“Rise and shine, Lee Lee, it’s a new day!” Hillary said cheerfully.
If Caleigh heard her, she gave no such indication. Her labored breathing pattern remained steady. Hilary reached forward and firmly squeezed her nose shut. She could feel the grinding of bone beneath her fingers. Thick blood-tinged mucus ran down Caleigh’s covered mouth as she awoke frightfully and thrashed her head about, freeing her nose from Hillary’s grip.
Caleigh struggled to breathe through her mangled nose. It hurt worse than ever. She blew out feebly in an attempt to clear her nasal passages. Hillary cackled in delight at the sight of her distressed sister. She would never let that broken nose heal.
“Did you miss me?” she asked mischievously.
She wanted to hear what her sister was saying but didn’t want to touch the nasty, snotty tape over her mouth. Caleigh was making all sorts of interesting sounds from her nose and mouth. Finally, Hillary couldn’t resist. Using the tips of her thumb and index finger, she pried off the tape, letting it dangle as she had done before. She wiped her fingers off on her shorts in disgust as Caleigh moaned loudly in pain.
“I had a stack of delicious waffles for breakfast,” Hillary taunted, “and I washed it down with delicious, cold and refreshing juice. Doesn’t that sound good to you?”
As hungry as Caleigh was, the thought of food did not appeal to her. She just wanted water. She was so, so thirsty. Her mouth was uncomfortably dry. Her lips were chapped and cracked. They bled a little when the tape was lifted off.
“Not talking to me, Lee Lee? Did I say something to upset you?”
Caleigh remained silent as she continued the arduous task of breathing.
“How ‘bout some water?” Hillary teased, “I’ll get you some...just say the word.”
Caleigh knew Hillary wouldn’t really give her water, but she was desperate. She needed hydration badly.
“War...ta,” she croaked pitifully.
Her throat hurt. It hurt just to utter those two little sounds.
“Okay, Caleigh, but mind your manners. What’s the magic word?”
“P-pleeee....”
“Plea? Like guilty or not guilty? Hmmm, I wonder, which are you? I say, guilty! Guilty!”
“Drink,” Caleigh grunted. Her half-open eyes were still sensitive to the light.
“Guilty!” Hillary repeated soberly as if she were a judge declaring her verdict, “now to decide on your punishment.”
“So Thirsty,” Caleigh cried.
Caleigh remembered what had happened the last time she begged for water...how Hillary had burned her face with the scalding hot liquid. She knew she couldn’t trust her sister, but somehow she continued to beg nonetheless. It was an automatic response to her dire thirstiness.
“So thirsty,” Hillary mocked, “well guilty prisoners don’t get any water…they get something else.”
Without another word, Hillary quickly walked upstairs to the kitchen. She searched through the cabinets looking for the paper goods. Her mother had rearranged everything, but she found what she needed quickly enough. She walked to the bathroom carrying the small paper cup.
When she emerged from the bathroom, the cup was halfway full of her urine. She smiled impishly as she carefully carried the cup down to Caleigh.
“I have something for you to drink.”
Caleigh knew she would regret it. What would it be this time? Poison? Acid? Blood? Still, she needed something to quench her thirst. She was willing to even sip hot water.
Hillary slowly propped Caleigh’s head up with her left hand while she placed the rim of the cup to her lips with her right hand. Caleigh gulped down Hillary’s warm urine sloppily without stopping to think about what she was drinking or even take a moment to taste it. It was wet and didn’t scald her mouth, that’s all that mattered.
To Hillary’s surprise and delight, Caleigh had guzzled almost all of her urine. She laughed hysterically as she dropped her sister’s head to the floor.
“Did you enjoy my pee?” she asked derisively.
Caleigh grimaced. With her stuffy nose she was unable to detect the faint ammonia smell present in Hillary’s urine. It disgusted her to think that she had ingested her sister’s pee. She tried not to think about it. It was done, what could she do about it now? She had heard about people having to drink their own urine under exigent circumstances. It never killed any of them, so the worst thing she’d have to deal with is the repulsive fact that she drank her sister’s urine.
