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"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever."
Psalm 23:6
May Mercy Follow
The door taunts him. Opens and closes quickly, locked only to him. Never to be touched without permission.Staci spends an inordinate amount of time staring at that door, willing it to move with a shaky gaze and all the hope in his pitiful little heart. Today is no different. With the clicking of guns being disassembled and reassembled all around him, his focus hones in once again on the one thing in the room he knows could free him in the only way that matters.“Peaches!” Jacob’s voice is an echoing boom in the large hall where they clean and maintenance the guns. Used to be the old rec room- can still see some remnants of its past use in the small murals decorating the far wall.Staci jumps and his eyes shoot straight to Jacob and stick there. “Sir?” He hates how small and scared his voice is, but he doesn’t know any other way to be, how to pull himself up out of the puddle of fear he’s been drowning in for weeks.Jacob doesn’t say anything for a second, simply eyeing Staci from his head to his feet, then back up again. Slowly, slowly, like there’s something there worth seeing. Staci wonders if he’s been caught out scheming his escape, if that will be the end of his little jaunt into the underworld. Just one minute to midnight on the doomsday clock in his head.“With me.” Jacob turns on a dime and walks out of the rec room, not even looking back to make sure his pet is coming. Like he knows Staci would follow him anywhere.He sees those eyes at night, in the darkness above his bed, all crystal ocean blue and measured cruelty. Always staring, judging. Waiting for Staci’s white-hot rage to finally come to a head, spew its pus and bile everywhere. Waiting, perhaps, for the walls to come down fully, so that all of Staci’s most base urges can float like a corpse to the surface.He keeps the wanting as close as he can, plays it off like he’s just afraid to die. It’s easy because it’s also true. He wants to live. He doesn’t want to be hurt by Jacob or his men. Once, Jacob had threatened to offer Pratt up to his Chosen, had gotten as far as the barracks door before Staci’s sobbing cries seemed to reach his ears. He was a disgusting, pitiful creature, snot bubbling and running down his face with his tears. ‘Anything,’ he’d said, ‘I’ll do anything!’Imagine, he thinks now, being something too pathetic for even Jacob Seed to kill. He wants to laugh in the quiet of his bunk, can feel it bubbling in his throat. He tamps it down and when it resurfaces, he beats it into submission with a baseball bat composed of Jacob’s Word.
Be strong.
Staci can’t come untethered just yet. He can’t he can’t he can’t. Those eyes like ice gaze back at him from the abyss like they can see right through him to the fucked up, wretched core beneath. The wanting thrums in his blood, stings his skin, tastes bittersweet in the back of his throat.Staci risks humming quietly to himself, a song his mom used to sing. He thinks of Rook, of Joey, and lets himself imagine that someone is coming to save him. Someone. Anyone.It’s weak, he knows. Weak.As he falls into a fitful sleep, he tries very hard not to care.Something changes after that day, something Staci can’t quite place. Jacob’s men who used to sneer at him now let their gazes slide over him like he isn’t there at all. Like he’s already dead.Jacob’s eyes linger a little too long, and his touches become more intimate. He’s always been self-assured about his hands on Pratt’s body, but now it’s- it’s the way it feels. Like too much and not enough all at once. Like Staci might break apart if he’s touched again or the itching under his skin might just explode outward and consume everything in its path.Only you. It’s the way he’s started to lean into it, to seek it out. To need it.-and you alone can thrill me like you do-He has to leave. There’s a clawing, gnawing feeling in his belly. A churning, guttural thing like a cat with its back up. All the signs flashing ‘DANGER! DANGER!’ in his head.Something is coming, he knows he knows- and he won’t be able to stop it.-my one and only you.They leave the door open exactly one time, and it is enough. He slips through the cracks like a shadow and out into the cold clear night. Surprises himself when he actually does it instead of just imagining it like all the other times before. His breath catches in his throat, the crispness of autumn air jarring from the relative warmth of the Veteran’s Center. Time collapses in on itself, wrenching apart and spinning back together. Reknitting itself from torn fabric like a moebius Frankensteined from all the wrong parts. He can’t remember what month it was when he first came here.This is when he stalls like a deer in headlights. Blinking, confused, panicked. Frozen. Staci doesn’t quite know what to do now without the cloying words of Jacob Seed counting him down, guiding him home. He knows what he should do. Should keep walking, keep going- he's just a few yards from the gate, from freedom. But the truth settles like a stone in his stomach, anchoring him to the spot.Regret, pure and agonizing, sinks it’s cold, clammy fingers into his heart. He doesn’t want to hurt anymore. Doesn’t want to be punished. He’s spent so much time just watching and waiting and the thing that crawled inside him and made a home- he wasn’t looking at that. Was always watching the way out, not the way in.Outside the fence, beyond the gate, he can see the shadows of evening settling across the land. The crickets chirp, the Judges bark somewhere off in the distance. The world is as terrifying as it is beautiful. He knows with a sudden clarity that even if he escapes, even if he somehow makes it, he’ll never really be able to leave. Everything he is or has ever been is buried here beneath the rocky ground. The thing inside him squirms and shakes in anticipatory glee, teetering just on the edge of amalgamation.Like there’s a fishhook lodged in his gut, always pulling him back, back, Jacob’s hand steady on the reel, he turns back toward the door. All the waiting in the world can’t save him, even now. He’s reaching for the door handle when it opens on its own.