Chapter 6.3
Hours later, the sound of the bunk door slamming startles me awake. I peer over the matrice to the outline of Rickon stumbling through the door. I searched the room but everyone had already left for the day. He kicked my shin, "Oi, go get me some water." He ordered. I glanced past him at the sink he'd just passed to get here, then silently filled the metal cup standing on its side with tap water and handed it to him, watching him carefully.
He was angry. More so than usual. Something didn't go well at the department of detainment. After a couple of mouthfuls he pulls it away in disgust, "uh, its warm." He threw it across the room, spilling water across the beds and clanging against the door.
"Pick it up." He ordered. I did. "Get me some cold water from upstairs." He ordered. We weren't meant to go upstairs unless our client needed something, he told me this himself. Getting caught up there was going to be far worse for me than for him. I was a nobody kid that looked like he came from the streets. But the air around him was thick and angry. He wanted me to disobey.
Without a second of indecision I retrieved the cup and left. When we had business with our client we would use the special lift next to the bunk, but that required a key that only Rickon had. The other side of the basement where it was used for storage, I noticed a set of stairs, presumably to be used in emergencies. At first, I thought it might have been alarmed, but as Quin was gone when I woke up and Rickon only just arrived, they must have been using the set of stairs as well. After three fights of stairs I reached the ground floor. The door had a small narrow window that I could peer through if I stood on my toes. The stairs opened up in a different part of the ground floor that the lift came out; here there were several offices surrounding a series of open plan desks, thankfully, with their back to me. I watched the pattern of people pass by for several minutes and slipped into the hall when there were least people watching. Those at their desks were too busy with their work to notice me skip past them to the water cooler at the other end of the hall. I filled the cup quickly, but I kept shooting nervous glances in either direction as the water cooler made painful gurgling sounds. I filled it three quarters then crept back to the stairs, spilling a little bit as I ducked behind a desk to avoid being seen.
Back in the bunk Rickon looked at the cup distastefully then swallowed it in one gulp.
He turned to me with a bitter look, "Sit down." He ordered. I sat uneasily on the piece of floor I was using as a bed, my hands resting either side of me to propel me out the way if needed. "You would do anything I say wont you?" he laughed dryly, "You're the perfect little bitch, you don't complain, and you follow orders, and you don't die." He gave an evil smile that sent shivers down my spine. There was something wrong with him, I felt waves of wrath roll of him- it hung round him like a stench, and that feeling terrified me to the pit of my stomach. But I couldn't move. He stumbles upright and looms over me. "How is that? Huh? How are you still alive you little runt?" I stayed silent, I truly wanted to run, and I don't know why I didn't. He pressed his foot onto the back of my hands and pushed it into it. Pain flared up my arm as he rubbed his heel into my hand, leaning his weight onto that single foot. "does that hurt? You won't even complain about that!" he slapped the back of my head, "did that hurt?" he asked, but I kept my head down and kept silent. I could smell the liquor on him as he took another swig of his flask. Hopefully, he would get too drunk and pass out, then I could crawl away, and we could both sleep it off- him the alcohol and me that pain.
"I asked you a question runt!" he releases he foot on my hand, inwardly I give sigh of relief, but like a statue, I can't move. I'm stuck in that awkward position with my hand held out in striking range. I want to pull it back, but I'm frozen in place, while cold sweat trickles down my back, sticking my top to my skin. "ANSWER ME!" he yells, grabbing me by the scruff of the neck and holding me up to his face so that my feet dangle away from the floor. A lump forms' in my throat, but from somewhere a trace insurgence rises from my stomach, and instead of looking at my hanging feet, I look up, directly into his eyes.
With animals, looking them in the eye could be a sign of aggression or a challenge to authority, apparently Rickon was such a creature. "Finally! I was beginning to think you were a living corpse. Well then?" he spat. I watched his eyes; they were dark with insanity running straight through them and the look of someone who'd killed too many men and was paying the price for his sins. "SAY SOMETHING!" he yells, beads of saliva fly onto my face, but I couldn't work my arms to wipe it away. He rams me into the wall and hits me with his spare hand, my skull cracking and ricocheting off the brick behind me. Darkness bleeds into my vision, and I could hear him shouting something else but for a couple of seconds my head rings with pain and fuzziness and I couldn't make sense of any of the words. My nose runs with snot and blood streaming down my face, and finally when my arms are free of the paralysis, I tenderly wipe at the river running down my face, "it hurts" I mutter.
His rapid breathing suddenly stops, and he releases me in mid-air, I hurtle to the floor, collapsing onto my knees. "Hurts…" he whispers, his expression a hundred miles away. He stumbles back, then turns tail and leaves me to crawl back under my blanket and cradle my wounds.
After the late hours of the night, my light sleep is disturbed by the creaking springs of an old army bed as a very drunk Rickkon collapses into his bed, shifting the entire frame a couple of inches towards my face. Where he went between then and before I don't know, but exhaustion pulled him into a deep sleep in seconds.