Trigger Warnings

• Detailed sex scenes which include incorrect ways of wearing sunglasses
• Stalking and unsuccessful kidnapping
• Murder
• Testicular torture
• Stabbing
• Mentions of rape (act not described)
• Mentions of paedophile side characters who get what they deserve
• Incestuous relationship between side characters
• Villainous side characters who commit necrophilia and cannibalism
• Rejection and death of parents
• A main character is asked to commit suicide
• Offence to the Flat Earth Community
• Offence to those who have an aunty named Beatrice
• ‘Fuck’ is mentioned 123 times
• ‘Cunt’ is mentioned five times
• This book is not meant to be taken seriously

Chapter 1 – Slash

"Bitch, let me in."

Under the little black camera’s eyeball was the speaker button and I pressed down on itrepeatedly like I was trying to make it come.

Haver Prison punched into the clouds with its rough, concrete walls, and rusty water bled down each metal-barred window, making it look as if the building were crying. A tall, barbed wire fence laced around the front. Its silver teeth clanged against whispers of breeze. Night purged all light aside from the jaundiced yellow floodlights across the prison’s exterior.

I stood at the front entrance, dressed, teeth brushed, hair slicked, all my new tattoos just healed. Peeling back my fur coat once more, I dipped my thumb over the smooth metal curve on Sally making sure she was sitting snug against my side. She was a Cleveland driving iron, the prettiest golf club in bright green, and she belonged to me. If the son-of-a-bitch receptionist didn’t answer, Sally was going to smash the camera.

Before I cussed again, a loud shriek erupted around me. Pivoting, I stepped back to search for the sound, hoping it was someone coming to let me inside. Through the damp dark of the lonely night, I searched until a floodlight pointed directly onto the source of the sound as if he had been a performer on a stage. Just behind the barbed wire fence, dressed in the matching red top and pants ensemble, an inmate cradled his arm that was bending the wrong way and cried out in pain.

Judging by the carefully constructed rope made of sheets and clothing still dangling through a spotlight down the side of the tall grey wall, he had climbed over it and fallen during his escape. As the shouts of nearby guards grew closer, the prisoner hobbled to the barbed wire fence, his last hurdle before tasting air that was not meant for Soulless.

The guards chased.

He fell, fucking up his ankle.

The guards beat him with their batons.

His sobs echoed through the silent night.

I yawned and pressed the camera button again. “Open up.” 

“Sir, Haver Prison is currently closed.” A tired female voice spoke through the speaker. “We will open again at eight a-m.”

I checked my watch; 2.05 am. Five minutes past the moment I ripped my way out of a woman’s womb, killing her on my entry into this world eighteen years previously.

“I’m making a delivery.”

The camera twitched down and back up to me. “What is your delivery?”

“Myself. Let me in.”

“Sir—”

I slung my thumb to the inmate who was now screaming as the guards dragged him away from the barbed wire fence. “He gets to be in there. I want to be in there. Let me in.”

“Sir, visiting hours are not until eight a-m.”

“I’m not a visitor.” I leaned into the camera, showing my eyes and the arrowed tattoos that pointed directly to them. “I’m Soulless.”

* * * 

The office smelled like sickness and the warden could have played Santa Claus at Christmastime.

He welcomed me to sit on the pleather peeling chair whilst he dumped himself on the other side of his desk, making his wheely chair creak.

“What do you want, boy?” The warden rubbed a hand over his red-veined eyes and snatched a chipped mug of watery coffee. “Eloise said you were causing a ruckus out the front door; you know, son, I could have you arrested for such matters.”

I crossed my ankle on my knee. “Do it.”

He winced before he sipped his coffee. “Excuse—”

“I want to go to prison, Sir. Specifically, Haver,” I said, lifting my chin. “It’s where my father went. I’ve got all my affairs in order. I turned eighteen just five minutes—” I checked the clock on the wall, “— fifteen minutes ago. I’m the right age, I’m ready.”

Spluttering out the coffee with a choke, he wiped his mouth. “Wha—”

“I’ll take a private cell.” I flicked lint off my shoulder. “Thank you.”

He stared at me for five ticks of the clock. “Are you saying you want to … come into this prison?”

