So what? What was the worst thing that had happened to me really? He’d shoved rotten dog food down my throat? Left me hungry in the basement? Left me without water for days? Made me piss the bed? Hacked up the body of a woman he’d killed only feet from me? Gave me a slap and some bruises? That wasn’t so bad. I could handle that. I had to. For Mason. And Wade.
I walked out of the bathroom with my head held high, though I still wasn’t in the mood to talk to Ron.
He seemed to have forgiven me. He talked to me as though nothing had happened. He made our dinner, and we ate as usual. We had drinks after dinner while playing cards. I said little to him, but he made more than enough conversation all by himself.
Shortly after we’d finished dinner, I began to feel groggy. It became a battle to keep my eyes open. I’d only had two drinks, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. When the cards became blurry, I put my hand on the table and rested my head on it, thinking I’d just lay there for a minute until the feeling had passed.
Right before the blackness overcame me, I remembered the last time this had happened. It was a repeat performance of the last time I’d made him angry with me.
He pretended he was over it, made us dinner and drinks, and I became sleepy. When I woke, I was in...Oh no. I knew as I fell into a deep sleep what I would find when I awoke.
19
Just as I suspected, I woke in the basement. Only this time, I wasn’t on the mattress and cuffed to the pipe. I soon wished I was, though.
With my head pounding, I opened my eyes and surveyed the room around me.
Melinda was still spread out on the floor as she’d been the last time I’d seen her, but she didn’t look as good as she had then. Her hair was filthy and caked with blood. Her skin was covered in dirt and bruises. Her wrists and ankles were raw and bloody from struggling against the restraints. And worse still, the fight had gone out of her. There wasn’t even any left in her eyes.
I sat in a chair, hands cuffed behind my back and around the vertical beam not far from Melinda. I was only a few inches away from her right foot. She didn’t appear to be awake, but at least she wasn’t dead.
“Melinda,” I said with a dry throat.
She didn’t respond.
Once more, I said, “Melinda.”
“She doesn’t seem to be willing to talk to you, Nicole,” said Ron behind me. I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs, so he must’ve been back there silently waiting for me to wake up.
I was terrified of anything he may have planned for us, but I had to keep my wits about me, and more importantly, keep him liking me before I ended up like Melinda.
Slowly, Ron walked around me and stood on the opposite side of Melinda, in a position where he could see us both.
“Nicole, I’ve given much thought as to what your punishment should be. You have no idea how angry it makes me that you would lie to me like that,” he said, his voice starting to boom. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm down. Then, he continued. “I thought about putting you back down here on the mattress that you hated so much. But I felt that just wasn’t going to teach you anything. After all, it didn’t teach you anything the last time. So then I asked myself what would be worse than that? Do you know what I decided?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sure if you thought about it long enough, you’d know. Go ahead. Guess.”
“Sorry, Ron. I’m afraid I left my crystal ball in my other pants, and I’m no mind-reader,” I said, hoping to remind him that he liked me.
He smiled, but it was faint. “I’ve decided that as your punishment, I’m not going to punish you.”
“Good. I agree with that.”
“I’m going to punish her.”
“What?”
“Yes, I’m going to make you watch as I punish Melinda for the things you’ve done. Maybe that will teach you what the mattress cannot.”
“No, just put me back on the mattress. You know how much I hate it. Isn’t that punishment enough?” I said quickly, trying to talk him out of hurting poor Melinda, who’d clearly been going through enough punishment already.
He smiled broadly. “I knew this would work.”
I watched as he walked across the room and retrieved some items from the cabinet above the utility sink. He returned quickly to Melinda’s left side, where he knelt facing me, in a position for me to watch. How very thoughtful of him.
Slapping her face, he said, “Melinda. Melinda wake up. There’s someone here to see you.”
Melinda’s head slowly rolled from side to side, and she began to moan. She said something, but I couldn’t make it out. It was probably her husband’s name, thinking he’d come to rescue her. I myself had woken up many times uttering Wade’s name, having dreamt that he’d shown up and busted down the door, killed Ron, and rescued me.
Using the cattle prod he’d brought from the cabinet, Ron shocked her awake with a scream.
“There,” he said. “I don’t want you to miss a thing. Now look who’s came to see you.” He pointed at me with the cattle prod, and Melinda’s head slowly turned my way.
I expected to see hope in her eyes, or fear. I would’ve been happy to see any emotion at all, any sign of life. What I saw instead was nothing. She had dead eyes. Just as Stephanie had.
“Nicole has been a very bad girl, Melinda. And we’ve decided that as her punishment, she will watch me punish you. How does that sound to you?”
She groaned what I thought was a no and tried to shake her head, but it was so slow, it appeared her head was just lolling back and forth.
“I didn’t agree to that,” I said. I wanted to make sure she knew this hadn’t been my idea, though deep down, I knew that it wouldn’t matter what she knew. The hours, possibly the minutes, of her life was ticking down to zero. It was only a matter of time until he killed her, and then it wouldn’t matter if she knew that I wasn’t a part of his sick and twisted punishment or not. But I had to tell her. I had to know that she knew.
