Depraved 2

by Bryan Smith

  So what then, are you just giving up?

  This voice of defiance surprised her. She had aspired to nothing other than an end to suffering for a while. But of course some part of her still wanted to survive. She was human. Some part of her would always want to go on living no matter what. Until just now, however, she had been certain hopelessness had overwhelmed that drive to endure.

  She looked at the curvy blonde woman hanging next to her. “Hey…you awake over there?”

  Daphne waited.

  The blonde gave no indication of having heard her. The obese man to the blonde’s left was just as motionless and apparently oblivious. They were either unconscious or afraid to talk. Daphne could sympathize, but her reawakened sense of self-preservation rendered the concern irrelevant.

  She pitched her voice a little louder. “Come on, blondie, I know you can hear me. Just answer a question for me. It wouldn’t do any good to start screaming, would it?”

  After a longish moment, the woman breathed a sigh so weary it was heartbreaking. It was the sound of a soul in total surrender. “Screaming won’t help you. It’ll only make you tired and might even get you killed. More importantly, it might get me killed. So don’t do it, okay?”

  Daphne made a noncommittal sound. “What’s your name?”

  “Does it matter? We’re dead anyway, all of us. Names are for people. We’re not people anymore. We’re just…meat.”

  “It matters to me. And we are not just meat.” The intensity of Daphne’s anger surprised her. This woman wasn’t her enemy. But the vehemence in her tone remained undiminished. “And if you believed that shit, you wouldn’t be so worried about me getting you killed. Tell me your name.”

  Another of those weary sighs. “My name is Kate.”

  Daphne smiled. “Thank you. I’m Daphne. I wish I could say it’s good to meet you, Kate, but, well…”

  Kate grunted. “Yeah.”

  Daphne nodded at the fat man, who so far was still showing no signs of consciousness. “What’s his story? Do you know him?”

  “Tubby? No. And you won’t get anything out of him. They cut out his tongue. All I know is he’s been here longer than me.”

  “Which is how long exactly?”

  “Five or six days? I don’t know for sure. You lose track after a while.”

  Daphne stared at the fat man a while longer. She had no idea what kind of person he’d been before the misfortune that had brought him here, but intuition told her he’d once possessed a considerable capacity for belligerence, an insight largely informed by the fact that his captors had elected to remove both his tongue and his feet. Of course, it was just as possible that this punishment had been for some unknown act of bravery. Whatever the case, he’d done something to greatly annoy his captors. And belligerent asshole or not, he hadn’t deserved this.

  No one deserves this.

  As she watched him, the fat man’s asshole cut loose with a ripping fart, a sustained, high-volume sound that made Daphne cringe and wish she could run to another room, the smell was so odious. This was followed by a plopping noise caused by blasts of diarrhea hitting the floor beneath him. He belched a few times between farts, rancid exhalations that smelled like death. Bile rose into Daphne’s throat and tears filled her eyes. Despite the dramatic evidence of gastrointestinal disturbance, the big man remained unconscious.

  Daphne gagged. “Oh, shit…oh, shit. Holy fuck.”

  Kate laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. I should’ve warned you. He does that.”

  Daphne gagged again and spat out bile. The chain suspending her twisted as her body swayed. She made a sound of pure misery. “Oh, fuck.” She whimpered. “I just realized I have to piss.”

  Kate made a sound of sympathy. “Sorry. You’ll have to piss down your legs. It can get pretty rank in here before they clean us up in the morning.”

  “Why do they even bother? Why not kill us right away?”

  “Because they’re not just cannibals, they’re sadists. They enjoy torturing and humiliating us.”

  Daphne experienced another flare of impotent anger. “Goddamn these sick bastards. How do they get away with this shit?”

  “Apparently they’ve been doing it for generations and have the whole process down to a fine art. They…”

  Daphne frowned. “They what?”

  Kate cut a frightened look at Daphne. “Shut up. Someone’s coming. Close your eyes. Pretend you’re asleep.”

