Amber and I have always been close. We’ve been ride or die since we could effectively communicate with one another as children. And when our parents passed away in a car accident, we decided to stick together to keep each other safe. We each began picking up several jobs to make ends meet. But as hard as we tried to work, we couldn’t keep our childhood home away from the clutches of the bank. The bills and mortgage payments were just too much for our minimum-wage jobs to maintain. So we were forced into a shithole apartment together, but like always we made it work.
We spruced it up and made it into a home. A shitty home, but it was our home. And we continued to work ourselves ragged just to maintain it. Even this shithole was just barely in our price range. I worked various delivery and fast food jobs, while my sister worked as a barista and tutored kids at the local college for a few extra bucks on the side. Together we could barely afford rent and food, but we had each other.
Then I was in an accident. Running a triple shift, I was heavily sleep-deprived and as I was riding my bike along the streets, my reaction time wasn’t good enough to register the car that slammed into me at 40 mph. It was nearly enough to kill me. By the time I got to the hospital, I was a twisted mess of blood and bike parts. The operations on me lasted upwards of 50 hours but they managed to save my life. But my left leg below the knee was amputated and several of my fingers had to be as well.
Amber arrived at the hospital immediately upon hearing of what happened to me. She assured me not to worry about her and just to get some rest. But along with the pain that came with being hit by a car and operated on, came the fear of how my sister was going to pay for my medical expenses. We barely had the money for food. How was she going to pay for my treatment without any sort of insurance?
Several months later I found out when I was released from the hospital with a prosthetic leg. At first, she had pawned many of our more expensive items like the tv and some of our mother’s jewelry. But when that had run out, she turned to the last option available to her. She became a prostitute. To keep me alive. It devastated me to no end, that my baby sister was whoring herself out just to keep me alive.
I could see an immediate shift in her personality. Amber had been bubbly and loving, constantly seeing the good in people and everything around her. But now that she was a prostitute, she became cold, forlorn, and distant from me. Though I could not blame her, given what she had to do every night just to keep us alive. Even though I was now receiving disability from the government, it was still less money than I got from working my several jobs. So we continued to struggle. Me, with physical therapy, and her with her nightly routines.
“Hey, Arthur.” she told me as she got out of her room yesterday morning. Her hair was a mess and she smelled like cigarettes and cheap booze. Her usual smell after a night on the town. I was sitting at the table enjoying a fine morning breakfast of water and cornflakes. The best breakfast poverty can buy. I simply waved at her and continued to crunch on my soggy cornflakes.
“Tough night?” I finally asked her while she went searching for food in the fridge for herself. All I got in response was an animal-like grunt from her. She didn’t like to talk about what she did. She was doing it just to keep us from ending up on the street. “Good talk,” I told her sarcastically.
“Gina said she might’ve found me a rich client.” she finally told me after fishing out some bread from the fridge. I looked over at her and couldn’t help but wince at the thought. Gina was a friend that Amber had made during her nightly rounds. A fellow ‘woman of the night’ if you catch my drift. I’d met her one time when Amber had brought her over to the house to sleep on our couch. She seemed nice enough, cheery, and friendly. But she had the same dead eyes that Amber had.
“Yea? Are you…gonna go out again tonight?” I asked her, suddenly finding myself not wanting to finish my increasingly soggy cereal. But at the same time, I wasn’t about to go wasting food so I kept eating.
“I’m going to have to Artie. Our bills are due by the end of the month and between the two of us, we won’t have enough to cover them. Gina says this dude is loaded so…I’m just gonna do it.” she told me in the matter-of-fact tone that she had developed when talking about her work. And all I could muster was a pathetic nod. Finishing my bowl of cereal, I reached over and grabbed my cane and forced myself to stand on my prosthetic leg. I still wasn’t used to walking with it so I required a cane around me at all times. I managed to hobble my way over to the sink and deposit my bowl there as Amber took my recently vacated space at the table to eat her barely buttered toast.