“Yes.”

He furrowed his brow. “Only Soulless go to prison.”“I’m Soulless.” I pulled down my shirt, showing him.

“I don’t love anyone and no one loves me.”

The skin over my heart was bare. No Soul insignia. I would never have that ugly mark of bloody veins pressing to the surface in the shape of a half-heart.I had tattoos instead.

“I don’t have a Soulmate,” I said.

The warden chuckled and set down his mug. “Boy, you’re only eighteen years old. You’re not Soulless. You’ve still got at least seven years, maybe more if your heart is thumping right.”

I yawned. “I don’t plan on having a Soulmate.”

The ridge of his nose pulled into lines as he squinted at me. “Did you go to school? Are you stupid?”

There was a knife in my pocket, and I stroked the handle. “No, but you are if you’re rude to me again.”

“You can’t choose anything. The connection happens naturally, whether you want it or not. Boy, you probably have a Soulmate. Statistically, ninety-five per cent of us do.”

“I’m in the lucky five, then.”

“Those five per cent go to prison.”

I clapped my hands and smiled large. “That’s why I’m fucking here.”

He pressed a buzzer on his wired phone. “God damn kids these days.”

His lack of respect for my request had my fingers closing in. I slammed my fist on his desk heavy enough to knock the calendar off the wall. The shudder echoed from the tabletop like remnants of a thunder strike.

The warden flinched.

I leaned forward, my irises widening their murky black, and slicked back my hair so that the tattooed arrows on my temples that pointed directly to them could be seen. “Look at my eyes. Do you know who my father was?”

A whiff of confusion smacked him at first. And then, a slight muscle clench in his jaw told me he understood. Finally, after a moment, his words came out as a whisper. “I heard he had … children.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “I’m the eldest.”

I inhaled, soaking in the scents of Haver’s walls, memorising them as one does a favourite recipe. This was going to be my home, my future, my destiny: the prison my father had been placed in all those years ago.

The most infamous Soulless man. Vicious, cunning, unforgivable, unhinged, wild and totally unlovable.

People wouldn’t dare speak his name. They hoped it would sweep him under the rug, allow him to pass from the collective consciousness. However, their shunning only made him more notorious; it wasn’t easy to forget the one man in all the world who was not allowed to be named.

They weren’t going to forget me either.

“He named me Slash Artery,” I said to the warden in a voice that could have commanded armies. “Get those two words tattooed on your brain. You’re going to be speaking them in front of the cameras more than adverbs.”

The impact of who I was wore off and the shock of it was replaced by exhaustion. The warden dug his hands through his wiry white hair with a silent sigh. “Shit.”

“Aren’t you so lucky?” I flashed him a grin. “I’m doing your job for you. You can say ‘thank you,’ now.”

“Look, son,” the warden said. “You can’t just waltz into prison like this. Have you committed any crimes?”

Sally’s cool green metal edge stroked against my chest. “I promise, I will.”

He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “I can’t just put innocent people—”

“I’m not innocent.”

“—in prison. That’s morally wrong. Also, it’s against the law and I’ll get fired.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you get fired.” I laughed without joy. “I’m trying to save people … from me.”

“Boy, you’re just going to have to go back home, wait until you’re twenty-five or older when the doctors have determined that you’re absolutely Soulless, and then I can assure you, you’ll go right to prison.” He smiled the way a grandfather smiled when they patted a kid’s head. Not my grandfather, but I’ve seen TV. “Do you understand?”

My jaw ticked.

“Who knows?” He laughed. “You probably have a Soulmate. Wouldn’t that be nice, huh? To be loved.”

I had been evicted from love’s promises the moment I was placed in my mother’s belly. It wasn’t love that had put me there, it wasn’t what had grown me, it wasn’t what had raised me – and there certainly wasn’t going to be any in my future.

I wasn’t made with love. So I was made out of something else.

Something fissured in my chest and I rubbed it away with the heel of my palm.

The warden stood, gesturing to the door. “Would you like me to call you a taxi?”

I stood too, pulling out Sally so that she and the warden could finally meet. Long and sturdy, her metal length glinted under the filtered office lights. Her round end curved smoothly, perfectly, and when I held her high, I became a conqueror with his sword.

