Mona accepted the tea with a smile of her own and breathed in the tendrils of steam that curled from brown liquid. Raising the chipped rim to her lips, she sipped carefully. Almost immediately, a taste as bitter as a bad walnut flooded her mouth and she took another drink, hoping the heat that flowed into her throat would wash away the aftertaste. If anything, however, it only made it worse.
“Mmmm . . . .” she lied, “it’s really good.”
“It’s a little old, I’m afraid. The boys like their coffee and it seems prideful to put out a full pot just for me.”
“It is just a little bitter.” Mona admitted.
“I reckon I might be able to scare up some sugar if’n you . . . .”
“No, it’s fine.” Matt added. “You’ve went to another trouble on our account.”
Mary lowered herself into a chair that looked as if a cat had sharpened it’s claws on the armrest with rabid abandon. Tufts of stuffing blossomed from the jagged tears that hadn’t been repaired with patches of mismatched fabric and Mona could just make out the wooden supports, peeking through the batting and flaps of upholstery like an oaken skeleton.
“If you don’t mind my sayin’, young lady, you’re the spittin’ image of Audrey Hepburn. Hair’s a little different, mind you, but if’n you don’t got her face then the Devil’s my daddy.”
“Why, Ms Gruber, you are far too kind with your compilments.”
Though Mona’s lips moved, it was not the soft lilt of her own voice that passed through them.. The tones were rich and the clear enunciation was colored by an accent that seemed refined and rebellious all at the same time: it was almost as if the spirit of the Hollywood legend had somehow possessed the young girl used her as a mouthpiece to communicate from beyond the grave.
“Well, I do declare . . .”
Mary’s jaw had dropped open and her eyes grew wide and round behind her spectacles. She glanced at Matt, as if expecting him to share the same expression of shock and amazement; however, he simply chuckled between gulps of tea.
“Mona can imitate just about any voice she hears.” He explained. “You should hear her do Sarah Palin . . . it’s uncanny.”
Mona blushed and dropped her eyes to the tea remaining in her cup. She seemed to almost pull back into herself, as if the praise were something that she felt the need to instinctively retreat from.
“It’s nothing, really. And I can’t do men’s voices at all . . . .”
Stifling a yawn, Matt blinked several times and shook his head as if he could fling off the exhaustion that had suddenly made it feel as though his muscles were as weak and ineffectual as the tea bag string that dangled over the rim of his cup.
“Gotten you out . . . of trouble on . . . on more than one occasion . . . .”
There seemed to be some sort of fog that made the corners of the room look as fuzzy and indistinct as an out of focus photograph. As he watched, the haze consumed more and more of the room and also seemed to seep into his mind; it was like his words and thoughts had become lost in the gloomy clouds. They bumped against one another and struggled to reach out to their fellow refugees before being pulled away by the roiling tendrils.
“I . . . feel . . . I don’t . . . think . . . .”
Matt turned to look at Mona, who swayed back and forth with half-closed eyes. Though she sat so close to him that their hips touched, she somehow seemed to be receding into the distance. As if the fog were attempting to claim her just as it had his thoughts.
“M-Mona . . . .”
He tried to reach for her, to grasp her hand and keep her from drifting into the void, but his arm hung limply by his side in direct defiance of his brain. At the same time, the cup of tea slipped from the fingers of his other hand and shattered against a floor that seemed to rush up to meet it. Reality wavered in and out of focus and Matt felt himself falling backward as the old woman’s face appeared like a thin-lipped specter in the fog.
“What . . . was . . . in . . . tea?”
As darkness rushed in around him, Matt could hear someone cackling as if from a great distance. It seemed to spiral through the veil that enshrouded him, rising and falling on the waves of fatigue that crashed against his consciousness. Tinged with madness and savage glee, it was the sound of a witch who rendered fat from babies in her bubbling cauldron; it was the merriment of a demon bubbling up through the anguish of the damned; it was the embodiment of every insidious creature that had ever sipped from the cup of despair with a thirst that could not be slaked.
