In The End, Only Darkness

by O'Rourke, Monica

  Patrick releases his grip on the iron but leaves it on her stomach, the wound worsening, flesh all but dissolved from her stomach, the skin on her arms and legs raw from the stressful pressure of her movements. He lays his forefinger and middle finger on her carotid artery just below the jaw line.

  “Dead?”

  Patrick shakes his head. “Way too soon. Erratic pulse though.”

  The girl with the curly brown hair has fainted, and Square Rims slaps her cheeks but she doesn’t wake up this way. The camcorder is in his other hand, dangling at his hip.

  Patrick glances back at Asha with longing, as if staring at a long-lost friend. He turns quickly back to the girl on the table. He produces a small vial, waves it beneath the girl’s nose. She sputters into consciousness, coughing and gagging and trying to escape from the noxious ammonia smell.

  “Welcome back, Katie,” Patrick mutters sadly.

  Katie begins to scream, and Square Rims clamps his hand over her mouth. “Save it,” he says, only Katie is shaking her head.

  “Why?” she cries after he removes his hand. “Why are you doing this?”

  And Asha wants to know the same thing, why are they doing this, why her? and the room darkens for a moment and she fights the desire to black out.

  Square Rims is exchanging the tapes in the camcorder now, and Patrick leans into her ear but speaks loudly. “Your daddy,” he says, scratching his chin somewhere behind all that wiry hair, “he says he doesn’t like you dating niggers. Says you won’t stop, that you’re ruining the family name.”

  Her mouth opens and closes and when it opens again says “what?” right before the sobs begin.

  “Sorry, kid,” Square Rims says, “nothing personal.”

  Katie looks lost, confused, her eyes wide and round like China plates. “But why? Why? Oh God, why?”

  Patrick frowns, shakes his head.

  “Don’t do this,” she pleads, frantic, her voice hoarse. “Please just kill me. Don’t burn me up!” but Patrick steps away from her and Square Rims raises the camcorder and rests it against his neck.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo,” Patrick says, “but this is what your daddy paid for.”

  And Asha sees the empathy in him and wonders how he could do this. Wonders what made him this way. Sees the struggle within him and knows what struggle feels like.

  “God no!” Katie howls, already bucking against the restraints, and Patrick reaches down and plugs the curling iron into the outlet.

  Asha knows from painful experience how hot curling irons get, once burnt her neck using one after it touched her skin for barely a second, suffered through a blistering second-degree burn when she accidentally sat on it because she’d left it on the toilet lid to heat up.

  Within seconds the smoke rises from Katie’s crotch, her pubic hairs singed, the flesh inside her vagina popping and crackling, burnt flesh smells like pork swirling with the smoke.

  Katie goes mad, kicking her legs wildly, busting through an ankle restraint, but there is no need to secure it; she’s unable to move anywhere at all.

  Square Rims records while Patrick makes sure the curling iron stays imbedded in the girl’s vagina. Katie’s screams pierce Asha’s eardrums, sends shivers dancing along her skin, tickles the fine hairs on her arms, heart pounding furiously now, her skin clammy and stomach lurching and flipping.

  Katie stops moving. Her head drops to one side, tongue hanging like a panting dog on a hot summer day, the smell of her burnt body thick and sweet.

  Patrick checks her pulse. “Not yet,” and he wipes his hands on his pants. He also checks the black-haired woman’s pulse and nods, and removes the iron from her stomach. “Dead,” he says, and Asha sees a blackened red mass where there once was skin, the border raw and jagged and oozing pus, blisters forming a puckered kiss around the rim of the wound.

  There are two other women in the room who haven’t said a word, haven’t made a sound at all, and Asha looks over, praying for hope. Wondering if this is a nightmare because it can’t possibly be real, they can’t possibly have been burnt to death, tortured that way. Hope that maybe one of these women in the other side of the room will save Asha from the madmen. But as her eyesight strengthens, as she is able to focus more clearly, she realizes that those other women are dead as well.

  Numb head to foot, unable to imagine a more horrible way to die than what she’s seen, movement no longer possible because she is terrified.

