Title: The Heart of Glass
Fandom: "General Hospital"
Rating: M
Length: 3124 words
Content Notes: Violence, delusional serial killer, allusions to the denial of sexual urges to the point of violence, allusions to self-directed homophobia, foul language, suicidal death of the serial killer
Author Notes: Written as a gift for someone (thankful that this prompt was inspirational as the gift is well beyond late). There is no pairing, though some may read it as such. This is not set in the current events of the show. It is AU.
Summary: Spinelli holds onto the glass heart he'd found hidden away beneath a loose floorboard of his prison as though it's his salvation, and terrified, he waits for his captor to return.

 

He held the chiseled heart up to the sunlight that trickled in through the lone barred window above him, and marveled at the way that the small glass sculpture cast colorful, spiraling rainbows throughout the sparsely furnished room -- on the floorboards, the walls, the billowing curtains, the ceiling. It was mesmerizing. Dizzying. He wished he could squeeze himself into one of the flat lines of color, and travel it to the other side of a rainbow.

Sighing, Spinelli closed his fingers around the tiny glass heart, enveloping it in warmth, closing it off to the light. His head ached, and his chest felt like it was on fire.

He pressed the knuckles of his closed hand to his split lip, hissing at the pain, at the trickle of blood that rolled down his fattened lip and onto his closed fist. He entertained the fancy that the glass heart, like a crystal, contained healing powers and all he had to do was press it to the contusions and cuts that littered his body and he'd be well again.

Coughing, Spinelli shivered and laid his head back against the wall and wished, not for the first time, that he could simply disappear into thin air. Maybe he could channel himself into the glass heart he clutched to his aching chest, and live there for awhile. Maybe forever.

"Devil's child, it's time to purge you of your sin!" the stranger's voice, tinged with anger, cut through Spinelli's splitting headache, making it throb along with his hammering heart.

Panic settled, like dead weight, in his stomach, and Spinelli almost choked on his own spit. The man was coming back, and with him would come some kind of pain. A punishment is what the man, the stranger who'd taken Spinelli right off the street, called his senseless physical attacks on his hostage.

Spinelli couldn't stop shivering as he heard the heavy, uneven tread of the man's footsteps on the stairs that would lead him up to the overly hot and stuffy attic room that he was keeping Spinelli in. He swallowed past the dryness in his throat, and clenched the glass heart that he'd found beneath a loose floorboard so tightly in his fist that the sharp tip of it drew blood. He barely felt the sting.

Shaking his head, Spinelli couldn't help the sudden litany of, "No, no, nonononono..." that spilled from his broken lips as he heard the key turn in the lock.

He felt the man's shadow fall over him. It was long and dark, and Spinelli could almost see it from beneath his closed eyelids. He couldn't help it, he whimpered and tried to make himself a smaller target, tucking his face against his knees, clasping his arms around his legs, not caring that the heart was digging a hole in the palm of his hand.

It wouldn't work. He couldn't hide from the man, and nothing he could say would keep the man from hurting him. The man would drag him from the corner of the room that Spinelli had attempted to find rest in, and then he'd beat him. It had happened countless times in the week that Spinelli had spent locked up in the man's attic.

Often it was a belt. Other times, a fist. Sometimes the man simply stood over him -- face an ugly blotchy red and purple in his anger, cords of his neck standing out like thick vines -- and kick him, over and over again until Spinelli lost consciousness.

There was no rhyme or reason to the beatings. Spinelli didn't know the man, didn't understand why he was doing this to him. His questions, when he'd asked them, had fallen on deaf ears, so Spinelli had stopped asking them.

He knew he, like others before him, that he would die from a kick that was just a little too hard, or the infection that was growing in the wounds that festered on his back, his stomach, his thighs, from the numerous beltings, or a fist that packed a little too hard of a punch. He was no longer afraid of death, though he was afraid of the pain. He hated it. It made him feel weak and vulnerable, not at all the independent young man he'd tried to make himself into under the mentoring of a reluctant Stone Cold.

