by Bryan Smith
But she already knew the answer to that.
A bad one.
She flinched when music started playing. Some loud rock song from long before she was born, she guessed. The band and song were unknown to her, but the title was pretty easy to figure out from the chorus: “Dude Looks Like A Lady.”
Kelsey couldn’t help it.
She started giggling.
29
LINDSEY WONDERED WHAT GRANT WAS up to when he moved to retrieve his pants from the floor, frowning even in the midst of her laughter. She was still standing behind the bound man, but the girl was nearly finished with her stitching job and so her assistance was no longer needed. She took the belt away from the man’s face and held it by one end, with the buckle dangling toward the floor. She would use the belt as a makeshift weapon if necessary, whipping the buckle across her husband’s face if she sensed he was about to make any kind of move against her. Because such a move was coming sooner or later. The only question was who would try something first.
She sighed in relief when he let his jeans fall again to the floor and saw he was holding his phone. He tapped the screen and started scrolling. Again, she wondered what he was up to, but the answer came seconds later when music began emanating from the phone. The song was one she knew from her days of hanging out in dive bars in college. Oldies dominated the jukeboxes in some of those places. She started laughing again as soon as she recognized it.
It was perfect.
Even the girl started giggling, which was surprising. She had powered through the gruesome task assigned to her with grim determination, and without once breaking down or botching the job. From her position behind the chair, however, Lindsey had been able to closely study the girl’s face and sensed how fragile her composure was. She was working hard to keep it together long enough to finish attaching her mother’s scalp to the head of the Hispanic man. In the end, she got it done, but it clearly took a huge mental toll on her. It’d be interesting to see whether she’d be able to maintain a similar level of composure while attaching the Hispanic man’s scalp to her mother’s head.
Grant was dancing in the dorkiest way imaginable, bopping his way back over to this side of the table and belting out his own off-key version of the song’s chorus. Lindsey’s feelings where he was concerned had taken a permanent turn toward the negative in the wake of the bathroom assault, but she couldn’t help feeling a certain amused warmth for him as she watched the ridiculous display. The way his dick and balls flapped around as he danced only added to the hilarity.
Getting into the spirit of the moment, Lindsey started dancing, too. Maintaining her grip on the belt, she came out from behind the chair and started wiggling her ass at the bound man. His continuous whimpering was still audible above the music. Inspiration struck. She plopped down on his lap and started grinding away at his crotch.
She made eye contact with Grant and smiled. “Record me.”
Grinning, he aimed his phone at her, tapped its screen, and continued dancing, albeit in a more restrained way as he sought to document Lindsey’s performance. “It looks like you’re giving the world’s ugliest woman a lap dance. It’s sort of hot. In a weird way.”
Lindsey laughed as the song came to an end. “Put on something else. Some kind of stripper song.”
Grant tapped the screen a few more times.
When “Take If Off” by Kesha started playing, Lindsey’s dancing became much more animated. She bounced up off their captive’s lap, spun around, and plopped down atop him again. This time she was straddling him as she continued to grind away at him. Grant kept the phone aimed at her as he moved off to the side to capture it all from a better angle.
Lindsey glanced over at the girl to verify she wasn’t seeking to take advantage of their divided attention. The girl saw her watching, wincing slightly as they made eye contact. Lindsey yelled out to her, pitching her voice high enough to be heard over the music as she warned the girl against doing anything that might get her hurt. She also told her to come closer and get away from the table, a command she instantly obeyed.
Satisfied she wasn’t an immediate threat, Lindsey focused again on the man trembling and whimpering beneath her. She knew he was too traumatized and in too much pain to derive any pleasure from her erotic dance, but she wasn’t doing it for him. The recording was something she planned to enjoy many times later on, after she fled the country and this crazy night was in the past.
