I could see the welts from across the long dark hall of Line Manor. She wore nothing and had a deep coldness to her body. I felt cold even in the tropical heat.

The floor was made of the thinest, most delicate egg shells, each crumbly shell connected to the lump in my throat. My heart wouldn't stop pounding, slowly, thanks to the propranolol, but strong, BABAM BABAM BABAM.

Beads of sweat ran down my body. The wind of the afternoon monsoon was gone. I could hardly breathe in the heat.

"I know you're there." she said, "might as well come on out."

That moment was both, the most terrifying and the most ecstatic of my entire life.

I was 14 years old. At Line Manor to become a man. And I was about to. About to become a man with the single most beautiful thing I could ever dream up. Miss Hayley. Chinese by birth. Singaporean by choice.

I stepped forward from the window and walked across the reflection of the moon on the wooden floor.

The welts. I slowed my steps and focused my eyes. The welts were now gone. Had I been imagining them?

I was within a foot of her neck when she turned to face me.

"It's the end of summer now." she said, her emotion a mystery, "you know what that means?"

I did indeed 'know what that means' ...

"We FUCK you idiot. And I get to finally leave this terrible place."

My blood stopped working at 'FUCKED' ...

"I'm going somewhere cold, I came here your age, but I was born on a mountain, 27 years it's been, but I miss the mountains now. I won't go back to that horrid place, full of whores and donkeys. I'll go to Japan, Hokkaido! or maybe somewhere north north in Canada!"

She spread her legs along the rug, the same rug hundreds of Kings and Queens had casually stepped.

Ballerina toes, experienced, not a scar or stretch mark on her, the skin of a child never let outside to play.

She got her freedom. I got my first fuck. It was our deal. You might think it wrong, some teenage psychopath trading on his unmatched powers. But I was in love. And I wanted her more than I'd ever wanted anything.

Maybe I was some teenage psychopath, but love for her broke through.

"I don't hate you. I want you to know that." she spread her feet wider, "but I will come back here one day and cut your throat from ear to ear."

Her smile could have lit the planet, a druggie on Christmas Eve scoring a floating warehouse of smack.

She reached out with her long fingers and pulled apart my mouth, closing the space between us, I felt her warm breath sucked down within me.

Something inside me snapped.

The Messiah, the future King of everything any human had ever laid there eyes on, snapped.

I would no longer be treated as the shy boy prince, lurking in the dark.

Tonight I would show Miss Hayley, this common prisoner, trash thief, caught on her knees as her master plan, her life's purpose, her one true dream failed.

As she pulled and squeezed my lips with her fingers. I removed my gloves from my pocket.

This story continues...

The Line Wars: The Tropics - Miss Hayley's Bones - A story of The Church of BRAD