by M. E. Betts
Daphne swallowed before she responded. "A grown-up. Responsible for all my own grown-up actions."
Red grinned. "Is that right?" he said as he stood. "What a brave girl you are." He strode across the room, grabbing a folding chair and dragging it toward his captive. He sprawled onto the chair, running his abnormally long, white fingers across his short, red hair. "So level with me," he said, "how is it you came to know all that stuff you know--about sneaking, spike-throwing, stuff like that? I don't imagine you could have been anything as glamorous as an assassin, now could you?"
Daphne uttered a dry laugh. "No."
Red shook his head. "What my guys described to me--it doesn't sound like those are recently acquired skills you got there. As in, you had to be doing those kinds of things before there were dead folks roaming the earth, am I right?"
Daphne stared past him, toward an empty spot on the wall. "What's all this leading up to?"
Red peered down at her from the corner of his eye for a few moments, then swung his body around her and crouched to her rear. He placed one of his behemoth forearms diagonally in front of her, from her hipbone to her face, and pulled her back into him. As the back of her head made contact with Red's dense chest, the impact caused her ears to ring and bright, floating spots to appear in her field of vision.
"What it's leading up to," he said, leaning down to whisper into Daphne's ear, "is that I can get over the people I lost if I can have you--and your freakish talents--working for me." He stood, studying her for a moment, then came in closer and inspected her shoulders and lower back. "Hey," he said, "did someone rough you up?"
"It was Heather," a male said from outside the room as he passed. It was the larger, bald man out of the two who had been in the room with Daphne until Red's return. He was the one who had made a point to warn Heather, the coconut blonde, that Red would be angry upon learning of the temperamental young woman's lashing of the captive.
"Excuse me," Red told Daphne, leaving the room.
Doesn't look too good for you, does it, Heather? Daphne thought. For the first time, she was left alone in the room, if only for a brief period. She took advantage of the opportunity to survey the area around her. There were no closets or doors in the room, other than the wide doorway through which she had been led in, and through which Red had exited moments before. There was one two- by four-foot window on the wall behind her, sitting roughly four feet off the floor. It appeared to be unopenable, just a single layer of two glass panes set into the cement and divided in the middle by a strip of wood. The room was mostly empty, other than a few dozen folding chairs, some sidewalk salt, and around a dozen municipal Christmas decorations, the sort that would have been installed on light posts after Thanksgiving in the old world. It seemed to be a general storage area in which to keep the tiny township's few public possessions.
Red reappeared, escorting Heather by the elbow. Behind them were three men and two women.
"Go ahead and have a seat, Heather," Red said.
Heather did as she was instructed, though her eyes were wide with the fear of uncertainty. The others in the room seemed slightly apprehensive, most likely also unsure of what Red planned to do. Daphne didn't know Red well enough to bother speculating as to whether or not he intended to kill Heather before the six assembled witnesses, including herself.
"So," Red said, locking eyes with Daphne as he jingled a set of keys, "I'm sorry, but this is a one-woman show, and tonight, you're just not the star of it." He stood Daphne up, spun her around, and unlocked her handcuffs. "Get her a chair," he instructed the nearest confused spectator, who retrieved one of the folding chairs.
"Now have a seat," Red told Daphne. "You may not be the star, but at least you get a front-row view. Two of you, flank her," he instructed.
A male and a female moved in to either side of Daphne, guns drawn. Daphne settled into her chair, her feet still bound.
Heather choked back a sob as Red turned the cuffs on her. The heavy flow of tears pouring from her eyes streaked her face with the charcoal hue of several layers of mascara.
"Red, I'm sorry. Please, if you'll just let me make it up to--"
Her words were cut off as Red pivoted and, in a single, smooth motion, took one long-legged stride forward to backhand the right side of Heather's face. Her head rolled to the left, and her eyes back into her head. When her head lolled back toward the center, Daphne saw blood beginning to drip from her mouth. A clear imprint was visible on her face, the shape of Red's bulbously knuckled hand connected by fainter pink lines in the shape of his phalanges. Some of the witnesses to Daphne's left shifted, exhaling forcefully through their teeth.
