Bring Her Back

by Jeff Strand

  Lucas and Marty seemed to mull that over for a moment. Finally, Lucas nodded, and Marty followed. "Yeah. That works."

  They left the room for a while. I should've been grateful that my toe was still intact, but it was hard to feel any kind of relief.

  They returned with a blue necktie and what looked like about two feet of a broken broom handle. Robert wrapped the necktie around my left shoulder.

  "Let's do below the elbow to be safe," said Lucas. "If it works we can go higher on the other arm."

  Robert scooted the tie down to just below my elbow, then tied it in a knot. He stuck the broom handle in it, and began to twist, tightening the tie. At least they were kind enough to use my left arm, which already had a bullet wound in the shoulder.

  There was no way I could talk them out of this, so it's just as well that I couldn't speak. I tried to keep myself calm. I breathed slowly and deeply through my nose and tried to think peaceful thoughts. If I was a boring victim, they might lose interest and not go through with this.

  He turned the handle until it refused to move any more. Marty put some large rubber bands around it, holding it in place. My arm was already numb.

  They left again. This time they left the lights on, probably so I could watch my arm change color with no blood flowing into it.

  I stared at the ceiling and tried to pretend that I had no emotions.

  I still didn't wish I were dead. To be fair, all I really had so far were lots of bruises, a missing toe, and a numb arm (if you didn't count the gunshot wound, the split lip, and the fingernail marks across my face from before I was locked in this room) so I might change my mind later. For now, I felt that things could still work out in my favor. I was really, really, really fucked, but I wasn't necessarily really, really, really, really fucked.

  Where had they buried her?

  Somewhere in the woods, I assumed. Shallow grave.

  How much of her had the insects eaten away by now? Would she be identifiable as Abigail? Even after all Jamie had done to her body, I could still tell it was Abigail. Would that still be the case? And would it be more or less horrific to see her again if her face was eaten away beyond recognition?

  I supposed I'd find out soon enough.

  I screamed for a while underneath the duct tape, which didn't make me feel any better. Not sure how long I screamed. I want to say that it was a few minutes, but it could have been significantly longer. I think the back of my throat began to bleed.

  Escape was going to be much more difficult if they took my arm.

  The wait was excruciating. I didn't want them to return, obviously, but I also wanted to get it over with, like when you're waiting in the dentist's office.

  Finally the three of them returned. Marty and Lucas each held a garbage bag that looked bulky enough to contain half of a body. Robert held a hacksaw.

  Robert made some sort of menacing comment to me, but my ears were ringing too much for me to understand what he said.

  Marty and Lucas set their bags on the floor. They were shiny bags, so they'd obviously transferred the contents of the shallow grave into new containers. Marty untied the one he'd been carrying, and as Robert gestured with dramatic flourish, Marty and Lucas lifted the top half of Abigail out of the bag.

  I could recognize her as Abigail. However, had we not spent extra time together, I don't think I would have recognized her as the lady with the flower stand.

  They hoisted her body on top of me, facedown, because why wouldn't they want to inflict as much trauma on me as possible? Robert sawed off her arm, letting out a mad cackle that should have concerned his associates.

  Marty and Lucas took her body off me (though the smell lingered) and set it on the floor.

  And then it was my turn for the hacksaw.

  I hadn't acquired much wisdom during my lifetime, but I'd briefly done outdoor work that involved some branch removal. My supervisor was a high school teacher during the week, and he carried that attitude into his weekend job, so he took pride in giving lessons about the various tools. I knew that a hacksaw blade (at least one meant to be used by hand) had anywhere from fourteen to thirty-two teeth per inch. Robert's hacksaw had thirty-two. My supervisor had never discussed what type of blade was best for sawing through bone, but I believed that Robert had chosen the right tool for the job.

  My arm bled a little but not much. They'd done a good job with the tourniquet.

  The blade broke halfway through. Robert didn't have a spare. He left the broken blade imbedded in my arm while he went to buy a new one.

