The Dime

by Kathleen Kent

  Sub-mission.

  I’ve taken Benny’s dream warnings to heart and listened patiently to the pattern of Evangeline’s ranting, rarely speaking, not moving in a confrontational way, embodying a blank, receptive canvas for her to paint upon. I’m lying in wait for an opening to pretend an attentiveness or sympathy for her psychotic beliefs and then thrust in the proverbial sword of the infidel. As with the instructor at the police academy, I want her to think that I am weakening, am down for the count, before seizing my chance and, hopefully, strangling every ounce of life out of her with my leg chain.

  Don’t get stuck in the abyss of your own morass, Benny had reminded me. Pretend to be defeated, just don’t actually be.

  But there’s a new urgency now in trying to escape. The leg wound has become infected. The incisions are two seeping, red gashes behind my ankle, swollen and painful to the touch. The slightest tug on the embedded hobble is like a burning torch being plunged into the tendons. My entire lower leg is warm, and I’ve got a low-grade fever. The nurse, Connie, has started me on what she says are antibiotics, but there’s been no lessening of the infection. Walking is becoming increasingly more difficult because of leg cramps, spasms so severe that they send me flailing onto the ground, clutching at my calf muscles with clawlike fingers, grinding my teeth to keep from agonized screaming. When I don’t move, the cramps subside. But if I don’t move, I’ll truly weaken and won’t be able to walk at all.

  In the past few days I’ve discovered that the house is not where Evangeline sleeps. My ears have become attuned to the subtle sounds of doors opening and closing—the main door heavier, with more heft than the inside doors—of car engines advancing and retreating, of voices appearing and disappearing. Connie and Evangeline take shifts. Within a few hours of Evangeline leaving, Connie is there to check on me. The one constant in the house seems to be Curtis.

  “‘When he raises himself up,’” Evangeline reads on, “‘the mighty fear; because of the crashing, they are bewildered…’”

  Without looking directly at Curtis, I know for certain that he’s staring at me. Tommy may have shown no interest as yet in his future bride, but little brother is another thing altogether.

  Curtis wants what’s intended for another. I’ve encountered men like him before. It’s the shackles that give him the hard-on, not the woman. For a guy like that, dominance is the key to bliss. If I’m not able to con Evangeline quickly enough, then maybe I can manipulate her younger son.

  And as subtly as I can, I’m giving him a glimpse of paradise. As I sit in bed with my back against the wall, the sheet fallen away from my legs, I let my T-shirt fall down over one shoulder, exposing the top of one breast; my nipples through the thin fabric are hard as two inverted upholstery tacks. My legs are bent, drawn toward my chest, and I spread my knees slightly, as though too weary to keep them together, giving him a straight shot at the V in my underwear.

  I sigh and groan, and Evangeline asks me what’s wrong. I tell her in my most pathetic voice that I’m ready for something for the pain. Any entreaties to see a doctor or be taken to the hospital I know will be denied.

  Until now, I’ve refused narcotics by mouth, but I want them to think I’m on a downward spiral. For the briefest instant my eyes meet Curtis’s gaze, and I look away, like a frightened deer, as though terrified. If today goes the way of yesterday, Evangeline will finish her reading, leave my room, and whisper some last-minute instructions to her son. Then the door to the outside world will open and close again. The heavy rumbling of a large vehicle, an SUV or truck, will start up and drive away.

  And I’ll be left alone in the house with Curtis until the nurse returns for the pre-dinner checkup. In the afternoon hours I’m supposed to limp around the bed “exercising,” hours that will be interrupted by the hatch in the door opening at odd intervals so that Curtis can spy on me.

  Today will be different, though. I feel it. I can almost smell the animal intent coming off him in waves, the son who covets his older brother’s baby incubator.

  Evangeline leaves the room and then returns and hands me a pill and a glass of water. I sit up, letting both knees fall open for Curtis’s benefit. I take the pill and down it. A little hydrocodone won’t incapacitate me and will allow me to endure the pain of having to move decisively. I’m going to need a buffer for whatever pain in whatever form is going to be inflicted on me.

