.
“Hensley?”
The way Gloria mumbles her name enrages me. It’s not the way a mother should acknowledge her daughter—especially not one that she gave over to be fucked and abused by strangers.
“Shut up!” I bark at her as I wrap my hands around her throat.
Hens giggles as she walks over and pulls out all of the kitchen drawers. I can hear the sound of utensils as they clang together, the sounds of my sister’s exasperation as she keeps opening more and more drawers until she finds what she’s been seemingly looking for.
Clatter, clatter, clatter.
The sound of an array of metal items hitting the kitchen table echoes off the walls in the room.
I tighten my fist around Gloria’s hair as I look up to see what it is that Hensley’s doing, then smile fondly and shake my head at her.
“Think you got enough?” I tease her as Gloria wildly claws at my hands. “Ouch, you stupid bitch! That hurt!” I shout at her as I backhand her across the face.
Hensley’s eyes become wild when she realizes that ourmotherstruck me.
She grabs one of the many sharp objects she pulled out of one of the drawers and lets out a feral scream as she throws herself against Gloria.
In an instant, I can hear the sound of flesh tearing, see a rush of crimson, and then Gloria howl in pain.
“Don’t you ever fucking touch him again!” Hensley screams as she punches Gloria in the head. Her moves aren’t calculated in the least, but she’s wild now.
She’s my wild girl who survives the only way she knows how in a cold, diseased world.
Hens gets to her feet, breathing heavily, sweating, smelling of that special aroma that I always look forward to being drunk on.
Though, why she smells like gardenias right now is beyond me.Not that I’ll ever complain,I think with a chuckle.
“I got it, Hens,” I tell her with a smile.
“Oh yeah? Well, so do I,” she barks as she gets to her feet to retrieve another sharp object.
I glance at Gloria’s left hand, then nod in appreciation. Hensley’s used a potato peeler to impale it into the dirty, wooden floor.
“Hopefully she’ll get tetanus or gangrene or something from that,” I say to my sister with a grin.
Hens shakes her head, her white-blonde hair whipping violently around her face like an abstract halo that once shown too brightly for Heaven, condemned to Earth as a fallen angel for being much too beautiful to bear.
“She’s not going to live that fucking long,” my sister assures me as she comes back, this time with a two-pronged kitchen fork and straddles Gloria. “Look into my eyes, bitch. I want you to know who this is coming from.”
When Gloria purposely shuts her eyes tightly, I grab a fistful of her hair again and slam it against the floor, but she still won’t budge.