Daphne puzzled internally over their mentally, that brutality and infliction of pain were perfectly acceptable when applied to an individual outside of one's group. When faced with relatively mild violence toward one's own, however, the humanity of the situation invariably became crystal clear.
"Red, please--" Heather began again, her words warped due to the swelling already beginning to set in on the right side of her face.
The female standing beside Daphne sighed, scratching the nape of her neck as she turned her face to gaze at the upper left corner of the room. The woman shook her head lightly as she saw Red from the corner of her eye, drawing his hand back again. The blow was a slap this time, done with his palm.
"Shut up," he told Heather, his tone quiet and dismissive. He turned toward Daphne and the others gathered behind him. "Now don't worry, guys. What's about to happen to Heather shouldn't happen to you, unless you're as stupid as she is."
Heather whimpered, cowering in her chair. Red turned to face her again.
"Get undressed," he said.
Heather's face contorted further as her fear intensified. "What?"
"You heard me," Red said. "Don't make me repeat myself."
Heather slowly stood to comply, an expression of utter disbelief on her face as she lifted her t-shirt up and over her head.
"You thought 'cause I fucked you , that meant you were my equal? That you could go ahead and make whatever judgment calls you want to?" Red sneered as she disrobed. "Heather, the woman you lashed with that chain is more my equal than you are. Come on now," he said with a mocking, false soothing tone. "I thought you were at least smart enough to know your place. I guess I overestimated you."
Heather's hands lingered, avoiding the removal of her final garment.
"Go on," Red said, his jaw torquing. "Take it off, baby."
Heather did as she was told, her face twisted with rage and terror. Her body was covered in spiky gooseflesh from head to foot. She stood in the silent room for around thirty seconds until Red spoke again.
"I'm not going to rape you," he said at last, his tone casual. "Even if I was inclined to, I wouldn't. You're a twisted little fuck. You might like it, even with all these people here. I wouldn't want you to get confused, me thinking of you in any kind of sexual way. I can't have you going and inflating your own sense of self-worth, like you did earlier." He grabbed her by the hair, his face moving in toward hers. "Don't let it happen again. Now get dressed and get the fuck outta my sight, you stupid taco."
Heather whimpered with a mixture of humiliation and relief. She quickly gathered her clothes, dressing herself and hurrying from the room.
"The rest of you can go," Red told the witnesses.
As they left, Daphne noted that two of them seemed to be disturbed and two seemed unmoved. The one at the rear of the procession, a female, was grinning broadly as she made her way to the doorway with her back to Red, her expression smug. She muttered something under her breath just before she passed Daphne's field of vision. Although Daphne couldn't hear the words, it was easy enough to read her lips.
"Crazy bitch."
Daphne shifted her attention to Red, who was settling into a chair across from her.
"I trust you won't be making any unwise moves," he said, motioning to Daphne's unrestrained hands.
"Unwise?" Daphne repe
ated, hands on her lap. "I trust I won't."
Red sat grinning at her, his dark blue eyes sparkling and his right eyebrow raised slightly. He rubbed his bristly chin between his thumb and index finger, staring her down while she stared back.
"You know," he said, a brief, rumbling laugh escaping his oversized chest, "at first, I swore it was a joke. I was out with a group, gathering supplies. Routine stuff. Then one of my guys here gets on the walkie-talkie, tells me some red-haired, freckled kid snuck up to the building like a ninja. Least 'til the dogs noticed her, chased her up a tree. Then, he tells me, this kid kills both dogs, sharpened stick through the brain. She's still not done, though. The first guy to come outside and wander underneath that tree gets taken out, 'cause the mutant drops down from the sky and stabs him in the head. My people threaten the child with more dogs, so the child scurries back up the tree. With nowhere to run, the little freak of nature finally surrenders. That pretty much the way it went down?"