“You want me to leave?” I asked nicely.

My first swing was high, wide and strong, landing the blow across his desk. Stacks of papers whirled out like a flock of birds scattering in all directions. The stapler smacked into the ground, spilling out a hundred pricks of sharp staples.

Jerking back from pure shock, the warden almost fell off his chair. “What—”

“Fine.” I yawned. “I can leave.”

I swung again, smashing his coffee mug against the wall. The pieces shattered into shards of ceramic. Liquid dribbled down the walls like blood in a butchery.

Oh, this felt good.

Finally, I was unzipping the skin I had been taught to walk in by eye-twitching foster parents and a world that craved perfection. Every swing of Sally, everything I broke, baptised me into who I was meant to be. I climbed on top of the desk, mounting it like a stage, ready for ovation.

The warden held up his hands. “Stop!”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “I can stop.” I leaned down and rested Sally against the warden’s mouth, letting him learn the taste of true Soulless. “You’re right. I’ll just get out of here, huh? Walk down the street, kill a few people. Then you’ll let me in. Does that sound good to you?”

Sally gave his face a gentle tap.

I got my own cell.

Chapter 2 – Shay

Three Years Later

A shooting pain forced me to sit up in bed.

“Ow!”

It was an odd sort of ache. Like how a squeezing hug might hurt but at least the other person was aiming to comfort you. Not many people hugged me, so when I did get one, I enjoyed the squeeze even if it hurt.

“Sorry, can someone p-p-please help me?”

No one came.

How silly of me to think they might. My voice was stifled by too many levels of floor.

I called the attic my bedroom; it was given to me long ago when my fifth sibling was born and we were running out of space to put all the human evidence of my mother’s and stepfather’s adoring love for each other. Much nicer than staying at my father and stepmother’s house on the pull-out couch in the basement.

I reached over to my mobile phone, accidentally knocking my alarm clock.

12.01 a.m., just a minute past midnight.

A minute into my eighteenth birthday.

As I clutched my pounding heart, it hit me then, like a slap of sunshine on the first day of spring.

“I have a Soulmate!”

It was rare this occurred exactly on your eighteenth birthday – or rather the exact minute of your eighteenth birthday. For most it took almost a full year for their heart to erratically beat. Sometimes your Soulmate wasn’t ready to find you yet. Mine was.

A Soulmate.

Clutching my chest, I listened to the deep thumps and embraced the ache, my eyes burning with impending tears. There was someone out there who was perfect for me. I just had to find them.

I tiptoed downstairs in my fluffy slippers, making sure not to land on the boards that creaked. My mother and stepfather didn’t like noise. They didn’t mind when my half-siblings played their instruments or ran amok in all the bedrooms or sang songs loudly off-pitch, but my moving feet and mumbling voice carried a different kind of tune, apparently. One I was asked to keep hidden, just like my things upstairs in the attic. I kept all my words in the attic of my head, too.

“Sorry, Ma?” I peeked my head through their bedroom door. “Jerry?”

In the dusk of the bedroom, my mother lifted her head a little. “Alice, did you have nightmares again?”

“Sorry, Ma, it’s m-m-me.” I stuck my head further in.

“Shay?” My mother furrowed her brow. “What are you doing?”

“My heart—”

“Get out!”

“Sorry—”

“Stupid girl, it’s midnight!”

“But I—”

“Get out of my fucking room and out of my fucking house.”

“Sorry, Ma.” Smile. Just smile. “I love y-you.”

“Fuck off!”

“Okay, I just have to go find my Soulmate.”

“Don’t come back.”

“I’ll be back later.”

* * *

I stood outside on the street, between the mailbox and sunflower bed, with the moonlight my friend and one hand clutched over my furious heart, waiting for the taxi. A squeaking noise sounded behind me, and I found one of my parents’ mouse-catchers had snagged a new victim. Inside the grated cage by the picket fence, a small, black-haired mouse screeched and pulled on the latched metal.

“It’s okay, little one,” I said as fiddled with the lock.

The attic – my room – regularly sung with the sound of scampering mouse feet. Like me, they weren’t welcome downstairs and so they took shelter in the roof beams. It wasn’t so lonely when they made their little noises.