  “But I don’t hear anything.”

  Kate didn’t reply. She was already feigning sleep.

  Daphne still hadn’t heard anything. She stared at the double flap doors that separated the kitchen from the dining area, straining to catch any glimpse of movement through the plastic windows. All she saw was a very faint light of indistinct origin.

  But then the flap doors swung open. A slender form stood outlined in the faintly blue-tinged low lighting for a moment. There was something in the figure’s stance suggestive of femininity. But then the flap doors swung shut and the person’s outline was temporarily swallowed by darkness. Daphne heard a click of heels. So it was a woman. She was softly humming a melody, something vaguely familiar.

  In a few more moments, the woman emerged from the gloom and her face came into focus. Daphne felt a stab of fresh anxiety. This was a face she recognized. And her last interaction with this person had not been a friendly one.

  Lexus was no longer wearing her hostess uniform, having exchanged it for a sleeveless yellow sundress with a swirly hem. She stopped in front of Daphne and peered up at her with a cruel smile. “You were mean to me today. You made fun of my name.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I bet you are.” Lexus laughed. “Now.”

  “Please don’t hurt me…”

  Lexus smirked. “You’re pathetic. Look at you, hanging up there like an animal. Helpless. Pitiful. Worthless.”

  Daphne’s eyes misted, but beneath her terror fresh anger burned, the words of her tormentor cutting at her pride. The truth was she had always believed she was better than most people. She came from money, was smarter than average, and was more attractive than the average person. Until today, hers had been an almost obscenely easy existence, one she coasted through while other people took care of her, pampered her, and adored her. Maybe this was fate’s way of punishing her for her pride.

  But Daphne didn’t believe in things like fate or divine intervention. Chaos was the driving force behind all of existence. Things just happened, some of them good, some bad.

  And some just plain fucked up.

  Lexus stepped between Daphne and Kate and disappeared from view. Daphne didn’t like not being able to see what the bitch was doing. The memory of what Vivian Hunt had done to that other woman was still too fresh in her mind.

  The mystery was solved a moment later when Lexus returned and set a metal folding chair directly in front of Daphne. A little swing forward and she would be able to set her feet on it, though she suspected that wasn’t the girl’s intent.

  Lexus pulled the yellow sundress off over her head, tossed it aside, and settled herself down on the chair.

  Daphne frowned. “What the actual fuck are you doing?”

  “You’ll soon find out. Before we start, I want to recommend you don’t resist, unless you want me to make what’s left of your life pure hell. You gonna resist, bitch?”

  Daphne had no idea what Lexus had in mind, other than that it was likely to be something repulsive. Still, it wasn’t like she had any real choice here.

  “I won’t resist.”

  Lexus smiled. “Good. Hey, you never know. You might even enjoy this.”

  Daphne said nothing.

  Somehow I doubt that.

  Lexus scooted her bare butt to the edge of the chair. She then took hold of Daphne’s left foot by the ankle and lifted it to her face. She smiled again as her eyes flicked up at Daphne. “I like pretty feet. And yours are some of the prettiest I’ve seen.”

  She broug
ht Daphne’s foot closer and pressed a cheek against its soft sole, moaning at the moment of contact. Holding the foot still, she turned her face and rubbed the other cheek against it, moaning again. She dipped a hand between her legs and moaned some more. Daphne felt a flicker of contempt for the woman molesting her foot. The expression on the little foot fetishist’s face was rapturous and her eyes were glazing over. She hadn’t been lying when she said she liked pretty feet. Daphne experienced none of the expected repulsion. To the contrary, here was something she could exploit.

  Daphne smiled. “You’re right. This is nice.”

  Lexus moaned.

  Daphne began to take an active role in the fetishistic interlude, moving her foot gently along the contours of the woman’s face and occasionally sliding toes into her open mouth. This induced a state of frenzied arousal in Lexus. In a few minutes, she relinquished her loose grip on Daphne’s ankle and reached between her legs with both hands. Her moans escalated in volume until she was almost screaming.

