House of the Damned

The Punishment

Six

The Punishment

The demons have cleared out and I’m back in my own room when a knock awakens me. I open my eyes and glance over at the door. It’s open and Venus leans casually against the frame. She silently gestures for me to come follow her. I sigh, but clamber out of bed to pursue.

My fingers run through my hair in an attempt to tame it as I trail Venus. She leads me down to the basement and I shudder as we descend the stairs. The shudder is not from the chill, though I’m sure that it doesn’t help. I ignore the shelves against the far walls, their contents vastly disturbing. Venus walks over to one of the shelves and grabs a book. She flips through it, skimming over the pages, before replacing it on the shelf and turning to me.

“Twenty lashes for his mistake, Cassandra,” she says, a twisted sort of satisfaction hidden in those horrid grey eyes of hers.

I nod. “Yes, Miss Venus.”

Richard enters the basement, looking horrified to see that I am the one in trouble. There is nothing he can do to help me and so he binds my hands in front one of the support beams. (It kind of looks like I’m hugging the pole.) He begins to whisper an apology and I stop him, much like he interrupted me. I can finally understand his earlier point. He nods and backs off.

I rest my forehead against the cool wood of the post and close my eyes. I take a deep breath to calm myself, knowing that I’ll need it. I hear the crack of the whip before I feel the barbed tip of it slice through the nightgown and into my skin. I bite my lip to hold back any cries of pain. I will not give her that satisfaction.

The whip cracks again and slices in nearly the same spot. Venus has been known to do that, strike the same spot repeatedly, leaving deep, scarring, sometimes life threatening wounds.

The next stroke makes contact with my skin longer, leaving a larger gash in my back. Six more lashes and my knees buckle, the rope the only thing holding me up. Another stroke and I have to bit my lip harder to hold back a scream.

I hear the crack again, but for some reason feel no pain. Strong arms wrap around my body and I open my eyes.

“What are you doing?” I hiss at Michael, appalled that he would do something so idiotic.

“It wasn’t your fault. You don’t deserve to be punished,” he answers.

I want to argue, but I don’t have the energy. I just lean into him as much as I can. He takes a total of six lashes before Richard tries to pull him away. His arms tense and his embrace tightens.

“Go with Richard, Michael. I’ll be fine,” I growl.

“You’re a bad liar,” he responds, but he releases me and allows my friend to pull him away.

I struggle to my feet again once more closing my eyes as if that will make this less painful. The next hit digs deeper than the last several. A small whimper escapes my lips. The next three lashes come in rapid succession. The room spins, my knees buckle, and I feel one last stroke before my vision goes black.

***

A burning, throbbing pain in my back brings me to. I lie upstairs in my bed with no idea how much time has passed. I open my eyes and glance over at the clock. It’s several hours later, but I’m not sure if it’s still the same day.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Michaels asks, sitting in a chair beside the bed. It’s an eerie reversal of the day he regained consciousness.

“Tell you what?” I mumble.

“That you would pay for my mistakes.”

“I referenced it.”

“Why didn’t you say it directly?” he demands, his expression riddled with guilt.

“It didn’t seem important.”

“Not important? You could have been killed!”

“No. Not yet. Venus hates me too much to kill me. You okay?” I change the subject.

It doesn’t help much. He just looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “You were nearly beaten to death and you want to know if I’m okay?”

“Your wings were sawed off and you wanted to know if I was okay,” I retort. “Now are you going to answer?”

“I’m fine. Emily said the gashes on my back weren’t as deep as yours and being half angel I heal slightly faster than a regular human.”

“Lucky you,” I murmur. “So you’re okay?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Been worse.”

He sighs. “You haven’t had an easy life, have you?”

“It started out easily enough. It just sort of went downhill after a while. Bad luck and bad timing, I guess. Can we not talk about this?” I close my eyes as though shutting out the light will shut out the memories. It does me no good, so I choose instead to ask a new question. “What year is it?”

He looks at me with surprise, but gives me an answer. I sigh. “And the month?”

“June, I think. Why?”

“Tell Em she turned thirty last month whenever you get the chance.” He gives me a questioning look. “Michael, we’ve no way of keeping track of time. We can guess, but it’s not exactly accurate.”

“That just sucks,” he mutters.

I shrug and then wince. Bad idea. “You get used to it. You get used to a lot of things.”

“Like having the shit beat out of you?”

“Language,” I snap, ignoring the question completely.

He sighs. “I suppose that’s a yes.”

I change the subject. “How much work do I have to catch up on?”

“None. We covered for you.”

“Thanks,” I say aloud, though I’m panicking on the inside. Venus likes to keep her staff so that it can’t properly function without just one of its members. If everything is getting done while I’m out of commission, it means we have one more person than we need. Which means for now, one of us is entirely expendable. I really should have figured this out when Michael first arrived.

“No problem.” He stands to leave and I grab him by the wrist. My movement is too fast and I wince at the pain it causes in my back. He raises an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t go. At least, don’t go if you don’t have to.” I meet his pale green eyes, my baby blue ones pleading. I feel like this would be more effective if I had brown eyes, but it will have to do.

He smiles and sits back down. “I won’t go anywhere if you don’t want me to. I owe you that much.”

I smile back at him. “Thank you.”

I close my eyes, but the sound of clinking metal causes me to open them again. I glance down to see Michael’s ankles in shackles. “Tell me you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“No more than I’d already done. Apparently I get on Venus’s nerves.”

“That’s not a place you want to be. Trust me.”

“I can believe it.”

I close my eyes again. “It was worth it, you know. The look on Mars’s face when you struck up the argument. Totally worth it. Just don’t do it again.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t plan to have a repeat of that.”

“Good,” I say to him. I know that Venus is nowhere near done punishing us, but I don’t want things to get any worse. A long silence follows during which I fall into a deep, peaceful sleep.

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A/N: D: Poor Cassie! But awww. Isn't Michael just adorable?