‘When one door closes, God opens another.’The Peggy looks at him for just a moment, his mouth forming a perfect ‘o’. It’s so human that Staci almost thinks he’ll be able to get away with a simple shrug. ‘Just needed a walk.’ Yeah, right. Before he can say or do anything, the man grabs him by the front of his old, battered uniform shirt and yanks, pulling him through the open doorway back into the belly of the beast.Like tendrils of vines creeping up under the siding of a house until it finally strips the skin of it, baring the bones to the world, the echo of the song and the red and the howling, whirlwind of pain-pleasure-pain overtake him. The air splits open in a spray of red warmth, a wave crashing to shore. He is borne on it, set within it, of it and from it and spilling forth, unchecked, like righteous fury.Staci is weak.This is what he knows, and who he is. He is bleeding from a cut on his forehead, from the place where it met the door jamb with incredible force. Still kinda feels spinny, like a listing top.But his lips are pulled back in a snarl, baring his teeth, dull and pink with diluted blood. Not his own blood for once.The Peggy before him- another nameless face in an unending sea of nameless faces- seems to consider his options. There is nowhere for Staci to go. Cornered, he keeps his hackles up. Nothing is sacred here, not even the God which Joseph so dearly loves.The Peggy realizes the mistake as soon as he's made it, the calculated error that will never pay off. He's misjudged, and Staci wonders for a brief moment if his teeth sinking into the man's jugular hurts terribly. It's okay though. He won't feel it in a minute.The warm bubbling gush of blood spills out around his mouth, and he's growling like a starved dog who's finally found a bone. Not even sure where his hands are, if he even still has them. There's a sound of clapping, slow and heady, and Staci catches that glint of red hair under the harsh florescent lights of the Veteran's Center rec room. He shifts sightly and then stills, teeth remaining clamped down over tendons and torn skin as the body lies limp at his feet. The human jaw can exert a pressure of up to 70 pounds per square inch. He doesn’t know if it’s fear or anger that locks his muscles in place."Good boy, Peaches," Jacob rumbles, and it sets something alight in the pit of his stomach. Something horrible and sinful. He came back into the pits of hell, pulled by demons, pushed by his own hand. Back to Jacob. Back home.When Jacob attempts to reach for him, he snaps at his hand, and the ragged chunk of flesh that has been clenched in his teeth falls to the cement floor with a wet thud."Easy, easy there." It's soft-spoken, but no less a command, and Staci can't help the high whine that leaves his throat as Jacob steps closer, closer. Finally, just as Staci thinks he might get his bearings back, Jacob's large and scarred hand curls over the back of his neck, and his knees nearly go out from under him.There is a rusty chuckle from above, disused and faded. He has been pushed against the broad chest of Jacob Seed, so warm and alive with the rushing of blood and his strong, beating heart. Jacob's hand is like boiling water against the ice of his flesh, and Staci sees his own hand come up to grasp at Jacob's old army jacket, clinging like a child. He lets out a shuddering breath but doesn't cry."I know, Peaches," comes the deep voice once more. "But you did so well for me, huh? Culled the herd, just like you were meant to."Staci keens in the back of his throat, nodding his head like he’s moving in slow motion, but still yearning so desperately to prove his worth. To prove that he has something left to give, even if it’s only all of him. Something that will stay the hand. Something that will keep it there.Rough fingers pet his knotted hair back, soothing the wounded animal that Staci has become. If this were any other time, he might be embarrassed by the warmth that blooms in his chest, the ache that grows larger and fiercer in his belly.But he is not.'Peaches', he calls him. Soft, ripe skin, all ready to be bitten into, to spill its juices.There are marks all over his body. It gets hard to remember where most of them are from- the trials are brutal, terrible things with teeth and claws all their own. Except the carefully placed thumbprints at the creases of his hips, the ragged mouth-shaped impressions on his thighs, his chest. He knows the origin of these, the mouth that gives him penance, gives him purpose. The hands that steal all his moments as well as his breath and keep them selfishly like a magpie in its nest.He knows these marks like he knows the scar on his knee from where he fell off his bike at age 10, pitching over a stump he couldn't see in the grass. That same belly flip feeling that sent him flailing into the cold autumn air, now turned terribly warm and treacherous in the heat of Jacob's private rooms.There are too many hands on his body, but there's only Jacob. He presses down upon him from everywhere, making his bones ache with want. Even when he's not touching him. The months- years- when he was Staci Pratt and he knew what that meant apart from a name slip further and further away under the weight of it. Jacob sees him, all the bruised and broken parts; has burnt him down and formed him again from ash. He is as he was made, all bone and ragged beautiful flesh, and his blood pumps harder through his veins now, singing, singing.They move like one terrible, trembling beast, all limbs and cries of ecstasy and pain. Staci writhes beneath Jacob, throwing his hips back into the crest of every thrust inside him. It hurts a bit at first, but it always does. And it always gets better, builds into a thrumming wild crescendo of white-hot pleasure piercing his belly like a dagger, bleeding poison into his veins until he’s nothing but a quivering, sweaty mess. Until he finally comes undone.When they lay in the afterglow, Jacob sweeps his large hands down Staci’s sides like he’s petting one of his Judges. Staci sees that look in his eyes then: the something close to pride, one blink away from warmth. He holds onto it, presses his heels into Jacob’s lower back to keep him seated inside. Jacob grunts, the corners of his mouth lifting crookedly as the scars on his face pull against his lips, looming over him like the final days his brother preaches about.Staci opens his arms and welcomes them gladly.