My normal routine was to keep our house as tidy as I could and go to physical therapy on the days that I was scheduled. Today wasn’t one of those days, but I decided I wanted to take a walk to the nearby gas station. I was friends with the cashier, and he hooked me up with recently expired snacks for free. Grabbing my jacket, I asked Amber if she wanted anything but she simply responded with a grunt and a shake of her head.
Leaving the apartment complex, I couldn’t help but sigh in despondent sadness. How had our lives come to this? I nearly wanted to throw myself into the street and have a car hit me again. Hopefully killing me this time. But I couldn’t do that to Amber. I was the whole reason she was even whoring herself out to strangers. Getting to the crosswalk, I managed to safely make it across the street and into the warm embrace of the convenience store.
“Arthur! I was starting to get worried about you!” Raj shouted at me with that big toothy grin he always had whenever he saw me. That warmed my damaged heart and never failed to get a genuine smile from me as well.
“Yea, my leg’s been killing me recently,” I told him, hobbling over to him and thanking God once I reached the cashier counter and gripped it with my free hand. I’d fallen plenty of times while trying to learn to walk on this new leg. And there’s nothing sadder than seeing an amputee trying to get back on his foot. Raj nodded and reached behind the counter, handing over a box.
“Here’s a little extra. Word on the block is that you and your sister are struggling. So I thought I’d help you two a little. My treat.” he said, pushing the box over to me. I couldn’t help but tear up a little as I looked into the box. It was filled with snacks and even some fruit cups. A luxury I hadn’t seen in years.
“Raj, thank you so much. I have no idea how I can repay you.” I told him, wracking my brain in an attempt about how I was going to pay him. But he held up his hand and shook his head. He grabbed the box and lifted it up as he walked out from behind the counter.
“Come, come, I’ll help you carry it to your home.” he offered, increasing my guilt even further. But I knew that there was going to be no talking him out of it. Once Raj put his mind to something, he was damn well going to see it through. Gripping my cane I hobbled my way out of the store with him, just in time to see a big black limo pull up by our apartment complex.
“What the hell?” I wondered out loud. This area was known to be a sketchy part of town. Hell, it was THE sketchy part of town. So to see it pulled up in front of my apartment building was really something to take me back. So imagine my surprise to see my sister exiting the building and walking towards the limo.
“Amber!” I shouted at her. Which clearly caught her off guard as she flinched and turned to stare at me. I could tell that she hadn’t expected me to show up in the middle of her doing this. I watched as she tried to think of what to say to me.
“I have to go, Artie. Will you be okay, while I’m gone?” she asked me, sighing as she stepped away from the limo and walked over to me, placing her hand on my shoulder and gripping it. I stared at her and then at the limo, where I saw that one of the occupants inside was in fact a nurse. And that just sent my mind spinning in a million directions. Was my sister about to go sell off her organs just to keep us afloat?
“Y-yea.” I finally told her. She nodded and wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug. I hugged her back with my one free arm and gave her a soft pat on the back. She pulled away from the hug and waved goodbye to both me and Raj, then turned around and walked back to the limo. The nurse exited the limo and held the open door for my sister. She climbed inside and soon the nurse joined her inside. Not before the nurse gave me the same dead look that my sister and Gina both had. The two of them entered the limo and soon the long black car drove off.
Raj helped me back into my apartment and even helped me put all the food and snacks into the cupboards. I thanked him and offered to pay him back but Raj wouldn’t even entertain the idea of it. He let himself out and quickly hurried back over to the convenience store which he had left unprotected. I hobbled around the room trying to find something to do with myself, finally just sitting down on my bed and pulling off my leg. Rubbing the stump with my hand I tried to imagine my life with both my legs back. While Amber and I were scraping the barrel daily, we at least weren’t in the shit that we were currently in.
I laid back in my room and contemplated sneaking one of my sister’s sleeping pills. I still had chronic pain because of my missing leg and fingers, so I had my own supply of painkillers. But my sister had recently been getting insomnia because of her work, so she had started taking them to sleep through her nights. But having already pulled my leg off I decided against it and just decided to go to sleep even if it was only early in the morning.
