Vengeance in the Badlands

by Brian J. Jarrett

  Dave shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Ricky puffed again from the wizard pipe. “I think about it a lot. If you couldn’t tell, before the virus I was never really an insider in any group.”

  “Maybe it was the wizard getup,” Johnny said.

  Ricky turned to Johnny, his eyes narrow. He shook his head. “No, it goes deeper than that. Always has. I wear a costume now, but back then I wore a different kind of costume. A costume to fit in. What’s beneath the surface couldn’t come out. Not back then, at least.”

  “And what’s beneath the surface, Ricky?” Audrey asked. She blinked hard, yawning.

  “People are multifaceted. They wear different faces, if you will, depending on the situation. There’s the face one might show to an employer. Congenial and dedicated. Then there’s the face one might show to a spouse. A listening, understanding face. Maybe an obedient face. Or the face shown to a mother, the one where we tell them we’re still their baby, even though we’re not.”

  “What are you getting at?” Dave asked, yawning.

  Ricky continued after taking another deep puff from the pipe. “I had my different faces, and I tried to use them to my benefit. Hell, I attempted to use them to fit in. To be accepted by others. High school was the worst because everybody knew I didn’t fit in. I thought maybe after high school it’d be different, that somehow the world would grow up and figure out that high school is bullshit.

  “But the reality is that high school is only just a microcosm of the real world. What I failed to see, and remained blind to for longer than I care to admit, is that high school never ends. Society never ends. People never end. They just continue with the same old shit, year after year. They get together and have a couple of kids, and those kids go on to do the same damn thing. One boring cycle followed by another, full-circle predictability that seeks to kill through boredom the challenging mind.”

  Johnny yawned again, blinking hard. “Hey man, I don’t want to be rude, but is there a point to any of this?”

  “What’d you do in high school, Mr. Johnny?” Ricky asked.

  Johnny shrugged. “The usual shit. Fucked around, drank a lot of beer and skated by on a solid C average.”

  Ricky smiled. “I figured as much. And you, Dave, what did you do? Let me guess, played some sports, but not seriously, maintained a B average and generally stayed out of trouble?”

  “I suppose,” Dave said. He yawned big, blinking his eyes hard. “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve spend a lifetime figuring out the faces of others. But they’re all just masks saying one thing while hiding something else.”

  “You’re creeping me out,” Gia said, looking around at the others. “I don’t like this.”

  Ricky grinned. “It’s not just humans who do this. Plants do it too. Take the Venus flytrap, for instance. It sits, patiently waiting, offering up a sweet treat for the unsuspecting fly. The face it shows to the world, let’s say. But the treat, sweet as it is, isn’t a treat at all. It’s the sickly-sweet reality of the plant’s other face; it’s true face, the one it hides from the world. The face that wants to gobble the fly right up.”

  “Okay, that’s it. This is creep-city,” Johnny said, rising from his chair. Suddenly his legs wobbled, and he collapsed to the floor in a heap.

  Gia stood. “Hey!”

  In a second Ricky was on his feet, retrieving a pistol from within his robes. He swung a fist, connecting squarely just between Gia’s left eye and the bridge of her nose. She went down hard with a yelp, blood trickling from her left nostril.

  Dave stood, but the room spun around him. He wobbled and fell to the floor.

  Ricky pushed Audrey backward, sending her to the floor. She crashed and rolled, struggling to get up, but unable to move.

  Nose still bleeding, Gia attempted to stand. Ricky drove the toe of his shoe into her face, sending her back to the floor again.

  “Stay put, little one,” Ricky said, pointing the pistol at her. “I don’t want to have to put you down.”

  “What did you do?” Dave asked, struggling unsuccessfully to get to his feet.

  “The flytrap uses nectar to lure its prey. But I find that a little flavor dust will do just fine in a pinch.”

