by catt dahman
Nick took that to mean Julia had gone out and left him. “Where’s Randy?”
“You already asked. I answered you. Shoot me, but I’m not saying anything. I wouldn’t last in a cage, see? I don’t care if I die. No biggie.”
Skot, always the wild card and never one to let anyone else work a plan, lunged and grabbed Carl’s arm, squeezing it. The sudden pressure on the deeply cut and now swollen and infected arm was too much, and Carl threw back his head to scream with maddening pain.
Nick didn’t care that Carl was in pain; he rather liked seeing the misery of one of his tormentors, but what he didn’t like was the noise Carl made when he didn’t know for sure that Julia was out of the house or where Randy was. Nick tried to pull Skot away, but Skot pushed him.
Next, he tried to cover Carl’s mouth but figured he’d be bitten, so he grabbed a dirty bandage from the trash, sitting next to the bed, and crammed it into Carl’s maw. He yanked up the pillow and covered Carl’s head.
“Damnit, Skot….”
Before they could argue any more or make Carl shut up, the door flew open, and both men looked that way. Their jaws dropped. A man they knew ran at them from the doorway, bellowing, and throwing punches. The man was Carl.
Nick blinked but then had to dodge blows. The shirtless man, clad only in jeans, swung with big fists, catching Nick in the stomach and then in his jaw. Nick went to his knees but yanked the shirtless man with him so that in the next second, they were rolling around, punching each other. Nick’s mouth felt as if a train had hit it when a fist smacked him, shredding his lips across his teeth. He almost screamed every time he used his injured hand to punch; on one hand, he had two crushed fingers, and on the other, his pinky was missing. Both hands were ruined anyway.
Carl stood and kicked Nick in his ribs.
Another blow might have been the end for Nick, but Skot was suddenly behind the killer and slammed a butcher knife into the man’s back. Skot kicked him, and as soon as Carl hit the floor, Skot was on top, stabbing, his hands going slick with bright red blood. He grew tired and finished with several stabs to Carl’s throat.
Nick sat up and stared, confused. He watched Skot finishing, not bothering to say a word while he took the few seconds to try to make sense of this entire situation. “Am I seeing double?”
“Naw, right before he ran in, I happened to see something on that guy’s upper arm. He’s got a tat that says KARL. Look at the ass who fought you. His upper arm. It says Carl.”
“Twins?”
“Yup. They look just alike, don’t they?”
Nick frowned, “Why would anyone have twins and name them Carl and Karl?”
“Well, I don’t know. It ain’t intelligent, but then it explains why they grew up to be such sorry bastards, don’t it?”
Nick nodded, feeling his ruined mouth and wiping away the blood. It was the only smart thing he had ever heard Skot say even if it were weird. ”Carl and Karl. We thought they were the same man every time.”
“Why wouldn’t we? It ain’t like we socialized. Man, I saw him come in and wondered what in the hell was going on. I thought I was dreamin’ stuff.”
“I did, too,” said Nick as he looked at Karl, “he’s dead. Your brother. Guess that hurts, huh? You mad? I bet you are. You sure look it. Too weak to help him, huh?”
Karl had spit out the dirty gauze but only stared at the other men with hatred in his eyes. He was far too sick to get up and could only cough again. Tears ran down his feverish face.
I sure like seeing them tears,” Skot told him.
“Yeah. It was just us for all those weeks. Those months, I guess.”
Karl laughed weakly, “Months? Weeks? You been down there two weeks today. That’s all. We grabbed all of you two weeks ago.”
“We were held and kept on an IV, and I know it’s been at least two months? It had to be because we were starving to death.”
“Damn. Go use the scales in the bathroom, stupid. Ten pounds tops. Look in a mirror. You aren’t thinner by much. Ten pounds, like I said. You’ve been here two freaking weeks,” Karl said. “Did we keep you in fancy hospital beds, so where did we get the supplies? Damn, Julia was right; people can be tricked easily. Dress it like a pig, call it a pig, and people believe it’s a pig. Pig.”
“That brilliant. Pig. Very 1970s.”
“You were fooled.”
“No. We’ve been starving.”
