He didn’t respond, just hung there with his eyes closed, his feet dragging through his own feces. He looked like a monster, an unrecognizable mass of contusions. The razor wire had done its job and I imagined you could flip his head open and use his skull as a bowl.
I pulled on the chains again, hoping they might have loosened in the past few hours, but my wishful thinking was squashed like a bug; the chains were fortified links of imprisonment. Tooth was onto something before, about figuring out how to get Skinny Man while still in our binds, and right before he came downstairs, Tooth had that proverbial lightbulb over his head. Unfortunately, I hadn’t the faintest idea what he had thought of.
I had to think, and I had to do it outside the box. Tooth had tried to yank his wrist through the cuffs, ripped a chunk of skin off, and beamed. But I knew he’d never get his hand through in one piece. What was his plan?
I was wracking my brain when I heard the car return, tires crunching on the gravel driveway. Shit, that was fast. Or was it? Time didn’t measure the same to me anymore; the seconds lasted hours and the hours blurred into a single frozen moment. The driveway door opened and keys jingled down the stairs, stopped behind the sunset photo. For a brief moment Skinny Man just stood there, listening. There was nothing to hear though—Tooth was out, Jamie was crying softly and incoherently, and I was quietly listening. What was he hoping to hear? Us making plans? Then it dawned on me: he was just playing around. Coming down the stairs as loud as he did, he knew I must have heard him. Like the incident with the gun, he was just messing with my head.
Sure enough, the door unlocked and Skinny Man came back into the room carrying a brand new roll of duct tape in his hands. Butch followed him in and went and sat by his dishes.
“Should have done this first I guess,” he said. “Some people just love to say ‘I told you so.’”
He tore off a piece and slammed it over Tooth’s mouth, covering the razor wire. The blood, saliva and pus made the tape slick and he had to put a few pieces on, wrapping it around the entire head before it would stick. He did me next, pressing it against my face so tight I thought my head would cave in. Having to breathe solely through my nose accentuated the stench of the room, which was beyond anything I’d ever dreamt possible. Dead fish in a hot trunk would have smelled better. Next, he disappeared into the back room and muffled Jamie’s cries. When he came out he put his hands on his hips and stared at Butch.
“Are you satisfied now?”
The dog sat like a bump on a log, obviously aware that his master’s brains were made of diarrhea. But Skinny Man gave a little chuckle, and for the first time I thought maybe he was just messing with us. Maybe the whole talking-to-the-dog thing was a ruse in case we escaped. I tried to remember if Son of Sam had pleaded insanity, but I couldn’t recall.
He came over and picked Tooth’s Red Sox cap off the floor, brushed it off and put it back on Tooth’s head. “Should’ve known you was a Red Sox fan. Never met an asshole that wasn’t. Hear tell that Red Sox fans are the most loyal fans around, but if you ask me, anyone who roots for these losers year after year after year, that ain’t loyalty, that’s just plain ignorance.”
Tooth made a little snuffle and blinked his eyes. I prayed for him to wake up, at least so he wouldn’t choke. But then I thought better he choke than get butchered any more. God, was I really giving in?
Blood was seeping out around the tape on Tooth’s face and running down his chin. It reminded me of a movie I’d seen, Force Ten From Navarone, where Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw were trying to blow up a dam. When they blew the dynamite, little cracks zig-zagged along the dam wall. The water trickled out slowly at first and they thought they’d failed the mission, but slowly the cracks widened until the whole dam broke apart and fell into the river. I almost expected Tooth’s head to do that now, just crumble apart and spill his brains down his shoulders. But Skinny Man must have seen the same movie, because he took out a pocket knife and poked a hole through the tape into Tooth’s mouth, letting the blood run out and pool on the floor.
Butch was on it like a fly on shit, licking it up as it fell. “Leave it.” Skinny Man kicked at him and reluctantly the dog went back and lay near his dishes.
“Okay then,” he said. “I think it’s time to play another game. How about that, Butch, you wanna play some more?”
The dog looked up, tilted his head, gave a little wag of his stubby tail. He looked unsure whether he’d get a treat or a kick in the ribs.
