by Jack Heath
The noise lasts just long enough to cover me as I whisper three syllables in her ear: ‘Play along.’
‘Don’t!’ she screams. I don’t know if it’s because she understood or because she didn’t. I pull back my fist, a big, dramatic gesture, and swing it at her. But just before it hits, in the moment when my body is blocking Donnie’s view, I open my palm, so the punch turns into a slap. It hits the side of her torso with a thud. Slaps are louder than punches, even if you don’t use much force.
She’s wearing another layer under the gown—thin thermals, the same colour as her skin. They probably stop her from freezing to death out here, but unfortunately, they also deaden the sound.
Ivy squirms in my grip. ‘Help me!’ she screeches. Not sure who to.
I hit her again in the same spot. Harder. In Hollywood, making a fight look real takes tricky camera angles, sound effects and hours of rehearsal. I have nothing.
She’s sobbing. ‘Stop! Please!’
I grab a fistful of her hair. She stands on tiptoes, which makes it look like I’m lifting her up by her scalp. She lets out a squeal of agony. I’m not entirely sure it’s fake.
‘What’s the matter?’ I shout. ‘Does that hurt?’
Shouting is itself a form of torture. The CIA used it at their secret prisons, along with deafening music played around the clock. But if I can’t make this look real, I can at least make it sound real.
I glance back at Donnie to see if he’s buying this—and Ivy swipes at me with her free arm, raking her nails down the side of my neck, taking out a shallow gouge. Unlike me, she’s not holding back.
I snarl with anger that would be real, if I wasn’t so scared. I grab her face and press my thumb into her eyeball—but it’s an illusion. That thumb doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s a trick that will only look real for a second, so I quickly let go and twist her arm behind her back. Police learn the rear wrist lock, because it looks gentle but hurts like hell. In the training manuals it’s called pain compliance. Right now, I’m trying for the opposite, making it look like agony but keeping it painless. Ivy is shrieking so loudly that I have no idea if I’m doing it right.
Donnie isn’t convinced, though. I can feel it, without even looking back at him. I’m going to have to hurt Ivy for real.
I’m not an experienced fighter, but I know anatomy. I don’t want to damage her solar plexus or rupture her bladder. I drive my fist into her belly, halfway between the two.
She folds in half with a wrenching cry. Whatever she did to her husband, she doesn’t deserve this.
I can’t keep up the act. Need to end it somehow. I grab Ivy’s throat again, and tense the muscles in my hand and my arm to make it look like I’m squeezing. She takes the hint, going bug-eyed and gurgling in my grip. She’s actually very good at this. Maybe she was an actress before she got captured.
I do the wall-kick thing again, and mutter, ‘Go limp.’ Praying that she obeys.
Ivy gags for a few more seconds and then, to my relief, her eyes flutter closed. I drop her, and she hits the ground like a bag of groceries and lies still.
‘Whoops,’ I say. ‘Must have pressed too hard on the carotid. Sorry, man.’
I crouch next to her. As I pretend to check her pulse, I surreptitiously wipe some of the blood from my neck on her top lip. Now it looks like she has a broken nose.
My blood on someone else’s mouth. Not how things usually go.
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Down for the count. But she has a pulse.’
Finally I turn to Donnie. His expression is hidden by the mask.
I spread my arms wide, breathing heavily. ‘So?’
‘It’s a lot less work with the axe,’ he says.
‘Not as much fun, though,’ I say.
He smirks. ‘True. Okay, you get the part. But there’s room for improvement—I’ll show you over the weekend.’
Only then do I look at Thistle. She’s shaking and hugging her legs with her free arm. I convinced her, too.
‘How’d our boy do?’ Fred asks Donnie at dinner.
Donnie raises his beer in my direction. ‘Made us proud.’
‘And the FBI agent? How did she hold up?’
‘Scared shitless,’ I say.
Fred raises his eyebrows. ‘Just scared?’
‘Lux abused the Abuser.’ Donnie shovels some rice into his mouth. ‘Made the FBI agent watch.’