I ended up sleeping through the entire day. I couldn’t remember the last time I had such a long rest. It seemed almost impossible for me to do that. I heard that people with depression have pretty fucked up sleeping schedules. Maybe this was just another symptom of my shitty situation.
Thinking of a way to apologize to Amber for sleeping for almost 24 hours straight, I pushed my stump into my prosthetic and grabbed my cane. Forcing my body up from the bed and out into the apartment, I was met immediately with a deafening silence. A silence that while I was very used to, somehow this one was different. It was as if I had stepped into a world where I was the only person in the whole building.
“Amber! You here?!” I shouted out to her. Hobbling over to her room I knocked on her door only for the door to squeak open. I peeked my head into her room and saw that it was empty. Her bed was still made and nothing at all moved from the place where they had been placed. My sister is a little OCD so she always keeps her room scarily clean, so seeing that nothing had changed meant that she hadn’t been back.
Pulling my phone out, I looked down to see if she had messaged me at all. But nothing was there. No texts, calls, not even a peep from her. My sister constantly checks on me, even if she might hate me for getting my leg cut off, she still loves and cares for me. So she always checks on me.
“Something’s wrong,” I mumbled to myself. I quickly grabbed my jacket and fumbled to put it on, while I leaned against the wall so I wouldn’t slip and eat shit on the floor. Leaving and locking up the apartment, I hobbled as quickly as I could down to the lobby and asked the landlord about my sister, and if she had seen her at all. The old bitch just stared at me and shook her head. Probably still pissed at me for living off of welfare or something.
Exiting the building, I walked over to Raj’s store and quickly asked him if he had seen her at all after that day. He could tell that I was panicking, and he tried to calm me down. Quickly he bought me a coffee from his coffee machine and forced me to drink it so I could calm down. It worked to a small degree, but I was still freaking out.
“What about that friend of hers? Gina? Maybe she knows?” Raj pointed out as he helped himself to his own coffee. I nodded at him since Gina was the person who had hooked Amber up with that client. I thanked him, and forced my few loose coins onto him for the coffee. Exiting the store, I started on toward the redlight district which is only a couple blocks away. I’d never visited before since I didn’t want to run into my sister during her work hours. But this was an emergency.
I could tell when I reached the avenue because all of a sudden it became even shadier than it usually was. When I said our apartment building was in the shady part of town I was proven wrong. This place was as if the shady part of town hooked up with an even shadier part of town and birthed this place. Not one step onto the block I was approached by a woman.
“I’ll give you a blowjob for $5.” she told me matter-of-factly, like I was ordering at a restaurant. I almost wanted to push her away with my cane but I had to start asking around about my missing sister.
“Do you know where Gina is?” I asked her. This redhead looked up at me with a squint like I had insinuated that she wasn’t good enough for me. “I’m trying to find my sister, Amber.” I followed up, hoping to keep her from doing anything to me.
“Wait…” she said, looking me up and down and only now realizing that I was an amputee. “You’re Artie, ain’t ya?” she said, a big grin on her face all of a sudden, and a giggle in her throat. I was caught off guard completely. I did not expect to be called my childhood nickname in this part of town.
“Yea, that’s me. Do you know Amber?” I asked her, grunting as I shifted more weight onto my cane. I had so quickly rushed out of the house that I hadn’t been able to properly put my leg on. I would need to sit down and readjust it, but for now, I just had to grin and bear it.
“Oh yea, she never mentioned me? I’m Ali.” she said with a smile, and the name did in fact ring a bell. Amber had brought her up before. Not as much as Gina, but enough for the name to ring a bell for me.
“Oh, yea! Nice to meet you.” I told her, offering her my free hand which she shook and kept staring at me.
“You’re a pretty cute kid. You’re looking for Amber? Didn’t she come home last night?” she asked me, popping out her hip and reaching into her purse to pull out her pack of smokes. I shook my head and reached into my pocket to pull out my lighter. I had smoked before the accident to cope with my stressful day, but I managed to kick it during my various physical therapy visits. I lit her cigarette for her and she couldn’t help but give me a coy smile. “A sweetheart too, huh?”
