Cold Hatred (Book 2 & 3 of the Damned of the 2/19th) -Updated and Rewritten

Cold Hatred Part: 12

"We were bound by chains of blood, of our past, and

all we had was each other. Alfenwehr stripped away

our humanity in ways an outsider wouldn't understand,

our officers turned us into animals, and we could trust

nobody in that frozen hell hole but a select few.

But dammit, we had each other."

2/19th Special Weapons Group

Restricted Area, Alfenwehr West Germany

Late Winter- January, 1986

Day 11 of Repairs

Day 3 of the Second Incident

Evening

They both stared at me for a long second. A flicker of shame came and went, but the sight of my uniform covered legs reminded me that I wasn't that silent boy that stood there and let others do what they wanted to him any longer. The lizard hissed and rage filled me, warming me, pushing back the stomach ache, the buzzy feeling in my head, and the strange longing feeling I had toward Aine.

"Keep going, honey," Nancy told me, taping off the IV line to make sure it was secure. She'd hung the bag from the shelf's support. My whole arm was getting chilled, but she was worried about the vomiting I'd done dehydrating me.

Plus, the hemlock tea would give me the shits very soon if I hadn't thrown it up fast enough, which would just make it worse.

"My father was a drunk. A bad one. He was a drunk before he was drafted for Vietnam and came back worse. He worked for Weyerhaeuser, on the logging crews, which was probably the only reason he could hold a job." I closed my eyes, remembering how more than once the sap on his hands had stuck to the skin of my cheek when he slapped me.

"That doesn't sound like the father you and William described," Bomber said, handing me a cold beer from the fridge. It wasn't Gatorade, and a doctor would probably frown on me swilling beer after hemlock tea, but fuck him, I was here and he wasn't. Let's see him survive.

"Yeah, well, I'll get to that," I told him, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. Bomber just nodded and moved over to the stereo, queuing up the CD player before sitting back down.

"He liked to play cards, and he liked to drink. He'd go to the tavern before coming home after he got his paycheck." I shook my head. "He'd been wounded in Vietnam, if it wasn't for his pension and the house he got when he came home from war from the family, we'd have been out of the streets in no time flat." I took a long drink off the beer, stifling the sudden urge to smash the bottle against the edge of the desk and then go down and slit Aine's throat.

"I guess my father got in trouble gambling, or he just wanted money, or maybe he just wanted to get rid of me, but when I was three he sold me to Aine's father." I shrugged. "Aine knew it by the time we went to kindergarten. She'd demand to sit by me, when we got older she had me carry her books. She told me why when we were in first grade, that her daddy bought me from my daddy which made me her boy." Something small hurt in my chest for a second as I continued, but I crushed it beneath rage. "When I went home crying my father beat me for crying and my mother beat me for talking to a girl."

"Jesus," Nancy said. She'd taken my hand sometime during it and now squeezed it.

"Aine would delight in kissing me on the bus. My mother would see it, and I'd get a beating. I quickly figured out that if I didn't do what Aine wanted at school, she'd kiss me on the bus, and I'd get beaten for 'defiling' her." Another long swig and suddenly my beer was almost empty. "I figured that shit out in the first grade. The first grade was the first time my twin sister..."