“Really?” Ron asked. “Are you saying you’ll trade places with her? Would you like me to tie her to the chair and put you in her place?”
My heart raced. This was one of those moments in life that no one ever thinks is going to happen to them. And when thinking about what if it did happen, they always thought they would do the noble and honorable thing. And here it was, all laid out before me, unfolding both in slow motion and at the speed of light.
I said nothing. I felt horrible about it, but I couldn’t volunteer to trade places with her. I just couldn’t. I tried to rationalize it by thinking that she was a used-up prostitute whose husband urged her to sell her body. Looking at her arms, I could see she was a heavy drug user. Probably an alcoholic. She was middle-aged. Living the life she was living, she surely only had a few more years ahead of her. If she had any kids, they were probably grown. Unlike me, whose child was only a year old, and who hadn’t even lived to see the end of her twenties. If it had to be one of us, it should be her.
But she was still a human, still a person with feelings and a family. And she would be receiving torture for things I’d done. That just wasn’t fair.
It also wasn’t fair that I was here. In this situation, in this moment, I had to choose my life over hers. This wasn’t the time to be a hero and throw myself in front of a speeding train to save her. I had to save myself. Not for me as much as for my little Mason with his little brand new teeth and his wobbly newfound walk.
So I said nothing.
“That’s what I thought,” Ron said.
In all the years to come, assuming I survived, I would hear those words echo in my mind. That’s what I thought. But the words weren’t going to be what would haunt me. What would haunt me would be the look on Melinda’s face when she realized that I wasn’t going to trade places with her. If a soul could shatter into a million little pieces, hers just had. And if a heart could snap in half and drain the life juice out of a person, mine just had. If I lived a thousand y
ears, I’d never forget the look on her face or the way I felt about myself in that moment. But even knowing all these things, I still couldn’t bring myself to trade places with her. Had I not been a mother, maybe. But I was. And I just couldn’t do it.
Ron laid an old leather tool belt on the floor beside him. From it, he pulled a hammer and a chisel. Still squatted, he moved toward her left hand.
“Nicole, make sure you watch this. Melinda, this is going to hurt a bit, I’m afraid.”
Situating himself so that I could see his every move, he put one foot on her forearm and pressed down, paralyzing the muscles and tendons in her forearm and hand, making it impossible for her to move her fingers. He put the chisel against her skin and beat it one hard time with the hammer. That’s all it took to cut off her finger.
As she screamed and howled through a hoarse throat, Ron picked up the finger and showed me. Her thin gold wedding band was still attached. He laid it on the tool belt and returned the tools to their place.
“Tell Nicole how much you enjoy taking her punishment,” he told Melinda.
In between screams, she shouted, “I hate you, bitch!”
Through my tears, I said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Go to hell,” she screamed to me. To Ron, she begged, “Please stop. Pleasepleaseplease stop.”
Of course he didn’t.
He pulled a knife from the tool belt. I guessed the blade to be about eight inches long. It was big. He put it to Melinda’s belly, and I could only watch as she began to thrash around as much as possible while alternately begging him to stop and screaming.
“Since this is for Nicole, I thought we’d carve her name onto your flesh. What do you think of that, Melinda?”
“No,” she screamed. “Please no! Please!”
As Ron began to carve into Melinda’s skin, making a large N as slowly as he could, I began to beg him to stop. Melinda’s and my pleas mingled together.
“I guess you should just be happy that her name isn’t Marguerite,” he joked as he continued slicing her.
As the blood spilled off her belly and slowly ran across the floor toward the drain, I cried harder than I had since he’d brought me here. Her pain was because of me. And if I’d been a stronger person, a better person, I would’ve switched places with her. But I couldn’t. All I could do was watch and cry and beg him to stop.
“There,” he said when he’d spelled out my name in big letters across her stretch marked belly. “Now you can always remember this day, and your good friend Nicole.”
She continued to scream, though her voice was going. It broke often, cutting out completely at times.
Ron stood with his tools and turned to walk away from her. But he quickly turned back and stuck the cattle prod to one of the open cuts on her belly. She howled and screamed through clenched teeth as her body spasmed, and then suddenly, there was nothing else.
Afraid she was dead, I focused on her face and chest. She was still very much alive. But her voice was gone. She was still screaming her head off, but no sound came from her.
Ron chuckled and walked away. He returned everything to its place and walked over to me.
“I’m going upstairs. I’ll come retrieve you later. Enjoy your time with Melinda. Had her voice not given out on her, I’m sure she would’ve had plenty to say to you.” He smiled and walked up the stairs, leaving me in the basement, crying and laden with guilt.
20
I cried nearly the entire time I was in the basement. I couldn’t help it. The guilt was heavy, though I tried to tell myself that he was torturing her anyway, and he would’ve surely done those things to her even without me as a reason. The only reason he said it was my fault was to torture me too. He liked me enough to not want to torture me physically, but not enough keep him from torturing me mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. I knew this really wasn’t my fault, but I still felt horrible.
Sometime later, Ron returned. As he removed the cuff from my left wrist and helped me to my feet, he asked, “Are you glad to see me?”
