The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3), Emmy Ellis [electric book reader txt] 📗

his… It was a hair’s breadth away, livid, some spots with yellow pus on the verge of breaking through the surface.

You’d think he’d make a visit to Superdrug, wouldn’t you, get some cream.

“Gerraway,” Jason mumbled, his bottom lip heavy. He tried to bat Jimmy off, but his hands were tied behind his back. Was this situation showing him what it was like to be held captive at the squat? Did a small part of him feel guilty over what he’d done to people here and it was manifesting in a dream?

No, he never felt guilty, so what was this all about?

“Are you going to behave?” Jimmy eased back, and he grew smaller, indistinct, a dark fuzzy shadow surrounded by yellow light, too yellow to just be the bare bulb dangling above his head. “Because I don’t want to hit you. Don’t forget I’ve got a gun an’ all. I’ll use it, but it doesn’t mean I’ll get any joy from it.”

Jason scrabbled to work this out. Jimmy with a gun didn’t sound right. The pimply fuckface was someone Lenny had used as a message runner in the past, but he wasn’t the sort to have a weapon. Where would he have got it from? It didn’t make sense.

Shit, did he steal mine?

“Gun?” Jason managed to grind out. God, his bottom lip hurt, throbbed. It was thick, swollen, and taut in one section, as if something held it together. Invisible pliers.

Jimmy’s shadow nodded, the head moving in stuttered slow motion. “Yeah. What’s up with you? Don’t you remember?”

Remember what?

Jason hated not being in control, and this dream was doing his bloody nut in. Fresh pain speared his leg, joining the relentless ache-burn, and he moaned, too tired to scream. His throat was sore anyroad, as though he’d already screeched for England or it was parched from lack of water, and his energy level was too low—he needed to keep what he had to think, and even that was difficult.

“Cazzee…?” he said and detested how that word had come out.

“You were a right prat messing with her.” Jimmy loomed back into view, one of his spots about to erupt far too close for comfort. “Only a prick would try to take the patch off her.”

Prick. Jimmy had called him a prick.

Rage festered in Jason’s gut, more so because he didn’t have it in him to react to the slur, one his waste-of-space father had always called him. The dream-nightmare was doing a number on him, preventing him from acting as he usually would, and he didn’t like it. If he could get his hands free, stand, he’d beat the shit out of Jimmy.

“Pizz…off.” He hovered on the brink of going deeper under or waking up. Which one needed more effort? Waking. It would be so easy to let himself drift, and he longed for oblivion to take him.

“Piss off?” Jimmy moved away again. “I can’t do that. Cassie wouldn’t like it. You know, you wouldn’t be here if you’d done as you were told, accepted her as the boss. I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with it.”

Jason focused better, forcing himself to see clearly, although his eyeballs had a strained feel to them. Had they bugged out at some point? He ignored the pain in his leg, which had been a steady throb lanced with spiky hurt so far, and concentrated. Ahead, an old bookcase. To the left, a window with the blackout blind drawn. Yellow wallpaper peeling from the top— so that was why the light was this weird mustard colour, it had reflected off the walls. A scabby carpet, beige that had once been dove-grey—he knew that as a certainty. And the smell… Dried piss, mould, and lavender.

It was all so familiar yet foreign at the same time—foreign because he didn’t understand why he was here, how he’d got here, or whether it was real or not. Yes, he was definitely in the squat, the house the old lady had left to Lenny as payment for whatever he’d done to help her out. The place where Jason had tortured many, loving the power.

How frustrating not to have any now. Maybe that was what the dream was teaching him. To give up his need to control the Barrington. Or was it saying that despite what he thought, he’d never have control, even if he took over running it for Cassie? She’d always be the boss, no matter what.

Jimmy stood by the open doorway, beside the bookcase, and became clearer. With that clarity, more pain seared Jason’s wrecked shin bone and infiltrated the surrounding muscles, a seeping heat that combined with a swelling sensation, his skin stretching, like it would rip any second.

He imagined a balloon popping. Tested out his dream state and moved his leg.

And was sucked under in a maelstrom of agony, Jimmy and the scabby living room disappearing, sending Jason into what he could only imagine were the depths of Hell, where flames devoured his leg, intent on suffocating him with the intensity.

* * * *

Jimmy relaxed, thankful Jason had blacked out again, although it was a bit bloody weird how his eyes had gone upwards, showing only the whites threaded with red veins. At least Jason hadn’t caused a problem; Jimmy wouldn’t have to punch him now. One, he wasn’t into violence, and seeing Cassie mete it out had churned his sensitive stomach, and two, his knuckles would come into contact with Jason’s mashed-up face. It’d be like thumping minced beef.

Cassie had wrecked it with her new weapon, the whip with barbed wire wrapped around it. Jimmy had heard of it via The Barrington Life, but to actually see it being used… Barbs had munched on Jason’s cheeks, ripping his skin, taking his eyelids and one eyebrow off, slicing through his bottom lip, cutting off a chunk of one nostril. Cassie