  “What about her?” Patrick says, and Square Rims shakes his head and says, “He didn’t say.” They approach Asha and she cowers, tries to melt into the table, wants blood and marrow to ooze into the sheet beneath her.

  Patrick touches her arm and leans over her head. “There are some sick people in this world.”

  Asha cracks open her lips and licks them, forces her lungs to obey and squeezes out a word. “Who?”

  “Derek, “ he says. “He was angry you dumped him.”

  On some level she knew there could be no other possibility, had assumed this somewhere in the deep recess of her mind. Mean-spirited, callous he’d been, so this doesn’t surprise her. But the realization rushes at her from its charred remains, choking her with the bitterness, and Asha is too stunned to weep.

  “He wants it to be painful,” Patrick says wearily, wipes his brow with the back of the hand not clutching her elbow, and Asha closes her eyes, tears rolling back into her ears, wanting a death that isn’t painful but not really wanting to die at all. He removes his hand from her arm and her eyes pop open in panic, and she struggles into an upright position.

  “Please,” she says, throaty words mingling with tears and desperation. “Don’t.”

  Patrick shakes his head. “It’s what we do. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she pleads. “Save me from here,” she whispers, “and we can be together.” She wonders why she says this to him, and wonders if she means it.

  Square Rims has disappeared and returns carrying a butcher knife, and pushes Asha back down on the table. She punches at him, tries to sit up again, tries to kick and claw and bite but Patrick secures her to the table, Velcro fasteners clenching her limbs. Naked body thrashing, squirming, futile attempts to slide away, and Square Rims leans into her torso for support, bringing the barracuda-teeth blade to the edge of the breast.

  “Double mastectomy,” Square Rims says to Patrick. “It’ll take a while, but she can bleed to death. Grab the camera.”

  Patrick doesn’t move though, stares into Asha’s pleading, wild eyes instead.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Patrick nods. “Yeah, Mike, I heard you.” But still he doesn’t move, still stands beside Asha, and she stares back, painful breaths choking, chest heaving and body shaking, skin pale and clammy and goose bumpy, a juxtaposition of hot and cold everywhere at once.

  At his feet is the camcorder, which Patrick lifts but doesn’t turn on. Mike releases his vice-grip on Asha’s breast, removes his elbow from her sternum. “What’s wrong?”

  “This doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to do this.”

  “We can’t let her go. Not after this. Besides, we have a job to do. This is what we do, Patrick. Just like you said.”

  Patrick glances across the room as if seeing it for the first time, as if the scope of the horror is just dawning on him, and he says, “This feels wrong.”

  Mike crosses his arms, butcher knife protruding from beneath his elbow and cocks his head like a confused puppy, flash of white upper teeth as he chews on his lower lip.

  “I’ll pay you,” Asha begs, last-ditch frantic attempt, “I have money and I can pay you.”

  “What are you doing?” Mike asks Patrick. “Why this one?”

  Patrick’s tea-colored eyes return to Asha’s, and he looks confused, looks sad and confused and he sighs as if unable to find the words to answer the question.

  Mike leans forward again, plants his elbow against her belly button and grabs her bruised breast, small pink nipple
erect from fear. Presses the knife against the flesh and says, “I’ll videotape the corpse then; you’re useless,” and the knife slices away the edge, cleanly severs part of the breast from her chest before the pain registers, before she notices that he’s already begun the assault. Blood seeps from the wound, her life washing away in a warm bath, the shock catching her breath several moments before she begins to scream.

  “Stop!” Patrick yells, rushes toward Mike, grabs the knife and wrestles Mike from Asha’s body.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mike snarls, shoving Patrick, almost knocking him off his feet. Patrick regains his footing and rushes Mike headfirst, knocks him to the floor, and the fight is over almost before it begins. Mike drops awkwardly, hands spread to prevent the fall and the knife is aimed toward the ceiling and Mike is impaled on it, the edge stabbing through his shoulder and coming through the back of his neck. Saint Vitas dance, Mike’s body spasming and thumping, a landed fish, and half a minute later lays still, blood quickly puddling beneath him, flowing into the drain several feet away.