  Chapter Nine

  Gia sat on the couch within Ricky’s living room with her hands bound by a short length of cotton rope. Her eye had already begun to blacken from where Ricky had punched her. Her nose sang with burning pain. It hurt to breathe.

  She glanced around the room, unable to find the others. “What did you do, Ricky?”

  “Ketamine,” Ricky said. “It has the effects of a roofie, but without the blue color. Works fast too.”

  “You put it in the Ramen.”

  Ricky grinned wide. “The flavor dust. Never saw that coming, did you?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Gia asked.

  “I stopped justifying myself to people a long time ago. Not going to start now.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “They’re resting.”

  “Are they still alive?”

  “For now.”

  “You left the drug out of my food on purpose.”

  Ricky smiled again. “You’re a clever girl. I knew that when you got my LOTR reference back there. I like you.”

  “Just let us go,” Gia said.

  “Oh, please. Don’t start that psychobabble bullshit. I get it. You’re appealing to my humanity and making me see you as a person and not an object. Well, I got news for you, sister. That ship has already sailed.”

  “What do you want from us?”

  “What does anybody want? What does it matter? You can’t bargain your way out of this one.”

  Gia paused. “What are you going to do to us?”

  Ricky smiled another wolfish grin. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  “Please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

  “Don’t beg,” Ricky said. “It’s unbecoming.”

  Gia went silent.

  “You know, that guy you were talking about earlier, the one you’re chasing? He did come through here,” Ricky said. “He told me a couple of guys would be along after. Guys who were following him. He didn’t mention any girls, though. That’s a bonus I hadn’t counted on.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Gia pleaded. “You really don’t.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to stop that? I know I don’t have to. I fully understand that. You can stop repeating it now.”

  Gia recoiled as a mask of revulsion and disgust passed over her face. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Ricky tapped on the side of his head. “Maybe a screw is loose up here. They say crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. I get that, I suppose. It’s clear enough that you think I’m crazy.”

  “I didn’t say you were crazy.”

  Ricky chuckled. “Don’t lie. I see it on your face. Maybe there’s something to it. I’ll admit to being different, sure, but crazy? Maybe that’s more of a state of perception.”

  Gia stared at him, shaking her head. “Now I’m calling you crazy.”

  “Thanks for the psych evaluation, but I’m not interested in talking Freud with you. I’m interested in talking about other stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  Ricky smiled. “Let’s start with the Shire.”

  Chapter Ten

  Audrey awoke on a firm bed inside a dark room. An opaque blind covered most of the window, allowing only a fraction of light to enter through the dirty glass. What light that did enter was dim, cast from a setting sun. Shadows crept from the corners, blanketing everything.

  She sat up quickly. Her head swam, and the room turned end over end, swirling in a mess of spinning shadows. She closed her eyes and waited for it to pass. Where was she? How had she gotten here? She tried to think, but her head hurt. She attempted to move her hands, but a length of rope bound them tightly together.

  Ricky.

  That son of a bitch.

 
She opened her eyes again. Nothing but vague shapes in the sinister shadows. She lifted her head and listened hard. Voices drifted in from under the door. It sounded like Gia. Hopefully, she was still alive.

  She scanned the room. In the dying light, she saw a wide dresser sitting beside a door. A thin line of light spilled in from beneath the door. Beside that sat a rocking chair.

  With someone in it.

  “Help me,” she whispered.

  No response from the chair.

  The room tilted again. Her thoughts scattered. She felt lethargic and tired. So tired.

  Ricky had drugged their food. Or maybe their water. It was making more sense now, starting to come back. She thought hard, focusing, attempting to form a plan, but the thinking came hard. She knew she needed to act; she needed to do something to escape this prison.

  If she didn’t, she would die here.

  She stood, and the room turned upside down, sending her back onto the bed again. She glanced at the rocking chair, barely visible in the low light. Whoever was sitting in the chair was just watching. Ricky had mentioned there might be others there with him. A partner in crime.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please let me go.”