“Who’s feeling lucky? Will it be asshole number one, wearing the hat of a loser team made of midgets and niggers? Or will it be asshole number two, who rubs his nub to pictures of Wonder Woman because he’s too much of a nerd to get laid? Or perhaps,” he smiled, licked his forefinger and stuck it in the air, “asshole number three. A sweet young hole if there ever was one.”
I hated him talking about Jamie, but I forced myself to remain calm, to figure out what Tooth had hit on. It was difficult to ignore Skinny Man as he rolled the dice about and tossed them on the floor. I didn’t look at the numbers, didn’t look to see the expression on his face. I had to think. What had Tooth been doing when he’d tried to pull his hand through the cuffs? I tried to pull my hand through but my wrist wouldn’t fit, and I ended up opening the cut that was there already a little more.
“Eleven. Boy, I am one lucky motherfucker, ain’t I, Butch? Got to hand it to fate, I tell ya.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding when I heard it wasn’t my number.
Then the ritual began, the dancing, the fondling, the dog barking. I fought to control my mind, to focus on the chains, on escaping. But as he undulated in front of me, taking off his clothes, I found it harder and harder to concentrate until, inevitably, I started crying again. He danced right up to me, all the tattoos following his lead, his own little tribe of headhunters. When he was completely naked he went into the room with Jamie.
She started screaming when he opened the door, though her voice was muffled from the tape. It wasn’t long before I heard a clink of metal and Skinny Man’s heaving grunt as he lifted something heavy. Whatever it was smashed against the ground and reverberated off the walls, sent chills down my spine and stood my hairs on end. Jamie pierced my ears with an unholy wail that lasted until her breath gave out.
I started shaking like I was freezing, but it wasn’t from any cold. I think I might have been going into shock, but I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to tell Jamie to shut up. I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I wanted to be in California, by the waves and smoking fresh dope.
She filled her lungs again and let loose with the same excruciating cry, and I couldn’t take it. This wasn’t happening. I was asleep, and any moment now I would wake up.
He came out of the room, blood smeared like war paint on his face and chest, carrying a large ax that looked like it had just been used to serve several pieces of cherry pie. Chunks of red flesh slid down the blade and plopped on the ground. Butch ran over, snorting like a wild boar, and sucked in the meat. Skinny Man rolled the largest piece of flesh up and down his stomach, then down to his erect prick where he rolled it up under his balls. I turned away, nauseated. I didn’t want to know what it was, it didn’t matter anymore. The daydream was safer, so I went back to the West Coast. But even then he wouldn’t leave me alone, came out of nowhere and stood next to me on the beach.
So I took a walk toward a public park to watch the children playing. I saw Jamie and myself running away from our father who was busy chasing us, making his silly faces. My mother was sitting on a checkered blanket, laughing and taking pictures. Jamie tried to dodge my father and twisted her ankle, crashing to the grass with tears in her eyes. I stopped running and stood next to her, just looking at her puffy face as she cried. My father scooped her up and carried her to the blanket and kissed her on the forehead. My mother rubbed her ankle and made more funny faces until she laughed. Nobody seemed to know I existed at that moment so I sat in the dirt an
d played with some ants, wondering why this little girl had stolen my parents from me.
Why that particular memory resurfaced is beyond me, but it calmed me down. I think I was trying to tell myself something, find reason for being where I was. It was a peculiar memory to dwell on, watching myself give in to jealousy. But perhaps it was not the resentment that was the focus, but something else. The picture from that day hung on the wall in our family room, though it was taken in the field behind the elementary school near our home and not in California. And though I had never paid much attention to it growing up, it always reminded me of the blandness of my upbringing. We weren’t a family of stature, or adventure, we were just your typical normal, no-flair unit. But we were a caring family, always there for each other when it mattered most, even if we couldn’t stand to be in the same room with one another half the time.
No matter what happened now, we would never be a normal family again.
