My Maddie (Hades Hangmen #8)(45)

“Poppa? What the fuck are you talking about, Flame? Poppa’s dead!”

“Leave him the fuck alone! Don’t touch him. Don’t you dare fucking touch him!” I said when they looked at my brother.

But Poppa and Pastor Hughes only laughed. There was another man behind them. He was here with the snakes; he’d brought them to me. To check if I was still evil. To see if I still had demons in my blood. I didn’t want to be evil anymore. I wanted my poppa to know I was good. Then maybe God would stop me being retarded, if he knew I was good. Maybe he’d help me understand people. Maybe I wouldn’t be different. If He knew I was good, the devil would leave me alone.

I froze when Pastor Hughes brought the snakes before me. “What the fuck? Who the hell is this cunt? Fucking psycho who’s scared of snakes?” He laughed. “What’s with all the cuts on his skin?” He reached out and touched my chest. I clenched my jaw so tight it made my teeth ache. I didn’t like to be touched. People only hurt me when they touched me. Or I hurt them.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me! The flames. The fucking flames! I need to let them out. I need to cut them out. They need to be released.”

“Flame. Be quiet!” Isaiah shouted from beside me. I’d never heard his voice before. He’d died before he could speak.

“Cut them out? Flames need to be released?” Poppa said, laughing. He lifted a knife. My cock got hard the minute I saw the blade. I hissed and tried to move, to hold my cock. He liked me to release myself. He liked me to bend over so he could release himself inside me. It hurt. But that was the devil, he said. The devil fighting the honest people of God who were trying to help me. If he pushed himself inside me, then maybe he wouldn’t do it to Isaiah. But I was trapped. I couldn’t move.

“What the fuck! He’s hard. Sick fucker’s gonna come just at the sight of the blade.”

Poppa got closer with the blade. I watched the knife as it pressed to my skin. The minute Poppa pushed down and broke the skin, my cock started throbbing. Poppa… Poppa always made the evil come out of me. In the cellar. He came into the cellar and made me better with his holy seed. He helped me release the evil too. He was trying to save my soul.

“This how you like it, sick fucker?” Poppa asked and sliced the blade along my skin on my arms. My teeth clenched and my eyes closed in relief, as I felt the flames drain away and rush down to my hard dick. Someone laughed again, but the flames were about to leave me. When they left me I could breathe. Until they came back. But I’d be able to breathe, and Isaiah would be safe.

“More,” I pleaded when the blade left my skin. “More, Poppa… please…”

Poppa started slicing into my skin, over and over again. Deeper and deeper until my muscles began to tense at the pain. My hands curled into fists, and when he stabbed the knife deep in my forearm, I screamed as the release left my cock and the flames drained from my blood.

Laughing. They were laughing. I didn’t know why they were laughing so much. Maybe it was because I was healed? Maybe it was because I was good. Maybe they were happy with me. Maybe I’d done well.

“And you?” Poppa said, pointing the knife to Isaiah. “You a sick fucker too? You gonna come in your pants if I cut you too?”

My eyes snapped open. “No!” I ordered and tried to push away from the tree. “He’s good. Please, Poppa. He doesn’t have the flames like me. He’s blessed by God. Not the devil.”

Poppa turned to me. “But we think he just might belong to the devil, like you.”

“No!” I called and my heart began to pound. Isaiah was good. He wasn’t like me. I killed him because I was bad. But he came back because he was good, like Jesus, he came back from the dead. He wasn’t evil. I didn’t want him to die again. I wanted to have him back with me. Mama said I had to always protect him. She made me promise her. I didn’t want to break my promise to her again. “Don’t. Please,” I begged.

But Poppa ripped off Isaiah’s leather jacket and threw it to the ground. He took hold of his bare arm and sliced the blade along it. Isaiah hissed in pain, but he didn’t scream. “No!” I shouted instead, trying to get free from my restraints. “No, no, no!”

“No hard on? No fucking coming in your pants like your friend here?”

“Back the fuck off. Leave him alone,” Isaiah said.

But Poppa kept cutting my brother. Kept slicing his flesh. When Poppa and Pastor Hughes were finished, Isaiah was covered in blood. They weren’t meant to hurt him. They hurt me, not him. They were meant to cut me, not him. Not my brother. He was good, not evil like me. I didn’t understand why they were hurting him.

“Enough,” Pastor Hughes demanded. He turned and smiled at me. I relaxed a little. Was it over? Was it time to leave Church and go home?

But then he bent down and took a snake from a cage on the floor. My body froze. “It was this that made him drop to the floor like a fucking pussy.” He brought the snake closer to me. I could feel my blood dripping from my arms. Poppa had just made me release the flames from my cock. But I could feel the flames quickly coming back, could feel the demons crawling under my skin, taking over again. The snake hissed and Pastor Hughes stroked its head. Poppa came forward, slicing off my shirt and cut. Pastor Hughes stepped round him and brought the snake to my bare chest. “You don’t like snakes, huh?”