Hillary was not pleased by Caleigh’s reaction, or rather, the lack thereof.
“Aren’t you grossed out?”
Caleigh didn’t reply. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore Hillary.
Enraged, Hillary slapped her sister’s bruised, blistered face. Her hand felt slimy afterward from the pus oozing from Caleigh’s open wounds and burns. As Caleigh cried out in pain and began whimpering, Hillary cursed out loud and walked over to the sink near the washing machine. She washed her hands and dried them on a hand towel on a nearby rack. Before returning to Caleigh, she grabbed the knife that she had left on the dryer the other evening.
“You’re disgusting, Caleigh,” she spat, “you stink and you look like a freak.”
Caleigh continued to whimper silently, trying her best to ignore her sister.
“Don’t you just want to die?”
Caleigh honestly didn’t know whether she wanted to live or die. She just wanted to sleep. Despite the fact that all she had been doing was lapsing in and out of sleep for days, she felt exhausted.
“Answer me, Caleigh! Open your eyes and stop ignoring me!” Hillary shouted.
Caleigh stopped whimpering and turned her head away from Hillary. Her eyes remained shut.
“You ungrateful piece of shit,” Hillary yelled angrily, “I give you something to drink and this is how you thank me? I should have let you thirst to death.”
Hillary grew even more incensed by Caleigh’s stubbornness and lack of regard for her cleverness.
“Look at me!” she demanded.
Caleigh remained still and silent.
“I said look at me!” she shrieked furiously.
Hillary dropped the knife and forcefully turned Caleigh’s head to face her. She pried her eyelids open, making a point to jab her eyeballs with her fingernails. Caleigh screamed in pain and tried to shut her eyes and turn her head away, but it was no use.
“When I tell you to do something, Caleigh, you had better do it!” Hillary shouted, sending spittle flying upon Caleigh’s face.
“Do you understand me?”
Unable to nod, Caleigh let out a strained “yes.”
Hillary released her head. Instinctively, Caleigh closed her eyes. Hillary’s blood pressure spiked as her fury intensified. She stooped down and grabbed the knife at her feet. Using her left forearm to hold Caleigh’s head down, she pulled up her sister’s right eyelid. Caleigh strained to shut her eyes but Hillary had her eyelid firmly between her fingers. She brought the knife over and sliced it clean off Caleigh’s face.
Caleigh wailed in horror and became hysterical. As blood ran into her eye and onto her face, Hillary began clipping her other eyelid the same way. When she was nearly done cutting it off, Caleigh managed to shift her head under Hillary’s arm. Struggling to keep her sister’s head still, Hillary accidentally dropped the knife on Caleigh’s shoulder. The mutilated eyelid hung limply down over Caleigh’s left eye. Blood was everywhere. It bled even more than most of her other injuries. Hillary grabbed a hold of the tender flesh and yanked it, ripping it free from Caleigh’s face and tearing part of her skin on the side of her eye.
Caleigh’s blood-curdling scream startled Hillary. She had never heard anyone scream so loudly. Her heart was racing with excitement. The spaces over Caleigh’s eyes where her eyelids used to be were bright red, bloody, raw and cavernous. She looked absolutely monstrous.
Caleigh was on the verge of hyperventilating. She had no eyelids...she could not shut her eyes. They would rema
in perpetually open from this day forward. She could already feel them drying out from her inability to blink. She shifted her eyeballs left and right, up and down, hoping that the movement would generate some moisture. It didn’t.
“Don’t move,” Hillary said viciously, “I’m gonna get the camera.”
Hillary ran from the basement up to her bedroom, knife in hand, leaving Caleigh wallowing in painful misery. She slipped the bloodied knife under her bed and grabbed her digital camera from her computer desk. She quickly glanced at her clock and sighed.
Time flies when you’re having fun, she thought with a sigh.
Hillary ran downstairs and down the basement stairs as if fleeing from an angry mob. She panted heavily as she approached Caleigh the Freak.