  When he was done, Robert slapped me with my own hand, trying to be funny.

  My arm was a bit wider than Abigail's but not so much wider that Robert couldn't sew her arm onto my stump.

  "Voila," said Robert. "Frankensteined!"

  The three of them stood over me, admiring the work.

  I just sort of lay there in shock.

  Robert smiled at me. "We've done you a favor. Now she'll always be a part of you."

  "At least until the arm rots and falls off," said Marty, "but I'm sure we'll have killed you before that happens."

  "Don't be so sure," said Robert. He let out a giggle. Again, I personally would not be inclined to work with somebody who was letting out giggles like that.

  I still didn't want to die. I wasn't sure if this was because of my intense strength of will or because I was an idiot.

  "Enjoy your new arm," said Robert. "We'll give you some time alone to get used to it."

  "If he whacks off with it, does that count as masturbation or a hand job?" asked Lucas. I think he was trying to channel Wulfe.

  They left me in the room, lights on, taking the hacksaw with them.

  twenty-two

  I didn't speak to Abigail.

  At least, not out loud.

  I apologized to her in my mind, which would be just as effective as speaking to her dead body, without the worry that it reflected badly upon my mental state to be talking to a rotted corpse on the floor. I guess technically I couldn't have talked to her out loud because of the duct tape over my mouth, although I'm going to admit that while this occurs to me now, it didn't occur to me at the time.

  I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen. It was all my fault.

  That was true. I hadn't smothered her with the pillow, but if you traced back the timeline that led to her kidnapping, the inarguable truth was that if she hadn't agreed to go on a date with me, she would still be alive today. She'd be selling her flowers right now.

  I had no idea what time it was, so she might not be selling flowers. She might be asleep. Or having breakfast. Or watching television with Queenie on her lap.

  I hoped that Neal had taken care of her cat like he promised.

  God, my body hurt. I doubted it would ever stop.

  Somehow I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, I kept my eyes closed, because as long as I couldn't see my surroundings I could pretend that I wasn't in a soundproofed room and I still had my own arm and Abigail wasn't dead on the floor below me.

  I couldn't actually pretend that. I could pretend to pretend. I was in physical agony, and I could smell the rot, and I knew that I was still strapped to a wooden table, so no amount of trying to go to a happy place in my mind could fool me into thinking I was somewhere else.

  The door opened and Marty, Lucas, and Robert walked back into the room. This time Lucas held the hacksaw. Nobody had washed off the blood.

  "What should we Frankenstein next?" asked Robert.

  "Sew her tits onto him," said Marty.

  Robert giggled. "Even I think that's depraved."

  Marty waved his hands. "No, no, let's take it even further. Let's cut out his whole groin area. Total crotch swap. Do-it-yourself gender reassignment."

  "I like that," said Robert.

  "You guys want to spend that much time looking at his penis?" Lucas asked.

  "There's nothing gay about cutting off somebody's junk with a hacksaw."

  "You
have to touch it."

  "I'll wear gloves."

  "You can't put a tourniquet on somebody's crotch," said Lucas. "We're back to him bleeding to death. What's the point of sewing a vagina onto him if he's dead?"

  "Maybe you're right," Marty admitted.

  "That's one step beyond where I want to take this. Let's cut off his foot. Is everybody okay with that?"

  Marty and Robert indicated that they were.

  They wrapped the necktie just above my right foot, twisted it tight with the broom handle, and held it in place with the rubber bands.

  I'd been showing signs of raw panic through much of this whole experience, but I forced myself to calm down. Project an aura of serenity. Make them believe that I had something to say that was worth removing the duct tape. Let's face it, lying here and having them saw off body parts was eventually going to be fatal, and though I very much doubted my ability to talk my way out of this nightmare, I had to try something.

  I spoke. It was muffled by the duct tape but I tried to make it clear from my inflection that it was a question.