He knew what he was in for. Spinelli had seen the telltale bloodstains on the floorboards, the little trinkets of hope lost forever in death, buried beneath the stained boards (the glass heart that was cutting his palm), and he knew -- like he knew that Stone Cold would eventually find him, recover whatever was left of his body -- that he was not the man's first victim, and, unless his killer was stopped, he wouldn't be the man's last.

"You can't hide from me," the man said, a hairsbreadth away from Spinelli, crouching in front of him, some instrument of pain stretched out between his hands, ready to use on Spinelli's already battered body.

Spinelli clutched his legs tighter and bit his torn lip. Shaking in his almost naked state, dressed only in a pair of tattered, and bloodied boxers, he felt the heart, almost a throbbing pain in the middle of his hand, and a sudden clarity flooded through him.

Raising his tear and blood streaked face, Spinelli looked into the eyes of his captor for the first time. They weren't cold, like he'd expected them to be. They were warm and brown, and had little flecks of gold in them that reminded Spinelli of pyrite. They were flakes of fool's gold, set in a pair of deceptively warm eyes.

The man's face held wrinkles. He was someone's old bachelor uncle, or a knee-bouncing, story-telling grandfather.

He was a cold-blooded murderer and he did not look the part.

Spinelli held his breath, and flinched when the man reached out a weathered hand to tuck a lock of hair behind Spinelli's ear. It needed to be cut. Stone Cold had said as much to him the other day.

"You know I'm doing this for your own good," the old man said. He sounded said.

Spinelli blinked. Shook his head. Made a small sound of denial that made the man chuckle almost kindly.

"You need to be punished," the old man said, not  unkindly, words matter-of-fact, as though trying to convince Spinelli of the truth of his words, and that he was only trying to help him. As though Spinelli's acceptance of what needed to happen would make things easier.

It wouldn't, and no matter how good it felt to have the old man's thumb caress his cheek in the first act of kindness that had been shown to him since he'd been taken, Spinelli refused to give in. He refused to accept that there was anything in him that needed to be punished in a manner so brutal.

"No," Spinelli said in a heated whisper.

The glass heart was an anchor, splitting his skin. It gave him strength, turned his fear into something that he could work with.

Whoever had died protecting this glass heart from the monster staring at him out of eyes that were filled with mendacious compassion and pitying sorrow, was giving Spinelli the strength he needed to survive, or at least to die bravely, not fearfully cowering in a corner of a musty room that reeked of his own (and others') sweat, blood, excrement and piss. The young woman, he could almost picture her in his mind, who'd hidden this heart beneath the floorboards, had died at the hands of the man who was crouched in front of him, face growing red with inexplicable fury.

"You are every bit as deserving of punishment as all the rest were," the old man hissed, spittle flying from his mouth, striking Spinelli in the face, making him flinch.

"All of you skinny, well-to-do fucks, men, women, strutting about like you know everything. Like you've got nothing to repent or atone for. Like you aren't a fucking sinner," the old man snarled, face twisting into a devil's mask. "Like you aren't begging to be fucked by every Tom, Dick and Harry. A harlot. Slut. Whore drunk on the devil's wine."

The gold in the man's eyes seemed to glow and spark as something in him shifted along with his stance, like a switch had been flipped and Spinelli was now staring into the eyes of a madman. A madman whose suddenly gnarled hands were raised, poised to wrap around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.

"I won't give into temptation. I never do," the man said, lips screwed up in an ugly sneer that made Spinelli's throat go dry. "I'll beat it out of you, like I beat it out of the others."

Steeling himself for the aftermath of what he was about to say, knowing that his words would seal his fate alongside the girl who'd gone before him, Spinelli felt the glass trinket pulse, like the beat of a heart in his palm, and he calmed. He kept his eyes locked on that of the monster, licked his busted lips, and opened his hand.

