by Rick Wood
She killed all these people – for this?
Filthy!
Everly struggles under his weight. He mounts her, placing his muscular arms over her, grabbing her wrists so tightly that her skin burns. His weight holds her down.
She thrashes and fights and kicks and throws her head and body around. She does everything she can do to get him off, to make it difficult for him to hold her in position, to do any kind of terminal damage.
She even screams, though she sees the irony of it.
If a scream would work, then it would have worked hours ago. No one is coming. No one is going to save her. She has to save herself.
“Get off me!” she screams. “Get off me, you fucking psycho!”
“You’re the psycho! You’re the one who did it all!”
With the two of them left, and Ashley’s immediate attack on her, Everly could only leap to a similar assumption that Ashley had about her.
He did it.
Ashley lets go of her wrists and throws his hands upon her throat. He clamps them around her, squeezing tight. He feels his thumbs press down on her oesophagus. He presses harder. And harder. And harder.
She chokes. Wheezes an attempt to breathe, but he is restricting her oesophagus, holding firmly with his strong hands, denying her the oxygen she so desperately needs.
Those five fatal words present themselves to her thoughts with a striking immediacy:
I am going to die.
And it is true.
If she cannot escape from this, she cannot breathe. She will pass out soon. Then he will keep strangling and she will die.
She does everything she can with her body. Throws her hips up and down, punches her legs into the air as if she is drowning and furiously thrashing for the surface. Her fists, balled up into tight clamps, fight down upon his arms with an urgency that does not escape Ashley’s awareness.
He fights through it, though her strength is inexplicably high.
It’s what happens when someone faces a life-threatening situation, isn’t it? They get stronger. They do things they could never do. Something about the mixture of adrenaline and foreboding and desperation that fills the body of even the weakest woman, giving them everything they need to do to survive.
Mothers have lifted cars to save their children.
Tiny daughters have lifted heavy fathers from the chair to carry out CPR instructed to them by 999 operators.
People have held their breath for extraordinary amounts of time, allowing them to plunge to the depths of the fatal lake and save their life-escaping baby.
And those symptoms are more evident now than ever. In Everly’s persistent fists, they fight with superhuman strength against Ashley’s triceps, biceps, wrists, deltoids, brachioradialis – everything she has is put into fighting the two arms fastened to her throat.
It isn’t enough.
Her energy leaves as she’s deprived of what her body needs.
She feels a headrush shake around her brain. A fluttering, lightheaded indicator of imminent death.
But she still has some fight left. Fight that she puts into her arms in a final strike against Ashley’s elbows. That strike does enough to capsize his arms and allow her a sudden rush that she uses to escape his clutches. He snarls as he raises his gaze, looking at his victim’s body crawl to the opposite side of the room.
But that was not enough to deter him.
He runs forward, retracts his arm, and puts all he has into a boxer’s punch. He does what wild sexual experimenters refer to as a ‘donkey punch’, throwing his arm through the back of her head and knocking her out.
Her body flattens like dough under a rolling pin, spreading out across the floor.
He turns her over.
In her groggy state, she groans.
Upon the metallic necklace fixed to her collar bone is a gun, pointed toward her face.
Ashley places his hand around the gun, fighting through an awkward twist of the wrist to get the right position over the trigger. He bends his arm downward so as not to break his wrist from the force of the gun.
Then he pulls it.
Blood ornaments the wall behind Everly’s skull with an image you would likely find in a Rorschach Test.
With no life left to control her eyelids, they open to reveal empty pupils. Empty, yet still staring up at Ashley.
A hole from beneath her chin to the top of her head hits Ashley hard with the reality of what he has done. It’s long enough and thin enough to fit a cylinder tube, should one be demented enough to wish to do such a thing to a corpse.
34
Everly
It feels strangely familiar, dressing like this again.
I try to hide the feelings of humiliation, regret, and hopelessness – instead, replacing them with feelings of nostalgia. Like I’m going back to a place I haven’t been in a while.
Only, it’s a dangerous situation. It always was.
And I have to remind myself what I’m doing, because I still can’t believe I’ve given myself permission to do it.
I am going to have to have sex with a stranger for half the price I used to charge.
I mean, I’m not that old, am I? Thirty-three? Your thirties are meant to be your sexual peak for a woman – or so all those ridiculous magazines say. Then again, the last edition of a woman’s monthly magazine I read debated whether it was stupid for a footballer’s wife to use a coupon in a supermarket. Honestly, I’m not sure if their superficial declarations and debates are ones that I’m going to pay an entirely huge amount of attention to.
Still, it is a little shitty. That I’m not charging what I could when I was nineteen. Maybe if I took the MILF angle, and marketed myself as an older woman, then…
Stop it.