“She didn’t come home.” I continued our conversation as I let her enjoy her cigarette. “Gina told her that she found a wealthy client, she got picked up in a limo and I haven’t seen her since.” I left out the part where I had slept for almost 24 hours. That was a little too much personal info for a girl I had met literally minutes earlier.
Ali stared at me as she sucked on her cigarette. I noticed that her hands were now trembling. Something I had said had upset her, that much was obvious. I gave her a few more seconds of smoke-sucking and waited for her to speak to me.
“Gina…” she finally said, shakily tapping the cigarette free of ash and staring at me with dead and hollow eyes. “Gina sends a lot of girls away in that limo. Some of us call it The Hearse. Lots of girls go in and never come back.” she told me, staring through me and letting smoke leak out of her open mouth.
“Where is Gina?” I asked her again. Gripping my cane’s head tightly and wanting so badly to bring it down on Gina’s dyed head. Ali could tell that much, she dropped her cigarette and stomped it out with her heels.
“Come with me, I’ll take you to her.” she told me as she placed her cigarettes back into her purse. I nodded and did my best to keep my anger down below the surface. I followed after Ali as best I could on only one leg and a cane. She led me down an alley, and for a moment I almost thought she was about to mug me. The joke would be on her since I had literally nothing on me except pocket lint. But instead, she led me to a door where she knocked a couple of times. It was like a speakeasy in the prohibition times.
Ali led me into the club, which turned out to be a bar for women of the night. All eyes quickly turned to me with suspicion. I raised my hand to wave at them all, and Ali vouched for me. Introducing me as Amber’s brother. That brought smiles to everyone, and everything went back to normal.
“Your sister is really popular,” Ali told me with a chuckle. She led me towards the back office, and it was at this moment that I really wished that I had properly put my leg on. Ali opened the office door for me, and I was met face-to-face with Gina. She looked much better than she did when she had to stay at our apartment. Her office was decorated with lots of shiny shit, and I knew instantly that this bitch had sold my sister off to someone.
“Artie!” Gina said, a fake smile plastered on her face. She rose to embrace me, but I held up my hand and shook my head. The smile on her face slipped for a moment, then she seemingly remembered/realized why I was there. “You’re looking for your sister, right?” she asked me. I responded with a silent nod. “And why are you here, Ali?” she asked.
“I’m making sure you don’t do anything stupid,” Ali told her, hand reaching into her purse and pulling out a switchblade. Well at least one of us was armed. Gina nodded, sitting back down at her desk and looking up at the two of us. She was constantly looking at the drawer, and I could tell she had something in there.
“I just wanna know where Amber is. Tell me where you sent her.” I ordered her, Ali pointed her knife towards Gina to force the woman into telling me the answer to what I wanted to know. She stared at me and then at Ali before taking her hand away from her desk and giving a long exasperated sigh.
“LeBlanc Manor,” she responded. “That creep buys up girls so quickly and pays so well that I just…look the other way.” I almost wanted to smack her with my cane even harder. The woman had turned on her friends just to get money from some rich asshole.
“You bitch.” Ali hissed, I could tell she was just as pissed off. “You’re the reason so many of us are going missing?!” She slammed her fists down on the hard wooden desk. If it hurt her at all she didn’t let it show. Her anger was too hot and fiery for her to notice anything.
“More girls are missing?” I asked her, grabbing her by the shoulder and trying to calm her down somehow. Also keeping a close eye on Gina.
“14 girls have gone missing since January. When you said Amber was missing I prayed that she was just running late or something. But now I see she’s the fucking reason for this!” She pounded her fist back into the desk. She pointed the knife at Gina and I could see the murderous intent in her eyes. “I’m going to gut you like a fucking fish.”
