He has broken me. I can’t help myself. I said I wouldn’t beg, but I just can’t help it.
He clicks his tongue, the same way he did at Cocoa’s when I caught him in the act—tsk, tsk, tsk. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s too late for you, Mel.”
“They’ll find you,” I say. “They’ll catch you.”
“Maybe, but it’s been weeks since I took you and no one’s even come close. I’ve been doing this for almost two decades, Melanie. I’m good at staying under the radar when I have to be. You’d be surprised, but I lead a fairly normal life. I have a job, a mortgage, a car almost paid off. This,” he motions to the room and the mannequins and to me, “is just my hobby.”
“Wymer will talk. He won’t want to go to prison for life.”
“Don’t act like you know Cooper. You don’t. Cooper would die for me, and he very well might.”
“They’ll find out he’s lying. When he can’t produce the other bodies because they’re down here, they’ll—”
“Oh, shut up,” the Mannequin Man snaps. “I’m not an idiot. I already know you’ve told your little detective friend about the last letter I left you. I saw your call logs and that text message. They know it’s me. They know I’m still out there, but Cooper will die before he talks. We have a bond your peanut-sized brain could never comprehend. Much like the bond I have with my sister. And these bonds are unbreakable.”
I realize begging won’t get me anywhere, not with these two psychos. I also realize I am going to die very soon, after much agony.
“Yeah, yeah, Mel. I know, I know. I’m not good. And if you keep looking at me like that, I may have to pay your parents a little visit.”
“You wouldn’t. You’re not that stupid.”
He rushes across the stone floor, teeth bared and slaps me on the arm, near the rod. I collapse and scream bloody murder.
“You watch your mouth, Melanie. You watch it before I have to remove your tongue. Better yet, I could just stitch those pretty little lips together now instead of later. Huh? How about it?”
“That wouldn’t be perfect,” I say, the pain still shuddering through me.
He cocks his head, confused.
“That’s what it’s all about. Perfection, right? Well, take a look in the mirror. You’re not perfect. Just like your sister. You’re b-both ugly as hell.”
He hits me again. I bite down on my lip so hard that blood floods my mouth.
Still, I’m not backing down. Not now. I’ve come this far, and I have nothing left to lose. He can hurt me, but even pain isn’t forever.
Soon, I’ll be at peace.
“Look at your face. You look like a clown with all t-that m-muh-makeup,” I say. Darkness edges around my vision. I’m sure I’ll pass out soon, so I have to make these words sting, make them hurt worse than each time he hits me. “You’re h-hi-hideous. You look exactly like what you are on the inside: a m-monst—monster. No amount of concealer or sit-ups and p-p-p-p-pushups can hide that.”
“You shut up. You shut up now!”
“At least Lola’s face is pretty. She might have a few b-blemishes on her body, but at least she doesn’t…doesn’t need three tubes of Mary Kay to hide the pock marks on her face,” I continue. I’m practically shouting, the words coming easier than before. The wave of adrenaline I ride is doing wonders. I never thought I’d shout again, not when I’m this weak.
The Mannequin Man touches his face and smears a finger down his cheek, leaving a blurred track in the makeup. He looks at the tip of his finger, his eyes wide, like he’s surprised there’s concealer on his face.
“And your teeth,” I say. “When was the last time you used a toothbrush and Listerine? Or fl-flossed. I’m guessing n-never.”
Now his mouth opens in a grimace. He touches his sharp left incisor. Turns, scrambles through his desk for a mirror. As he looks at himself, his back hitches and he chokes out a sob.
I’ve wounded him.
But like him with me, I’m not stopping here; I’m going to plunge my knife deeper and deeper, and I’m going to twist it until he’s on his knees begging me to stop.
“I’ve never seen a man wear so much makeup. Men aren’t s-supposed to do that, not unless they’re f-famous, on TV, in the movies.”
“Shut up!” His eyes are watery.