  Robert glanced over at me.

  I repeated the question.

  "What the fuck do you want?" he asked.

  I repeated the question once more.

  Robert ripped off the tape. I hadn't shaved in a while, so it took some hair with it, adding a bit of bonus pain to my situation.

  I wanted to scream, but I choked it back as I looked him in the eye. I did everything I could to keep my voice steady and articulate. "Shouldn't you be consoling your wife?"

  His expression went dark. "Go to hell."

  "What would she think of this?" I asked. "She'd be disgusted by you. Horrified."

  "She'd be happy that you got what you deserved."

  "Bring her down here. See what she says."

  This was not a brilliant attempt at psychological manipulation. My strategy was based on the idea that I, as somebody who had succumbed to madness, was making poor decisions and so perhaps Robert, who was quite clearly on the same path, might also do something that wasn't in his best interest, like bring his wife down here to witness the grisly fate of the man who'd murdered her son.

  "Maybe I will," Robert said.

  He didn't mean it. I could tell he didn't mean it. He was just toying with me.

  "The hell you will," said Lucas.

  I'd received a dark look, but Lucas got an expression of pure hate. Even if he had absolutely no intention of showing Bernice the torture room, Robert didn't seem to appreciate being told that he wasn't allowed to do so.

  "Maybe she should see this," said Robert. "Give her some closure."

  Again, I could tell that he would never bring her down here to see the ghastly sights within. This was barely-sane alpha male posturing.

  "You told her we already killed him."

  "This might be a pleasant surprise."

  "She's mourning your son alone," I said.

  Robert turned on me, immediately furious. "You shut the fuck up or I'll cut out your tongue." He waved the hacksaw at me. "I'll saw your teeth out. You think you're hurting now? Do you? I asked you a question!"

  "Yes, I think I'm hurting now."

  "I can make it hurt so much more. So. Much. More."

  "While your wife cries for your loss."

  "Tape his mouth back up before I do something I'll regret," said Robert. "I'll bring her down here. I'll hand her a drill and let her go crazy." He let out a giggle, though this one transitioned into a humorless cackle. "I bet she could come up with ideas that would make us puke up our guts. Oh, she'd make you pay. By the time she was done with you, you'd wish you ran the other way when we killed your girlfriend. You'd wish you helped me hold the pillow. They may have talked me out of cutting off your dick but they won't be able to stop her. Hell, I'll go pick her up right now."

  Robert turned toward the door. I knew what he was doing. He was just trying to scare me. Make me believe that my feeble attempt at psychological warfare had backfired in a huge way. Make me think that my suffering was somehow, impossibly, going to get so very much worse.

  I knew exactly what he was doing.

  Marty, apparently, did not.

  "Hey!" said Marty, grabbing Robert by the arm.

  Robert tugged his arm free and punched him in the jaw. Marty staggered toward the closed door.

  Lucas moved toward them to break up the fight. But he was still holding the hacksaw, which made his intentions less than clear to a man who, as has been established, did not have a friendly relationship with own mind at this point.

  Robert pulled out a gun and shot him in the face.

  Lucas hadn't even hit the floor before Marty pulled out his own gun and shot Robert in the back of the head.

  Before you ask, no, that is not what I expected to happen when I asked if Robert should be consoling his wife. And I didn't feel cheated that I'd missed out on killing them myself. I was content with the way things had just played out.

  Marty just stood there for several moments, taking in what had happened. Then he screamed some blasphemies. When he was done with that, he scooped up Robert's gun, took another gun from Lucas, opened the door, and stormed out of the room. Sadly, he shut the door behind him and I heard the lock click, followed by the sound of more locks sliding into place.

  So...

  Was the room soundproofed enough to cover the sound of gunshots? If we were down in a basement, I supposed the sound might have been muffled enough that nobody was rushing to call 911. I would happily accept whatever punishment might be in store for my actions if the cops could rescue me from this room, but I had to assume that I was on my own.