“Yes,” I said, though the answer was both yes and no. I was glad to be leaving the basement, but I was never glad to see him.
“Good. I thought you might be.” He kissed my cheek softly and led me up the stairs. “I made you some scrambled eggs and bacon and toast.”
Confused, I asked, “It’s morning?”
“Of course.”
“You left me down there all night?”
“Yes. It doesn’t seem like it, does it? Time flies when you’re having fun.”
The son of a bitch had left me down there all night. No wonder I was tired and my back was stiff.
Even though he sometimes slipped something into my food to knock me out so he could take me to the basement, I was looking forward to eating a good breakfast. He’d only done it a couple times so far, and only after I’d angered him. I was starving and he was a good cook. As I’d done nothing wrong, I didn’t think he’d drug me again so soon.
I sat in the usual chair as he locked the cuff to the underside of the table. I yawned, and immediately felt guilty about doing so. Melinda had gone through all that, and I was yawning and upset because he’d left me in the basement all night. I was selfish.
I was wiping my swollen eyes with my hand when he brought my plate. He set it down in front of me, went to the other side of the table, and took his seat.
With the spoon in my hand, I scooped up a wad of scrambled eggs and put them in my mouth. As always, they were delicious. I put another scoop in my mouth and looked around at the other food on my plate. The bacon looked perfect. The toast had the right amount of butter melted into it. But then I saw something else, something that nearly made me vomit.
I stopped chewing immediately and stared at it. Ron must’ve been watching me.
“I think that’s appropriate, don’t you?”
I shook my head, afraid that if I opened my mouth to speak, I’d puke.
“You don’t have to eat it. It’s just a little reminder.”
Forcing myself to swallow the mouthful of eggs, I said, “What’s it supposed to remind me of, Ron? The kind of person you are?”
“No. It’s to remind you to be a good girl.”
“How can I eat with that on my plate?”
“It’s not touching any food. It’s just there for you to see. You don’t have to touch it or eat it. Just see it.”
“I don’t know if I can eat with it there. It’s gross. Can’t you just put it on the table or something? Does it have to be on my plate?”
“Yes, Nicole. It does,” he said sharply. “How else will you learn?” He softened his voice and said, “Think of it as Melinda giving you the finger.” He laughed.
I didn’t.
How the hell was I supposed to eat with a severed finger on my plate, nestled between the eggs and the bacon? How could I even have an appetite when she’d lost that finger because of me? I hated him and I hated myself.
I dropped the spoon. It fell to the plate, clanking against the wedding band on the finger.
“You’re not finished, are you? You’ve hardly eaten anything?”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“You were until you saw the reminder. Is that what’s wrong?”
“Yeah. It’s disgusting. I can’t eat with that there, especially knowing it’s my fault.”
He smiled and nodded. “Then it’s working perfectly. I want you to eat, don’t get me wrong. But I want you to learn. Yes, this lesson has already taught you so much more than just being left on an old mattress did. I don’t see that we’ll have any more problems, do you?”
I shook my head.
I didn’t eat anymore at breakfast. I just couldn’t. But at lunch, it was on the plate. At supper, it was on the plate. The next morning, there it was, sitting beside my waffles. At lunch, it was lying beside my sandwich. At dinner, it was beside the pot roast on my plate. Every meal for the next few days was garnished with Melinda’s severed
finger. It was starting to smell. Even over the mouth-watering aromas of the food, I could detect the stench of decay rising from the plate. Just as my stomach growled from the anticipation of the food, it flip-flopped at the smell and sight of the finger.
This went on for days. Ron brought me a hearty plate of food containing a rotting finger, and each time, he took it away untouched. By the seventh day, I was absolutely starving. I had to eat something. As Ron sat across from me eating as if nothing was wrong, I managed to talk myself into eating without looking at the finger or eating anything on the same side of the plate as the finger. If I only ate the food on the opposite side of the plate, that would be okay. Well, not okay, but better than eating the food near the rotting digit, and certainly better than starving.
That method worked for a couple of days, but Ron soon caught on to what I was doing. Then, he started serving my plates to me with the finger in the middle of the food. For a few days, I didn’t eat. But when the hunger pains returned, I started eating the food from the edges of the plate. Anything that wasn’t close to the finger, I ate.
Finally, sometime after my next menstrual cycle, Ron quit putting the finger on my plate altogether. When I first didn’t see the appendage among my food, I worried that he’d cooked it and was serving it to me. I hesitated at dinner the first night without it, afraid to eat the food. I couldn’t shake the thought that chopped up inside the meat loaf was what was left of the flesh from the finger.
Ron saw my hesitation and explained himself. “The skin was rotting off the bone, and I don’t want you to accidentally eat any of it and get sick. When the skin is completely rotted away, I may return the bones to your plate, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I truly believe you’ve learned your lesson. Am I wrong, Nicole?”
I shook my head, disgusted that he still had the finger. I briefly wondered where he was keeping it. Up until now, he’d kept it in a bag in the freezer, taking it out for each meal, returning it when the meal was done. I had no doubt that it was there now, as he spoke, and I wondered how long he would leave it in there.
Held, Pushed, and 22918 (3 Complete Novels) Page 9