Oh Jesus, please let him break down and start crying. It would be a small victory in the eyes of many, but to me, it would be one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. If I died right after watching him cry, if he killed me now, I would leave this world at least somewhat happy.
“Lola was the one that got the looks in your family, apparently. I’m not trying to be mean,” I say, an obvious lie, “I’m just being ah-ah-honest.”
In a blur, the Mannequin Man rips his shirt off. “But look at my body. Look at my abs and my chest. I’m ripped. I’m beautiful. I’m gorgeous!”
“Your body isn’t bad, no, but not g-great, either. You l-look fuh-famished,” I say. “I can uh-uh-appreciate that you’ve put in a lot of hard w-work—”
“Hard work?” he interrupts, “I eat three times a week. Do you know how hard that is? To starve yourself?”
Not hard when you’re chained up in some psycho’s basement, I think, but I bite my tongue.
“I haven’t had dessert since I was in my twenties. I miss it. I miss candy bars and ice cream,” he says. “I haven’t had a cake for my birthday in years.”
He’s becoming unhinged. He’s right where I want him.
“That’s all good. Sug-sugar is bad for you anyway.”
“So I’m doing good?” he asks. He just wants approval.
Twist the knife, I think.
“Sure, sure,” I say. The calmness in my voice betraying how I really feel. “But you are not a handsome man. You aren’t p-p-perfect. Your mother may not have cared about you kidnapping young w-women and killing them, I-I don’t know, but I do know she wouldn’t be happy with…how you look. If you weren’t lying when you said she only cared about perfection.”
“Shut up! You don’t know my mommy! You don’t!”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t. B-but—”
“Then shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” He drops to the floor and starts doing pushups. One, two, three, forty—I lose count.
“Beauty is more than just what’s on the ssss-surface,” I say as he grunts and grits his teeth. “It’s also what’s inside of you. Your—your soul.”
He stops and looks at me.
“But your insides are ugly, too,” I say.
He goes back to his pushups.
“Exercise w-won’t fix your f-face,” I say. Twisting the knife. Twisting. “You don’t see Lola doing hundreds of p-puh-pushups, you don’t see her starving herself. When we went to the coffee shop, she always ordered a flat white, and when we went out to dinner, she always got a big meal. Dessert, too—cheesecake, tiramisu, ice cream. Because why?”
He looks up again, and this time he seems different. Because I’ve destroyed him. All his confidence is shot. This, I know, is dangerous. When it comes to psychopaths, messing with them is like playing with unstable dynamite.
“Because she’s beautiful,” he says. “Because her face is perfect. And her body is wonderful. She is a natural beauty.”
I nod and say, “Yes.”
“And I’m not.” Tears roll down his face, cutting more tracks in his already smeared makeup.
I try to shake my head. “No.”
The Mannequin Man gets up, leaves his shirt, and storms out of the basement.
He’s left the light on, too.
For the first time in my weeks here, I’m happy.
Forty-Eight
The problem is that I’m still chained up. I can’t get out of here. And if I don’t get out of here, I’ll die soon. I can already feel my body giving in. My brain doesn’t want that, but my body has a mind of its own right now.
The feeling in my right arm dwindles by the second. I can already barely move my
fingers, and when I do, it sends bolts of white-hot pain up to my elbow, which travel to my neck. I fear if I escape and somehow miraculously make it to a hospital, they will have to amputate my arm from the bicep down.
The light is on. I like that. The rats leave me alone when the light’s on.
I press my back against the wall and slide down slowly.
Think. Think. I need to think.
I need to get out of here. I need to get free. Somehow.
I’ve royally pissed the Mannequin Man off. The next time he visits, I think he’s going to kill me.
I move my left arm. It’s not easy. The ligaments at my shoulder feel stretched to the max, and each little movement brings on a bout of agony, a reminder of what this son of a bitch is capable of. I look at the cuffs around my wrist. The skin there is raw and ragged, almost like the mannequins of the dead girls across the way.
