I couldn’t do it anymore.

I couldn’t handle my sister’s agony, my father’s despair, my own brokenness.

I can’t do this.

And neither could Jasmine.

Her tears stopped as suddenly as they began, but her eyes never tore away from mine. Her cheek pressed on the floor as her breath puffed cold smoke from bluing lips.

And she uttered the words I would never forget.

The words ensuring I stepped into an icicle prison and gave her the key. The sentence forever turning me into snow so I never, never, never had to feel what I’d felt that day.

“Kite…I can’t feel my legs.”

I howled in remembered agony, hating him all over again. He’d disabled my sister. He’d broken her back, crippled her spinal column. He’d irrevocably destroyed her life all because of me.

Me.

Fuck!

Blocking out his screams, I stormed toward the head of the rack and traded the club for the lever. While Cut trembled and shook in his restraints, I punched the mechanism, cocking it another rotation.

His broken ankle and limbs stretched further, eliciting more screams, more begs. The barn filled with sounds of popping and cracking. The gristle and ligaments finally gave up, breaking in increments.

I wanted to be sick. I wanted to wade through his pain, and for once, stop wallowing in others’ misfortune. But unlike the instant with Jasmine teaching me in one violent swoop to stop, I couldn’t.

“Jethro—stop. Please…” Cut’s voice interspersed with deep-seated groans. I wanted so much to give in and obey. But he’d committed too much. Done too much wrong.

He hadn’t paid enough. Not yet.

Shoving the club down my waistband again, I sat on my haunches and grabbed the small wheel below the rack.  I knew this machine so well. Too well. It’d become a regular enemy, and I’d learned how to use it from too young an age.

Cut had felt what it was like to lay horizontal while receiving pain. It was entirely a new experience to be vertical.

Spinning the wheel, I shut my ears off to Cut’s string of curses and pleas as the table slowly tilted upright, transforming from bed to wall. With every inch, Cut’s body shifted as the weight transformed from his back to his wrists. His spine remained stretched, his body distended, but now the new angle meant he could see me moving around. He was the messiah this time about to die for his sins, not others.

Feeling his eyes on me, I didn’t look up as I made my way toward the table of horrors. Gently, I placed the club back into its dusty spot and grabbed the cat o’ nine tails.

“Have you hung there long enough, Jet?”

My father’s voice roused me. My head soared up even though my neck throbbed. He’d left the clock on the stool in front of me, letting me count the time. Today, I’d been on the rack for two hours and thirteen minutes. Jasmine was still at the hospital. The doctors did all they could to fix the blunt force trauma to her spine. But they weren’t hopeful.

Nothing Cut did to me now would ever be as bad as watching my sister run for the very last time.

I’d made a promise never to come here again, but that was before Cut scooped me from my bed at daybreak and gave me no choice.

“Let me down.” I coughed, lubricating my throat. “You don’t need to do this anymore.”

He came to stand in front of me, his hands jammed in his pockets. “Are you sure about that?”

I nodded, tired and strung out and for once, blank from feeling anything. “I’m empty inside. I promise.”

He gnawed on his lower lip, hope lighting his gaze. “I really hope this time you’re telling the truth, son.” His head turned toward the table. The dreaded, hated, despised table.

A thought clouded his face as he strolled over and picked up a whip with multiple strands with cruel knots tied in the cords. He’d threatened me with the whip before but never actually used it.

I tensed in the cuffs. My limbs had stopped screaming, but my joints were beyond moving. Cut knew how far I could be stretched these days without causing me too much agony.

After all, it was about keeping me immobile and sensitive, rather than ripping me into pieces.

“Let’s see if your lessons have been learned, shall we?” He dragged the whip through his fingers. “Call this your final exam, son. Pass this and you’ll never have to come in here again.”

He didn’t give me time to argue.

His arm cocked backward.

The whip and its knotted tails shot forward.

The first lick shredded my t-shirt, biting sharply into my chest.

A scream balled in my throat, but I’d finally learned. I’d learned not to focus on myself or my sister or prey or hope or happiness or normalcy. I’d learned to focus on him—my father, my ruler, my life-giver.

So I did.

Every strike, I took with pride because Cut felt proud of me.

Every cut, I accepted with gratefulness because Cut finally believed he’d earned a worthy son.

I listened to him and only him.

And it saved me from myself.

I gripped the table as a feverish weakness throttled me. I couldn’t do this much longer. Every part of me was heavy with sickness and toil. I’d proven my point. I’d made him suffer. I had to end this before I drove myself into a grave beside him.

Pushing off from the wood, I stalked to face Cut on the rack.

His eyes widened, locking onto the whip.

“Let’s see if you’ve learned your lesson, Father. Let’s see if you can accept what you gave me as quietly as I accepted it.”