Commissioned [completed]

Chapter 36 - Be not afraid

You woke mercilessly cold. Water soaked your feet and pants. "What the fuck is this water?!"" You croaked, your throat like sandpaper, "If I get a UTI, I'm going to be so pissed!" You yelled to the brazier-lit, barred room. Your words echoed back at you and around a corner.

The bricks were red, the bars were wrought iron and spiked, flourished like the catacombs of Italy. You noticed a stack of skulls in your enclosure. "What are you in for?" You asked glumly. You sighed as, of course, the head did not reply.

You had to use the bars to help you to your feet, you hissed, feeling bruised and beaten. "Fuck the police," you muttered to yourself. You had been so careful—they must have seen you on road cameras.

Your chest felt weird. You reached... and you pulled out your phone. "Huh," you said softly. "Pious jerks probably couldn't even look at my chest, let alone search it." Not that it helped you; you had no bars. It was the sewer. You ambled around the cell for bars.

"I'm going to kick Sodo," you grumbled, but then it occurred that something might have happened to the angry little asshole. They had blades that could literally kill him. Properly dead.

You narrowed your eyes to the bars of the cell. You weren't getting between them with all your bones; you weren't a squid. The gate was old... you looked at the hinges. "Pirates of the Caribbean..." you murmured. A soft, welcome ping sounded in your right ear. Firstly, the movie was a pansexual fever dream. Secondly, it taught old gates, old hinged doors just need a little 'leverage'. You looked around the cell; there wasn't a bench, only the nook of skulls. The heads probably didn't deserve it, but you cleared them from their place in the wall. It was to no avail. You passed the cell like a tense zoo animal. "I'm going to get pink eye," is all you came up with. No, you wouldn't; you were going to be dead. "At least if I am dead, I won't have to deal with pink eye!" you amended.

Sodo had kept telling you that you were too strong. And perhaps you were. You'd been taught to be gentle with others because you often didn't know your strength. But that was human; worse, it was presenting feminine. Gentle, docile, feminine. Anyone who knew the feminine knew it was neither gentle nor docile, and to be either took great strength.

You drummed your fingers on your folded arm. "I'm basically dead anyway," you shrugged, stowing the rising panic the sentiment came with, and instead, you approached the iron door. You planted your bare feet, and you lifted. The iron groaned. "No.. nope.." you panted. If you couldn't lift Sodo out of here the first time... "damn it!" You yelled, hearing it echo back at you.

You stared at the half-submerged skull. That was soon to be you. "I don't want to be a fucking ornament!" You yelled and struggled against the door again. Your back ached from your fall on the wheely chair. Your arms, your face...You sighed and rested your head against the gate. "I think your decorating is tacky," you said quieter, but you knew you were alone, and your words didn't matter. You sniffed, "I'm an artist; I should know when decorating is tacky, and yours is." Your right ear pinged again.

Your head was bowed in view of the hinges. It only really had a pin holding it there. You tried with your hands to pull it out; in your desperation, you ripped skin. In your growing anguish, you rattled the bars and choked a sob. Please, someone.

But there wouldn't be. There was no one for your skull friend, and there wouldn't be anyone for you. Your right ear dinged louder. You looked at your skull friend again, looked at his wedge-like jaw, then back to the pin in the hinge. The jaw came off with a snap, and the teeth dropped everywhere like raindrops to the water.

You began prying the nail from the hinge with your friend's jawbone. It was giving. Your hands bled, caked with rust and filth, but the first came away, followed by the second. You tried to walk the gate quietly to the ground. It didn't want to be quiet—It wanted to be heavy, slip from grasp, and come crashing to the ground.