Fred was reaching across the table for the green beans but his hand stops halfway there. ‘You had a turn on Ivy?’
‘Yeah.’ I try to sound casual.
There’s a flicker of something in Fred’s expression. Possessiveness?
‘Is that a problem?’ I ask.
Zara watches this exchange with interest.
Fred shrugs and picks up some beans with the tongs. ‘I usually do Ivy.’
‘Oh.’ I put my water glass down a bit too hard. Thunk. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know.’
Donnie glances at me. I did know. He told me.
‘It’s all good,’ Fred says. His face relaxes back into its usual serene smile. ‘Just ask next time, okay?’
Now Donnie looks even more uneasy. I did ask, and he said yes.
But I don’t rat him out. ‘No problem. I will.’
Donnie relaxes. My heart rate settles.
Fred chews on some corn. ‘You want to go on the delivery run with Kyle in the morning?’
‘I don’t need help,’ Kyle puts in, looking offended.
‘Sure,’ I say. My plan is that Thistle and I will be gone by morning. But I still don’t know what to do about Kyle.
I wonder if Fred remembers what he told me yesterday—that Kyle does the mail run because he’s expendable. Maybe Fred is implying that I’m expendable, too.
I lie in bed, listening.
Donnie’s footsteps are the heaviest, and he goes to bed first. Someone else has a shower—either Cedric or Kyle, since Fred already had one—then goes into one of the bedrooms and paces around for a while before the bedclothes start rustling. The shower hisses again for someone else. Last to go to bed is Zara, her footsteps lighter and more cautious than the others. No pacing for her. Her footsteps just stop. The bed doesn’t squeak either. A good-quality bedframe.
I keep seeing Thistle’s face. She already thought I was a monster. Now she’s watched me torture another prisoner. At least when she found the head in my freezer, I was able to protest my innocence. This time I couldn’t even do that.
After all the movement is over, I wait another four hours. Long enough for everyone to finish reading or watching videos on their phones and fall into a deep sleep. Then I rise and slip out into the corridor.
Remembering the creaking sounds, I keep my feet close to the walls as I walk, reducing the risk of the house giving me away. After turning a corner I’m walking parallel to the boards, so I pick the darkest one—probably the hardest wood—and walk along it, balanced like it’s a tightrope, all the way to Fred’s bedroom.
No light under his door, so he’s not reading or using a laptop. I had hoped he might snore, but there’s only silence from inside. I can’t tell if he’s asleep or just lying there in the darkness.
I touch the handle. Fred is paranoid enough to padlock all his windows closed. Is he paranoid enough to set some kind of trap? It wouldn’t take much effort to stretch a tripwire between the handle and a heavy object, or to lean a broom against the door so it would fall onto something loud when the door was opened.
I’ll just have to hope he’s not that paranoid.
He’s not paranoid at all. You’re trying to steal his stuff.
I turn the handle. There’s a very soft click. I push the door open slowly. No squeaks from the hinges. No broom, no tripwire. In the darkness, I can see the bed and a shape in it, but I can’t tell if the occupant is facing me or not.
He doesn’t move, though; I don’t think I’ve woken him.
I can see dim outlines of the furniture in the room. A little red light glows on his
phone, charging on the dresser. Some clothes are on the floor, possibly the ones he just took off. Maybe he’s planning on wearing them again tomorrow. One of the advantages of making other people clean up the blood—less laundry to do.
The dark makes it impossible to see the key bowl from the doorway. As I enter the room, I bend down and squeeze the clothes, just in case. Nothing in the pockets of his jeans, nothing in his shoes except silicone inserts. The shoes feel like leather—unusual for a vegetarian, though not necessarily for an environmentalist.
This reminds me of the jerky in his desk. I would love some more. But Thistle is depending on me.
So get some for her, the voice in my head suggests. She’s probably hungry, too.
I ignore the voice and make my way to the key bowl on the bookshelf. Fred’s key ring is there. I carefully clench all the keys together so they don’t jingle as I lift them up.