Holding the heart in the center of his pierced, bleeding palm, Spinelli raised it until it was between him and the twisted man crouched dangerously in front of him. The man's eyes lit on it, and the sneer fell into something a little softer, almost inquisitive.

The heart was no longer translucent; light would not travel so easily through its multifaceted architecture. It was covered in red, tattling splotches of blood.

The man reached for it, and Spinelli closed his fingers around it, protecting it as the dead girl had. The man stilled, and his eyes locked on Spinelli's closed hand as though he could see through the flesh to the heart held within it.

"Where did you get that?" the man asked, gaze flickering briefly to Spinelli's before returning to Spinelli's bruised fist.

"Did she deserve the punishments?" Spinelli asked in a quiet voice. "Who was she? Do you even remember?"

The man's lips twisted, and then his face crumpled, and a single tear trailed down his wrinkled cheek. His body shuddered and his hands hung suspended before Spinelli's fist, as though fearful of touching him.

"She was the first," he said, licking his lips. "Pretty little thing. Thought she could trick me with her womanly wiles. I showed her, though. I beat her until her blood ran free, and her spirit was clean as the glass heart she said her mother had given her for her sixteenth birthday. It was a waste. She wasn't pure until after I was through with her."

Spinelli's heart clenched, and his stomach churned. He swallowed the bile that burned its way up the back of his throat and prayed that the girl hadn't been sixteen when she'd died, that she'd been taken when she was closer to Spinelli's age. He couldn't even imagine having to face this kind of horror when he'd been just a teen.

"What was her name?" Spinelli asked, and the man looked at him, tilted his head, and then frowned.

A shrug was the man's only answer as he settled back on his heels and stared at the hand that held the heart that belonged to his first victim. Spinelli mourned for the nameless girl, for the others who'd died at the hands of this delusional, self-hate-filled man.

"My name is Damian Spinelli," Spinelli said, keeping his speech simple in the hope that it won't set his captor off. "I have a daughter. Her name is Georgie. And I have a best friend I call Stone Cold. Who was this girl?" Spinelli asked. He had to try again.

Opening his hand, he revealed the heart hidden there. Its sharp edges caught and refracted the orange light of the sunset as it peeked in through a gap in the curtained, and barred window.

"Alice," the man whispered, eyes glittering with something that Spinelli did not want to acknowledge could exist in the eyes of a monster. "Her name was Alice." His voice was awed, and he gave Spinelli a look of wonder.

"Alice." Spinelli held the heart between his thumb and pointer finger and smiled.

"Alice," he whispered, and when he dared to look at the monster in front of him, he felt a calming presence sitting next to him, and was no longer afraid.

The man stared at the heart, watched the light play across the shadows that began to take over the room, and something in him shifted. Spinelli didn't trust it at first. The man's face softened, his eyes grew kindly once more, and his gnarled hands seemed to change into something far less terrifying.

Time was suspended for awhile, Spinelli sitting in the corner, the man crouched low in front of him, mesmerized by the blood-flecked heart in Spinelli's hand. Spinelli held his breath, and, when the man scooted away from him, eyes darting throughout the room as though he was seeing it for the first time, Spinelli's heart almost stopped beating.

"Go," the man said, turning away from Spinelli, voice wrecked. "Go before he comes back."

Heart stuttering in his chest, like a fearful child, Spinelli shook.

"Go!" the man shouted.

Spinelli pushed himself up, using the wall for support. Doing his best to ignore the fiery pain that stabbed at his chest, and in his head, the various debilitating aches and pains that coursed through his body, he stumbled across the room, past the man, and almost fell headlong down the stairs in his haste to escape. He had no idea who the he was that the man had been talking about, and didn't want to know.

Clutching the heart in his hand, Spinelli pushed his body as hard as he could, his gait unsteady as he forced his aching limbs into a limping run that brought him out of the house and through an unkempt yard of ankle high grass, and onto a cracked sidewalk. It was there that he shouted for help, voice barely able to make sound for the dryness of his mouth. He hadn't had water in two days.