  Her face twisted in confusion moments later as Daphne withdrew her foot.

  “What the hell--”

  Lexus was unable to get out of the way as Daphne’s foot swung forward and connected with her chin in a teeth-jarring, consciousness-obliterating clack that was almost as loud as the snap of her neck.

  Daphne’s heart was racing as the motion of her body carried her backward.

  Kate was no longer feigning sleep. “Holy shit! You killed that bitch.”

  Daphne swung forward again. “I know.”

  Kate shook her head. “On the one hand, good job. On the other, you are seriously fucked now.”

  The dead girl’s body slid off the folding chair and crumpled to the floor.

  Daphne knew full well this was maybe the most ill-advised thing she had ever done. There had been no conscious decision to do it. It had just happened. She sort of wished she could take it back. The consequences were sure to be dire. Then again, there was an undeniable satisfaction in seeing one of these redneck assholes dead.

  Maybe she wasn’t as powerless as she’d assumed.

  10.

  The dead thing on the bed had thus far failed to stir. It was infuriating. There hadn’t been the slightest hint of reanimation. Sienna would have been thrilled with anything—a single twitch of a finger or eyelid flutter—but Arlene Baker’s corpse remained utterly still.

  Sienna couldn’t understand it.

  She had performed the ritual precisely as she had during her successful attempts at reviving small animals. Frowning, she gnawed on a black-painted thumbnail and went back over everything she had done.

  Scented candles were burning in each corner of the room. She had consumed most of a bottle of absinthe and had done some mental exercises to induce the condition necessary for opening a channel between the worlds of the living and the dead, the so-called “state of ecstasy” most of the old texts talked about..

  And then there was Spooky.

  Spooky was a rat, one of several rodents she’d captured during her explorations of the crawlspace beneath Jodi’s house. Before her final exit from the House of the Lame—as she thought of it—she had stashed the jars containing her last few specimens in her backpack. After seeing to all the initial ritual preparations, she took Spooky’s jar from the backpack, unscrewed the ventilated metal lid, and allowed the frightened creature to crawl into her hands, smiling at the way his whiskers twitched and his eyes darted. Sienna thought rats were adorable.

  But her affection for the creature didn’t stop her from cutting its throat, thus allowing its blood to spatter the center of the pentagram she had drawn on the floor with a tube of Stargazer black lipstick. The memory of the way the thing had thrashed and mewled in her grip brought a rush of pleasure not unlike what she’d experienced in the aftermath of killing Arlene.

  Everything had felt right.

  Not just right, but perfect.

  She had gone so deeply into a meditative state that for a time she lost all sense of her physical self, the world around her falling away as a radiant white light enveloped her. She experienced a bliss so pure she temporarily forgot the purpose behind what she was doing. It had been like this the other times, too, but not as intense. Anyone with the ritualistic know-how could theoretically achieve a similar state, but for Sienna it was amplified by her natural gift for magic. The feeling of power flowing through her was so intoxicating a part of her never wanted it to end. When the physical world coalesced around her again, she had expected to see Arlene’s corpse writhing and stirring on the bed. It should have been the moment of her greatest success so far, the necessary last prelude to bringing her father back.

  Instead there was this hateful tableau of abysmal failure.

  Sienna’s hands curled into fists. “Come on, you disgusting old bitch. Rise, damn you.”

  A long moment passed. Arlene remained motionless.

  Sienna stamped a foot on the floor. “Fuck!”

  Still nothing.

  Sienna sipped from the nearly depleted absinthe bottle as she paced the floor and considered the problem. The obvious difference between her earlier efforts and what she had tried to accomplish here was a matter of scale. A human being was a far more complex creature than a rabbit or a cat. It stood to reason that calling one back to life—or undeath—might require substantially more psychic juice than killing a mere rodent could produce. This made a great deal of sense and she resolved to up the ante next time, but there was still the question of what sort of animal she should use when she again performed the ritual.