“Smile for Andy,” she said heartlessly, as she held up the camera, brought Caleigh into focus and snapped the picture.
“Maybe I’ll make a scrapbook,” she said happily, “it’s just too bad I don’t have any pictures of Dad’s bloody body parts...or Mom’s.”
“Mom’s alive,” Caleigh cried defiantly, “she’s alive.”
“Technically,” Hillary said, “but not for long.”
“Joshy?” Caleigh asked sadly. Her tears helped to alleviate the dryness of her eyes.
“He’s dead,” Hillary said, “that part was true. He begged for you to help him. He screamed and cried so much.”
“Where’s Mom now? She’s gonna find me, you know, she’ll save me.”
Hillary let out a sharp, shrill laugh.
“Don’t hold your breath, Lee Lee. No one’s coming to rescue you. You’ll be suffering in that spot for months.”
It was a dismal thought that made Caleigh want to cry even harder. Could she really survive like that for another week, let alone months? Did she want to survive like that?
Hillary continued to take photos of Caleigh from various angles.
“If only there was a way to capture your smell!”
“Go to hell, Hillary...I hate you!”
“I know, Lee Lee, that’s okay. I forgive you.”
“For what? I never did anything to you...I never did anything wrong,” she sobbed.
“Nobody cared about what I was going through, including you,” Hillary replied bitterly.
“I didn’t know...it’s not my fault.”
“I told you, just last week, I told you. You didn’t show any compassion, you just didn’t care.”
“I didn’t know you were telling the truth. What could I do about it anyway?”
“No one ever believes me,” she said, with a hint of sadness in her voice, “why doesn’t anyone ever believe me?”
“It’s not too late,” Caleigh pleaded, “no one would blame you, you’ve been through a lot...you could—”
“No!” Hillary shouted angrily, “it is too late, they’d put me in jail for the rest of my life. I’m never gonna let that happen.”
“We could tell them it was someone else, say it was a burglar,” Caleigh said desperately.
Don’t listen to her, she’s a filthy liar...she’d be the first one to testify against you....
“You hate me, remember? You wouldn’t help me.”
“Yes I would, Hillary,” Caleigh cried impulsively, “I swear...I swear to God!”
“There is no God!” Hillary shouted, wiping away the stray lone tear that snuck down her cheek. In a huff she reached over to Caleigh and placed the tape back over her mouth. It flapped back down. Hillary tried again to secure the moistened piece of tape over Caleigh’s mouth. It refused to stay put.
Panicking, Hillary ran back upstairs. She had to find some other kind of tape to use. She left the basement door ajar. She could hear Caleigh’s wailing clearly from the hall. She ran up to her bedroom. She knew she had some tape in one of her computer desk drawers. She searched through the draws quickly until she found a roll of masking tape. She knew it was nowhere near as strong as the duct tape, but it would have to do.
Leaving her desk drawers open, Hillary sprinted to the basement with the tape. Caleigh was still screaming and hollering. Hillary flipped the dangling piece of duct tape over Caleigh’s mouth and used the masking tape to secure it in place. She tore off multiple strips to reinforce the duct tape. By the time she was done, every inch of the duct tape was covered and Caleigh’s noise was reduced to her familiar muffled whining.
Hillary exhaled deeply. It was an exhausting hour. She looked down at her shaky hands. She felt dizzy and nauseous. Was she getting sick? Had she tempted fate with her lie? She quickly placed the quilt over Caleigh and walked slowly upstairs. She sat on the couch to catch her breath. Something was definitely wrong with her. She felt a sudden urge to vomit and barely made it to the bathroom in time to puke up her breakfast.
Maybe it’s just nerves, she thought.
She had certainly been under a great deal of stress. She rinsed her mouth and slowly walked to the couch. She curled up on the cushions and fell asleep. The next thing she knew, her mother was hovering above her with her hand on her forehead.
“Are you all right, sweetie? You’re not feverish, that’s a good thing.”
