Part 19 - Gretel: Only One Way

I lied to him. I lied to him and I didn’t care. I lied to him, and it’s going to get him killed. But what was one broken, run-down cop under the Giant’s heel when my whole case hung in the balance?

I stared at my reflection in the window of the last car. The Q line was still bustling, which wasn’t unusual for the middle of the night, but no one even came near me. And would I have noticed if they had? And what would they have seen?

I peered out past the rain-streaked window, trying to avoid my own accusing eyes, but there was no solace in the glowing lights dotting the city’s darkness. Those eyes burned with the fires I’d set the last two years. Like the burning need inside me.

Finish the job. Let them all burn, but finish the job.

And yet. What even was the job anymore? Charlie was pressing again, and I couldn’t keep him at bay much longer. Give him what? My own bloody signature on the death certs of more souls than I could count? And if not death, worse — a lifetime of torment and suffering. A lifetime of memories of what was and what you will never again. A lifetime like mine. When they lost the ones they loved, watching them dragged away screaming, would they feel what I felt? A pit of deep despair, blackness closing in, the weight of it crushing the life out of them. Out of me. Would it tear at something inside them, something that could never be repaired? Never be healed?

Would they rise from the ashes bereft of a soul?

When Hansel disappeared, I’d sworn to do everything in my power to bring every child home, to be a beacon of light. No person should have to lose a loved one to such horror. Except with every turning year, every empty lead, every empty day, the calendar pages yellowed and torn, that purity, that sincere purpose burned away until there was only a glimmer of hope.

I’d pushed my way into Ivan’s organization by then, and there was only one way in — not by saving children and jailing criminals, but by looking into the mirror and stripping away everything left until the image before me was something I didn’t recognize.

The lights flickered, the walls of another station flashing by, a face staring back at me Hansel wouldn’t know. Tears of rain streaked her face, his face, its face, the face of a monster.

A man moved behind me, a flicker of gray, tall and gaunt, coat like a shadow that enveloped him. I could see Ivan’s face over my shoulder, the strain of his years, the sickness that lingered behind his eyes. The animal that he was, like a wolf that carried off the children of fairytales. Like the wolf that carried away Hansel. Like the wolf I left on his battered leather couch, teeth glimmering in the neon.

But the real danger still loomed. The shadow I’d become was nothing like the soulless husk that now ruled my world.

I’d given myself to him the first night I’d seen the cages, the red-rimmed eyes staring back at me from the shadows, the pleas filling my ears, hoarse cries of despair. I’d seen Hansel in every one of them — nothing but his sweet, round face, his smile, the ways his eyes lit up when I mentioned going to Ike’s for pie or the arcade, a roll of quarters jingling in my pocket.

I’d slid under the table at dinner and sucked his cock. I’d given him parts of myself I didn’t know I possessed later that night.

I stared up at the shadow behind me, feeling the scratch of his nails, the hiss of his breath as he drove into me. The cold stare that met me each time I looked back. The sting of his slap when I dared do so. There was nothing in his touch, in his eyes. When he finished, he slipped away quietly, leaving me there with his seed spilling from my cunt. He washed while I dressed, his fingers stinking of disinfectant while the scent of freshly-fucked whore wafted up into my nostrils.

It was never enough, and when I saw the emptiness reflected back at me, I knew there was only one way to earn his trust. Only one way to destroy him.

The shadow moved on, and the angelic image of a child in her mother’s arms filled the darkness of the window. The light flickered, blinking them in and out of existence as the train rocked and rocketed us north to Harlem. The child’s eyes locked on mine for an instant, and it was all she needed to turn away and bury her face in her mother’s coat. Did she know what I saw? Did she see the cold iron bars? Did she feel the loss already, the cold horror of the night with her mother, nothing more than a memory?

I did.