#faralexgraves

“Johnny…Johnny don’t–”

Voice wavering, cracking into a pained grumble as his head is cranked backwards and made to face the ceiling. Eyes straining to look down a broken nose and refusing to be forced away from the man across the room.

“Don’t...” wheezes through bruised lungs and something clicks in his throat as he swallows hard, the knife-tip a sharp point against the column of his throat as the tender skin moves beneath it with each despairing breath.

It’s almost beautiful, the gram staining of his eyes. Heavy irritation turning the sclera dark and heavy, as heavy as the bruises beneath each eye - pressed so delicately into that thin skin - and the bruise that sits heavy across the bridge of his nose.

Such blue eyes, the unrealest kind blue. The kind that people dream of capturing in art, photography, poetry. Blue like the Ocean: blue that is grey and roiling with white caps - blue that is green and sea salt-soaked skyline - blue that is bright and clear and unwavering as a pool - it will always return to the stillness.

Blue eyes that bore straight into him. Tears pooling up in heaps before they tumble down gaunt cheeks and sear across torn skin.

“Don’t…” the knife’s tip peeks through his skin as he flexes his throat, the blood drips slow and warm, “Don’t watch…”

When this started, he understood most of what their captors were rambling about. He knew the language in passing. Conversational.

But now, his brain is so bruised and disconnected, he struggles to understand they’re speaking at all. Someone behind him barks out an order, for only orders have that level of cadence.

A body moves from behind him, to behind Johnny…

Two gloved hands land on either side of his temple, they force his head forward. Fingers tipped in dirt and blood clawing at his face.

“Please…” he begs. He pleads to not deaf but uncaring ears. The mighty beast bows and crows in pathetic groans as the knife digs deeper into the jut of his jaw, where the hinge that maneuvers so much of a human’s quality of life sits innocently.

The pain is unreal. It simply cannot physically exist. The varied wounds across his body are real - he watched each one get inflicted. He’s felt the pain of them for the duration of their stay here in hell. But the knife digging into the cartilage of the joint, it shoots through his skull like the sharp discordant plucking of a string.

He knows.

He knows that Johnny knows.

Their time here - is up.

“Close your eyes..” he whispers, the subtlest movement of his mouth lances pain like no other.

But stubborn, unyielding, good Johnny won’t.

And they both know it.

He watches, eyes pouring out whatever is left of his body’s dwindling resources. When he shakes his head, the man behind him yanks him back and forth. Like a dog shaking a rabbit - the rabbit making a wounded sound high in its throat.

He doesn’t want Johnny to watch this. Doesn’t want to impart the horror into that too-good-too-kind mind.

“Close… your eyes… love – please…”

“John–”

They cut his voice out.

It tapers off between consonants, soft sound turning into a gargled gasp as the knife’s edge jerks its way across the most vulnerable part of a man’s body. That ever so protected space that all animals covet.

Rent from one hinge to the next, the blood that sprays out is spectacular. The sound is nonexistent outside of his own head - the ripping of each individual cell that reverberates into his skull.

There’s screaming, the sharp ringing of his death bell growing louder, he hears the sound of a chair scrapping violently against concrete.

“NO…NO NONONO—”

Shouted orders, frustrated grunts, the ever present sound of anguish and heart break. Johnny is screaming for him, over and over through jagged sobs and rushed incomprehensible despair.

“Simon?! SIMON!”

He’s never heard his name said like that. Such anguish is a most treasured gift.