  But the figure in the chair remained silent, watching in the darkness.

  She tried to stand again, but the room swirled around her. She wasn’t ready for walking yet, but maybe she could crawl. She slipped carefully off the edge of the bed, using her bound hands to steady herself on a nearby nightstand as she fell to her knees and waited for the room to stop spinning.

  When the room had finally settled again, she pleaded with the person in the rocking chair. “Help me,” she whispered.

  No response. No movement either. It finally dawned on Audrey’s drug-addled brain that this wasn’t a person in the chair.

  It was a mannequin. Another piece of Ricky’s sick and twisted house of horrors.

  Squinting in the darkness, she could now see that the figure wore a frilly dress with big ruffles. She crawled a little closer. She smelled perfume.

  And something else, under the surface.

  The unmistakable odor of rot.

  Her insides went queasy as a shiver passed over her body. She didn’t want to go closer, but she had to. She had to know for sure.

  She crawled a few more feet on her knees and bound hands. The odor got worse with each step.

  And then she saw it; the dead woman’s features visible in the low light. Audrey’s blood froze in her veins. Ricky wasn’t just eccentric; he was a full-blown psychopath.

  Panic gripped her tightly in its cold embrace. Her chest rose and fell as she struggled to keep her breathing under control. She couldn’t afford to hyperventilate now. She closed her eyes again, focusing, but thinking felt like trudging through knee-deep mud.

  She opened her eyes again and searched the dimly lit room for anything she could use to free herself or use as a weapon. Ricky would be back; that was only a matter of time and she sure as hell didn’t want to end up as his next human doll.

  It was hard to see in the dark. She used her bound hands to feel around on a table beside the dead girl. She found sewing needles, thimbles, and spools of thread amidst scraps of clothing. The needles could be useful, but difficult to use as a weapon, even more so with her hands bound.

  She needed something better.

  She rifled through the mess on the table, her heart racing as she glanced toward the door. Ricky could come back at any moment and if he did he’d make sure she didn’t get out of that bed again.

  Her fingers fumbled through items on the table, still searching.

  Then she found them.

  Shears.

  The voices from outside the door stopped. Audrey’s breath caught in her throat. She froze, listening hard with her eyes back on the door again. Her mouth went dry as her heart thudded violently in her chest.

  The sound of conversation started again. Audrey sighed. She reached out with her hands, grasping the shears in her fingers. She opened them as wide as she could and touched a finger to the blade. Not as sharp as she’d like, but it would do.

  With her hands bound she had no way to cut the rope from her wrists. She thought hard, fighting the haze of whatever Ricky had used to drug her. An idea came. A plan, finally. She sat down on her backside and placed the half-opened shears between her feet. Then, using her shoes as a vice, she leaned forward and placed the rope against the exposed blade.

  She ran the rope up and down on the blade’s edge quickly as she could. The dead woman in the frilly dress stared ahead, a silent warning to hurry the fuck up.

  Motivated, Audrey sawed harder.

  The conversation went silent again.

  Ricky could be on his way to the room.

  Audrey sawed harder still, her arms burning from the exertion.

  Then the rope snapped in two. The binding loosened but didn’t fall away. Ricky had been sure to wrap it a couple of times around her wrists, securing it with some wicked knots. Cursing under her breath, Audrey went back to work on the next rope, her arm muscles on fire now. She gritted her teeth as she struggled to get through the dense, fibrous strands of the rope.

  Still, no sound from outside the room as the seconds ticked by.

  The shears slipped out from between her feet, tumbling into the shadows and out of sight. She lunged after them, feeling around on the carpeted floor.

  She couldn’t find them.

  She tugged hard on the ropes, but the binding was still too tight. They wouldn’t come loose.

  Fuck!

  She went back to searching for the shears as precious seconds passed. Everything was so dark that she could barely make out silhouettes in the shadows. The panic set in again, threatening to seize her up into a ball and never let her go.