Hillary stretched.
“I must have dozed off,” she said and yawned, “I felt awful a little while ago, I threw up, but I feel okay now.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t push it,” Kathy said, “we can have it tomorrow instead.”
“No, I’m okay now, really. Let’s get everything ready, I’m starving.”
Hillary stood up and grabbed one of the bags from her mother’s hand. She walked into the kitchen with Kathy and Joshua following behind her.
“Did you get the cream soda?”
“Yep,” Kathy replied, “and some ginger ale too...just in case.”
After Hillary and Kathy prepared the sandwiches, they packed everything in a picnic tote bag. Kathy placed the drinks in a small, insulated cooler. She grabbed extra napkins and tossed them into the picnic tote.
“I think we’re all set,” she said.
“Yay…picnic!” Joshua cheered on merrily as he clapped his little hands.
Twenty minutes later, the three of them were walking down the road toward the wooded area. Just before the alcove in the woods where Hillary had stashed the bags full of her father’s body parts, the path branched off to the right.
“God, it stinks!” Kathy said, frowning.
“Yucky, stinky!” Joshua added.
“Let’s go over here,” Hillary suggested, leading them down the path to the right.
The foul smell seemed to follow them down the trail.
“Maybe we should go down a different path,” Kathy suggested, covering her nose.
“Yucky, Mommy,” Joshua whined, “yuck!”
“It should be okay further down,” Hillary said, guiding them deeper into the woods.
The smell was pervasive and rank and familiar. Kathy knew that smell. It was the same smell from Hillary’s room, just more prominent now.
A few feet ahead of her, Hillary stopped. Her heart pounded heavily within her chest. Damn wild animals, she thought. She knew that she should have just turned back, agreed with her mother that they should take a different path and be on their way. But it was too late now. Kathy and Joshua caught up to her.
“What’s wrong, why did you—”
“Mommy, what’s that?” Joshua cried, clinging to his mother’s leg fearfully.
Kathy eyed the pile of bloodied, maggot-covered flesh on the ground in front of them. Her eyes were wide and full of disgust.
“That explains the smell,” Hillary said, trying to sound nonchalant, “it’s just a dead animal.”
“What kind of dead animal is that?” Kathy questioned.
“Who knows? Well let’s not do an autopsy! Let’s get out of here.”
Hillary cursed the animals that had torn into the garbage bags and dragged her father’s remains out into the open. She walked around the decaying flesh, grateful that there wasn’t anything in the pile that coul
d be identifiable as human remains, or worse, her father.
“No!” Joshua cried out, too afraid to step past the putrid pile.
“C’mon Joshua, just walk,” Hillary shouted as she looked back to make sure that her mother and brother were still following her.
“Hillary, maybe we should find another spot,” Kathy said, as she lifted Joshua into her arms. He was covering his nose and whining.
“That’s what I’m doing, Mom,” Hillary said in frustration, “come on, we’ll find a spot up ahead.”
“But it still stinks so awful,” Kathy said as she looked down at a large section of Michael’s rotting thigh, amongst other parts. She opened her mouth in shock when she noticed course hairs on the grey-tinged epidermal layer of the flesh. It was clearly no animal. It was part of a human.
Kathy gasped and thought, Michael! She began trembling.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Hillary asked sternly, her voice taking on a distinct edge.
“I—I think I caught your stomach bug,” she said with a soft, nervous chuckle, as she stepped back, “I have to get back to the house.”
Kathy turned and started to make her way back toward the house.
Shit! Hillary thought, fearful that her mother had seen something damning.
“Wait, Mom!” she yelled, as she turned and started walking to her mother. She paused momentarily to inspect the mound of maggot meat. She didn’t notice anything that would cause alarm, other than the overwhelming stench. Maybe it had just turned her mother’s stomach. Yet, she knew her mother well enough to know that she was scared. Somehow she knew...she knew that it was part of her husband lying there on the dirt path.
“Wait,” Hillary repeated as she jogged to catch up to Kathy.
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