  “Oh God,” Patrick moans and drops to his knees, check’s Mike’s pulse. “It was an accident,” he says to the corpse, square rimmed glasses shattered beside the dead man’s head.

  Somehow the pain has been forgotten, endorphins and adrenaline replacing the blood in her veins, severed tissue not on her mind for a moment. But when she glances down reality floods back, the gaping hole where the connective tissue should be now filling with air, searing heat marking the outline of the wound. Patrick presses a cloth against the damaged breast, pushes against the agonizing wound, and the cloth is saturated with blood.

  “How much money?” he asks, almost whispers, and Asha understands his motivation now, knows that this is the only reason Mike is dead and she is not.

  “Grandfather … left me money,” she says through gritted teeth, slow measured breaths against the pain. “Lots.”

  Patrick snatches a roll of duct tape from a table a few feet away, presses a clean cloth to her wound and secures it with the tape. Caresses her hair and stares longingly into her eyes.

  Without another word he is gone, and Asha waits several minutes before realizing she doesn’t hear any sounds; no footfalls, no breathing, alone with a roomful of corpses, tied useless to a table, slowly bleeding to death. She calls Patrick’s name several times but the effort hurts too much, each echoing word bringing a fresh bout of searing pain, so she lays quietly and waits, not knowing how long to wait, or why he’s left her like this. No clock to mark the passage of time, no windows to allow sunlight or moonlight to filter in, to indicate how long she lay shivering and bleeding and sobbing on the table.

  Footsteps now, many footsteps, getting closer, either following a corridor or descending stairs; impossible to tell.

  Breathless, face tinged pink and sweaty, Patrick returns to her side.

  Bizarre relief to see this man, her torturer, her rapist, the memory of the rape having been forgotten until now, replaced by fresh torture. But she remembers fingers probing, stroking, remembers being fucked inside a coffin, inside a drawer but the conflict of emotions makes the acid in her stomach churn. Feeling compassion and gratitude for the man who saved her when it was probably the same man who had tortured and raped her.

  Sweat-sheen face hovering above hers, slight smile through scruffy, wiry terrier beard, and he plants his hands on her shoulders and gently squeezes. “I’m back,” he says, stating the obvious. “We have to figure out what to do here.”

  She wants to respond, wants to say “how so?” but the words fail her, the blood that fled her body stole her words, stole her strength and ability to respond.

  He peels back the tape and removes the cloth to examine the wound. “It’s really not that bad,” he lies, rifling through the contents of the first-aid kit he lays on her stomach, cold metal box sending shivers through her body. “You’re mostly in shock I think. The cut’s not that deep.”

  Hydrogen peroxide bubbles in the wound, sizzles and foams like an antacid tablet in a glass of water, and it stings but the pain is bearable. Iodine next, the brownish-red liquid tickling as he pours it. Out of her line of sight he’s working on something, and she hears the slow rhythm of his concentrated breath. He turns back to her, snaps on a pair of rubber gloves, lights a match to sterilize the needle he’s holding.

  “Just a few stitches,” he says gently, and she shakes her head, the relief she felt just moments before dissipating until the only feeling that remains is dread. “You have to stay still. I’ll work fast.”

  Stabbing pain as needle penetrates skin, the creepy tickle of the thread feeling like spider legs, passing through the fresh puncture wounds, and it’s repeated and repeated and she clamps her eyes shut against the pain, against the sickening feeling of being sewn.

  “Okay, done.” Muscles relaxing, relief from the strain, she feels him carefully bandaging the stitches, covering the wound with gauze and surgical tape. He covers her with a blanket and she whispers “untie me,” but he shakes his head, loosens the Velcro bindings but leaves her restrained.

  “Not yet,” he says, stroking her hair, and pulls up a chair to sit beside her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asks weakly, finding her voice again. “Why heal me if you’re only going to keep me a prisoner?”

  Eyes lowered, he doesn’t answer, strokes her forehead instead, gentle touches lulling her into calmness, enticing her into an exhausted sleep.

  It seems like only minutes have passed when she opens her eyes again, but the room if different now, the bloody reeking corpses gone, charnel house now an almost-empty room of stone and concrete and glaring fluorescent light. Several feet away, the outline of a body beneath a sheet, lying on a gurney.