She raised her torso and rubbed her breasts against the man’s face, a move that elicited a whistle of appreciation from Grant. The dance continued even after the Kesha song ended. At her direction, Grant picked out something else, some slow hip-hop track she didn’t know. She’d shifted positions against the bound man multiple times throughout the dance, but now she straddled him again and looped the belt around his neck, feeding the end of it through the buckle and pulling it tight while slowly grinding against him in time to the music. His eyes bulged open as she pulled it even tighter. He began to struggle weakly again as pitiful wheezing sounds emanated from his throat.
Grant moved in closer, his voice becoming huskier as he said, “Do it, baby, do it. Finish him off.”
Lindsey stopped grinding and looked at the phone. “No. It’s not time for that. Turn the fucking music off.”
Grant frowned as he tapped the phone’s screen, silencing the music. “Damn. I was enjoying that. I love how twisted you are.”
Lindsey considered reminding him how he hadn’t seemed so certain on that count not so long ago, but she refrained, deciding it was best for now to avoid picking at anything that might get tensions boiling again. Better to lull him into a false sense of comfort and renewed comradery with his wife.
She loosened the belt and took it away from the bound man’s throat. At that point, she climbed off him and moved back a few steps. The buckle end of the belt was again dangling toward the floor. Some tense, silent moments elapsed as no one said anything.
Grant cleared his throat. “Um . . . everything okay, Lindsey? You seem a little on edge all of a sudden.”
Lindsey almost laughed.
Instead, she turned her head slowly toward him, smiling tightly as she said, “Everything’s fine.”
She then wheeled about and lashed out with the belt, whipping the buckle across the girl’s face.
30
THE PAIN KELSEY FELT WHEN the buckle hit her wasn’t the worst she’d experienced tonight, but it was enough to make her shriek in surprise and drop to her knees. Before she could try getting back to her feet, the crazy woman was behind her again, looping the belt around her neck and pulling it tight enough to make her sputter and gasp for breath.
Once the woman had cinched the belt as tight as she could without actually choking her to death, she put a hand on Kelsey’s shoulder and pressed down hard to keep her from standing.
Then she put her mouth against Kelsey’s ear. “The party’s over, you stupid cunt. You still have work to do. Better get to it before I get really mad. Believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”
She held the belt in place a moment longer, seeming to enjoy Kelsey’s desperate struggle to draw in air. Then she took the belt away and gave her a hard kick in the ass, making her crumple to the floor, where she lay gasping for several moments as the woman continued to loudly berate her.
“Get up! Get up, you filthy fucking whore! Lift that scrawny little ass of yours up before I cut your fucking throat!”
Before Kelsey could even attempt to obey this command, the woman kicked her in the side. She moaned in agony and rolled onto her back as pain exploded inside her. The pain from the stomping she’d taken earlier had never come close to going away, but it had subsided to a level where she could manage to function. Well, that was all over now. It again felt like something was wrong inside her, broken or nearly ruptured. Tears streamed from her eyes as she begged the woman not to kick her again. She was terrified of what another kick that ferocious might do. It probably wouldn’t kill her—she hoped—but i
t might hurt enough to make her wish she was dead.
The woman kept screaming at her to get up. There was nothing even faintly resembling mercy or compassion in that voice. Kelsey whimpered and flinched every time the buckle snapped against the floor, close to her head. The woman’s burst of rage was so extreme it even seemed to give her husband pause. He suggested she should ease up in a surprisingly meek voice. The woman ignored him and pulled her leg back, ready to kick again.
Kelsey choked back a sob and said, “I’m getting up.”
Seeing that leg poised to kick was all the motivation she needed. Rolling over again, she braced her hands on the floor, the muscles in her arms shaking as she struggled to raise herself up. She felt like giving up multiple times, but she kept at it, pushing through in the same grimly determined way that had allowed her to complete the first part of the scalp transplant. Now she needed to call up a similar reserve of strength to see her the rest of the way through this. She wasn’t at all certain she could manage it now. It’d taken everything she had to finish the first part. Even before this latest assault, sewing the man’s scalp to her mother’s head was going to be extraordinarily difficult. She’d been pushed to her limits and far beyond.