It’s not enough. The keys make a faint clink. Fred snuffles and rolls towards me. I freeze, my heart hammering, the keys in my hand. I crouch to hide under the bed—
But someone’s already down there.
I stifle a yell. Zara is staring at me. She has something clenched in her hand. I’m willing to bet it’s a pin.
Fred settles, sighs, and goes still.
Zara and I look at each other for a moment. Long enough for me to realise she isn’t going to warn Fred that I’m stealing his stuff. Long enough for her to realise that I’m not going to warn Fred that she’s about to stab him.
I slowly rise, back out the door, and close it behind me. I have no idea what Zara thinks I’m trying to do. But it doesn’t matter, as long as she keeps her mouth shut until I’m gone.
Escaping isn’t going to be easy. I know where most of the cameras are, but not all of them. Plus, once we’ve stolen Fred’s car, the motion sensor on the driveway will go off. Still, with everyone except Zara asleep, we’ll have a head start.
I sneak through the backyard, past Cedric’s opium farm, past Samson’s grave and past the dogs, which make that creepy moaning sound but don’t bark, thank God. Soon I reach the slaughterhouse. Some whispering is happening inside, but I can’t make out the words.
The whispering dies out as soon as I start unlocking the door. Once it’s open, I make my way to where Thistle is chained up. In the darkness I can only see her outline and her teeth. She’s slumped against the wall in one corner, one knee up, the other splayed out. At first I think she’s playing possum, like with Donnie. Then, for a horrifying moment, I think she might be dead.
‘Thistle?’ I say.
She flinches. ‘You can’t kill me.’
‘I wasn’t planning to.’ I was hoping Ivy had told her that my beating was mostly fake, but apparently she hasn’t.
‘I mean it,’ Thistle says. ‘The others will tell your pals at the house that you’re not really Lux. They all know the truth. Killing me won’t help keep your secret.’
‘Not unless I kill everyone else, too.’
This is the dumbest thing I could have said. I just wanted to point out the flaw in her plan, as though that would somehow make her trust me, given that her plan was predicated on not trusting me. As usual, my instinct was to be right rather than to be liked.
The other prisoners start whimpering helplessly.
‘Relax, goddamn it. I’m not gonna do that.’ I reach for Thistle’s leg, but she snatches it away. ‘Hold still! I’m trying to unlock your chains.’
She hesitates. ‘Oh. Sorry. I trust you.’
She’s lying, but at this point I don’t really care. I just don’t want her to die.
I jam Fred’s key into the lock. The cuff around Thistle’s ankle pops open. ‘Now, stay close to me. There—’
She kicks me in the side of the head. A bomb goes off inside my skull. The other side of my head hits the floor. The slaughterhouse is spinning around me like a theme park ride. My guts churn and I fight the urge to puke.
‘Hit him again!’ someone screams.
‘Kill him!’ someone else roars.
I never expected a peaceful death—old, in hospital, holding hands with someone who cares about me. Nor could I hope for a meaningful death, like getting killed in a just war, or even a normal death, like a car accident. My demise was always going to be something senseless and bizarre, like getting kerb-stomped to a pulp by the woman I love in an old slaughterhouse.
But Thistle doesn’t do that. Instead, I hear her bare feet slap the concrete as she flees.
‘Wait!’ I stand up and immediately stumble sideways into the shelves of the fake pharmacy. The pill bottles don’t fall off—they’re glued in place.
Thistle is slipping through the open door. I stagger after her, the ringing in my ears worse than ever. My ear itself feels slightly crushed.
Finally I reach the door. The frame bruises my shoulder as I barge through.
‘Thistle?’ I hiss. ‘Thistle!’
No response. But at least she didn’t run towards the house—I can hear her, crunching through the forest to my right. It’s only a matter of time before she blunders into the viewing angle of one of the cameras.
I chase after her. I’m still dizzy, but she’s barefoot. Soon I can see her in the moonlight up ahead, running between the trees.