“No. You were cramped up, and that made you weak. We messed with the lights and told you that time was passing, and we gave you subtle hints, just like Julia said, and you fell for it. You believed it.”
Nick sat at the foot of the bed. Maybe he wasn’t thinner. Was he? He didn’t know. “We were so hungry.”
Karl chuckled dryly, “We made you think you were. All manipulations of the mind. You were so easy. We said it, and you believed, and you ate each other. Oh wow. So funny. You cut off fingers and toes for that.”
Skot limped the whole way up both sets of stairs and all through the house. Nick’s pinky stub ached, and his hand throbbed with pain where his fingers were crushed. “But….”
“You weren’t starving. You thought you were.”
Nick fell across Karl and wrapped his hands around his throat. He squeezed. The place hurt where his finger was snipped away and where his fingertips were smashed, but the pain felt just fine, and he kept the pressure on Karl’s throat, pressing and digging and seeing a red haze. For some reason, he thought that Karl had told the truth, and if he were lying, it was worthy of being strangled for. The torture never ended.
“Hey, hey, Nick, hey,” Skot said, “he’s dead as dog shit, Dude. You done killed him about two or three minutes ago. “He’s a fat liar. It was longer. It was a long time, and we were starving. Right? Right. Huh?”
“I dunno.”
“The rest is gonna be upset hearing this if it’s true or not.”
That was the second intelligent thing Skot had said. Nick knew that explaining about Karl and Carl was going to be one shock, and telling them they might have been there for only two weeks was going to be a bigger shock. Some might not do well. “We might want to wait until we get out of here. It’s likely to upset the rest.”
Skot shrugged and said, “I don’t care.”
Nick didn’t know if that meant he didn’t care if they waited or if he didn’t care if it upset the rest. He wondered where Julia and Randy were. Again, time had worked against them, and he was unsure how long they had been upstairs. They needed to check the bedrooms and bath on the other wing.
He stood.
And below, Ruth screamed.
Chapter Seventeen
Ruth stood outside a small half bath as Lovie peed, scared to leave her unguarded. Kim and Jake watched the stairs.
“Hurry.”
“Did you hear something?” Lovie ran her hands under the water, trying to wash off some of the dirt and grime after she finished but also trying to be quick and quiet.
“Nope, but I have to go,” said Ruth, listening to the running water. She ran into the tiny bathroom and was kind of happy to be using a real toilet again. If they want me, then they will have to catch me, and they better be ready to fight. I can’t go back, Lovie. If I suddenly awoke there right now, I’d give up. I’d take my own life before doing it all again,” replied Ruth
“I’m so jumpy. I am terrified of their catching us.”
“But it’s okay. I mean we fought, and we survived it. We can beat them. We have. What if we had given up right at the start?”
“I don’t know, Andre. He wasn’t a coward, but he knew something. He understood that there are some things we can’t forget or come back from. I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay.” Ruth scrubbed at her hands while looking at herself in the mirror. She was dirty and greasy. She was thinner, but she wasn’t painfully thin. She blinked at her reflection. “I should be skinnier.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not that thin, but I should be after all this time,
right? I should be far weaker, and I was a little over weight, before. I look pretty good now. Why?
Lovie’s eyes widened. She plucked at her shirt. It hadn’t dawned on her until now that she wasn’t small either. Someone who was starved for months would be boney and very feeble. She was somewhat weak, but she had two finger tips chopped off and had been in a cramped cage. “My God, Ruth. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be able to walk.”
“Jake warned us not to eat too much or too fast, right? Because our bellies would be tiny and unable to handle much food, but I ate quite a bit, not as much as I could before, but a lot. We need to tell the others.” Ruth stopped talking since overhead, they heard a series of crashes, thuds, thumps, and shouts. A violent fight was going on.
Jake and Kim were both practically dancing in place, hearing the noise and wondering if they should go help or stay where they were. Jake waved Ruth and Lovie to hurry and regroup.
Ruth wanted to know what was going on upstairs, yet she was terrified of who might emerge, walking down the stairs, but she was also thinking that she wasn’t very skinny. Her mind was a thousand places, and she didn’t like any of those places very much. That was probably why she didn’t see that Randy was right there in the hallway with them, coming from another room.