  I whisper something unintelligible, clear my throat, and say to her, “Thank you for your kindness. I’m sorry I’ve been so much trouble.”

  Be the apologetic, obedient daughter, Benny told me.

  I raise my beseeching gaze to her, my eyes opened wide and vulnerable, lower lip trembling. Evangeline lays a hand briefly on the top of my head and smiles radiantly, benignly. The Madonna of Rock Crystal Meth. Our Lady of Loony Tunes.

  She covers me efficiently with the sheet, and I catch a glimpse of Curtis’s head following the movement of my pale and vulnerable thighs.

  I glance at him, my face conveying Please don’t hurt me. But the gray matter behind my eyes is screaming, Come on, fuckface. Come and get you some of this. I have something for you.

  Evangeline continues reading, “‘The sword that reaches him cannot avail, nor the spear, the dart or the javelin. He regards iron as straw, bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee.’” She closes her Bible.

  “Finish your lunch, Elizabeth,” she tells me. “It will build up your strength. Then rest. Connie will give you more medicine later for your leg.” She stands at the foot of the bed, smiling with expectant pleasure. “Tommy will be back tonight. He’ll want to spend some time with you.”

  I bet he will, I think, but I duck my head modestly, as though I’m actually shy about the prospect of being raped. Twice, if Curtis has his way.

  “I’ll have Connie help you get cleaned up,” she says, and I give her a barely perceptible nod. “You know, Elizabeth, with your continued cooperation, you’ll get a bigger room. A warm shower. A better blanket. Even a place to walk outside. Do you understand?”

  An intake of air, another nod from me. Such a good girl.

  “Do you want the restraints on?” Curtis asks her.

  Evangeline regards me for a moment, taking in my pathetic form, weighing and assessing my demeanor. “No,” she tells him. “I think we can leave them off for a time. I believe Elizabeth is gaining some acceptance.”

  When she leaves the room, Curtis follows after her, but he catches my eye and grins at me, the tight, mirthless stretching of lips of the SS officer who’s taking a cigarette break before continuing the torture.

  My heart rate has accelerated enough to make me feel light-headed, the first welcome, spreading warmth of the pain meds radiating from my gut to my arms and legs, exaggerating the effect. I slow my breathing, willing my shoulders to relax, acutely aware that, although the room is cool, a scrim of oily sweat has erupted on my forehead and chest.

  She didn’t put on the restraints. My hands and arms are free.

  I check to make sure the hatch in the door is shut and then reach down under the elastic band of my underwear. My fingers close around the dime I had found under the carpet. One slender little coin. That powerful connector that Benny spoke of in my dream. His reminder that dimes could be used on slightly loose screws had confused me; at first it seemed a random spark in an otherwise cohesive imagining, but then I recalled, like a nail gun to the head, the metal grate covering the heating vent. The rusted grate secured with two long screws. Screws that I couldn’t budge with my fingers alone but that I did manage to remove earlier this morning using the edge of the dime. It gave me just enough torque to begin the rusty unwinding. The dime is now pitted and slightly bent, but it did the job.

  Below the grate was a shallow well space angling down to the heating ductwork. And into this space had been swept, in preparation for the carpet to be laid, I assumed, floor debris. Some small, bent nails, dust bunnies, and the remnants of a shattered overhead light cover. Long,
wicked shards of frosted glass.

  I had gathered up several of the thickest, pointiest pieces and slipped them between the mattress and the box spring. Then I quickly put the grate back over the well and refitted the screws.

  Curtis, I know, will be returning and I want to be ready for him. I pull the shards of glass out from under the mattress and slide them under the pillow for easier access. Soon there is the rattling of the door being unlocked and Curtis slips into the room, cattle prod in hand.

  He stands watching me for a few moments, then tosses me one of the wrist restraints, still attached by rope to the ringbolt.

  “Put this one on,” he tells me.

  My throat closes, and I struggle to keep my face neutral.

  “You won’t need those,” I say. “I’m not going to fight you.”

  He shakes his head. “I know you’re not. Put that on.”

  I need my hands free to reach for the glass shards.

  “I won’t…I won’t resist,” I plead, pulling the sheet away to expose my legs, willing him to believe that he can take me without a struggle.