  The table I was on was thick and sturdy—at least it felt that way. It certainly didn't wobble. I'd previously considered that with enough effort I could probably rock it enough to tip it over on its side, but it wouldn't actually break the wood, and then I'd just be strapped to the table in a much less comfortable position, and my captors would be pissed.

  The difference now is that it was kind of irrelevant if Marty was pissed, and there was a hacksaw lying on the floor.

  I rocked back and forth. At first it didn't do anything, but as I kept rocking, the table started to move a bit. It was crucial that it fall to the left and not the right, so hopefully I had the manual dexterity or the luck to get this correct.

  It was working.

  I kept shifting my weight back and forth with as much force as I could, and then I hit the tipping point. The table fell over, crashing onto its side.

  I was now facing Abigail's corpse. I would have been staring directly into her dead eyes if the sockets weren't empty.

  I had to ignore that. No time to be paralyzed with horror.

  In a wackier scenario, the table would have completely broken apart and the straps would have fallen away, leaving me to sheepishly realize that I should have tried this sooner. But, no, as expected the table held firm, and I remained strapped to it.

  The hacksaw was a couple of feet away.

  My good arm was bound to the table.

  Abigail's arm was not.

  I discovered to my astonishment that the power of our love was so strong that the bones, muscles, and nerves had joined together, and I could use the arm like it was my own! It was my own. We had truly joined together.

  I made that up, obviously. All I could do was move my upper arm to make Abigail's sewn-on arm flop around. This did not give me any kind of offensive advantage, so there'd been no reason to strap it to the table after they were done with the surgery, but if I was persistent I might be able to eventually drag the hacksaw over to my good hand.

  I swung her arm over to the hacksaw. It landed right on the first try; however, when I twisted my arm to drag it back, Abigail's fingers didn't bring the hacksaw with them. I tried a few more times with no success. The big problem was that her hand kept landing palm-up, and I needed it to land palm-down if the fingers were going to curl around the blade.

  After about fifteen tri
es, I got the hacksaw to move about a half-inch closer. I took this as a sign that it would eventually work.

  I lost count of how many times I flopped Abigail's arm back and forth. It may not have quite reached triple digits, but it was close. Several of the stitches snapped before I was done, but finally I'd dragged the hacksaw close enough to grab it with my other hand.

  It had taken so long that I'd given up on the idea of a SWAT team bursting in to save the day. But, on the plus side, Marty hadn't returned. I was pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to fend him off with a dead arm.

  I couldn't move my right hand very well and the angle was bad, so the process of sawing through the first strap took forever. Once that was done, things sped up and I rolled away from the table, free.

  Free except that I couldn't sit up, which I suppose is what happens when you've been strapped to a table for so long. I removed the tourniquet on my foot, hoping it hadn't done any permanent damage. After a bit, though, the blood was flowing well enough for me to stand.

  I tested the door handle. Locked, as expected. I didn't have anything to pick it with, and even if I found something, the door had more than one lock. If they'd gone to the trouble of soundproofing the room they'd certainly gone to the trouble of ensuring that I couldn't get out. So while I probably couldn't open the door (though I intended to try), Marty was going to have a nasty surprise waiting when he came back to check on me.

  I was correct. I couldn't get out.

  And Marty was apparently in no hurry to get back.

  I'm talking days.

  I'm not sure if he fled the house before the police could arrive, and then didn't dare return, or if he was just trying to wait out my death. Waiting out my death was a good strategy—it wasn't as if I had any food or water.

  Yes, there were two freshly dead humans, but no, I did not have food.

  When thirst began to overtake me, I did not lick up any blood.

  Being locked in a room with dead bodies—one of them the woman you loved and whose corpse you never expected to see again—does odd things to you. You see things that aren't really there. You begin to itch all over. You start crying for no reason, and then suddenly you're laughing, and then you're back to crying.