He stumbled along the broken sidewalk, nearly falling several times, until he was a block away, and he ran, headlong, into what felt like a wall. He almost fell, but the wall caught him, and let out a gasp, and then there were words coming fast and frantic, and Spinelli couldn't catch a single one of them.

Unable to take another step forward, Spinelli simply gave into the dizziness that had been plaguing him for days, and closed his eyes, sagging into the arms of a stranger, hoping that it wasn't the monster who'd let him go, that it wasn't some kind of sick game that he played with his victims before finally killing them.

Spinelli's head floated. He was on a cloud, being carried away by the wind. Sounds, like words, moved around him, through him, tried to make their way into him, but couldn't, and then he was gone, lost to the sensation of floating, unaware that his body was being loaded onto a gurney, that the paramedics were hooking him up to IVs, frustrated that they could not pry open the fingers of his left hand, and doing their best to work around that.

Consciousness ebbed and flowed for days as Spinelli's body, with the aid of antibiotics, fought off a nasty infection, and his wounds slowly started to heal. The fingers that had clutched so tightly to a small glass heart were now entwined with fingers that Spinelli, even in his semi-conscious state, recognized as safe, welcome, home.

When Spinelli was finally able to keep his eyes open for longer than a few minutes at a time, he gently squeezed the hand that was holding his, waking the man slumbering by his side.

"Stone Cold," Spinelli whispered, and Stone Cold, moving faster than Spinelli could have if he'd been woken out of a sound slumber, had a straw pressed to Spinelli's lips, and Spinelli sipped at the blessed cool water.

"Spinelli," Stone Cold said, voice cracking as he brushed hair off of Spinelli's forehead, eyes growing cold in anger when Spinelli flinched at the action. "You're okay. You're safe now."

"Wh-'ppened?" Spinelli said.

"What do you remember?" Stone Cold asked, sitting on the edge of Spinelli's hospital bed, thumb rubbing soothing circles over bruised knuckles.

Spinelli closed his eyes and tried to think past the grogginess of his mind that was caused by a combination of the drugs he was on and his injuries. He recalled brown eyes set in a weathered face, flecks of false gold, and being beaten, mercilessly. Shuddering, Spinelli did not resist when Stone Cold pulled him up and wrapped his arms around him, hugging him close.

"He kept saying that he had to punish me," Spinelli whispered. "He killed Alice, and others, and...oh, god, he's...he..."

Stone Cold rubbed Spinelli's back, and urged Spinelli to match his breathing to his as Spinelli had started to hyperventilate. "It's okay, you're safe now, he's gone. He's not going to hurt anyone else ever again."

Spinelli told his story in fits and starts, face buried against Stone Cold's chest until he eventually fell into a fitful sleep ensconced within Stone Cold's arms. Stone Cold coached him through the nightmares, and didn't let go of Spinelli until Spinelli had settled into a peaceful sleep.

It wasn't until days later, after being released from the hospital in the care of Stone Cold, that Spinelli learned what his mentor had meant when he'd said that the old man was gone.

After Spinelli had stumbled his way out of the man's house, and into the arms of a stranger, the man had apparently called the police, confessed to taking the lives of a dozen young men and women in the hopes of saving their souls from perdition, and then he'd blown his brains out in the very room he'd kept his victims in.

They'd found the skeletal remains of the men and women he'd killed, hidden within a cellar behind the house, and a blood-spattered note, penned in spindly writing that simply read: For Alice and Damian.

Spinelli wasn't sure how to feel about any of it, and was grateful that he didn't have to face recovering from the trauma on his own. He had Stone Cold's steady, grounding presence in his life, and Georgie's unconditional love. He was not alone, and, as he touched the glass heart he kept in his pocket, he hoped that Alice knew she was no longer alone, even in death.