Daphne shrugged. "Assuming the kid is me," she said, "yeah, pretty much."
"More than a dozen of my people have turned up dead with your sticks buried in them," Red said, "and only one lived to tell about it. That doesn't count the ones that got your knife or God knows what else."
"Red," Daphne interjected, "I really don't think I'll be useful to you."
Red put a finger to her lips. "Shh," he said. "That's not what I want to hear. Face it, we're both a couple of mutants. I think we'd be pretty formidable together, don't you?"
"I'm flattered," Daphne said. "But I'm not feeling it. Plus I don't know that I'd live up to your expectations."
"No one said to flatter yourself," Red said. "I'll be honest, the whole--underdeveloped look--it's a little off-putting. But you're obviously an adult, I can see that now that I've studied you up close. You seem like someone who's been traumatized, damaged somehow. Did you parents starve you as a kid, or were you anorexic?"
Daphne gazed at him, her expression placid.
"I think they starved you," Red said. "Something about you seems a little bizarre, I'm not sure exactly what it is. Maybe you were a street urchin, hardened at an early age? I don't know. To be honest, it hardly matters." He sat looking her over for several seconds. "I think I'm gonna call you Scarlet. I don't expect you to tell me your real name, but Scarlet seems like a good one. Is this your real hair color?" He reach out, gently taking a strand of her long, smooth hair in his giant hand. "Seems like your real hair color. It's like a trail of blood following behind you, isn't it?"
Daphne's hands itched, longing to wield a pointed piece of titanium or wood. She knew she stood little chance of winning against Red in a game of hand-to-hand combat, let alone managing to get out the front door and past the dogs. When she had been taken captive, she hadn't counted on being courted as well. Admittedly, though, she could see his point when it came to the idea of two people such as Red and herself uniting as a pair. They would be a duo of comic book proportions. Still, as charming as the thought was, Red was wasting his time. He and Daphne would never be together, not as partners and certainly not as a couple.
"Okay," Red said, "you don't want to talk. That's fine." He circled to her rear, cuffing her hands once again. "I'll be back in a bit."
Left alone once again, Daphne focused the entirety of her attention on her situation. She wriggled inside the handcuffs, wondering if any amount of squeezing or scraping would free her of their grasp. Although her hands were, like much of her body, quite small, her wrists were bulky in comparison, with thick, sinewy arms that steadily widened up to a point just below the elbow. Despite her oddly shaped hands and wrists, however, the cuffs seemed fairly tight in their grip. The firm, well-developed mound of muscle between her thumb and index finger protruded as she collapsed her hand in an attempt to squeeze through the left cuff. She tried with the right hand, where the mound protruded even further. She suspected that if she were to try to force either hand through, it would result in severe bleeding, or even worse--that her hand would get stuck and swell halfway through the process.
She was still considering a way out of her predicament when Red returned, followed by another man whose dark hair was streaked with gray. He winked at Daphne as he followed Red into the room.
"So, Ms. Scarlet," Red said, "do you party at all?"
Daphne glared at him, fearful of where the topic was headed. She didn't mean for her expression to be so transparent, as she was loathe to give Red emotional fodder with which to manipulate her. Still, she was fairly certain that when Red said 'party', he meant taking drugs, and she struggled to keep the lack of enthusiasm from showing on her face. Suddenly, she realized that of all the things Red could force on her--including death--being in an altered, uncontrollable state of mind was the most frightening prospect she could imagine.
"By the look on your face," Red said, "I take it that's a no. That's a shame. Everyone should have the chance to indulge every now and then, partake in some adult recreational activities. My friend here can help you out with that." He motioned to the older man beside him.
"Hey there, Scarlet," he said. "I'm Logan, and you and me are gonna have a real good time together." He patted a backpack slung over his shoulder. Daphne shuddered internally, unable to even imagine what sorts of things the bag could contain. Her eyes widened as Logan produced from the pack a hypodermic needle and several small vials of liquid.