And yet she had no choice but to try.
The level of exertion required to get all the way upright again made her scream in pain, but she kept pushing and was finally able to do it. She sniffled and had to fight hard not to descend into a fit of hysterical crying. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she glanced at the woman and felt an intense wave of hatred and anger sweep through her. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to take a knife and carve the smug look off her fucking face. At the same time, offending the woman was the last thing she wanted, so she tried hard to keep her hatred from showing. Which wasn’t really possible, of course. The woman’s leering expression showed she knew precisely what Kelsey was feeling and felt nothing but contempt for it.
Kelsey heaved a breath and haltingly approached the table. She walked slightly hunched-over, gently holding a hand to her stomach as sweat poured down her face. She paused as she reached the table, taking some moments to catch her breath.
She expected the woman to start screaming at her again, maybe hit her or whip her with the belt, but that didn’t happen. She glanced at the man and woman surreptitiously, without looking directly at either of them. They were watching her in the same expectant way they had earlier, eager to see this next progression of her debasement unfold.
In that moment she more clearly understood there was next to no chance here of any outcome that didn’t involve her death. One look at the woman’s deranged expression was enough to confirm her true intentions beyond even the slightest doubt. Once again, however, Kelsey chose to press ahead anyway.
She took another packet of thread from the cross-stitch kit and tore the packaging open with her shaking hands. Threading the needle this time took longer because of the shaking. She jabbed her fingers with it multiple times before she managed to get it done.
Just one scalp remained on the blood-smeared baking tray. Before picking it up, she put the needle and thread down and opened the packet of cocaine, again using a long fingernail to scoop out several bumps. She felt steadier and less afraid almost as soon as the drug hit her system. Though she’d already had more than she normally would at one time, she kept at it, snorting it up until the packet was nearly depleted. When she dropped the packet on the table and again picked up needle and thread, her hands were no longer shaking.
She picked up the scalp and approached her mother, who was quietly sobbing and staring at the floor. Her slender shoulders were shaking and without her hair she almost didn’t look like her mother at all, an impression enhanced by the mask of coagulating blood obscuring much about her features. When she sensed her daughter’s presence, she lifted her head and looked at Kelsey through eyes shimmering with tears. She mumbled something, but in a weaker voice than before, rendering her words impossible to decipher from behind the tape. It was quite a change from earlier, when she’d fought desperately to defend her daughter. Now she sounded broken and defeated, ready to die, something Kelsey supposed was to be expected after being scalped by one’s own daughter.
Kelsey had snorted up the bulk of her modest coke supply in an effort to stifle her emotions, because only by doing that would she stand any chance of getting this done. But as she straddled her mother on the chair, an unexpected surge of raw emotion threatened to overwhelm her. She felt queasy and had tears in her eyes as the crazy woman moved into position behind the chair, looped the belt around Piper Weatherby’s blood-stained face, and pulled her head roughly backward.
Some moments passed as she struggled to push back the queasiness and contain her emotions. She didn’t want to do this to her mother, even now, after she’d done so many horrible things in the name of self-preservation. Making matters worse was the pain and cramping in her abdominal area, which was flaring up again in a big way. She ached to slide to the floor and curl up in a fetal ball. The only reason she didn’t was because she knew the woman would interpret this as total failure, giving her the greenlight to resume whipping and stomping her, probably until she was dead.
“Get on with it, bitch,” the crazy woman snarled at her from the other side of the chair. She laughed in that mean, sneering way of hers. “Unless you’re ready to give up and accept your punishment. It that it, girl? You ready to die now?”
The guy was recording again. He’d moved in close from the side and was aiming the phone at Kelsey’s face. “I don’t think that’s true at all,” he said, his tone one of reassurance. “She’s stronger than that. Come on, Kelsey, prove her wrong. You’ve already done some seriously badass shit. You’ve got this. I know you do.”