“Gina, call another limo to my apartment,” I ordered from her. That caused both of them to look at me like I was insane. “What? Am I going to walk all the way to LeBlanc manor?” Jackson LeBlanc was well known throughout the entire state as a philanthropist recluse. His manor was on the complete opposite side of the city, and there was no way I could walk all the way there in time or afford an uber.
“I’m coming with you. I don’t mind being bait.” Ali told me, pulling her knife away from Gina and putting herself between me and Gina. “Call him.” she turned and ordered Gina. The woman looked at the two of us and realizing that she was outnumbered and outmatched, picked up her cell phone and put it to her ear after tapping on it.
“Yes, hello? It’s Gina. Yes. Yes, I know but I have another girl for him. Yes. Same location as the last one I gave you.” She awkwardly looked over at me when she uttered that sentence. I had to dig my fingers into my palm to try and contain my anger. “They’ll be at your apartment in 20 minutes,” Gina said as she hung up and placed her phone down on her desk.
Ali and I left her office as quickly as we could manage and started on the way toward the apartment complex. The fact that she could run that quickly in heels was a surprise for me. I finally was able to adjust my leg as we both sat down on the park bench that was located right next to my complex.
“Amber told me about your accident. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Ali told me as she watched me place my leg back onto my stump. I offered her a smile and a shrug. My predicament didn’t bother me as much as the feeling of burden I had placed on my sister.
“Did she ever wish this didn’t happen to me?” I asked her as I laid back on the bench, at last having fixed my leg. Ali looked at me, and then all of a sudden decked me on the shoulder, getting a genuine ‘ow’ from me.
“She loves you more than anything, dude.” she scolded me. “She works her ass off and doesn’t complain at all. And you’re all she ever talks about! She loves you, dude. So don’t you go doubting her.” Ali told me with a smile on her face. Which brought a smile to my own face, and a little tear to my eye when I thought of how hard my sister was working for the two of us.
“Thanks, Ali,” I told her. She nodded and we both sat and waited for the expected limo. At long last, the black limo pulled up to the apartment. Ali helped me up to my foot and we both walked over to the car. The door opened and that same nurse stepped out. Her dead hollow eyes stared into mine and she looked over at Ali.
“I have been sent to only pick you up.” she told Ali bluntly. Ali looked over at me and she considered something. She turned to fully look at me and gave me a cheeky smile.
“Sorry about this, cutie.” she told me, before grabbing my cane and yanking it from under me. She quickly swung it around and bashed the nurse on the head with a sickening crunch. The nurse dropped to the floor like a sack of dirt. I didn’t have time to figure out what happened before Ali grabbed me by the collar and shoved me into the limo before climbing in behind me. “Take us to the manor.” she threatened the driver, who looked back at us with a shrug and started the car back up.
“Well. What are the chances you just killed her?” I asked Ali as she handed me my cane back, this time with an added stain of human blood on it. She shrugged at me and grabbed a hair tie from her purse to tie her hair back into a ponytail. The driver was so oddly calm with this whole predicament, that it was scaring me far more than the fact that Ali probably just killed someone in front of my building.
The car ride was silent for the most part. My mind racing with how I was even going to get into the mansion to free my sister. Or if she even needed saving in the first place. Had she ditched me for some rich asshole? Now I was just sounding like a jealous ex-boyfriend. I looked over at Ali and watched as she tapped her cigarette box against her palm. I fished into my pocket and handed over my lighter to her, allowing her to keep it when she tried to offer it back to me.
Finally, we arrived at the enormous mansion. It was breathtaking for both of us, as when Ali laid eyes on it she coughed up a storm and almost dropped the cigarette in her mouth onto her lap. The gates surrounding the mansion opened for the limo, and the silent driver drove us into the awaiting garage. Parking out in front of the mansion, he put the car in park and wordlessly stepped out to open the doors for us.
“Thanks,” I told him as he helped me up onto my feet. He was being oddly helpful after being the victim of a carjacking. He pointed toward the giant wooden doors to the mansion, and we followed his lead toward the doors. He knocked upon them, bowed to us, and then turned around to return to his limo.
