SGE His Guarded Heart (Prequel to His Darkened Heart)

Chapter 5 Losing Game

"He's weak and look at you—you're strong, Krushem. You're like me."
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Chapter 5 Losing Game

The bloodshed began not long after that first day Krushem and the others had arrived to the School for Boys.

Ever since being declared as Tedros's right hand man, Aric had had the freedom to go about hurting boys he thought acted out of line. The Doom Room had been reopened and that was where Aric would drag boys to before punishing them.

So for the past few weeks, the school was filled with bloodcurdling screams that robbed Krushem of sleep. He would stay awake, listening to poor boys screaming in agony below him until the screams would die down.

Aric had recruited Balleng and Armeq to help him in punishing the boys. Krushem had only gone into the doom room after the aftermath where he would witness battered and bruised boys shaking on the floor, their backs bloody.

Aric would tell the boys to leave and the boys would flee from the Doom Room with all the strength they had left, leaving a trail of blood in their wake. Aric hasn't assigned Krushem to punish the boys yet, but he had assigned Krushem to do cleanup.

Cleanup involved scrubbing the blood off the floors and walls and cleaning the torture weapons that Aric and Balleng and Armeq would use to inflict punishments.

Krushem couldn't fathom how Armeq and Balleng could just go along with Aric and torture poor, innocent boys without feeling sick to their stomach. Krushem was only relieved Aric hadn't asked him to help with torturing others, but he feared that time would come soon enough.

One particular day, Krsuhem was on cleanup duty again. Aric had gone to see Tedros regarding waking up the teachers or something of the sort, and he'd told Krushem to do cleanup while he was gone.

So there Krushem was, on his hands and knees in a puddle of blood scrubbing at the floor. His whole body was tense, his muscles stiff. His knees ached from resting on the hard, stone floor and his arms were sore from long use.

The smell of blood hung in the air like a storm cloud, and Krushem felt the thick blood become stuck beneath his fingernails as he worked to clean the bloody puddle on the floor before him.

Part of Krushem wondered if Aric had only assigned him on cleanup duty because he didn't think Krushem had the guts to actually torture someone. But if Aric thought he was soft, why let Krushem be one of his henchman anyway? It was clear as day the past few weeks that Aric loathed all boys who even showed an ounce of softness, so why not torture Krushem like he tortured everybody else?

Aric was a puzzling person to Krushem. He didn't know what Aric saw in him to make him his henchman. He hadn't done anything of the sort to "help bring order" to the school for boys. All he'd done was clean up Aric's messes—literally.

It was like Aric didn't see Krushem as a henchman. No, he saw Krushem like a maid. A maid!

Krushem didn't know why that made him so angry. Why would he care what Aric thought of him as anyway? Krushem was just relieved Aric didn't ask him to torture others, because Krushem didn't want to inflict pain on others. He wasn't a sadist like Aric was.

Krushem didn't want to hurt others and yet he didn't want to be hurt either. Cleanup duty was the in-between. It was an in-between Krushem preferred over everything else. So if Aric thought of him as a maid, then so be it. Krushem would be the maid and that was fine by him.

Krushem wrung the wet rag into a bucket of water and watched the blood fall drip by drip. 

The silence of the doom room was almost as eerie as the sound of it when boys were being tortured. The silence almost seemed more foreboding than the screams of despairing boys. Krushem felt on edge every time he stepped foot in the empty doom room.