  But he raises the prod and I know that more begging will not sway him. I’ll have to wait for another opportunity.

  I buckle on the right cuff and he moves to my left side to restrain the other wrist.

  He sits on the mattress as he secures the restraint.

  “If you kick me,” he tells me, “I’ll use the prod on you till your heart stops.”

  Curtis then stands next to the mattress and begins to unbutton his shirt. “If you bite me, I’ll hurt you in ways you’ll never forget.”

  When he gets all the buttons undone, he reaches down to pinch one of my nipples hard. The sensation is a sharp ladder of pain from breast to temples, flooding my eyes with tears.

  “You can scream all you want, though,” he tells me, grinning.

  A knock at the door startles him, and he straightens almost comically.

  “Who is it?” he yells.

  Another knock. “Goddamn it,” he swears, feverishly buttoning his shirt again. “Just a minute,” he calls out impatiently.

  When all the buttons are fastened, he walks briskly to the door, opens it, steps outside, and closes it behind him. There is the sound of a female voice, and the door opens again.

  “Nurse is coming,” Curtis tells me. But it’s not Connie, it’s Brenda, her two eyes blackened from the broken nose I gave her. She comes into the room carrying a large basin of water and a washcloth and towel folded over one arm.

  “You’re here early,” he says to Brenda, arms crossed over his chest.

  “I’m here to clean you up,” she tells me, ignoring Curtis. She looks surly, still angry over my attack on her. Her movements bristle with resentment.

  Brenda thumps the basin down on the floor next to the mattress, hard enough to spill water over the edge.

  “Where’s Connie?” Curtis asks.

  “You think I know?” Brenda snaps. “She’s not here and I am.” She begins dipping the washcloth into the basin and wringing out the excess water.

  “It’ll help if you undo these straps,” she tells Curtis, her voice strident. “I’m not washin’ the nasty bits. She’s got to do that.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” he says.

  Brenda is running the washcloth roughly down my right leg, the water barely tepid. She points to the incision behind my ankle. “That looks bad. I’m going to need some ice for the swelling.”

  When he doesn’t move to leave she raises her head in annoyance. “Would you please just go get me some ice in a bag? There’s some in the big meat freezers in the far car park.”

  Curtis looks at her for a moment like he’s going to challenge her, but then she says the magic words. “Evangeline is not going to be happy if this leg gets any worse.”

  With an exasperated breath, he leaves, taking the prod and closing the door behind him.

  Brenda immediately drops the washcloth and crosses rapidly to the door, puts an ear to the wood and listens for an instant. The skin below her eyes is puffy, a purplish gray, forehead shiny with sweat, her nose grossly swollen. Her hair looks greasy and uncombed, her naked, frowning mouth like an unhappy baby’s. But there is a barely suppressed tension to her movements, and her breathing’s rapid. She turns to look at me, reaches into a pocket of her nurse’s tunic, and pulls out a small pistol. The barrel points at me like a black, accusing finger.

  I jerk away defensively, a sudden demented vision of my body being shoved into one of the large freezers—where El Gitano’s headless body was kept?—but she sits next to me on the mattress, setting the gun, like an offering, on the bed. Then she begins to undo one of the wrist restraints.

  “I didn’t do that to your leg,” she tells me, wiping at her forehead with the back of one hand. She’s not crying but her eyes are veined with red. “Evangeline did it. I just gave you the deep sedation. I didn’t know they were going to do that to you.”

  She stands and moves to the other side of the mattress, releases the other restraint with shaking hands.

  “This has gone too far,” she says. “Too many people have been hurt.”

  I sit up quickly, grabbing the gun. The pistol grip feels like a warm handshake.

  “Give me your phone,” I say, holding out my hand.

  She shakes her head. “There’s a guard posted twenty-four/seven at the front gate, down the road about a half a mile away. He takes all our cell phones while we’re at the house. They use portable radios. That’s how they talk to one another.

  “I want you to kill Curtis Roy,” she tells me. Her eyes, narrowed to two slits, meet mine. “If he’s arrested, she’ll just get him out again. He raped me, just like he will you. He deserves to die. I just can’t do it myself.”