The two of us stood awkwardly as we waited to see who would open the door to meet us. The enormous wooden object finally opened, and another nurse poked her head outside. I instinctively pulled my cane away from Ali and she pouted at me.
“You must be Ali and Arthur.” she said in another dead-like voice, that almost made it seem like she was some sort of robot. She pushed the door open all the way to allow us to enter. I entered but wondered how in the hell she even knew my name. Although I figured after we had left, Gina had called and informed LeBlanc that we would be arriving. That just made me wonder why they hadn’t sent some kind of bodyguard to protect the nurse that had picked us up.
“Monsieur LeBlanc is expecting you in the gardens.” she told the two of us as we entered the giant mansion. It was like a museum was turned into a home. Paintings hung from the walls along with numerous sculptures and vases that littered the halls. I was afraid to even look in the direction of them, knowing they were probably worth more than I would ever be able to make in my entire life.
“Why would a rich asshole like Jackson LeBlanc need prostitutes? Can’t he get himself a nice trophy wife or something?” Ali asked as we began to walk down the hall. My eyes were going a mile a minute in an attempt to find where this asshole would be keeping Amber. But this entire hallway seemed to be devoid of doors so I just kept hobbling along with the two of them trying to keep pace with them.
“Monsieur LeBlanc has certain needs that no single woman could possibly fulfill.” the nurse told us as we continued down this long hallway that seemed to cut across the entire building. At one point we reached an intersection that I thought could lead to a different location, but this nurse kept us going straight until at last, we reached a pair of glass doors. The nurse opened them and led us back outside where I was blasted by the overwhelming scent of flowers and other plants.
“Jeez, this guy should open up a flower shop or something,” Ali said as she covered her nose and mouth with her arm. I followed suit as the various smells soon became too much for me to handle. We approached an old wheelchair, the ones you see in like those Victorian insane asylums, and the nurse finally pulled away from us and approached the chair, leaning over and whispering into the occupant’s ears.
She then grabbed the chair and slowly swung it around to face us. The occupant in the chair was an emaciated figure in a suit. His face was covered by a shiny metal mask and a black mass of hair on his head.
“You’re the brother of…” his raspy and hoarse voice told us. There was a long pause as he seemingly tried to remember who my sister was. The nurse leaned over and started to whisper into his ear again. He looked over at her for a moment and then looked back at us. “Amber.”
“Where the hell is she?” I demanded to know. He tilted his head to me as he seemingly struggled to breathe. If this was Jackson LeBlanc, I have no idea how he could have sex with a prostitute. It looked as if I blew on him too hard he would fall over and die. Ali reached into her purse and pulled out her knife and held it out at the rich corpse.
“Tell us where she fucking is, or I’ll finish you off.” Ali got closer to LeBlanc as if to hold him hostage, but he quickly reached out and gripped her arm tightly, and yanked her close to his face. I raised my cane to defend her, but before I could, he made a low growling noise at her before tilting his head back and revealing a mouth below his chin. And before Ali could utter a word, he bit into her face and ripped off an entire chunk of it.
“Jesus fuck!” Was all I managed to shout as Ali’s lifeless body fell to the floor and LeBlanc turned to face me. I watched as he twisted and spasmed in his chair, as sickening crunches emanated from his body. He stood up from his chair, and I watched as legs sprouted from his backside and he rose from his chair like some horrible fucking centaur creature. I held up my cane defensively as LeBlanc leaned forward and began to crawl on all six of his appendages. I started to back up as best as I could, it’s not exactly easy to do that on a prosthetic.
“I can’t have you taking your sister away from me,” LeBlanc said, his strangely human voice coming from something so monstrous, really put me on edge. The uncanny valley really is a real thing when you come face to face with something that’s pretending to be human. “She is a perfect host for my child. I will not have you steal her from me.” He hissed at me, his mouth hung open with blood dripping from Ali’s face meat. He didn’t speak by moving his mouth, the words just seemed to come fully formed out of his mouth.