“There you go.” I smiled down at my new friend. “All free and – ow!”

New friend bit my finger on the way out.

Throbbing with the shock of the bite, I wrapped the hem of my dressing gown around it. At least the pain was nothing in comparison to what was going on in my chest; a beautiful pain that meant I was going to be loved.

It didn’t matter anymore. Not the people at work who never sat with me at lunch. Not the neighbours who turned their backs when I waved. Not my grandparents forgetting to send me birthday cards. Not my siblings who sneered at me. Not my father and mother shoving me to the other, trying to figure out what to do with the accident they had before finding their actual Soulmates.

Someone loves me.

The taxi pulled up. Heart Travel was a government enterprise, sending out transport to people who could not afford it when their heart was thumping furiously and in need of finding their Soulmate. They would take you anywhere. Over entire suburbs, cities and across continents. All I had to do was follow the tug in my heart, telling me where to go.

After a swift monitoring of my heart, the man said, “That’s a quicker beat than usual.”

“Is it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Is th-th-that good?”

He grimaced. “What’s wrong with you?”

“A lot of th-things.”

“No, why are you speaking like that?”

“It’s a s-s-s-stutter.”

“It’s strong.”

“Sorry. It’s only when I’m nervous.” I swallowed, focusing. “I don’t have it all the time.”

“No, I mean, your heart has a strong connection.”

“Ah!”

“Whoever’s on the other end must be desperate to love you.”

I was exploding into novas, into brand-new universes.

It was surprising that I knew where to direct the driver, as if following a map I had drawn myself a hundred times. Hours passed. The further we drove the more the pain thumped harder. I breathed through it, letting my heart conduct my finger, pointing here and there until finally the car rolled to a stop.

The driver’s voice pattered out into a whisper. “I’ve never taken someone here before.”

I unpeeled myself from the seat my nervous sweat had glued me to and looked up through the window. Rain drops punched into the glass, again and again. It smelled damp here. The back of my neck pinched. Through the dank dark of the night, I met Haver Prison.

Only one type of person went to prison.

Soulless.

A lot of them were murderers. Thieves too. Rapists, paedophiles, arsonists, narcissists, Scorpios, psychopaths, sociopaths and people who hassled their old high-school friends about buying overpriced beauty care products from their most recent pyramid scheme.

Soulless were evil. And the one way to identify them?

Their heart.

They were people whose hearts never beat erratically to find their one true love.

If you couldn’t find a Soulmate, it meant you couldn’t love. If you couldn’t love, you weren’t a good person. Ergo, prison.

I stepped out of the car and through Haver’s front door, its hinge screaming as I entered.

Haver Prison was lovely. The peeling linoleum floor had a print of sharp triangles, bleach made the air smell fresh and clean, and the leaking pipes overhead could have easily been a water feature.

The warden who greeted me walked with his belly out first.

Touching the nest of my hair, I realised I probably should have gotten dressed before leaving the house. I was about to meet the love of my life in slippers and a nightgown. I sucked on my inner cheek, worried, but quickly realised that my state of attire did not matter. My Soulmate was going to love me unconditionally.

“Uh, Shay,” the warden said, sitting on his chair on the other side of the desk. “Every employee at the prison has a Soulmate. The guards, the staff, even the gardeners. Everyone. It’s a condition of the job. We can’t allow anyone suspected of being Soulless to work here.”

“What a great rule!”

There was a quiet.

“Which means your Soulmate is another type of person at the prison. Do you understand?”

My smile withered until I remembered to pick it back up.

Smile. Just smile.

His corded phone rang and he scooped up the receiver quickly, turning on his wheely chair to show me his shoulder. “Dedria, thanks.” He rubbed his forehead. “Can you go down to gen and see if there’s anyone currently experiencing … there is?” A pause. “Okay …” Another pause. “Who?” A much longer, longer pause. His voice turned lower, deeper. Quieter. “Are you absolutely sure?” His eyes dashed to me. “Shit.”

The further I walked down the hallway with its flickering lights, following the warden and his two friendly guards who liked looking at my breasts, the more the pain ruptured in my chest. A giddy adrenaline pinched me with excitement. We halted at a door. On the other side, someone was shouting.

