Democracy

tour

"This is the meeting room." I wave my arm generally around the room. "I meet dealers here and they become recruits or they follow Keiran's lead and wind up dead." He nods slowly. I lead him through to our sitting room. "This is where we hold meetings properly, discuss business and all the like. You can also come in and just laze about." We go through to the corridor and I point at the doors. "My room. Then Chuck's, then Fern's, then Harriet's." I move to the door beside Harriet's and open it. "This can be your room, if you want it. We mostly sleep at the house but sometimes one of us wants to sleep here and sometimes we have work here." His room is empty at the moment, except for a large bed and a cupboard at the side. I direct him down some stairs. "This is a different living quarters." I tell him. He gives me a questioning look, he hasn't said anything since we arrived. Neither have the others who follow behind.
I enter a room. It goes silent and the smoke that waves through it seems to get thinner as people put out their cigarettes. I walk to the centre of the room where there is a table which I lean on. Gesturing Dorian forward, I watch the men in this room as they scutter to the side.
"You all should have heard about the bodies that we put on display today. I am hoping you can recognise the importance of your silence about our work. Currently, there is a body in the morgue, just one, but as you like to know, we work in sets of four here, so just remember that you'll be dragging not just yourself down but your friends as well if you don't keep quiet." I pause, letting my words hover in the room. Then I gesture to Dorian, "this is Dorian. Take orders from him just as you would Harriet, Chuck and Fern." I start to head out of the door but when I reach it, I hear some muttering about Dorian. I stop Dorian where he is and slide a knife into his hand. "What did you say Thomas?" The boy, Thomas, instantly grows frightened. He won't repeat what he said. It's no matter, I heard him call Dorian a pussy. "We all know the rules here, if you decide to talk negatively about anybody else, that person reserves the right to cut your tongue right out of your mouth or, well, really any body part they choose." I gesture Dorian forward and call for Thomas to stand out.
Thomas is jittery. He is older than Dorian and I. He is also taller and stands over Dorian, trembling. Dorian hovers over his face with the knife.
"Any body part you choose, Dorian," I tell him, "do your best not to kill him," I add in a bored tone.
In a moment of thinking Dorian's hand moves toward the eyes. Thomas watches it carefully, until he can't anymore- until there is a knife stuck into his right eye, and he is screaming, and Dorian is trying to pluck the eyeball from his socket but settles for cutting it beyond repair as Thomas wails in agony. After a couple minutes, Dorian steps away, admiring his handy work. I clap my hand on his back and pull him towards the door.
"Welldone," I whisper to him on our journey down to the morgue. He smiles a little across at me.
As it always is, the morgue is cold. I introduce Dorian to our doctor and then I pull out a body from the drawer. Dorian's eyebrows furrow a little as he looks down at the corpse but he quickly finds an expressionless mask to wear. I turn my back on him.
When I turn back blowtorch in hand, he's calm again. He looks up at me with a questioning look. I pass him the blowtorch.
"You saw the brand on the bodies today?" He nods slowly. "Do the same to this one." He opens his mouth a little in hesitation. "It doesn't need to be perfect just 4 dots in a diamond shape." He nods, frowning. But he leans over the boy and pressed the blowtorch on and holds it to the body's skin, watching it melt and warp. By the end the room smells of charred flesh and I am glad to push the stench back into its drawer.
I show Dorian the rest of the house, leading back to the front door.
"Don't bother coming tomorrow," I tell him when we reach the door. He nods and turns to leave but I grab his shoulder. He doesn't react when I hand him the smartphone out of my pocket. "It has my number on it. Use it if you need to. Otherwise just get some music, there's tons of memory for songs and that shit. All money is covered. Be here on Sunday." I close the door before I can hear him say thank you mousily.
I spend the rest of the evening beating the crap out of a punching bag. I sleep like a baby.
The next morning I don't talk to anybody, choosing to sit in my room and process the previous day's events. When Saul attempts to enter, I twist his hand around and slam the door, he hisses in annoyance but afterwards I am greeted with silence again meaning he either disappeared or he's hiding behind the door, waiting for me to allow him entrance.
When it becomes dark outside, I find myself outside the front door, bow in hand. I head into the woods, watching for anything moving between the trees. Ten minutes in, I see a rabbit. Scampering toward a bush, terrified, it comes under my aim. Then an arrow pierces its head. The arrowhead is struck in the ground and half the rabbits face is drooping over the end of the arrow.
Shouting stilts the air and I realise I've wandered close to the fence of the house where the abused boy lives. It's where Dorian lives. I don't want it to be.
The voice that is responsible for the shouting is deep, too deep to be Dorian's, and strong- it must be his father. Anger rips through each muffled shout. Has Dorian been stuck with this all day?
As the shouts continue and I fight off any wisp of guilt that tries to entrap me, I sink down to sit by a tree. Dorian was left in that house all day due to my order. He has had none of the training that the other three have and although he can obviously fight he hasn't been taught how to fight against something like his family. So I sit there, with no intention of returning to the house, the idea doesn't even cross my mind. I listen to the shouts that the father dolls out. Then I hear the moments of silence when the father dolls out other things to his boy. Then the shouting returns and I listen more. Until his violent words lull me to a stormy sleep. I don't dream. I don't even fully sleep, still hearing the father's anger from within my head. I don't even think of blocking his voice out. It shows when he isn't hurting the boy.