"No, no," she said, her tone frantic and hurried. Although some part of her mind tried to maintain order, it was too late. She had become fully panicked, and her words and actions were now beyond her rational control. She tried to scurry backward, tipping her chair and landing on top of it. In the next instant, Red was on top of her, scooping her up and bundling her tightly in his arms with her knees drawn up to her chest. She pushed with all of her strength, attempting to breach his heavy-duty grip. He cinched his arms even more tightly, and she found that she was unable to move at all.
Logan moved in after a moment toward her exposed inner arm, piercing the freckled flesh with the needle. Daphne was frozen, stunned. She knew that she was in for a ride, and that she had no idea of what to expect. She had no idea what was beginning to course through her bloodstream.
"Once this hits you, sweetheart," he told Daphne, "it'll make you much more willing to try some of the other goodies I got in my bag. Once this hits you--" He grinned, looking her in the eye as he continued, "you'll eat up whatever I give you."
"Let me be clear," Red said, turning toward the other man and flexing as he towered over him, "I don't want her to be hurt."
"Hey, relax," Logan said. "I know what I'm doing. She's in good hands."
Red leaned toward him, whispering. "Yeah, well, just keep those hands--and all your other body parts--off of her. You read me?"
Logan nodded. "Hey, man, it's cool. We're cool. I'm not gonna do anything to her you don't want me to."
Daphne began to feel an overwhelming sense of calm, first throughout her body, but quickly followed by her mind. She felt herself relax in Red's unyielding arms, and he lowered her onto a chair. She realized that she no longer cared about getting out of the building. She was giddy in a way that, while being alien to her, kept her from being overcome with fear the way she had been before being pierced by the needle. She no longer cared about anything, and a delirious laugh floated up from within her. A smile crept onto her face as she stared up at a broken clock on the wall. She wasn't sure how long she sat before blacking out.
When Daphne was a child, back in Chicago's South Side, she and her family would generally celebrate holidays with the other families on their block. It was a small, tight-knit Irish community. The neighborhood was among the last of its kind. Not many Irish immigrants were entering the country, and those who had come en masse in the last century had almost entirely homogenized long ago, scattering through the surrounding area as they married outside of their nationality and helped populate the nearby suburbs.
For Daphne, her brother and their parents, the co
mmunity gave them a sense of family. They had come in the late 1990s to escape the social, financial and psychological fallout left behind from the Troubles, Ireland's long-running conflict with England, and a general, never-ending run of bad luck in their homeland. Daphne recalled the last St. Paddy's Day dinner she and her family had attended before she had been orphaned. Dinner was being held at the home of Mrs. Flannigan, an elderly widow and land-lady who lived in one of just a few houses in a neighborhood filled with mostly apartment buildings, most of which she owned. Daphne and her family had traveled to Columbus Drive to see the parade and the famous green dyeing of the Chicago River, then made their way back to the neighborhood for dinner and festivities at Mrs. Flannigan's home.
It was a stately structure, a sturdy Georgian built from cement blocks with decorative facades. At more than 3,000 square feet plus a full basement, the house could hold many dozens of occupants. For that reason, it was frequently chosen as the location for get-togethers.
That March was unseasonably warm, and many of those attending the dinner were gathered in the backyard, in Mrs. Flannigan's old-fashioned garden where the appetizers and Irish brew flowed. The warm air was thick with the scent of early-blooming daffodils and bleeding hearts, and water could be heard trickling and pouring from the fountains bearing old, oxidized copper figures such as Pan and Eros.
The sound of the running water mingled with that of the friendly chatter filling the garden, and floated up through the window of an upstairs bedroom. The room, in addition to a guest bed and dresser, contained several trunks and wardrobes filled with costumes and garments from Mrs. Flannigan's much younger days, when she had been a prominent figure in the booming Broadway scene. In one trunk, its lid flipped open to reveal piles of fluffy dresses and skirts, five-year-old Daphne lay sunken into the soft garments with her lower legs dangling out.