  “Patrick?” she whispers, parched throat and parched lips, swallows and tries again. “Patrick?” louder this time.

  Patrick returns carrying a tray, steaming mug of what smells like coffee or soup, maybe both. He lays the tray on an empty table by the door and gently lifts her head and neck, props pillows behind her. Retrieves the bowl of soup and blows on each spoonful before feeding it to her. Noodle soup tasting odd because of the metallic tang on her tongue, remnants of blood and sickness, but she eats because her empty stomach hurts, feels queasy. He feeds her soup and coffee and wipes her mouth with a napkin.

  The body across the room begins to stir, struggles unseen beneath the sheet, makes no sound other than a muffled, snorting grunt.

  Patrick sets the dishes on the tray and sits beside Asha again, and pulls the blanket down and untapes the wound, replaces the gauze and tapes it closed again. Asha had forgotten about her nakedness and modesty blossoms pink on her cheeks.

  “You said you have money,” he says as he covers her again with the blanket.

  She nods, weary, wondering when this will finally end, wonders why he’s even bothered to treat her if he plans to kill her for her money.

  Leaning forward he presses his face near hers. “You have a decision to make,” and he’s moved away, is now behind her head. Clinking sounds of metal, sharp scrapes of knives, metal against metal, and he returns to her side with a collection of knives.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” and he lays the knives beside her on the blanket, and her eyes bulge in fresh terror, amazed that she had become so complacent, had felt so safe somehow, had believed Patrick cared for her.

  “I want to take you with me,” he says, staring away at nothing, at a chunk of stone wall. “But I have to be sure. Do you want to come with me?”

  Lids fluttering, mind racing and trying to understand what he’s saying, understand what his question means. “Yes,” she whispers, and realizes she means it, realizes she wants to go with Patrick, to be with him. Doesn’t know why and realizes the absurdity but believes she loves his compassion, his tenderness, her rapist-cum-rescuer, her Dark Knight in tarnished armor but she never was one to argue with the desire of the heart.

  “I love you,” he says, ba
by’s breath wrapped around his words. “I know that’s crazy, Asha, but I do.”

  She nods, slowly, unable to answer because she doesn’t know if she loves him, does know there’s no reason she should but also knows that she wants to spend every waking moment with him.

  “You know what I am. You know what I’ve done.”

  Again she nods, words failing her. She knows, and somehow it doesn’t matter. Whether she’ll still feel this way tomorrow, or months from now is a mystery, but for now this is enough.

  “Then I need you to do something. For both of us.”

  Eyes questioning, hoping they speak for her, but he waits instead for an answer. “What is it, Patrick? What do I have to do?”

  He walks over to the body beneath the sheet on the gurney; removes the sheet to reveal the restrained, gagged man naked on the table.

  Asha gasps, almost chokes on the spit she’s sucked into her throat. Stares in disbelief at the man on the table, his eyes huge, sclera tinged pink with broken blood vessels. Derek, hazel eyes pleading, some sense of relief apparent when he notices Asha. A look of dread replacing hope as he seems to remember why she is here in the first place.

  Patrick returns to her side, breathless eagerness as he says, “I want us to be together, Asha, but there’s only one way. Will you do this?” and after an eternity she nods, slowly, hungrily, hatred raging through her body like disease.

  Patrick moves the knives to the chair and unfastens her restraints. Helps her sit up and hands her a shirt and pair of pants, helps her get dressed and is careful of her bandaged wound.

  Asha slides her legs over the side of the table, pins and needles stabbing as the circulation returns. Stands on unsteady legs, blood and adrenaline rushing to her head.

  He lifts the knives, an assortment of blades like a bouquet of stainless steel. “This way I’ll know. I’ll know for sure. We’ll leave here, Asha. Go to South America or somewhere like that. Leave this behind.”

  The idea makes her tingle, the plan exciting, her desire to be with Patrick all she can think about now. He takes her hand and leads her to Derek, and together they stare at him looking terrified and pale, sweat trickling down his face.