I’ve studied these cuffs many times before. They are unbreakable. Without a key, I’m devoid of all hope.
Forty-Nine
I know what I have to do.
When the rats tried nibbling on my wound, I moved too suddenly and the rod inside my arm shifted.
I need a weapon. I need something to defend myself with because the next time the Mannequin Man comes down that ladder, he is going to put an end to me.
The light is still on.
How much longer? I don’t know. Knowing my luck, the bulb will burn out and I’ll be in darkness again, watching for the rats as their yellow eyes get closer and closer.
I look down at my arm. The blood-soaked gauze, the jutting rod, the yellow-purple bruised skin, and the streak of red that runs upward.
Using my left hand, I stretch it as far as it can go toward the right, but the chains are restricting and I’m just inches away. Back against the wall, I roll my left shoulder outward. My right arm doesn’t move much these days. After the stretching, I’m sure I’ve torn some vital parts that used to keep me all intact.
I grunt and suck in air through my teeth. I am miserable.
My right arm flops to the left.
Fingers touch the rod, the gauze.
The grunting turns to screaming. Oh God please help me—
This is when I remember.
In a crack in the floor to my left is one last Vicodin, a present from Lola.
I waste no time in going for it. My fingers scrabble at the stone. At first, I don’t find it and I think the rats have taken it while I was passed out or asleep.
Then I see the little white pill.
I grab it, toss it in my mouth, and chew it up.
The quicker I feel its effects, the better.
Time, I think, is not on my side. I’ve pissed him off, and soon he will come down for his revenge. Three punishments were his deal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he throws in a fourth.
I roll again so my useless right arm flops between my legs. The chains jingle loudly. I hope they can’t hear it up there.
Stretching my left arm as far as it goes, my fingers find the cold tip of the rod. I wiggle it.
The pain is a blast of fire. I bite my tongue so I won’t scream.
I wiggle it again.
A wave of blood pours from the wound, from where the Mannequin Man drilled through my flesh and bone.
Please please please please please—
Another wiggle, this time firmer. The pain is white-hot. It feels unnatural, having something burrowed into your bones that shouldn’t be.
I have to get it out.
The wiggle graduates to a violent shake.
The gauze sops up as much blood as it can, but there’s a lot and it’s dripping onto the floor.
And the rats have smelled it.
They come out of the shadows. Six of them. They are big and fat, furry things, the type of rodents you’d expect to see in an abandoned basement on a dark and cold night. Beady yellow eyes. Protruding yellow teeth. Worm-like tails.
One, braver than the others, darts toward me.
I kick out. Feel the slick fur against my foot. My skin prickles. The rat squeaks—which sounds more like a scream—and joins his buddies in the shadows.
Now my heart rate is high, too high. I feel my blood pressure spiking so hard that I think my veins will burst out of my flesh.
But my fingers are back on the rod, and the shake I did thirty seconds ago graduates into a more confident twist.
The pain is unlike anything I’ve felt so far. My vision dims. I think I might pass out.
Then—
The Vicodin kicks in, and the agony dulls slightly.
A bolt of courage ripples through me.
“Do it,” I tell myself. “Do it now.”
I know it’ll hurt, it’ll hurt like hell, but with the Vicodin tingling my spine and nerfing my senses, I have to strike while the iron is hot.
The rod is blood-slick. So much blood that it squirts through my fingers, red and vibrant in the dull grayness of this dungeon. I don’t care. I put it out of my mind.
Instead, I replace the pain with images of my mother, her face full and healthy, her hair grown back; of my father, smiling before the television, a glass of lemonade in his hand dripping with condensation, no booze for him in this daydream; of Chester, purring and pacing as I open a fresh can of wet food and—
With one mighty pull and a squelch, the rod is free from my arm. I hold it in front, unblinking.
For a long moment, there’s no pain until it suddenly hits me like a pile of bricks.
I feel the hole in my bone. It’s unnatural, and my body is letting me know.
