There’d be so much blood that he’d look on shocked that it could all really be coming from his own body.
“And then I’ll be back to teach you what’s expected of you.”
Like a serpent materializing in the air, a length of chain whipped out of nowhere. It hit Gauge’s face with a loud snap and the man reeled and screamed, grabbing his face with his hands. The chain lashed out again, bashing onto the crown of his skull and coming away wet with blood.
“You get the fuck away from her, you degenerate son of a bitch!”
The voice was thick and raspy, familiar… but there was also a power in it that she’d never heard before. As if years of repressed rage and hatred had come boiling out in a volcano of pure emotion.
Gauge’s cheek had already started to swell from the initial blow, the skin puffy and purple, starting to push his cheek upward, forcing his right eye into an unnatural squint. His hands were away from his face, but he still seemed dazed, like he’d always believed himself to be invincible and was just now feeling pain for the very first time.
“What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing?”
“I said back the fuck off, man!”
Corduroy stepped into view, his anger burning so hotly that even the twisted mass of scars covering his face couldn’t contain it. He held the chain in one hand as he advanced; it whistled through the air as he swung it in quick circles, forming what almost looked to be a blurred shield before him. In his other hand was a ball-peen hammer that shook with the currents of fury undulating within him.
“You damn traitor. You wanna fuck her, Cord? Is that it? You want a piece of that little street rat? Shit man, all you had to do was say so. There’s plenty enough to go around.”
Corduroy circled Gauge like a stalking animal, his eyes darting from the plank of wood in Gauge’s hands to Ocean’s face peering through the window.
“I’m gettin’ ya outta here, Ocean. Don’t you worry.”
“You ain’t doing jack shit, Corduroy. You think Levi hasn’t heard what’s going down? All the shouting? You think she’s not already on her way? You might be able to take me down, old man, but no way you can get both of us. So give it up… and I might find it in my heart to forgive you.”
Corduroy stared Gauge directly in the eye and his answer was short and cold. “Levi’s dead.”
Gauge looked as if he were caught by a surprise pain, and the color drained from his face. He moved his lips in a silent word Ocean soon realized was really one syllable repeated again and again—no.
“Funny how quickly a pot of boilin’ water will strip the flesh off someone’s pretty little face if it’s held down long enough.”
Gauge roared and rushed toward Corduroy, but the older man was ready. The chain lashed out again with a flick of his wrist and coiled around the wooden beam. He yanked with both hands, obviously trying to pull it from Gauge’s clutches in one swift move.
Gauge responded with the reflexes of a soldier, however. At the same moment Corduroy was pulling, he twisted his body savagely to the side. Instead of the plank flying from his hands, Corduroy was jerked forward by his own weapon.
The burned man swung his hammer with a yell as Gauge whirled, the rounded head passing within inches of his face. Then he was falling backward as Gauge tackled his attacker, slamming into Corduroy’s midsection, and the two were suddenly rolling across the floor.
Their hands grasped and pulled at one another, scratching and choking and gouging as the hammer clanged to the ground. Neither one shouted or hurled threats, they were locked in combat. There were only grunts, strained growls, and gasps of pain.
Somehow, Gauge managed to climb onto Corduroy’s chest and the younger man slammed his forehead into the bridge of Corduroy’s nose with a series of sharp whacks. Blood sprayed in the air like a crimson mist, but it was impossible to tell if it were coming from Gauge’s split and swollen lip or the torrent that gushed from Corduroy’s nostrils.
Corduroy struggled to land a punch, to hit the squirming son of a bitch in the throat or solar plexus, but his swings were wild, as though he were seeing double and aiming at the wrong figure.
“Fuck you, old man,” Gauge hissed. “I’ll make that little bitch of yours choke on chunks of your fucking flesh, you damn turncoat.”
Gauge’s hand snaked behind him, the fingers grasping across the floor until they came into contact with the object they sought. In a blur of motion, the hammer descended in a deadly arc that ended with a thud on Corduroy’s forehead. The older man’s body jerked in a single convulsion, but the hammer bashed down again. And again.
“I was a food warrior, mother-fucker! You can’t take down a food warrior, you stupid son of a bitch!”
Gauge had been so focused on the struggle that he hadn’t heard the cell door swing open. The patter of footsteps had been lost beneath the primal sounds of their battle and the heavy breathing from behind him would easily be mistaken as an echo of his own.
His hand raised high for one final blow, the hammer held aloft like a blood-caked trophy. Then his hand was tumbling toward the ground and he knelt there for a moment, staring at the spurting stump, his brow knitted in confusion and shock.
He reached out to touch the nub of flesh that had once been a wrist, to prove to himself that it really was gone.
There was a flash of light and he was left staring at not one, but two severed appendages. Blood oozed from the wounds, seeming to bubble up from around the hints of bone through all of that wet, glistening flesh.
He looked up as the first twitches of pain began to pull the corners of his eyes and mouth into a grimace. Ocean towered above him with the sickle held firmly in both hands. Her shirt and face were spattered with blood, her eyes nothing more than narrow slits.
“I loved you, damn it.” No tears. No quivering emotion in her voice, just a flat statement of fact. “Do you understand… I loved you.”
She snorted through her nose and shook her head as if in disgust. “I loved my Mama, too, but that’s okay, now. You taught me. You showed me what it takes to survive. That bitch deserved to die. Understand? I was her damn daughter. Her daughter.”
Gauge wobbled back and forth as he pressed the remnants of his hands beneath his armpits. His face was as pale of the wax in the candles they’d always burned, candles Ocean now realized had been made from rendered human fat. His eyelids fluttered as he began to slip in and out of consciousness, so Ocean crouched down and put her lips close to his ear.
“She deserved to die, and so do you. But not yet. Not like this.”
She puckered her lips as if she were about to kiss him on the cheek. Instead, she drew up a glob of phlegm from the back of her throat with a quick inhale. She spat, smiling as the goo slid through the shadow of a beard on the face she’d once thought possessed angelic perfection.
Gauge toppled over like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He lay on the ground, breathing shallowly, blood continuing to drain from his missing hands.
“O… Ocean.”
Corduroy. His voice was a soft whisper as he struggled to open his eyes.
“Shoulda k-killed him long time ago.”
Part of her wanted to ask why. Why had he come to her aid, why had he given his life in an attempt to free her? It was obvious the man didn’t have much time left. There was too much blood, his skull too shattered. She simply let him talk, listening in silence.
“D-didn’t… know. Where were you. Where you were. Didn’t kn-know. Tried to warn…”