Justifiable Homicide

by Jesse Bastide

8

  He went to the other side of the cage when he was done. He was breathing harder. He looked at her like a piece of meat.

  She looked down and felt a throbbing pain inside her.

  He walked over to her. He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand.

  She raised her chin with great effort and looked straight at him, saw a smile begin to spread at the corners of his lips, and spat in his disgusting face with what little saliva she could muster. A little reciprocal payback for earlier. She couldn't help it. And what did it matter anymore? She was his strapped-up Fuck Thing. It could only get worse, so why not show him what a bastard he was?

  He slapped her.

  Her face jerked violently to one side. She brought her head up and the man slapped her other cheek. It was as hard as a punch this time. Blood started to trickle out of one of her nostrils. She licked it off her upper lip with her tongue.

  “Cunt,” he said. “Stupid cunt.”

  He turned around and picked up his pants and underwear. He got dressed with his back to her. She saw the dark hair on his ass, the thicker tufts of hair collected around his mud-stained ass-crack, and thought, He's an animal.

  He pulled up his pants and left the cage.

  And if he comes back to do it again, I want to be dead first.

  9

  The man came back. In a story like this, the man always comes back.

  He went up to her and unstrapped her arms and allowed her to lower them.

  Her arms were sore. The muscles had almost locked into place. She wiggled her fingers, trying to get sensation back into them, and felt painful pins and needles come back as precursors to proper feeling. She didn't want to look at the train wreck that was her body from the waist down, but she did anyway. She saw the bloodstains from her leaking vagina. She smelled the piss. She felt crusted blood on her upper lip from when he'd hit her.

  The man bent down and unfastened the leg restraints, saying “I bet you won't be a fucking cunt with your foot this time.” Then he stood and smiled and stepped back to look at her. “Feels good to be free, don't it?”

  “You call this free?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He laughed like he'd just said something fucking hilarious. “Now come on, we're going for a little ride.”

  “Where?”

  “You'll see.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  Now she didn't want to die. It had everything to do with the state of her arms and legs, as temporarily insane as that might seem. Because now that her arms and legs were free, she thought that maybe she had a chance. Maybe she wasn't doomed after all.

  “Kill you?” he said. “We're going to go have some fun. I've got things to show you. A special place.” He took a gun out of his waistband. She hadn't seen the grip sticking out when he'd come into the cage. Now he was pointing it at her. The gun had a dark black eye at the end of the barrel.

  “Come on,” he said. “Walk.”

  The cage door was open. She walked out. He was right behind her. It hurt her to walk. Her crotch was chafed and sore and something hot was still aching in her belly and it hurt on every step. She walked across the warehouse toward the door.

  It felt like the longest walk of her life.

  They got to the door and he stepped in front of her and opened it before gesturing for her to go through first. They went outside.

  He pointed toward the car with his gun. Now that she got a good look at it, she saw that the car was a maroon Crown Vic. It looked like a cop car. They went toward it. Selena scuffed her feet. She didn't want him to shoot her. She imagined what it would be like to have a bullet tear through her heart. How it would feel to end that way. To feel herself bleeding from the inside. To cough up blood. To choke on blood.

  A bullet didn't have to do much work to end someone.

  It wasn't a pleasant thought.

  They got to the car and this time he didn't put her in the trunk. He opened the passenger side door and stood aside and said, “Ladies first.” He was grinning.

  She thought about this man's mental state. What disease did he have? What rare mental diagnosis? Otherwise, how else could someone be so evil?

  She got into the car. She sat down and put her hands in her lap and folded them over her blood-stained underwear.

  The man got in on the other side. He had the gun in one hand. He looked at her and said, “This is gonna be all kinds of fun. Just you wait.”

  He started up the car.

  10

  They drove through wooded country. They passed the odd two-tone house. A trailer or two. She didn't see any people, not until a pickup truck came the other way. She tried to make eye contact with the driver of the truck. She tried to say help me with her silent lips. But the man in the truck didn't see her.

  Selena tried to return to her breathing. It was one of the only things she had left. One of the only things she could control. She still didn't recognize where they were. There was an apple orchard off to the left. There was a sign that said Blanchard's Apples that had a hand-painted picture of a loaded apple tree on it.

  She looked into a dark farm house window as they drove by, feeling alone.

  They drove for a long time. She started to see more houses, which gave her a small dose of hope. If someone could see what was happening....

  The trick would be getting someone's attention without letting her kidnapper know what she was doing.

  “This is where the fun part happens,” said the man. “I'm taking you to my house. You know, I think you're a keeper. You're the kind of toy I can keep in the basement. I can have fun with you for a long time.” He clicked his tongue as a kind of auditory punctuation and smiled at her. She saw yellow stains on his teeth, from either coffee or cigarettes or some combination thereof.

  Don't panic now, she thought. Think about a way out.

  “I'm thirsty,” said Selena. “Do you have water?”

  “Shit – water? I didn't think to bring no water.”

  “Please. My throat. I haven't had anything to drink all day.”

