The girl with red hair(22)

Warning: Dark stuff coming ahead. If you dislike dark stuff then please skip few chapters.

While I have trimmed down a significant amount of the dark stuff. It still is dark. So read at your discretion. 

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There were bodies around him.

Women.

Bloodied. Battered. Scattered like broken dolls tossed aside after use.

Their clothes hung in ribbons, barely clinging to skin that was bruised, scraped, and punctured in too many places to count. Some had been stripped entirely. Others still wore tatters of what once might've been dresses, uniforms—dignity. It didn't matter anymore. None of it did.

Because they weren't people now.

Just shapes.

Still. Silent.

Dead? Some, yes. Most? Maybe. But what struck me hardest wasn't the silence of corpses—it was the silence of the ones who might still be breathing.

Eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling with a hollow gaze that screamed without sound. Eyes that had seen too much. That had watched the whole thing, moment by moment, with no way to look away. Some blinked. Slowly. Mechanically. As if even that was too much effort. Others didn't blink at all.

Just lay there.

Accepting.

Their bodies didn't twitch when I stepped in. No flinching. No crawling. No attempt to cover themselves.

Because what was left to protect?

The floor beneath them was littered with glass. Some pieces as fine as sand, others jagged enough to carve. A cruel, glittering carpet. And they'd been left there. Forced to lay on it. Pressed into it.

Some had slivers in their backs, their shoulders, their thighs. Others had shards still embedded deep in their flesh—twitching like splinters trying to escape.

Blood soaked the floorboards. Thick in some places. Dried in others. It had turned sticky, dark, almost black. And the room stank of it—blood, sweat, rot, rum, and something worse. The stink of pain. Of control.

Of ownership.

I counted them.

One by one.

Seven.

Seven women.

Not fighters. Not rebels. Just victims. Taken. Used. Shattered.

I moved toward one, gently, slowly—like stepping across a battlefield after the smoke clears. I reached for her shoulder and turned her over.

Her body flopped with a sickening looseness, like the bones inside no longer knew how to hold shape. Her skin was pale, marred by bruises so deep they looked like ink stains. Scars. Cuts. Burns. Old wounds beside fresh ones, layered like a map of pain.

And her eyes.

Vacant.

Open.

Still wet with the last tears she'd ever cry.

A shard of glass pierced her chest, right beneath the ribs. Not clean. Jagged. Forced in with cruelty, not precision. It had to hurt. God, it had to. And she died with it inside her.

But what broke me most was her face.

Not the blood.

Not the bruises.

But the look.

That distant, already-gone look.

She hadn't screamed.

She hadn't fought.

She'd given up long before her heart stopped.

She'd died the way a candle dies—slowly, quietly, flickering in a room that no one cared to light.

I stood there.

Sighing. 

For the first time since I stepped onto this cursed ship, I stopped smiling.

The grin I'd worn through blood, through fire, through fear—it died in that room.

Smiling now would be blasphemy.

It would mock the dead. Defile the suffering. Spit on the shredded remains of who she used to be. 

It would mean I was no different from the monster still snoring behind me.

I wasn't a vigilante. I wasn't some hero out of a storybook. I didn't wear righteousness like armor. 

I was just a guy trying to survive.

But even now—especially now—I had a code.

And it wouldn't let me leave her there.

I stepped forward, knees cracking from the tension, the rage. I bent down, gently, as if she could still feel it. As if treating her softly now could somehow undo the violence carved into her skin.

Her body barely weighed anything.

She was too light. 

Too fragile. 

Like bones wrapped in paper. 

And cold.

God, she was so cold.

Her arms hung limp as I lifted her. Her head lolled sideways, cheek resting on my shoulder. 

I could feel the cuts on her back, the shattered skin from the glass. I tried not to move too much. Tried not to make it worse. 

Even though she'd never feel pain again.

She deserved that. At least that.

I walked to the door of the captain's cabin, each step slow, deliberate. Not because she was heavy. 

But because leaving that room felt like carrying her out of a tomb.

Or maybe a crime scene.

That room had air, but no life. Light, but no warmth. Just broken glass and broken women and a monster dreaming in the middle of it all. 

I wouldn't let her rest near him. Not even in death.

She deserved better than to rot in that slaughterhouse.

The moment I stepped into the hallway, heads turned.

Crewmen stared.

Some looked away, ashamed. Some froze, eyes wide, mouths trembling. Some horrified. 

I didn't stop. 

Didn't say a word.

Let them see. Let them watch.

She mattered more.

I stepped onto the main deck. The sun was high now, bright and cruel, shining on her wounds like it was proud of what it revealed.

I found a space—bare, hard wood, cracked and faded—and laid her down. Slowly. Carefully.

Her arms fell at her sides like broken branches. Her hair spread across the planks like seaweed adrift in still water. Her chest, caved in where the shard had pierced her, looked too quiet now.

The crew gathered in a loose circle. No one spoke. No one dared.

And I just knelt beside her.

I didn't close her eyes. That wasn't my right. 

But I made sure her head faced the sky.

Not the blood. 

Not the beast behind the door. 

Just the sun.

Even if it never gave her warmth in life, maybe it would keep her company now.

And I promised, without saying it aloud, 

that I would bury that demon. 

Not with shovels.

But with silence. 

With fear. 

With the same helplessness he carved into every inch of her skin.

No gods. 

No mercy.

Just me.

And my code.

And what's left of the storm in my chest.