Crossed wires

Tuesday Afternoon 

The basement smelled like rusted iron and burned nerves.

Victoria hung from the ceiling by thick chains, her wrists wrapped raw. Her shirt was half-torn, soaked through with blood and sweat. One eye was swollen shut. The other gleamed with something sharp.

David approached without a word.

The first punch landed in her stomach—a deep, brutal blow that knocked the breath clean out of her.

She gasped, coughed blood... and then giggled.

He hit her across the face.

Her head snapped sideways, cheek splitting open, blood splattering across the floor. She let out a breathless laugh, her voice rasping through a cracked throat.

"Mmm," she hissed. "You've missed me."

David said nothing.

He struck again—harder—this time in the ribs. A crack answered him.

Victoria wheezed, grimaced—then gave a shuddering chuckle.

"Still have that perfect aim," she whispered. "You always knew where to hit."

He grabbed her hair, yanked her face toward his.

"You're enjoying this?"

"I'm savoring it," she smiled, blood on her teeth. "This is the first real conversation we've had in years."

David's jaw twitched.

He dropped her head and picked up a steel pipe from the table.

"You remember this?"

"Intimately."

He didn't wait.

He swung it into her thigh. A meaty, ugly noise. The bone underneath cracked, and Victoria screamed—then laughed right through it.

"Oh god, I forgot how good you are at this."

He hit her again, higher. Another rib, maybe two. Her whole body convulsed in the chains.

Still—

She giggled, biting her lip, eyes fluttering like someone being kissed.

"You hit harder when you're angry," she whispered.

He dropped the pipe.

Reached for the pliers.

Her breath caught—not in fear, but something closer to anticipation.

He took her left hand, gripped her index finger.

"You still paint?"

"I use knives now."

He crushed her nail between the rusted jaws.

She screamed—a raw, howling thing—then broke into wild, shaking laughter.

"You're perfect, David," she gasped. "Absolutely f***ing perfect."

He moved to the next finger

She laughed. A hoarse, ragged sound.

"You're still the worst man I've ever met."

Then:

Footsteps on the stairs.

Not hurried. Not scared. Calm. Rhythmic.

Then her voice:

"Uncle David?"

David exhaled slowly.

"Down here, Shari."

Sharon appeared in the doorway, dressed for travel. A black coat, a carry-on slung over one shoulder, her hair tied back. Her eyes scanned the scene—the broken woman bleeding on the chains, the bent crowbar in David's hand—and didn't blink.

"Looks like you've been busy."

"Had some... Entertainment" he muttered, wiping blood from his knuckles.

"I'm heading to the airport."

"Already?"

She nodded. "Jet's leaving in two hours. Grandfather expects your answer by Saturday."

David turned his back on Victoria and faced Sharon.

"And what if I don't give one?"

"Then he'll assume it's a no. And send someone less polite than me next time."

"Good," David growled. "Let him try."

Sharon tilted her head.

"He said... you can bring your little boyfriend if that sweetens the deal."

David's eyes narrowed.

"Vincent isn't part of this."

"He's part of this , you know that" Sharon said. "

David stepped closer.

"I'm not going back."

"Why not?"

"Because I hate them."

He said it plainly. No anger. No drama. Just the truth, rotted and full of history.

"I hate everything they are. Everything they turned me into. I'd rather rot down here than sit on their throne."

Sharon stared at him for a moment.

Then she shrugged. "Suit yourself."

She turned to go—but paused halfway up the stairs.

"You used to say I'd grow up to be just like my mother."

David's jaw clenched.

"You didn't," he said. "You grew into something worse."

She smiled faintly.

"And you love me for it."

Silence.

"Tell Vincent to meet me outside."

She vanished.

The door creaked closed behind her.

---

David stood still for a long time.

Only the sound of dripping blood filled the cellar.

Then—

a weak, rasping voice behind him:

"She's your niece?"

"Yeah."

"Same eyes," Victoria muttered. "Same knives in her smile."

"She's smarter," David said. "Meaner."

"And you still couldn't say goodbye properly."

He turned, slowly. His face was a shadow.

"You don't get to analyze me."

"I'm the only one who can," she said, grinning through blood. "We know too much about each other"

He stared at her.

"You look like hell."

"You made me," she whispered.

David walked to the table, sat down, wiped his hands clean on a ruined towel.

She watched him through one swollen eye.

"Something's wrong," she said.

He didn't answer.

"You're afraid," she said.

He looked at her then. And it wasn't fear in his eyes. It was anger 

"I spent years trying to unlearn what they did to me," he said. "Now they want me to lead them?"

She didn't smile this time.

"You won't go back?"

He shook his head.

"I won't even bury them. They don't deserve a funeral."

Silence.

"Good," Victoria said. " But I suppose you give that a try"

David leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes.

"You ever wonder" he said quietly "what a child becames when he grows up in a house built in teeth" 

The cellar hummed with tension, old blood, and the kind of silence that only came after pain.

" Do you want to hear a bedtime story?"

.

.

.

One day 

There was a man

He had three wives.

And from them, he bore nine children—each one cataloged and judged the way one inspects hunting dogs or war horses.

He believed children were not born with value.

They earned it.

Or they died.

Then, one year, the man made a mistake.

A fleeting moment of indulgence with one of the housemaids. A girl with quiet eyes and a scar on her wrist .