“What the fuck did you do to my sister?!” I shouted at him, holding my cane up high to swing at him at a moment’s notice. He kept approaching me slowly but surely, like a predator approaching a wounded animal. Which I guess is exactly what was happening. He pounced at me and I swung my cane at him, cracking him against the head and sending him stumbling to the floor. He growled and clawed at nothing, as he looked like a beetle that was knocked onto its back.
Taking that moment I quickly turned around and thanked God that I had gone for such a hardwood cane. I started running as quickly as I could on my one leg and started to put some distance between the two of us as whatever that thing was struggled to get back on his legs. I took a turn in that intersection I’d seen earlier and found myself facing a giant staircase. And on the second floor, I saw that there were plenty of rooms.
“God damn it,” I mumbled. I would’ve looked for an elevator but I chanced a look behind me and nearly shat a brick when I saw that giant fucking bug crawling on the ceiling towards me. A screech came from his open mouth. It was like a thousand nails on a chalkboard at the same time. Turning around I started the slow process of moving my way up the stairs. But I was barely halfway up the stairs before the creature that was LeBlanc had landed on his feet and started to quickly scurry towards me up the stairs.
“Stay away from there!” His human voice screamed while the screeching sound mixed with it. It was the most terrifying thing I’d seen. On top of every other fucking thing that had suddenly started going wrong when I entered this cursed fucking mansion. He caught up with me quickly and tripped me up by grabbing at my legs and causing me to fall down to the stairs into his clutches.
He snarled at me as he opened his jaws to take a bite out of me. Thinking on my foot I quickly held up my cane and allowed him to chew on it. I held it up and battled with him as the two of us tussled and fought with each other. We were in a stalemate and to my amazement and thanks he couldn’t seem to bite through the cane right away. It was like a dog who was refusing to let go of the stick he had just been sent to fetch.
I tried to think of a way to get out of this and at least give me some time to look for Amber. Looking down at my leg I thought of something I could do. Pulling one of my hands away from my cane I reached down to my leg and struggled to try and pull it off while only having my one hand to hold him off. I finally managed to yank it off and finally with all my strength cracked the creature against the head as hard as I could with my metal leg. He dropped my cane from his mouth and fell backward down the stairs and landed on his back again. A small part of me smiled in glee as I watched him squirming around on his back once again.
Quickly pulling my leg back on and hauling ass up the stairs I made it up the stairs and began to search the rooms for my sister. The first few rooms were empty but as I went through the rooms I began to come upon rooms drenched in blood. Both fresh and dried, I started to panic about what could’ve happened to my sister. And then I started coming upon rooms with dead bodies. Their stomachs ripped open. When I opened the first door that showed that I threw up and quickly shut the door behind me. My fear began to rise even more.
Finally, I opened one door and nearly collapsed when I saw Amber tied to a bed. “Amber,” I whimpered as I saw her. She looked over at me and her eyes went wide in terror.
“Arthur! Help me!” She screamed. I quickly shuffled into the room and closed the door behind me. I walked over to her and grabbed at the ropes that had her tied down. I quickly started to try and untie them but my eyes fell down to her stomach and my blood froze cold as I stared at her. She looked like she was due any moment now.
“What the hell happened to you, Amber?” I asked her, still trying to untie her but my eyes were completely glued to her stomach. She looked down at it and then stared back at me sadly.
“He…put something inside of me. You have to get me out of here quickly Artie! I feel like something’s moving in there!” She screamed out, and I watched as her stomach bulged and she let out a loud scream of pain. I quickly started to untie her and shuffled my way down to her feet to untie them as well. She continued to twist and turn and yell as whatever was inside of her picked up the pace of its thrashing inside of her.
Just as I was working on her last foot, the door to her room was ripped off its hinges as LeBlanc screeched in anger toward me. Amber let out a terrified scream and then a low groan as the thing inside of her thrashed again. I reached out to grab my cane but before I could he pounced on me and bit down on my arm. I screamed out as he crushed my hand inside his maw. He crunched down on my arm with a vice-like grip. I needed to save my sister, she was all I had. I yanked as hard as I could and watched as my arm severed below the elbow. The rest of my arm disappeared into LeBlanc’s mouth.