I dared a look at the hell about me, and found Skinny Man on the ground petting Butch, who was in turn licking the stump of flesh that had just been placed in his bowl next to the mystery woman’s arm bones. It played sort of like a movie, like I was in another dimension, trying to figure out how they lit the shot without drawing attention to the crew. If I wanted to, I could change channels by blinking my eyes and watch the California station instead.
Seemingly, the two worlds melted together like paint mixing, and soon I was watching Butch eat pieces of my sister on a beach in Malibu. Tooth stood next to me on the beach, his flat, sizzled crotch attracting seagulls.
Skinny Man walked up to the ice cream truck on the boardwalk and bought a molten red shovel, threw it over his shoulder and carried it back to a door that opened against physics in the breaking tide. He disappeared inside, fading into darkness and into a woman’s screams. Out in the cloudy red sea, the dorsal fin of a dolphin broke the surface and then sank back into the depths.
CHAPTER 17
I don’t know how much time went by before Skinny Man returned to our dungeon, but it was long enough for hunger pangs to make my stomach feel like it was tearing itself in half. Long enough for Butch to finish eating my sister’s flesh and go back upstairs. Long enough for Tooth to wake up and cry and lean back against the wall and doze off again. Long enough for me to fall asleep myself without noticing because one minute I was happily engaged in coitus with Lucy Graves on a Malibu beach, and the next I was being slapped in the cheek.
I came to in a fog, blissfully ignorant of the fact I was being tortured in some crazy man’s basement. The slapping, however, was lighting up my face so I instinctively lunged at whatever was causing my discomfort, only to snap back, crack my skull against the wall, and see stars. When my vision cleared, in front of me hovered the maniacal visage of Skinny Man, laughing at my surprise. He smacked me again for good measure and showed me the dice. I had forgotten about the game.
“Did you have a nice nap? Count any sheep? Can do lots with sheep, ya know. For instance, bet you never seen your sister get fucked by a big ol’ billy goat, huh? Give me some time I can arrange it, perhaps throw in a flaming wasp nest while we’re at it. Lock ’em all up in a big box and shake it up! Just shake it good! Man, that would be something to crow about. All in good time, I suppose.”
I noticed for the first time he had fillings in his back teeth and wondered what doctor was crazy enough to get so close to this man that their hands were in his mouth. Even more distressing was the notion that Skinny Man took better care of his teeth than I did.
“Figure your number is due, boy,” he said, and leaned in close toward Tooth, sniffing the collection of fluids around the tape. “You’re friend here is starting to stink. Maybe I should put him out with the garbage.”
“I’m thirsty,” I said. Through the tape and gag it sounded like, “Mmm mmrrmmy.”
“Thirsty?” he asked, deciphering my mumbles.
Honestly, how long had he been talking to gagged prisoners?
“You want a drink? Shit, you motherfuckers want everything. ‘I want a drink, I want to go home.’ Boo-fucking-hoo. You should have thought about that before you crashed my party. It ain’t my fault you’re down here parched like a sand trap. Shit, there’s a whole frigging lake out there in that mountain. You should have gone there, done some swimming, drinked your fill. Drinked? Is that a word? Shit, I’m not so good with words, ya know? I said ‘Ya know!’”
He grabbed my throat and squeezed—his old familiar tactic—and while he did it he grit his teeth like a child poking a dead bird. I frantically nodded yes, but he wouldn’t let go, just kept squeezing. What did he want? Confirmation of his stupidity? Yes, you dumb fuck, you used the wrong word, because you’re fucking insane and take orders from your dog!
“You must have the angels on your side, boy. Because something is telling me to play fair, roll the dice, even though I know I should snap your virgin neck right now.”
I prayed he would do it, that’s how far gone I was. But he didn’t; he just let go of me in a huff.
“Shit,” he said, seemingly annoyed at himself. “You want water? Okay, I’ll get you some water.”
What he got me was shit in a cup, a rancid smelling brownish-green fluid I could only have guessed came from some dead animal’s ass. “The pipes are rusty,” he said. “It looks bad but it tastes okay.”
I shook my head no, closed my eyes. Naturally, that pissed him off, but that’s what he was hoping for. “You ungrateful little shit! I didn’t have to get you any water, you know. I could have left you down here to die of thirst. Now you drink this water.”