She got pregnant.

She didn't tell anyone.

Not out of shame, but strategy.

She thought—naively—that if she kept the secret, she could protect what would come. Raise the child quietly. Keep him away from them. From that house. That name.

But the man found out.

He didn't rage . He simply took the child from her arms the moment it was born.

The maid didn't even get to name him.

She was locked in a cellar somewhere on the estate. Not killed. Not yet.

"Just in case the boy ever needs a mother," the man had said.

Then forgotten her.

As for the child—he followed tradition.

Every child born in that house, whether legitimate or bastard, whether planned or accidental, was handed over to a pair—a man and a woman among the servants.

They would raise the child far from the estate.

Never tell him who he was.

Treat him cruelly.

Harshness breeds hardness, the man believed. And only the cruelest sons survived.

That was the test.

If the child broke—he died.

If the child killed—he lived.

If he proved exceptional—he might come back.

If not… the surrogate parents were executed alongside him.

Failure was a group sentence.

And so, the unnamed baby—no record, no title—was placed in the arms of two lower servants.

They were sent far away.

To a distant, rotting village with broken roofs and fog that never lifted.

The couple named the boy David.

They weren't supposed to love him.

They were supposed to beat him, starve him, break his trust before he even learned to speak.

But something went wrong.

They fell in love with the child.

Not romantically. Not blindly. But with the aching gentleness of people who had prayed for seven years for a child of their own—and received him in the form of a sleeping, nameless boy wrapped in linen.

They raised him like he was theirs.

They told him stories. Gave him hot soup in winter. Held his hand when he was afraid.

They didn't know that kindness would cost them everything.

And neither did he.

Not yet.

.

.

.

David was not a loud child.

He didn't cry much, didn't laugh loudly, didn't throw tantrums like the other village children.

He was... observant. Still. And when he looked at you, it always felt like he wasn't seeing your face — but measuring how easily it would peel off.

He was barely one year old when his "parents" — the couple chosen by the estate — began to worry.

It started small.

One morning, they found a bird pinned to the back of the shed. Wings stretched, body open, organs displayed like petals. Beside it, a tiny butter-knife covered in drying blood. David was barely walking.

Another day, they caught him pulling the legs off a spider, humming softly, watching it try to crawl with what was left.

His mother turned white.

His father sent for a priest.

He liked the sound small bones made when they snapped.

He liked that silence always followed a scream.

He liked when something that had been moving… stopped.

They tried to teach him kindness.

He listened, nodded, mimicked regret. But the blood kept appearing — behind the barn, beneath the floorboards, between the pages of his picture books.

Then came Caroline.

The neighbor's daughter. Three years old, wild and golden and unafraid of anything.

When they first met, she marched straight up to him and smacked the dead beetle out of his hand.

"That's gross," she'd said.

David blinked.

Then smiled.

They became inseparable.

She took his hand and made him run. Taught him to dance in mud, to chase clouds, to sit still and look at stars without wanting to pluck them.

He never smiled at anyone the way he smiled at her.

She was everything he wasn't: warm, loud, alive.

And somehow, she learnt him how to look to the beauty.

She called him "my little prince."

He called her "his."

Once, under a grey sky and muddy boots, he told her:

"When I grow up, I'm going to marry you. I'll keep you in a house with windows."

She laughed. "Why wouldn't it have windows?"

"So no one else sees you."

Sometimes, Caroline would catch him hurting something — a frog, a squirrel, a cat once. She'd scream at him, slap him, cry.

He never got angry at her.

He just... tried to stop.

For a little while.

---

His mother became sick. Nauseous in the mornings. Sleepy all the time.

David noticed before they said anything.

He caught his father holding her belly one night, whispering.

He knew.

They were having another child.

His father stopped lifting him up.

His mother no longer kissed him goodnight — just nodded, distracted.

When he brought her a dead bird he'd "saved from the cat," she screamed at him. Told him to get away.

That night, he buried the bird beneath Caroline's tree.

Weeks passed. The belly grew. So did the silence.

They didn't say it, but he felt it.

The warmth they had wrapped him in all his life had cooled.

One morning, he heard them whispering in the kitchen.

"I'm afraid of what my child will become if David stays too close," his mother said.

His father was quiet. "We'll handle it."

David sat outside the door, holding a moth with one wing torn off.

It fluttered. Died.

He didn't blink.

---

Then, the day came.

Caroline had braided a crown from reeds and placed it on his head.

He didn't like how fragile it felt.

Then his father's voice boomed from the doorway:

"David. Come here. Quickly."

He ran inside.

His mother was pale, soaked in sweat, but smiling. In her arms was a bundle wrapped in blue cloth.

"Look, David," she whispered. "This is your little brother."

David stood there, expression unreadable.

"He's yours " she added. "Go on. Try holding him."

He shook his head. "He's… small. What if I drop him? What if I… killed him by mistake?"

She smiled. "You won't. I know you won't."

He didn't move.

She pressed again. "At least give him a name. That's your job now."

David stared at the tiny face. At the little fists. At the peace it wore .

"His name is…"

He hesitated.

Then, with a voice like cold steel:

"Vincent."

His mother sighed, happy. "That's beautiful."

But David was still staring.

And somewhere deep in his chest, something sharp turned over and whispered:

Now you're replaceable.