Pacifier

🦊Camille🌹

The light was low and red, like hell glowing soft through the crack in the door which kept me concealed from the clientele.

Which kept me secure and secret. Locked in a cupboard with nothing but that warm red glow to let me know I was still alive.

My bones ached and my chest ached too but that was all. I wasn't hurt. Ia was just uncomfortable. Claustrophobic. Senses heightened where my sight had been dulled.

I could taste the dust and damp and the blood in the air, someone else's blood which was damp on the wall. I wondered who had drawn their last in this hole before I would. Wondered whos soul I would follow into the shadows.

I could hear music, could feel the vibrations in my hands which were flat against the floor. I was holding on you see, palms flat, counting. In my head Johnny was counting with me and I was calming like all those times he had brought me down from a feverous high fear when Id been younger, plagued with murderous thoughts for the evil men who had raised us.

I could hear those murderous men now, they passed my prison their feet little shadows dancing over that thin line of red light. 

I could hear their conversations through the walls but I couldn't tell what they were saying, their voices low and warped with music, with footsteps with glasses smashed and then, with the hiss of silence followed by the first shot of the gun. 

A fight breaking out, the lights flickering, changing, warping, the voices I'd tuned into doing the same. 

Nothing for a moment, the lull before the fear kicks in, the adrenaline, the bite and the sting of a loved one shot dead. And then another. And another. And another.

And just like the racing of a heart shot into overdrive, I felt that terror take over, felt it creep and seep an inky emotion into the walls and floorboards and the network of blood which flowed  between the men who's lives revolved around Billy Reids private members clubs. Red lights flickering low, blood flowing, blood staining the velvet downstairs at Reds. 

I could hear them now, their panic, their defences, I could hear a war breaking out downstairs and I felt the terror they felt seeping through the damp sticky floor and into me. 

I heard the gunfire, felt the pop in my ears as that steady fire grew nearer and nearer to me. Up the stairs, staggering. I could sense the struggle of one man against them all. The last of the Reids and Lewises being dragged down, biting and feral as they fought against them. Whoever they were, this Travis Bickle who persisted despite the many hits I was certain they must have taken. Despite the bullets lodged in their limbs. 

And then I was blind, blind and aching and dragged to my feet, a gun in my back digging in and burning, freshly fired and threatening me, a hand squeezing my wrists together so that the friction of my bones on my bones burnt and stung and propelled me forward through the bright emergency lights which flashed like sirens all around, lighting the corridor as I a man I thought was dead shoved me forward again. 

My legs didnt feel like my own as I squeezed my eyes shut against the light and tried to step. I'd lost track of time in that trap, my muscles had been left tight and bruisy for too long and now every step was a strain. Every step was a struggle, but Ruben Reids gun hot against my flesh was searing me and stirring me to move. 

I found myself tuning into the shots, the screams, the mumbled cacophony of death which followed that lone gunman through Reds that night. I found myself counting their shots and the seconds between their shots, growing more and more certain with every shatter which rang out that I knew who that gunman was. Who it was I was scared might falter at any moment. Hit in the wrong place at the wrong time, their life ripped from me too.