  A goat, perhaps?

  Hmm…

  Goats were often used in Santeria rituals, some of which were similar to what she was attempting. Satanists were also reputed to use goats in their ceremonies, though that was maybe more a product of popular culture myth than reality. Still, the goat sacrifice was a common enough motif in magical ritual to suggest a promising level of potency, maybe even enough to ignite a spark in Arlene.

  The only problem was she was a little fuzzy on how she might lay her hands on a goddamn goat. This would not have been an issue back in the old days of Hopkins Bend. Lots of the old families had kept goats and other critters on their property, typically inside little areas fenced-off with chicken wire. Snatching an animal from a place like that would have been a snap, though there was the obvious risk of catching a backside full of buckshot from an ornery property owner’s shotgun. But there was far less of an old backwoods mindset in Bedford. She couldn’t think of anyone who kept goats in town. There were a few farms scattered around the area, but access would be problematic.

  Shit.

  She was contemplating how she might feasibly sneak onto a farm and make away with an ornery piece of livestock without getting caught when she heard the knocking from downstairs. A frown creased her brow as she lowered the bottle and stared at the open door to the hallway.

  The knocking came again, more strident this time. She could hear the flimsy old door rattling in its frame. It wasn’t possible to just ignore the knocking. Whoever this was would feel compelled to investigate the lack of response to all that sound and fury. There weren’t many people around who still gave a shit about Arlene Baker or cared enough to come check on her, but the few who did wouldn’t be easily deterred.

  And anyone potentially nosy enough to let themselves in and start poking around would have some very pointed questions for her after getting a look at this room. That Arlene had died after a long period of neglect would not be surprising. Passing that off as a result of natural causes would have been easy—if not for all the accoutrements of black magic.

  Sienna put the absinthe bottle down and rummaged through her backpack. When she found what she was looking for, she walked out of the room and started down the hallway at a brisk pace. The knocking came yet again and was followed by a deep male voice calling out for Arlene. At first Sienna thought this must be Delmont, but that didn’t make any sense. The big goon had his own key. And the door wasn
’t locked.

  The voice called out Arlene’s name again and Sienna raised her voice in response as she started down the spiral staircase. “Just a minute!”

  After reaching the front door, she did her best to arrange her features in a way that conveyed a mix of guilelessness and an eagerness to assist. Her face contorted in ways that felt weird as she struggled to get the look right, making her wish she had a mirror in front of her. When she realized what she was going for would just make her seem even weirder than usual, she made her face a careful blank instead and opened the door.

  The handsome boy on the porch was about her age. Outfitted in the standard rural male uniform of flannel, jeans, and boots, he had the strapping body of a farmhand and the smile and chiseled features of a teen idol, along with piercing blue eyes that enhanced his dreamy appeal to a nearly absurd degree.

  Sienna gaped at him. “Who the fuck are you and where did you come from?”

  The wattage of the boy’s brilliant smile increased, nearly making her swoon. “My name’s Bradley Cummings. My daddy is Horace Cummings. We got a farm down the road a piece.” He raised an arm and pointed in the general direction of, presumably, “a piece”. “Daddy sent me to check on Miss Arlene.”

  “Oh yeah? And why the fuck would he do that?”

  “Boy, you sure use the F-word a lot.”

  Sienna smiled. “You got a fucking problem with that?”

  A tinge of color rose in the boy’s cheeks as he held her leering, lustful gaze for a long moment. But then he broke the eye contact and glanced nervously at the floor. “My mama makes us kids put a dollar in the swear jar every time we say a bad word. I can’t even say h-e-double-hockey-sticks.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  Bradley frowned. “You shouldn’t take the savior’s name in vain.”

  “You’ve gotta be goddamn shitting me.”