  “You gonna die on me?” He laughed. “That's not up to you, missy.”

  “No, I'm not going to die, but it hurts. I'm so thirsty. Please.” Her plea was part truth, part exaggeration to get him to pull over somewhere. A stalling tactic.

  He sighed. “I'll get you water. But only if you suck this first.” He pointed between his legs. “Deal?” He grinned, exposing more yellow stains in his mouth.

  The urge to vomit came up, but she swallowed the lump of nausea and forced it back down. If she didn't agree to his idea of a deal, he might beat her. He might change his mind about her and shoot her on the spot. He looked crazy enough to do either of those things.

  “Okay,” she said. “I'll do it if you pull over. Just please get me some water.”

  The man drove a little further. They passed more houses, then more trees that blurred past the windows of the car. He slowed down just before a cemetery. He turned into it and pulled in far enough that any passerby wouldn't be able to see into the car.

  He parked it and turned off the engine, which made clicking noises as the radiator cooled down. There were tall pine trees overhead. There was no grass between the gravestones, only moss and pine needles.

  The man looked at her. He unzipped his pants and exposed himself. He put his hand on his cock, which was already hard and stank of old come and urine, and wagged it at her. He said, “Do your magic, woman.”

  For an instant, she thought about trying to bite his penis off, just swallowing as much as she could and then biting into it hard like she was eating a piece of undercooked steak on the fourth of July. She could do that, and while it would be disfiguring, it wouldn't kill the bastard. He'd have time to shoot her or grab her neck and choke her to death. Both those realizations made her see that she'd run out of options at this particularly awful moment; she'd have to give him what he wanted.

  She reluctantly moved her face towar
d his lap and parted her lips.

  11

  It was even worse than she'd imagined, mostly because the source of the sour smell was now in her mouth.

  But if there was a silver lining here, it was in the form of opportunity. She was face to face with the gun that was in her captor's hand. He was holding it in his left hand. His hand was close to his lap. His grip was loose, like he was so enjoying himself that he'd let his guard down. His other hand was in her hair, stroking her head and massaging her scalp in a disgusting display of false intimacy.

  She kept her eyes on that gun while she did her awful duty. But like any opportunity worth anything, there was risk. If she reached for it, would she be able to tear it away from him before he could tighten his fingers around the grip and slam it against the side of her face?

  She prepared for him to climax by putting a hand in his lap. She moved her hand closer to his gun hand, creeping it across his lap while he remained blissfully unaware of her intentions. When her hand was no more than an inch from his, she kept it there, motionless and ready to spring into action.

  It happened sooner than she thought it would. It always does in moments like these.The thick man moaned and his body tensed. He was in that place of sweet sweet nothings.

  She reached for the gun.

  She got it.

  12

  Selena shot him. She put a bullet into his gut.

  She jerked herself out of his lap and wiped her mouth against her shirt and wedged herself against the passenger door, putting as much space between her and the man as she could. She was still holding the gun, aiming it at him, her arm shaking.

  He doubled over, grabbing for the place that hurt. Then he reached for her, his red face twisted in rage, his eyes bulging. He was going for her neck. She pointed the gun at his face. She pushed it up against his nose and the barrel stopped shaking. She said, “Stop or you die, motherfucker.” Her voice had a tremor on motherfucker.

  He stopped his hand. He put it down. He leaned back and grabbed for his shot belly. He rocked back and forth. Blood oozed from his wound. It was covering his white shirt, soaking it dark red. He cried out in aching pain. “You shot me, you dumb bitch. You fucking shot me. Look what you did.” He moved his hand so she could see the red stain soaking his white shirt. He looked at her.

  “Make a move and I swear to God I'll shoot you in the face.” Her gun hand was shaking again. She reached for the door handle behind her without looking and opened it. She kept the gun trained on him and got out of the car.

  She stood and looked at this bleeding man with the passenger door still open. She could leave him and run. But what if he lived? What then? That would mean it wasn't over. It would mean he might spend every waking minute of every day of his sick, perverted life trying to track her down. It would mean she'd have to live the rest of her life looking back over her shoulder, because she'd have no way of knowing what he was up to. That was no way to live.

  She knew what she had to do.

  13

  He'd been her abductor. Now it was his turn to get fucked. He was digging a hole. It was a fresh hole adjacent to a grave that was already there. He was digging with a pine branch as a shovel. It was slow work. He was sweating. He was bleeding from his gut. Blood was dripping down to his pants. It was dripping into the earth. He had dirt and blood on his face where he'd rubbed himself.

  “You can't do this, you know,” he said. “You'll get yourself caught. It's not easy to kill a man. It's a burden. You won't be able to live with it.”

  “And what made you think it would be easy?” She was standing six feet away. She was pointing the gun at him. It was getting cold for her, not wearing any pants. But she wasn't going to leave until the job was done.