  And then her fingers touched one of the blades.

  She quickly picked up the shears, wedging them between her feet before she went back to work on the ropes. After a few more repetitions on the blade, she felt another binding let go. The bundle loosened up again, but the ropes held. She could move her wrists maybe a half-inch apart now. She wriggled her hands violently, hoping to shake off the ropes, but they remained stubbornly in place.

  She went back to cutting again. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she struggled, her eyes darting between the dead woman and the thin line of pale light spilling beneath the door.

  How long had passed since she’d last heard anything from behind the door?

  Another rope snapped. Audrey tugged and pulled with her wrists, writhing and twisting like a trapped animal. The binding loosened a little more but did not give up its ghost.

  Her nerves firing on full alert, she noticed a shadow break the perfectly thin line of light shining in through the bottom of the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Audrey’s heart seemed ready to leap from her chest when she heard the key being inserted into the door’s lock. A chill ran through her, nearly freezing her in place.

  He was coming for her, and when he found her, he would kill her and dress her body in his homemade clothes. She would rot in that chair until he’d had enough of her, and then he’d find somebody else to take her place.

  Snap out of it! a voice bellowed in her mind. Get your ass moving!

  So, she did. She took up the struggle against the ropes with fervor, but no amount of thrashing had any effect on them.

  She had to think. She knew this, but her thoughts swirled, like leaves in a cyclone. She reached out for those thoughts, grasping desperately, but they just flitted away like so many butterflies.

  The doorknob turned.

  And just then Audrey caught one of those elusive ideas fluttering through her head.

  The shears!

  Her hands might be bound, but she could still grip with them.

  And she could stab.

  Moving as quickly as she could, Audrey grasped the shears and brought the handles together, closing the blade into a point to form a knife-like
weapon. She scooted against the wall, tucked away in the shadows as the door began to open. She clutched the scissors tightly as she glanced to her right to find Ricky’s corpse bride sitting in the rocking chair, dead eyes staring ahead into the dark room. Audrey thought she might puke as the odor of old perfume and rotting flesh wafted around her, but she forced her gag reflex back down.

  Then the door open and light from the hallway rushed in around the figure of the wannabe wizard turned murderer.

  Audrey froze, sitting as still as possible as Ricky stepped into the room and headed toward the bed.

  He turned on a flashlight, only to find the bed empty.

  “What the hell—”

  Forcing herself to her feet, Audrey stood. She teetered before launching herself toward Ricky, shears out in a stabbing position. She brought the blade down hard, burying the scissors to the hilt in Ricky’s back. He screamed; a high-pitched, girlish cry that filled the room. He turned and swung a fist blindly into the darkness, catching Audrey’s jaw by accident.

  Already dizzy, that punch proved to be all it took to bring Audrey back down again. She collapsed to the floor, her face beside the dead woman’s foot.

  “You bitch!” Ricky yelled. “Oh, you fucking bitch!”

  Audrey tried to get back up and make a second attempt, but her head swirled like a hurricane. Dizziness prevailed, and she tumbled back to the floor again. The walls seemed to spin around her like a sadistic kaleidoscope.

  Ricky struggled to grab hold of the shears lodged in his back, but only hooked a pinky finger in the handle. He yanked hard, but the blade remained firmly planted. Biting agony tore through his back as blood poured from the wound. He screamed and fell to his knees, panting as he struggled to get through the pain.

  “I’m going to cut your goddamn fingers off, one by one,” he snarled. “Nobody does this to me and gets away with it! Do you hear me? Do you hear me, cunt?”

  Forcing herself out of the fog, Audrey struggled to her knees. Her jaw sang with fresh agony as she stabilized herself.

  Ricky got to his feet. Shrieking now, he tried once more to retrieved the shears buried in his back. This time he got an index finger in the handle. With one mighty tug, he yanked the blade out of his back, releasing a copious stream of blood and an inhuman screeching wail.