“Artie!” Amber screamed as I crawled my way out from underneath LeBlanc as he enjoyed my arm. I managed to reach her bedside before the shock of blood loss began to catch up with me. I reached out and grabbed her hand to try and pull her off the bed. She grabbed mine but began to scream uncontrollably as the thing inside of her was ready to come out. My eyes began to feel like they were weighed down by concrete and my strength was leaking out with the blood that was pouring out from my arm.
As I collapsed to the floor clutching my sister’s hand, the last thing I heard was her final scream as something sliced through her stomach and began to screech as LeBlanc had. I collapsed into unconsciousness and I must have surely died. For there was no feeling and nothing but inky horrible blackness.
Then all of a sudden I was pulled back into living as I woke up to slow methodical beeping. Forcing my eyes open a little I stared at the white ceiling of a hospital room. Turning my head to the left I looked over at the monitor that had woken me up.
“About time you woke up.” an unfamiliar voice told me. I turned my head to the right and was startled to see a well-dressed blond man staring at me. I tried to sit up but found that I had no strength to move much. “I do apologize for what my associate did to you. I’ve constantly tried to tell him to only go after people who don’t have families. But you can only teach an insect so many things.” My eyes finally adjusted enough to make out the man’s figure well enough. He had heavy bags under his eyes and despite this being a hospital room he was smoking a cigar as he stared at me.
“W-where’s my sister?” I asked in a hoarse voice. Some small part of me had hoped that she might have survived. The blond man looked at me and blew a cloud of smoke. For a short moment, I thought there was someone standing behind him as he blew that large plume of smoke. I blinked to try and see if I was seeing things.
“Dead. Moments after you collapsed unconscious.” he told me, leaning back on the chair he was sitting in and taking in another puff of smoke from his cigar. I stared at him for what felt like hours, but it was probably only a few moments before I moved my head to stare up at the ceiling and began to ball my fucking eyes out. I’d lost the closest person I had in my life and I was completely alone.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” I asked the man, lifting my arm up to wipe the tears from my eyes. Only to be met with a stump looking back at me. I’d given up everything for her and it all had meant nothing at the very end.
“How should I know, boy?” The man asked me as he stood up from the chair and reached into his pocket. “Here, I’m going to pay you to keep quiet about everything you learned about Jackson LeBlanc.” He told me and letting a slip of paper fall onto my chest. Picking it up with my remaining hand I saw that it was a cheque for over $500,000. “There’ll be more so long as you keep your mouth shut.”
“You can take this, and shove it up your fucking ass.” I told him, crumpling it up in my hand and throwing it back at him. The blond man tsked at me, reaching down and yanking me up from the bed I was laying in. My eyes met him and I saw the fiery rage that was in those eyes.
“Listen you little crippled piece of shit. Either you accept this fucking money or I feed you to that parasitic freak so you can join your whore of a sister!” He shouted at me, dropping me back down into my bed and getting a pained yell from me. He reached into his pocket and shoved another cheque into my chest before he turned and walked away from me. I watched as he walked away and once again I thought that he was being followed by something. But it must have just been the searing pain I was feeling.
So I accepted his blood money. But I haven’t used it. I haven’t so much as even looked at it after I deposited it into my new bank account. I’ve been wasting away in my apartment, only ever checked in on by Raj as I was seemingly rotting away by myself. I wish that I had died in that mansion with my sister. At the very least I would’ve died with her. And not survived to suffer without her.
As my last action, I decided to spit in their faces by telling all of you about what they’re doing to prostitutes, and what Jackson LeBlanc actually is. A parasite that’s trying to have a child. I don’t think he’s succeeded yet because prostitutes are still disappearing. I don’t know who that blond man was, but he must have some sort of role to play with LeBlanc. But that’s for others to find out. It’s my time to join you, Amber.