Randy hoped Carl and Karl were able to fight and prevent anyone’s leaving. Everything had happened in a few seconds, too quickly even to think about what was happening. He was glad he had grabbed the bat as he ran to find the escaped group.
Randy moved fast and looked bigger since he was close and they were not separated by bars. He carried a baseball bat that looked enormous as he ran towards Ruth and Lovie. Ruth ducked to one side, but didn’t keep running as Randy expected. She didn’t run away but skidded to a stop.
Lovie went to the other side as he swung, but he corrected his aim and caught her across her ribs and back, knocking her to the floor. He howled as he put all his power into the blow. Lovie made a strange noise as the wind was knocked out of her. She fell with her ribs bruised and fractured. Her knife, her protection, skittered across the floor and was lost for now, but she would be unable to use it anyway.
He paused over Lovie as he prepared to deal the second blow. She fought to breathe again before Randy slammed the bat down again, catching her jaw. The bat fell and slid slightly sideways, and the pain of both blows merged with a rush of fiery heat and a numbing sensation. She couldn’t get her breath, and she lay in an open position, unable to move or think beyond the curious deadness of her body.
That gave Ruth the chance to attack instead of running away. And she did. She drove her knife underhanded into his stomach as he half turned to her, his bat at the side. The blade stuck in his belly since stabbing was a difficult process, and it would take a great deal of strength to stab deeply and then to remove the blade. Her hands slid on the blood, and she lost her knife.
Randy was very resilient, and with one hand, he wrenched the knife loose with a great yowl, and a gout of blood spurted forth and covered his pants and shirt. He prepared to kill all of them. He had used the other set of stairs to go down and check the subjects, but he had found the cages empty except for the dead. Racing back, his only concern was to find them and kill all of them before they left the house.
By the stairs, Kim and Jake saw what happened, how Randy seemingly appeared out of nowhere and hit Lovie twice. They reacted fast, but Randy was faster.
Lovie got to her feet and leaped weakly at Randy, grabbing his upper arm, but he had the knife Ruth stabbed him with and was far better at hand-to-hand combat. With hardly a thought, Randy spun and slashed with the knife, coming in low and using his weight and a downward motion to his benefit, and Lovie was pushed backwards.
Jake didn’t bother with a knife fight. He came running and leaped at Randy full force, driving the man to the ground and knocking the bat to the side. Randy fought, despite the bloody but non-life threatening wound to his belly and the cut arm. He struggled to cut Jake’s throat as they rolled and fought, each with a knife and a fist.
Jake and Randy fought with their fists, each trying to punch the other, and Ruth and Kim were left to try to help, but they had no idea what to do as the men rolled and punched.
Ruth knew she wasn’t going back to the cage, but if Randy won this fight, that could be an option. She screamed and launched herself on Randy’s back as he and Jake rolled. She beat Randy’s back and neck with her fists, wanting her knife back so that she could make him suffer as they had.
Randy raised himself and slung his arm back, tossing Ruth to the side again. This time, he was open for another attack, and Kim came running, driving her knife into his groin, slashing and stabbing as fast as she could. Randy stopped the fight and rolled to his back, trying to get into a fetal position to protect himself, but Kim took every punch she could until Jake could throw himself over Randy and pin his arms.
His pants were soaked within seconds, and it pooled beneath him. Kim kept going, and the back splatter coated her face and arms. She barred her teeth and growled as she worked, looking like a beast.
Lovie sat and watched but didn’t realize that she was already covered in her own blood. Randy had slashed her stomach open, and she was pouring blood; all she felt was a faint heat and numbness.
Ruth could have kicked the knife away from Randy, but she joined Jake in trying to keep Randy’s hand pinned. Maybe he would lose his grip on the handle. Frustrated and desperate, Ruth grabbed the bat and began beating Randy’s hand with the knife; pounding as hard as she could, she was able to break a few of his fingers, and he lost the knife. It slid to the side. It was payback for what he and Carl did to Andre’s hand and Nick’s fingers.
Lovie lost her warm feeling and became ice cold as she blew from her stomach.