“I’ll be pretty, so very, very pretty . . . so pretty . . . .”
As Matt was sucked into the chasm that enveloped him, one final thought rose to the surface of his mind: Mona . . .
And then there was only darkness.
SCENE FIVE
For the first time in weeks, Darlene Honnicker felt hope unfurl within her soul. She’d heard the muffled voices from downstairs: the deep tones of a man and the softer, less distinct, cadence of a woman. The words were nothing more than a rhythmic lull that had been robbed of meaning by distance and wood; but they were the sounds of someone other than more familiar voices that made her cringe like a beaten puppy with each uttered syllable. Perhaps cops, she’d thought. Maybe her captors weren’t as clever as they thought. Maybe they’d left some sort of clue behind when they’d snatched her: a credit card that slipped unnoticed from a wallet, tire tracks that were so distinct only a handful of vehicles in the county would match them . . . . It happened on TV all the time. Just when things seemed at their bleakest, some handsome FBI agent would kick in the door and snatch a broken and crying woman from the clutches of death. She could almost picture them in their dark suits, hands resting lightly on the holstered pistols while their eyes picked up some small sign that the old woman and her sons weren’t alone in this house. They’d exchange a look with arched eyebrows, pull their weapons in one fluid motion, and then their voices would boom through the silence: Get down! Down! Put ‘em where I can see ‘em!
She tried to scream, to let them know that she was here, that she was alive; but the ball gag that stretched her mouth into a painful O seemed to cram the sounds back down her throat, making her wretch and cough on the despair that burned like acid against her already strained vocal chords. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and the salty solution stung the thin cuts on her cheeks and lips . . . but she couldn’t give up. Not with help so close. Not when all that separated her from the promise of freedom was one wooden door and a set of rickety stairs.
She knew what she had to do. But the mere thought of it made her feel as if a fiery ember simmered somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Bile rose in the back of her throat, its bitterness overpowering the flood of saliva that had absorbed the rubbery taste of the gag and she tried to breathe slowly through her nose. Her heart fluttered in her chest and she squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that the day old gash on her temple ripped open anew.
Do it, just do it, girl . . . .
Her arms trembled and she bit down on the red ball as if she were some savage predator and it the throat of her prey.
You can do this, Darlene. You have to . . . .
Downstairs, the voices continued their wordless singsong . So close that they were probably directly underneath her; but with the nails in her hands, they may have as well been on the moon.
On the count of three, okay?
Images of home flooded her mind: her grandmother’s quilt draped across the headboard, the overflowing garbage can in the kitchen, the telephone ringing as her sister called to gossip about what Louise Hambright had done after Sunday services. Children laughing and playing on the street outside.
One . . .
She wanted it back, all of it back. The boring daily routine, the dishes and vacuuming, the way Mr. Thompson next door would try to look down her blouse when he thought she wasn’t looking. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like much of an existence; but it was life . . . and it was hers, damn it.
Two . . .
/> Her muscles felt as if they were contracting in an attempt to flee as far from her hands as they could possibly get. Urged on by the warning hammered out by her heart, they tightened and pulled, stretched until they felt as if they were on the verge of snapping like old rubber bands. But there was no choice . . . it had to be done.
Three!
Darlene yanked her hands upward, ripping the scabs that had begun to heal around the rusted metal of the nails, and the torment slammed into her like a sucker punch of white hot nausea. Blood and cloudy, green pus squirted from the twin wounds as drops of sweat were forced through every pore on her body. She was freezing and feverish all at the same time, reality swimming in and out of focus while little flash bulbs of light burst in her field of vision. She wanted to double over, to throw up, to chew through her wrists just to end the agony of the nails rubbing against raw flesh and exposed nerve endings . . . but she had to keep trying.
The ball gag subdued the scream that seemed to rattle within her head and the heads of the nails pressed cruelly down upon her wounds. Her body shook as if fault lines were shifting somewhere within her and split-second blackouts pummeled her consciousness like jabs from an insane prize fighter. Her naked body glistened beneath a sheen of sweat as chill bumps crept over every inch of exposed flesh.