  “That's different,” he said. “I had it all planned out. You was gonna to have a good life with me. I woulda' taken care of you. Treated you good. Now you shot me. I'm gonna die here, you don't get me to a hospital. That's murder in the first degree. A felony. Capital murder. ”

  “Stop talking. I don't want to hear any more. And it's self-defense, asshole.” She didn't believe the last part, about self-defense. This was murder she had in mind. But it was justified, wasn't it? After everything the man had done?

  She held the gun with two hands. It was starting to feel heavy. The hole was only two feet deep. It was uneven. It needed to be deeper. “Keep digging,” she said.

  The man looked at her. He was pale. His digging was getting weak. And he was so much weaker than he had been when he'd carried her over his shoulder to the metal cage in the warehouse. Now he was a dying man hunched over with his stick. Digging his own grave.

  He was slowing down. He was losing blood.

  He dug until the sun was low. It was late afternoon. The hole got deeper, until finally it was deep enough.

  14

  “On your knees,” said Selena.

  “No,” said the man. He looked at her defiantly. “I know what you're fixin' to do. You're gonna shoot me here. You're gonna bury me in this hole. You don't wanna do that. You don't know what it's like to live with that, knowing you killed another human being.”

  “And you do?”

  The man looked away.

  “On your knees.”

  The man knelt in the hole, still facing her. Still defiant. She walked around behind him. She thought about giving him last words, but that seemed too kind.

  She put the gun up close to the back of his shaved skull. She saw sweat beading on his muscular neck. He was shaking.

  She exhaled. Then she shot him in the head.

  One bullet.

  15

  It took her the better part of an hour to cover him up. She buried the gun with him, sticking the end of the barrel into his mouth like a metal cock and shoving it down his throat. It seemed fitting. She used her feet to kick dirt on top of him. She used the pine branch to do the rest of the job.

  When she was done, she spat on the fresh mound of earth as a final gesture of disrespect. She walked away. She got to the car and saw he'd left the keys in the ignition, and it dawned on her that if she'd buried him with the keys it would have meant a sucky walk along the road with no pants on.

  She left the cemetery in his maroon Crown Vic. She saw more of the same: trees and houses and single-wide trailers, a few double-wides; some cars on blocks in people's yards.

  She didn't know where she was, not until she saw a sign – Anton, pop. 1448.

  That was two hours north of where she'd been kidnapped. She followed the road till she saw signs for the highway.

  She found I-95. She got in the southbound lane and drove. She turned on her headlights. The sky was orange and turned pink before fading into indigo. Then the sun went down.

  16

  Selena went to the Save Mart where she'd been taken. She parked the Crown Vic next to her Jeep. She saw the two bags of groceries by her rear bumper, right where she'd left them. The bag that she thought would fall over had in fact stayed upright with a significant lean to the right.

  She realized that she hadn't been gone long enough for Raymond to come looking for her or report her missing. She realized that it was because Raymond was doing the eleven pm news and that meant he wouldn't be home till one in the morning.

  Poor Raymond had a sexually assaulted wife who'd killed a man in cold blood, and he didn't even know it.

  She got out of the Crown Vic and hurried over to her Jeep, looking around her to see if anyone was staring at her for being in her underwear in the parking lot. It was dark enough that she couldn't tell.

  She walked around to the back of the Jeep to load up the groceries and realized that she didn't have her key fob. It made her feel stupid. She thought that maybe it had been in her pants, the ones her kidnapper had taken off her back in that awful cage.

  She started to sob out of frustration. She didn't want to bring the dead man's Crown Vic home. She didn't want to ask for help, either. She kicked one of the grocery bags, spil
ling the contents. The carton of eggs tumbled out and opened and she saw the cracked shells and runny yellow yolks. And next to those cracked eggs on the pavement, she saw the black key fob for the Jeep sitting under the bumper. She'd dropped the key fob during the assault and it had fallen there.

  Sometimes even the shittiest day could have its redeeming qualities.

  Selena looked around again. There were people leaving the store but they were going toward a white Caprice in a handicapped space by the main doors and didn't seem to be paying her any attention. That was the way she wanted it.

  She hurried. She picked up the spilled groceries (even what was left of the wet carton of eggs), loaded them in the back, and got into the Jeep. On her way home, she checked her mirrors obsessively.

  Just in case.

  17

  Selena took a shower at home. There was blood and dried urine and dirt on her legs. Blood and dirt on her face. She washed it all away and kept standing under the hot water until it ran the hot water tank down and got colder.

  She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She looked at herself in the mirror. She saw the bruises, the way one cheek was swollen more than the other. She had a black eye on that side.

  She'd have to find a way to explain it all to Raymond. But she didn't want him to know the truth. Or how she'd ended it all.

  She felt the crushing weight of what had happened descend on her chest. It was suffocating her. She took short, fast breaths. Maybe the guy was right, she thought. Killing a person changes you. You have to live with it.

  She struggled to get herself back under control. But the tears were coming now. They were streaming down her face. She tried to swallow them down. She took a dry towel hanging next to the sink and used it to wipe the tears from her face. More tears came in their place. It was no use resisting.

  She let the grief come. She watched herself in the mirror. She tried to think of a story to tell her husband.

  She couldn't think of one.