The warden hesitated with the handle. “The man …”

“Man?” I asked, almost standing on my tiptoes. “MySoulmate is a man?”

His tight smile swapped to unease. “He’s been here for three years now. Technically, he doesn’t have to be in here. He hasn’t committed any offences outside of prison and if he has a Soulmate … well, he’s free to go. But, uh, you may have seen him on the news.”

“News?” I just wanted to go inside. I wanted to meet him.I wanted to fall in love.

“He’s, uh …” the warden ticked his jaw from side to side, flashing his eyes to anywhere but me. “Slash Artery.”

I stayed smiling. “What a beautiful name.”

The warden cringed. “Do you know who he is?”

“Who?”

“Slash Artery.”

“It’s such a pretty name.”

“Do you know who … his father was?”

“Who?”

“Slash Artery’s father.”

“I haven’t even met Slash yet, but I’d love to meet his family too!”

“His father was …” He swallowed hard. “Do you watch the Execution Battles?”

“No.” I touched my lower lip. “I don’t like violence, it’s too frightening.”

“Shit.”

“Please don’t cuss, I don’t like that either.”

“Shit.”

The guards opened the door for me while the warden was busy rubbing his face. I went inside, and each footstep closer had me envisioning a clearer future of my house with my Soulmate. Our toothbrushes kissing in the same cup and our pillows sleeping side by side and our matching bathrobes … but I shouldn’t presume things. Maybe he doesn’t like wearing bathrobes. Maybe he prefers matching sweaters. And matching pyjamas! Both of my families had matching pyjamas, but not me. My parents always said they could never find my size.

Maybe we could get matching hats too, and matching socks. I’d let him choose.

Inside the room was a medical bay. Smelled of disinfectant. A faded poster on the wall showed an inmate in handcuffs smiling politely to a nurse who was giving him a needle, but someone had burnt out their eyes. The shouting sounded like the playlist for hell.

Two nurses and a pack of guards bustled around a bed with duct tape on its legs.And there he was. Lying in front of them. A man in a red top and pant set.

He groaned and lashed out on the thin mattress, yanking at his shirt as if it were swallowing him. Fuelling himself with a string of cussing, he pulled at the red fabric and tore it off until his chest was bare.

“Get it out!” He dug his nails into his upper chest, right where his heart was pounding for me. “It fucking hurts! Cut it out! I don’t fucking want it!”

“Hello.” I remembered to smile as big as I could.

Everything stopped.

The guards ceased pointing their batons, the nurses lowered their raised hands and the man on the bed sat up.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

Slash Artery.

He was every single birthday candle I had ever blown out. My wishes came true. Tall with a slender, yet sturdy build, like a martial artist. I flushed with heat at his naked chest. Smooth skin wrapped over muscle; it would have taken him many hours over many years of extreme endurance training to achieve such a physique. Black hair fell over his face in errant waves. A strong jawline, pink lips, a nose that sloped into a sweet, rounded tip, and his eyes. Dark eyes, like silent night. On each of his temples there were two tattooed arrows, pointing to those pretty, dark eyes.

And his heart?

It looked as if it were in terrible, horrible pain. But it was mine, and I would look after it for him.

“I’m Shay,” I said, taking a careful step forward, restraining myself. My heart was begging me to run into his arms, to crush our chests together and learn the taste of his lips.

He didn’t greet me back.

In fact, he didn’t do much of anything. He stared at me, but it was more of a glare. Something dark and gut-wrenching.I stepped forward again. “I’m yours.”

That made his jaw clench and for a half a second, a moment that could have been missed by a blink, he leaned toward me as if he were about to offer me his hand.

But then he jerked back, grabbing a scalpel, tearing his eyes to me with pure fury. “Get the fuck away from me! I don’t have a Soulmate!”

He aimed the scalpel. Before he swung, the guards thrashed him with their batons. The sound of bones breaking chorused with shouts and cussing as they all battled on the bed.

The warden rested his hand on my shoulder, not letting me step forward again.

“He’s v-v-very handsome.” I watched arms dislocate and knees bend the wrong way. “And he seems v-very nice.”

Smile. Just smile.