I’m talking as if this is a permanent venture. Like this isn’t a singular event.
I have no choice.
Just this once. To keep me going until I find another job.
To keep a roof over the head of a precious little boy at home.
Though I tell myself, again and again – I could end this. For me. For my son. For any stranger who is not deserving.
For this client.
This client.
That I am about to fuck for money.
As the lift doors close before me, I bow my head and feel shame. What would my son say? If he were able to grasp the concept and treat it with the maturity of an educated adult, would he really condone what I’m doing? Would he want that for me?
I don’t have a choice.
He needs to eat.
I can go without. I have done so numerous times. I’ve learnt not to need much to fill my appetite, but I couldn’t do that to him.
In a sudden moment of panic, I press the buttons on the lift and my mind goes into a foggy blur.
I thought I’d be worrying about how degrading this is. About how pathetic I am, about how I’m going to have to bend over and take it from another heaving scumbag with too much money. About how disgusted I’ll feel to have him inside of me, to have him fill me, pushing through my dry cunt, rubbing my insides like wood against metal.
But I’m not.
I’m thinking about how my son would judge me.
Would I even be able to give this client the experience I once could?
I’m not what I once was. I can’t stimulate conversation in the way I once did, energise small talk, imply innuendos. I can’t entice men in the way I once managed. I can’t dress provocatively without revealing a stretch mark from pregnancy or a wrinkle from stress or some other deformity or degradation of my body or disgusting change that age and circumstance has done to me.
What about when they see me, if they don’t want me?
If they ask for their money back?
If they take off my clothes and look at me with a face of disappointment?
That look of a child on Christmas morning when they are expecting an Xbox One, and get a pair of socks.
Is that what I am now? An unwanted pair
of socks?
I tried dating a man once. About a year ago. Figured my son could do with a father figure. Lasted weeks. He took my clothes off and saw the scars from years of self-abuse and described me in the way that all women dread being described.
“You are damaged goods.”
He dressed and left the house without looking at me.
I cried myself to sleep that night, but it wasn’t any different from any other.
I cut myself on my thighs so my son will never see it.
What about those marks?
What if it’s a man who likes legs?
I have to turn back.
I can’t do this, I have to turn back.
And just as I think it the doors open, and a corridor of hotel rooms is displayed before me. My legs are unknowingly carrying me forward, pushing me through as if aimlessly forging against a rising tide.
My energy is gone.
I cannot do this.
And just as I make that decision, my hand is knocking on the door of room eighty-three.
“It’s open,” comes a voice that sounds surprisingly different to what I was expecting.
It isn’t the voice you’d expect from your average client.
I open the door and it creaks into the room. It’s a large, lavish room, decorated with grand ornaments and fine architecture. Even the windows take up most of the wall, parading down upon the stylishly floral bedsheets tucked perfectly into the sides of the bed.
“Hello?” I say.
“I’ll be right out,” comes the peculiar voice again. Like it’s feigned deepness, someone putting on a low pitch. Someone pretending to be a middle-aged man, who is clearly not.
“Erm, where are you?”
“Money’s on the dresser. Help yourself to a drink.”
I look to the dresser, a large set of drawers with a mirror on top, next to an envelope and a tumbler of whiskey.
Just what I need.
I walk over to it and glance at my reflection. The light hits it in the perfect way to highlight the flaws of my skin. It’s one of those mirrors positioned in a way that would make even the most beautiful of people feel inferior – which means it makes me feel like dirt.
I pick up the envelope. Open it. A wad of cash is inside. I’ll count it later.
For now, I need to drink.
I pick up the tumbler of whiskey and gulp it down in one. Its sharp sting makes my throat know it’s there, but it’s–
I lose my thoughts.
I stumble.
I fall.
I’m on my knees.
The bathroom creaks open.
I’m on my knees.
I’ve fallen.
I stumbled.
I’m on my…
Feet appear, blurred, hazy.
I fall onto my front.
When my eyes next open, I see four other people with chains around their ankles, in a room where I am held captive.
This isn’t real.
Stop lying.
35
Time Up
Ashley looks at the corpse he created.
He thought he’d feel worse than this, but he doesn’t.
He feels numb.
Empty.
Like it was something he was meant to do. Like he couldn’t help it.
Like he had no choice.
Because she was the killer.
And just as the thought engrains itself permanently into his mind, a rustle comes from behind him.
And a foot is twitching.
My foot is twitching.
And my eyes are opening.
36
Ashley
I still feel a needle digging into my neck, even though it isn’t there.
I’m being wheeled along on something.
Above me, lights pass.
I have no idea what’s happening. My eyesight is a mess of colours entwining into various luminosities. Contrasts and hues change from their various extremes.
I am travelling.