Oh Jesus, dear God, sweet Lord, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus . . . .
She didn’t care if she had to tear holes the size of quarters in her hands, if the ripped tendons and shredded muscle meant that she would never again be able to flex her fingers: saviors were downstairs, people who could deliver her from this rustic pit of Hell. She ignored the squish of raw flesh against uncaring metal, fought through the cloud of acid that seemed to curl and roil about her, and willed the spike to shift.
Just wobble like a loose tooth in a baby’s mouth. Show some sign of giving, of weakening . . . .
The nails, however, remained firmly embedded in the scarred wood. Bits of tissue hung from crags in the rust like fleshy prayer flags and the metal was slick with blood that oozed around the base like a liquid flower unfurling crimson petals.
Darlene slumped forward and her forehead hit the edge of the table with a sharp whack. She panted through her nose and swallowed the vomit that kept trying to shoot through her esophagus as her hands slid back to the tabletop. Tears rolled from her eyes and streamed down a face that was as pale and waxen as a corpse.
Everything from the follicles of her hair to her toenails shrieked with electric-like jolts of molten agony and the little vein bulging against her temple quivered with each irregular swish of blood. Her heart felt as if it were convulsing like an epileptic in the throes of a seizure and she just wanted to close her eyes, to let the darkness take her and morph the pain into a muted dreamlike sensation that drifted on the dark seas of unconsciousness.
Rest . . . rest and try again, for God’s sake, don’t give up girl . . .
Through the pounding of her own pulse and the Lamaze-like gusts of air that flared her nostrils, Darlene heard a deep laugh from somewhere behind her. It started as a chuckle, something that may have been nothing more than a pain induced hallucination; but within seconds, it had built into a rolling guffaw that seemed to radiate from every corner of the dusty room.
“Well, ain’t that sweet.” A voice quivered between snorts. “If I didn’t know better, I’d reckon she were tryin’ to get away, Daryl.”
She felt a finger against her back, tracing patterns in the sweat that trickled down the canal of her spine.
“Sure looks to be that way t’ me, Earl.”
Hands squeezed her shoulder so tightly that fingertips dug into her collarbone like drill bits. At the same time, something rustled against her damp hair and she felt warm air tickle her ear as a voice that smelled like bitter coffee and rotten meat whispered.
“Now why would you want to go and do that for, darlin’? Don’t you like our little time together?”
Daryl walked to the front of the table and grabbed a fistful of Darlene’s hair. He yanked her head up so that he was staring directly into her glassy, dilated eyes.
“What in tarnation were you doin’ all that foolishness for?”
His eyes flitted to his brother and something about his tone and stance was like a schoolboy trying to impress the teacher with a shiny, red apple.
“She’s all bloody and tore up now, Earl. Shit, look what the stupid bitch done did to her hands”
The flesh that puckered around the nail shafts looked like meat that had been chewed up between the cogs of some machine. Ragged strips flapped in the current of blood that poured from the wounds and the tissue beneath seemed gnarled and bulbous, as if it had been ground to a near pulp and then shoved back up through the holes.
Earl jerked the chair out from under Darlene and she started to fall backward as fresh screams tried to force the red ball out of her mouth with their force alone. The nails pulled at her mangled hands and her feet scrambled for purchase like a cartoon character trying to run in a puddle of oil. Somehow, she managed to regain her balance and she stood there, practically laying over the table while her knees shook and buckled.
“Cunt don’t need her hands for what I got in mind.”
From behind her, Darlene heard the sound of a zipper being undone as Daryl’s high pitched giggle echoed through her head.
“Once my brother there is done, then it’s gonna be my turn. Like that, don’t ya? Yeah, I know you do. You like ‘ole Daryl best, don’t ya, sweetheart?”