  I want to ask her what the plan is after I kill Curtis, but I hear the outer door to the house opening and then closing again, hard. Curtis will be back in the room in a few moments. My mouth is dry and rancid, like the bottom of a birdcage, my head filled with loose grains of sand. The leg chain rattles as I reposition myself.

  Brenda stands up, throws herself back against the far wall. She looks at me, terrified. “Just don’t forget that I was the one who helped you,” she whispers.

  The door opens and Curtis comes fully into the room before his brain registers that I’m out of the restraints, on my knees on the bed, pointing a pistol at his head.

  “Get down!” I yell. “Or I split your skull wide open.”

  He looks from me to Brenda. He drops the bag of ice to the floor. Then he charges me. I squeeze the trigger, and no explosion. There is no round in the chamber, and before I can rack it, he’s tackled me. He’s over me, a grain thresher of churning hands and arms. I flail desperately against him, but one of his fists connects with the side of my head. The gun is twisted viciously out of my hands and into his. The butt of the gun is smashed into my cheekbone and the tiny, dim galaxy of the overhead light doubles, then doubles again.

  I can hear Brenda screaming. Curtis extends an arm toward her. He’s saying something, but I can’t understand the words. My hands are plunging under the pillow. A searing pain as a piece of glass slices open one searching palm. The pistol fires again and again, at least half a dozen times, followed by a minute gap of silence. Curtis watches Brenda collapsing to the floor, her hands over her bleeding chest. His shirt is pulled away from his pants, exposing belly above the belt line. Both of my hands come out from beneath the pillow, each with a fistful of glass. The first hand engages in a downward arc with enough power to jam the longest deadly icicle into the tender flesh, the tip gliding into the taut muscles like a knife into a Christmas ham, stopping only when the killing tip bucks against his pelvic bone. I twist the glass and it breaks off inside him.

  Curtis doubles over, screaming in pain. A sideways sweep and I deflect his gun hand, follow that with a hard, rapid palm strike up under his nose, my arm seeking to drive the cartilage into his brain. His head snaps back, but ins
tantly he brings his head at me again, nose leaking blood, lips curled in furious pain. His eyes are open only to the promise of my slow, painful death, his chin careening toward me like a hatchet. I raise the remaining winking shard straight up, bracing it against one split and bleeding palm, and with his own forward momentum, he impales the unguarded, pulsing hollow of his throat on the glass.

  Gurgling noises erupt from his mouth and he throws himself off the bed, swinging the gun frantically in the air. He lands on the floor, firing the pistol wildly, emptying the magazine into the ceiling; glass and wood chips fall like rain over my head. Within ten seconds he is lying completely still.

  I’m still on my back, my breath a sharp keening wind squeezed in and out of my lungs. Get up, get up, get up, some unrecognizable inner voice chants, and I wipe the sweat from my face, feeling the blood from one palm coating my forehead like a mask.

  I crawl off the bed, forgetting the weighted leg chain, and am brought up short with a painful tug. Panting, I crawl to Brenda, dragging the stone behind me. She’s not breathing; her bruised eyes are open and vacant.

  A quick check of Curtis’s unmoving body proves he’s gone to meet his Maker as well, blood still leaking from his neck wound onto the floor. His own gun is not on him, so it has to be elsewhere in the house. Like Brenda, he has no cell phone.

  The sword that reaches him cannot avail, nor the spear, the dart or the javelin, I reflect with cold irony. But a shard of glass…

  “Slings and arrows, motherfucker,” I tell Curtis as I crawl past him, dragging the stone to the door.

  The door is unlocked and I crack it open, listen for any sounds. Hearing nothing, I heave up the stone and stagger out into the hallway. I need to find Curtis’s gun or some kind of weapon. The cattle prod is propped up against the wall so I grab it in one hand, cradling the heavy stone precariously in the other arm. My right palm where the glass has pierced is seeping blood, making my grip on the prod slippery, and it almost falls from my grasp as I shuffle to the right, toward the room where I’ve been taken several times to meet with Evangeline. The one with the painting of Saint Michael. I know there’s a window in the room and I need to get my bearings.