I drop the rod. It bounces off the stone, makes a loud clang.
But I begin to relax. I fall backwards into the wall. I’m breathing hard and fast. I think I might be close to having a heart attack.
So much blood pours from my arm. I grab the gauze, unwind it, then tighten it as much as my weakened muscles will allow. The pressure feels good and terrible at the same time. I keep holding the wound until my left hand aches.
I have to stop the bleeding. I can’t go through all this pain, just to die from blood loss and to get eaten by rats.
Delirium is close by, though. It’s settling in my brain, trying to find a permanent home.
Can’t let it.
Have to fight it.
The rats move closer, gold eyes boring into my own, hungry, ravenous.
“Go away,” I wheeze. “Fuck off.”
But they’re getting darker and darker, more distant.
No—
And this is when I hear the hatch opening.
Fifty
At first I don’t know what I’m seeing. I think I’m having some kind of hallucination.
The Mannequin Man comes down the ladder, but he’s moving like he’s drunk, each step careful and measured. When he hits the stone floor, he doesn’t turn; he leaves his back to me.
The rod is in my left hand, running the length of my arm, which is facing down so he can’t see. There’s blood everywhere. The gauze on my right elbow is loose and flapping.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he says. His voice is muffled. Soft. “You said I wasn’t perfect. Not my face. But my body is. At least, close enough, right?”
He hasn’t turned around yet.
What’s going on?
I’m gripping the blood-slick rod with all my might. It’s not easy. At any moment it could slip from my hands and clang off the floor, giving me away. All that work for nothing.
“I slave over my body. You know that. I do thousands of crunches and pushups a week. Thousands, Melanie. And what does my sister do? Nothing. She got all the good looks. You’re right, Mel. You’re so right, and I have to thank you for that.”
I can’t speak. Something is wrong. There’s a smell of sickness in the air, thicker than that emanating from my wounded right arm.
“You made me see what I should’ve done a long time ago,” he says. “Lola and I, we’re the last surviving members of the family. When Mom was alive
, she was the beautiful flower, the one we looked up to, even when age betrayed her.”
I can hardly understand him; his voice is so muffled.
“Then she died and I thought I was the beautiful flower. I was wrong, and you helped me see that. Lola was the flower, and I was nothing but the ugly duckling who, unlike in the story, would never turn into a beautiful swan…not without some initiative.”
He pauses. His breathing has become ragged, almost filtered.
“What did you do?” I say.
I don’t remember making my lips move.
“You know I have to kill you now, Mel,” he says. “You took your punishment well enough, but I have other things to deal with currently. More pressing matters.”
This is it, I think. Fight or die. Win or lose.
I think of my mother, her smile genuine during her second chance at life.
I think of my father, so happy again.
I think of Chester.
I owe it to them to keep surviving. I owe—
He turns around.
Except he is not himself any longer. He’s wearing a mask—
No.
The realization is like a knife to the gut.
It’s a face. A human face. Fresh. The blood drips down his neck in red zigzags. Pieces of auburn hair cling to the edge of the forehead.
It’s Lola.
He is wearing his sister’s face.
“Am I perfect now, Melanie? Huh? AM I FUCKIN’ PERFECT NOW?”
I see the difference in the skin tones, his makeup a sickly pale beneath the eyeholes of Lola’s creamy, unblemished flesh. I see the crookedness of her lips, how they’re no longer complete, and how his gnarled teeth stick through the jagged circle of her mouth.
And the blood. The red tears running down the torn flaps of her cheeks, the drops splashing the floor. I can hear each one hit the stone, so unequivocally loud.
“AM I PERFECT ENOUGH FOR YOU, MELANIE? AM I? ANSWER ME, YOU STUPID BITCH!”
It’s now that I notice he’s holding a bloody knife, the same one he’s used to deface his sister.
The pain I feel now radiating throughout my body could not be dampened by a thousand Vicodins.
Plastic Girls Page 15