He ripped the tape off my mouth, taking bits of facial hair with it. It burned like someone rubbing sandpaper on my skin. With one hand closing my nostrils, he forced my mouth open and poured the sludge down my throat. Instantly, I recognized the coppery taste of blood. But there was more than just blood. There was some sort of salty fat, and feces as well. Definitely shit from some animal or human, decayed flesh, bits of skin, something worse than bile. I felt it land in my hungry belly and fill up all the space, smelled it behind my eyes as I fought to exhale. Realizing I was drinking death, somehow, despite his vice-like grip, I coughed and spewed the rest of it onto his face.
Skinny Man snapped his fist back to hit me and that’s when Tooth woke up.
“Mmmm.”
At this, Skinny Man stopped short of dislocating my jaw and sneered.
“Well, I’ll be a red-assed monkey in a banana factory, look who’s awake.”
Tooth was awake, and what was more, he was aware. Narrow slitted eyes, furrowed brow, hands balled into fists and flexing by his side. The sonofabitch was ready for a fight. And all this with his face so unrecognizable and his groin so hacked up you’d swear he’d just crawled out of the grave.
“I’m sorry to inform you,” Skinny Man continued, “your angry stare doesn’t do much to frighten me. Kind of hard to be intimidated by a man with no dick. Or does that make you a woman . . . technically speaking? Tell me, hot shot, how does it feel to loose both your guns?”
Tooth didn’t waver.
“Okay, looks like the fun’s about to begin. This here is more like it, sort of like the playoffs—who gets to advance to the next round and all that shit. C’mon, sing with me. Take me out to the ball game—hey, you still got those, that’s gotta count for something.”
He threw the cup over his shoulder and tossed the dice on the floor. I never prayed so hard it wouldn’t be my number, and I didn’t look at the result just in case. But when he looked back up, he looked right at me, a grin snaking across his bearded face. I knew he’d rolled one of my numbers, I knew this was going to hurt. I wanted to go back to my dream world but the rancid taste in my mouth kept me in the present.
“Oh God, please, no,” I said.
“’Oh God, please no,’” he repeated, whining it like a baby.
“Please, you don’t have to do this.”
“Jesus, boy, you are a little sissy. It ain’t even you
r number.”
Looking down, I found the dice near my feet, two fives beaming back at me. I didn’t know which was worse, that I was happy it wasn’t me, or that Jamie was about to be hurt again. I was thanking God and at the same time cursing Him for putting me here.
The man did his song and dance, stripped bare and went into the back room. I was slowly beginning to realize how amazingly strong the human body is, how resilient and self-preserving it can be. But also how much pain it can suffer. I figured there was no way Jamie would even be conscious anymore, but her screams tore me in half, scratched my brain and I just cried and cried. Where the tears came from I had no idea; my body should have been empty of everything by now, including my will and concern.
Her screams brought the dog down the stairs, sniffing the air and looking for its master.
Tooth, in a subdued yet deductive mood, started pulling his hand through the cuff again, peeling back his skin like a banana. He groaned and pulled until the bone came through, a sickening pearl colored fragment scraping on the metal. I watched him in awe, both because the pain must have been unbearable, but also because he should have been dead, or at the very least, unconscious.
Through the concrete wall behind me the screams grew to a crescendo, but my mind started to focus on what Tooth was trying to do. It was that cosmic connection we had; I just knew what his twisted mind was playing at. He was trying to break his thumb, maybe even sever it off, get his arm free and use it on Skinny Man.
Pushing Jamie’s cries out of my mind, I watched him like I was watching two girls kissing, trying to see it from different angles. If he got his arm free, he could grab the guy, pull him in. I could go for the keys in his pocket if he was close enough. The chains offered about two inches of slack, so he’d have to be practically on top of me. But then what? I wouldn’t be able to unlock myself, would I? And wouldn’t Skinny Man just push free and kill us? And did he even keep the cuff keys on that particular ring? And half the time he was running around naked playing with himself so he wouldn’t have any clothes on anyway.
The Summer I Died: A Thriller Page 12