I lift my head momentarily, but it’s heavy. It feels like gravity has increased, like a set of weights has been rested on my forehead.
Has my coach done this?
A punishment, maybe?
My thoughts lack clarity.
What’s happening?
I am dumped onto the floor of a room. Something cold and metal is clamped around my ankle. Someone is doing this. Someone must be doing this.
But who?
I try to open my eyes. Try to understand. But it’s like driving through fog. Somehow, I’m moving forward, but I can see nothing. Somehow, lights punch against me, but I can barely see those lights in front of me. A heavy peace weighs down my body, and for a moment I believe that strings are tied around all my limbs and a puppeteer is controlling my movements.
I close my eyes again and go out of it.
When my eyes open in their next dozy haze I can tell there are others. I can’t see them, but there are others.
And I never remember this until I kill Everly hours later.It doesn’t become apparent to me until it is too late that I saw the killer’s face.
I saw it.
Fresh, flickered with blood, freckles and pimples and everything you don’t expect.
Clear.
Dragging me.
Blurred, but with features unmistakable.
My head lifts and they lock something around their ankle. A restraint.
I pull on mine.
I have one too.
Why do they have one?
And I look them in the eyes.
And I look her in the eyes.
She looks too young to be able to do this.
Surely it can’t have been her.
“What…” I try to say. “What… are… you…”
She puts her finger in front of her mouth, looks me in the eyes, and shushes me.
If only I remembered this before I was the last one standing.
If only I remembered that I saw her face.
Her face.
The face of the one who does not belong.
The face of an evil, sick, and twisted sixteen-year-old girl.
37
Time Gone
Ashley’s memory hits him harder than any opponent ever has.
It doesn’t register at first. It feels false. Like it’s something he created himself. Like it’s something someone placed into his unconscious, like a DVD into a DVD player, and allowed its fakery to play in his mind.
His head slowly turns over his shoulder.
She sits up.
“What the fuck…” he mutters, but it does nothing to him.
It doesn’t give him any resolve that could allow him to move from his static position. His feet are rooted to the floor like roots of a tree had twisted themselves around his ankles with such force and tremendous vertical pull that his feet could not lift if he wanted to.
Nor could it do anything to remove his utter horror at the revelation that he has just killed an innocent woman. That, all along, the killer was in this room, but playing possum. Pretending to be dead with a performance that an ardent Oscar-winner would not fail to be proud of.
A little girl. A child. A sick, twisted teenager.
How could it be so?
She rubs her neck, twisting it from side to side.
“I tell you what,” Maya says. “Lying in that position for so long has given me a real crick in the neck.”
“You…”
Ashley attempts to launch himself into a tirade of abuse. The words form in his mind: that she is a bitch, a psycho, a sicko, a demented monster, an underage rabid animal. But none of those words form on his tongue. All that forms is a stutter replaced by a sickly quiver. His stomach lurches, his body fails, and his mind is awash with emotions that do nothing but cloud his judgement and make him fail to move or act.
She takes a key from her back pocket and undoes the restraint around her ankle.
She has a key.
A key.
All alon
g.
She has a fucking key!
Ashley’s ability to move comes back in a sudden bombardment of energy – if this were a movie, this is the point that a camera would launch itself downward toward his face to symbolise a sudden twist in gumption, a change in his demeanour from that of saddened horror victim to vengeful aggressor.
He runs forward.
Maya doesn’t even move. Because she knows what points of the floor his ankle restraint can’t reach. She knows how far Ashley’s restraint will allow him to move. She planned this well.
And, as she stands against the far wall, his outstretched claw pushes a gentle breeze into a strand of hair that sits loosely over her face.
He swipes and reaches and pulls and yanks on his ankle restraint. Does everything he can to get to her. She sighs, watching him with a cruel, knowing smirk that only incenses him further. She even tries to steal a glance at his watch to let her know how long he has been at this helpless attempt at a failing attack.
After it becomes apparent that his hostility is restrained to a short radius of the room, he halts, breathing heavily. He can’t think. Can’t talk. Can’t move or act. He is consumed with rage. Completely taken over by an animalistic need to kill her and maim her and put her through every piece of sorrowful suffering that he has endured.
He’s killed a person.
An innocent person.
“I know, I know,” she says, lifting her arms into the air in a playful shrug. “Genius, I am.”
He screams like a feral beast. He can’t even turn his abuse into words anymore, he is forced to growl, forced to act like a caveman who doesn’t understand enough to communicate in English.
“If it helps,” she says with a slanted smirk that continues to rile him. “She was going to die next anyway.”
He roars again.
“If you could give that a rest, then I can answer any questions you may have.”
She crouches. Her hands knock on a hollow part of the floor that had previously been below her body. She lifts a hidden lid, where a gun has been placed.