Kim realized she was barely able to raise her arm, much less use the knife. She was tiring. Jake knew it at the same time and took the knife. For some reason although it was unsaid, he understood this was Ruth’s kill and that he had to let her finish, watching and protecting, but allowing her to do as she wished. He pulled Kim away, and they slid on the bloody floor.
Ruth’s jaw dropped for a second. From when Randy first appeared until right then, it had been a split second, but she felt it had been a long time.
Time had no meaning, just as it hadn’t when she thought she had been in a dog cage for months, starving to death, cutting off her finger for some fucking prizes, or seeing people cut off fingers and toes for freaking boiled eggs and scraps. They had fought to get bits of fingers or pieces of raw flesh. She had watched Andre die to help her. She saw Mike burn alive and Mattie eat his skin and flesh as if she were at a barbeque, smacking and groaning with pleasure.
And Vinnie, all that in minutes or hours or days, and she didn’t know because she WASN’T SKINNY. LIES. Peeing in a cup and being fed like a mistreated dog, she CUT HER FINGER OFF.
Ruth’s eyes rolled crazily, and she picked up the baseball bat and partially stood, “I am NOT going BACK to that damned CAGE.” Each time she yelled a word, she hit him with the bat, slamming it against his face. Three times. Bones broke. He wasn’t so tough. His shiny white teeth, so straight and beautifully shaped, were broken or knocked out or went flying. They sounded like buttons falling. “I won’t GO back ever AGAIN because you can’t MAKE me.” Three more times, she hit him, fracturing and destroying an eye socket, and following with a blow that made his eye almost pop out, and a third that broke the eye socket fully and allowed his eye to slide around to a new hole.
She ruined his broken nose, knocking it so far to one side that it looked like a lump of dough. She worked on his forehead until the bones broke and then on his jaw until it was sideways, and his mouth poured gouts of blood.
Because Kim had stabbed him in the groin, Ruth went there next. “You pervert. You ENJOYED our misery and got OFF on seeing us break down to mere
ANIMALS.”
Then, Kim ripped open a testicle with the bat, and Ruth popped it
open like a ripe fruit, making him scream even louder. The second blow was across his penis but didn’t do much more than cause intense pain, adding a new rush of pure agony that caused Randy to make loud, high-pitched, keening noises as he wailed. The third blow was back to his face because Ruth, deep in her subconscious, wished to wipe away his entire face, the one she had looked to for mercy and found only cruelty.
She turned slightly, raised the bat, and brought it all the way down, crushing the other bones of his face. Skin split, bones shattered, and blood poured; his face began to look like a lumpy red mess, but Ruth yelled at him and continued.
Nick and Skot came down the stairs at a run, but everything had happened while they were fighting and talking since they had had their own situation. They hoped the four below would deal with one or two as they had. They were people fleeing, not a trained combat team, and Nick and Skot were not heroes who were there to save the rest.
That didn’t mean they didn’t rush as soon as Ruth screamed, but by the time they got there and assessed the circumstances, Jake was moving away, and Ruth was beating Randy to death. Neither Skot not Nick felt there was a reason to ask her to stop what she was doing; she was letting some of her fury go.
“Ruth, I think he’s dead. I see his…yanno…brain,” said Skot who was impressed that she had made Randy’s head look like red and yellowish jelly, and his head was malformed. She had not only killed Randy, but also, she had hurt him and made him more dead than just dead. He chuckled although it was inappropriate. “He’s like…maximum dead. He’s half past dead. He is the deadest of the dead. Really.”
“Shut up, Skot,” Nick muttered. He saw Ruth had stopped hitting Randy and was sitting on the bloody floor with the bat; both she and her weapon were covered in gore, bits of flesh, and blood, fats. She wiped her face off kind of as an afterthought but only smeared the mess. “Are you okay?”
“Hmmm? You think he’s dead? I can hit him again.”
Nick had been squatting next to Lovie, checking her out and finding a severe head injury and a broken rib that had punctured her lung, as well as a cut that had opened her belly, causing her to be in critical shape. Her eyes didn’t focus, and she made a few sounds, but Nick couldn’t tell if she knew who he was.