Kelsey glanced at him, recalling her vague notion of somehow turning him against his wife. That had always seemed an iffy proposition at best and now she was running out of time to find a way to make it happen. The tension between the two of them remained a palpable thing, however, so maybe there was still a chance of swaying him to intercede on her behalf when the woman inevitably decided it was time to kill her.
The woman laughed. “Bullshit. Look at her. She’s falling apart.”
Kelsey made direct eye contact with the man. When he smiled and winked at her, she swallowed the lump in her throat and blew out a big breath. Feeling slightly calmer, she placed the scalp atop the exposed part of her mother’s skull and began the process of smoothing it into place. Because the Hispanic man’s head was bigger, the edges of the scalp would significantly overlap the edges of her mother’s sliced flesh. Stitching the edges together would require less stretching of the flesh this time, but the fit would be loose and awkward-looking. Telling herself it wouldn’t matter as long as she managed to complete the stitching job, she pressed the needle to her mother’s flesh and began to push it in. In the same moment, the worst abdominal cramp yet made her stomach feel like it was being turned inside-out. She was utterly powerless to hold back the tide of nausea that rose up inside her like a tsunami.
Vomit exploded from her mouth and struck her mother in the face, hitting her like a stream of water from a firehose. Another powerful wave of nausea came over Kelsey almost immediately. She let go of the scalp and leaned backward slightly, but the second explosive blast of vomit again hit her mother dead-center in the face. If not for the duct tape covering her mouth, a lot of it would’ve gone straight down her throat.
Her captors made several sounds of disgust as this happened, but they were laughing, too. Both of them. She got a glimpse of the man’s face between the eruptions of puke and felt further sickened by his expression of leering amusement. She was crazy to ever have looked at him as anything like a source of comfort or encouragement.
She vomited on her mother’s face one more time, but there wasn’t as much of it now. Her stomach continued heaving despite having already expelled the entirety of its contents. She felt hot, acidic bile touch the back of her throat and
whimpered as tears rolled down her face. At the same time, her mother was trying hard to draw in air through her nostrils. The layer of duct tape over her mouth kept being sucked in and out as her lungs worked overtime. An impulse to rip the tape away was too powerful to resist. She tried peeling at an edge of the tape, but the vomit made it too slippery to grip.
The crazy woman took the belt away from Piper Weatherby’s face and started whipping mother and daughter with it. They remained entwined on the chair as the buckle bit into their flesh in numerous places. Kelsey sagged against her mother and sobbed miserably as she listened to the buckle ring against her exposed skull. Unable to take any further abuse, she was ready to give up.
Then the man grabbed hold of her and hauled her off her mother, dumping her on the floor. She rolled onto her back and stared blearily up at the ceiling. Seconds later, the sadistic crazy woman was looming above her, belt still in hand.
She grinned. “Oh, well. Close, but no cigar. Ready to die now?”
Kelsey turned her head to look at the man, imploring him with her eyes before managing to weakly utter a single word: “Help . . .”
He no longer had his phone. In its place was a knife, gripped tight in his right hand. Despite everything, Kelsey felt a small spark of hope. Maybe he really would help her. Husband and wife stood on opposite sides of her. The woman leered down at her, her grip tightening around the belt. In that moment, she seemed oblivious to her husband, who was staring right at her with a murderous expression.
The crazy woman began to lift the belt.
Her husband’s fingers flexed around the handle of the big knife.
And from somewhere right outside the cabin’s closed front door came a sound that startled them all—the distressed crying of an infant.
31
THE GIRL COUGHED AND SPUTTERED and tried to sit up as soon as they all heard the squalling of the infant, a sound that seemed to be coming from the general direction of the porch. Her mother also became dramatically more animated upon hearing the sound, bucking against her bonds and straining to tear her feet free of the big nails holding them to the floor.