‘Thistle! Wait!’
She doesn’t turn. I catch up. At the last second, she spins around and attacks me with a left hook. It’s a hell of a punch—it might have broken my neck if I hadn’t tripped on a root at exactly the same moment. I blunder into her with an accidental tackle. We both hit the ground in an explosion of dead leaves.
‘No!’ Thistle tries to struggle out from under me.
‘Stop!’ I say. ‘There are cameras everywhere. Just stop.’
She pauses. ‘Cameras?’
‘Right. Plus a motion sensor on the driveway. Plus some fucking scary assholes in that house, one of whom is awake. Please, please, just let me help you.’
We’re almost face to face in the dark. I can feel her breath on my cheek. Even this close, I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
‘What’s your angle?’ she says. ‘I want the truth.’
‘I’m trying to save your life.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why,’ I say.
‘I don’t. I don’t understand you at all, Blake.’
‘I’m not with these guys,’ I say, gesturing back towards the house. ‘I tracked Fred down, but he turned out to have company. I had to pretend to be Lux so they wouldn’t kill me.’
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ Thistle snaps. ‘I found a human head in your fucking freezer.’
‘You did,’ I say. ‘But I didn’t kill him.’
‘Oh, yeah? Who did?’
‘Nobody. He died of a heart attack.’
‘Then what the fuck was he doing in your—’
‘I was gonna eat him.’
Finally the words are out. This terrible secret that I’ve been keeping for my whole life.
Thistle stares at me. She will never love me after this. But if she doesn’t understand, she won’t do what I say. Telling the truth is the only way to save her.
‘Eat him,’ she repeats.
‘I found his body,’ I say. ‘I took it home so I could eat it.’ She just stares.
‘Look, I’m sick in the head, okay?’ I say. ‘I admit that. But I’m not gonna kill you. I’m your only hope of getting out of here.’
‘Eat him,’ she says again.
The idea must be hard to digest. ‘I eat people. But I’m not a killer. Well, I have killed people, but only in self-defence. Not for food. Although in some cases I did eat them afterwards, but that’s not the reason I—look, can we discuss this on the way?’
CHAPTER 29
What kind of dog has a bark, but no bite?
Thistle follows me through the forest like a sleepwalker. As if she thinks she might be dreaming.
As we make our way towards the garage—taking a winding route to avoid the cameras—I give her
the whole story. What happened to my parents. The abuse at the group home. The would-be mugger who got his throat bitten out. The corrupt FBI director, offering me death-row cadavers in exchange for cases solved. The gangster who offered me the bodies of her enemies. Parts of this Thistle knew already, but I can see on her face that they’re starting to make more sense with context.
You’d think it would be a relief to say all this out loud. It’s not. Instead of disappearing, the guilt that I’ve lived with my whole life metastasises into shame. Thistle says nothing, but I can feel her growing horror as she listens.
‘Camera just there,’ I say. ‘Go left.’
She obeys. We walk in silence for a minute. My guts twist as I wonder what she’s thinking.
‘The severed head,’ she says finally.
‘You’re really stuck on that,’ I say.
‘It wasn’t … chewed.’
‘I guess I never got around to it.’
She shudders. ‘What I mean is, are you sure you’re not imagining it?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve known you a long time. I never saw any evidence that you were eating people. Are you sure it’s not just a delusion?’
This has occurred to me from time to time. It’s a drawback of being so good at destroying evidence. Without proof, memory and imagination get all mashed together.
This is an opportunity to take back my confession. To convince her that I’m just crazy and not actually a monster.
I don’t take it. ‘I’m sure.’
We trudge on. Someone should put you down. I can hear her thinking the words.
‘You know,’ she says instead, ‘my life is just as fucked up as yours.’
A dark chuckle bubbles up my throat.
‘I mean, I endured the same bad things,’ she clarifies. ‘My parents died, too. I grew up in the same group home. And I don’t feel the urge to … do what you do.’
‘Lucky you.’