Darlene squeezed her eyes shut and her hands instinctively tried to form into fists; but this only sent fresh spasms of pain through her already sensitive nerves. It felt as if millions of fiery needles gouged and scraped somewhere inside her hands and the blood gushed from the holes more rapidly now as her heart rate ramped up to a breakneck speed.. She sank her teeth into the hard, rubber ball and tried to pretend that it was a throat: either one of these bastards, it didn’t matter which. She would rip away chunks of flesh like a rabid dog if given half a chance, would chew and tear until strands of the jugular were wedged between her incisors like little slivers of roast beef. Just let one of these low-life, redneck sons of bitches try to kiss her for a change . . . just let them fucking try . . . .
“Earl! Daryl! You boys get your sorry asses down here this minute, hear?”
Even through the floorboards, the old woman’s voice was shrill and piercing. Earl slammed his fist into the wall as he cursed beneath his breath; Daryl, however, had frozen like a possum in headlights. The color seemed to drain from his face and his bottom lip quivered so slightly that it almost seemed as if it were the thin layer of drool, and not the chapped flesh, that was actually moving.
“Damn it, boys! Don’t you make me come up there . . . “
Earl’s voice bellowed, though the frustration that was reflected in his grimace was carefully camouflaged with what he hoped to be a tone of respect.
“We’re comin’, Mama. Be right there!”
Yanking up his zipper, he dropped his voice to a low growl.
“This ain’t over, darlin’ You just stand there and think about all the things I’m gonna do to you when I get back. And, I swear to God, if you try any more of that foolishness, I’ll slice your fuckin’ tits off. You hear me, girl?”
Darlene nodded her head so rapidly that droplets of sweat flung from her soaked hair like a spray of mist.
“Alrighty, then. Guess we have what I’d call an understanding.”
“I’m a’gonna count to five and if’n I don’t hear you boys comin’ down those stairs, may the God Lord help your souls . . . .”
“Come on, shit for brains. What the hell you gawkin’ at?”
Daryl trudged after his brother, pulling at the hairs of his mustache as he walked. The two walked through a short, dark hallway lined with doors and then descended a flight of stairs that wobbled and creaked beneath Earl’s bulk.
By the time Mary had counted to four, they two brothers stood in front of her
; Earl stared at the young couple slouched over on the couch and the corners of his lips turned up into a smile. Something cold and hard glinted in his eyes and he ran the tip of his tongue along his top lip as he allowed his gaze to follow the contours of Mona’s body. Daryl, on the other hand, stood slightly behind his brother’s enormous frame and wrung his hands together as if he were holding an invisible cap. His head was slightly bowed and he only allowed himself quick peeks at the unconscious couple out of the corner of his eye.
“Now you boys listen here. I want you to take these two upstairs and tie ‘em real good, you understand? I don’t want no repeat of that time last summer, you hear?”
Both brothers nodded their heads but remained silent.
“After that, the pair of ya go find that there car of theirs. Reckon they couln’t got too far before you boys found ‘em. You take the chain and you . . . .”
“Shit, Mama, it’s fuckin’ freezin’ out there.”
Mary stormed across the room with her first two fingers spread into a V. The wrinkles on her face pulled into a tight scowl and she clenched her teeth together as if she were attempting to shatter them.
“Earl Gruber, don’t you sass me, young man!”
Clutching Earl’s shirt with her free hand, she thrust up with the other. The extended fingers drove into Earl’s nostrils so deeply that his nose seemed to swell with the presence of the sudden invaders. The large man’s knees gave out for a fraction of a second as his eyes watered and blood trickled around the old woman’s fingers. But he didn’t try to pull away or defend himself; he simply stood there with his eyes clinched shut as his mother leaned in so closely that spittle peppered his face.
“I don’t care if Hell’s done froze over, you’re gonna do what I say, when I say to do it. You hear me, boy? You hear me?”
Earl nodded his head almost imperceptibly to keep his mother’s fingers from plunging even further into his sinuses than what they already were. But this seemed to satisfy the old woman, for she yanked them out and released the tide that had built up behind them. As her son pinched his nostrils and tilted his head back, she licked the blood from her fingernails so slowly that it almost seemed as if she were inspecting them for chips and cracks with the tip of her tongue.
Shut The Fuck Up And Die! Page 5