PillowFace

by Kristopher Rufty

  He didn’t deserve to die.

  Joel saw Pillowface. A small spark of hope flickered in his eyes.

  “Pillowface? Help me!”

  Buddy laughed hysterically.

  “You can stop this, Pillowface…you can stop this!”

  As if they weren’t laughing hard enough at the poor kid, he began to cry. Then he added for fits, “You’re my friend!”

  Buddy had tears in his eyes he was laughing so hard.

  Carp yanked back on Joel’s hair, forcing more tears out of his eyes. “If he was your friend, kid, would he be letting me do this?”

  He pulled Joel away from Haley’s legs and onto his knees, then slammed an elbow against the back of his head, knocking him forward to the floor. He landed near the other girl. She reached out to him and stroked his face. Her touch looked to calm him some. But, the back of his skull had to be pulsating like someone was hammering a spike back there.

  He’d witnessed Carp perform unnecessary acts of violence to people before, but this was the first time it had angered Pillowface enough that he was tempted to snap his neck.

  Buddy looked at Face, “You friends with this snot or what?”

  Pillowface couldn’t take his eyes off Joel.

  Buddy’s smile began to fade. “Tell me you weren’t hanging out with this kid.”

  Pillowface still didn’t answer, just continued gaping at Joel who was crying really hard now.

  Through sniffles Joel whined, “Pillowface…”

  Buddy didn’t give him a chance to respond. “Let me tell you who the real Pillowface is…the one we call Face. He’s a killer, and he loves it. A fucking assassin. He’s the best at what he does. The best there ever was or will be.”

  Normally when Buddy stroked his ego, Pillowface felt as if he were some kind of god among men, an artist painting on a sadistic pallet. Everything Buddy had said was true. He did take some form of pride in his work. But, after seeing the undeniable hurt in Joel’s eyes, he began to remember there was another side to his work, one he didn’t usually see.

  Their side. The kid had had a hard enough life as it was, and he’d made it even harder by becoming his friend.

  Pillowface’s pride was gone by the way of shame.

  Buddy’s patience had worn out. He stomped his foot. “Face? Answer me goddammit! Are you friends with this kid?”

  He nodded.

  “Un-fucking-believable.” He looked at Carp. “Did you see that?”

  “Sure did.”

  Buddy obviously couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

  “You son of a bitch. You fucking traitor!”

  He slapped a hand across the front side of the burlap. Pillowface shot his head around. Buddy jumped back when he saw the rage bubbling in his eyes.

  “Don’t look at me like that. This is your fuckup. You’re the one that brought us to them. You call that kid your friend, but what about Carp? He’s been there for you a lot longer than that twerp.”

  Agreeing, Carp said, “Goddamn right.”

  “So, to prove yourself to us once again, you’re going to have to take a test.”

  Pillowface tilted his head. He should have known it would come to this.

  “Grab the kid, Carp.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Screaming, Haley kicked at Carp as he leaned over to lift up Joel. He still had the gun in one hand, so he reached for Joel with the other and grappled a nest of his hair. Haley continued to lash out, but didn’t come close to connecting. From the floor, Carlee swung her fists, but missed as well.

  Carlee began to scream high-pitched wails that couldn’t be understood.

  Haley tugged against the barbwire, looking at Face with hatred in her eyes that he hadn’t seen so severely other than his own. “Leave him alone! He’s just a kid!” She looked at Carp. “You’re going to kill a kid?”

  “No,” slapping a hand on Pillowface’s back, “he is.”

  ****

  Writhing and squirming, Joel hammered on Carp’s chest. This did nothing to save him. With each attempt at striking him, Carp tugged his hair harder, until finally Joel gave up. An hour ago he wouldn’t have thought Pillowface might actually kill him, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d never once truly feared him in the short time they’d been together.

  Now, he was terrified of him.

  The girls screamed and begged from behind Joel. He couldn’t tell them apart. Sounding more like disarranged shrieks, their words were hardly understandable. At last, Carp had forcefully escorted him to Pillowface. They faced each other.

  Carp released his hair and jostled Joel against the towering build of Pillowface’s body. The feel of it, its firmness was familiar, but nothing was comforting about it anymore. Everything had changed in such a short amount of time.

  The screams behind him lightened. He made himself look up at Pillowface. Their eyes locked. Staring for a moment, Joel saw a tear break away from his eye and soak into the burlap.

  Simultaneously, Buddy and Carp began a chant. Slow at first, it steadily increased to a drum. “Face! Face! Face!”

  The chant continued as Joel felt Pillowface’s brawny hands find his throat. He hoped that his eyes, ample and full of fear, asked him to make it quick, because he was begging for it in his mind.

  ****

  Pillowface glanced at Haley. Her mouth hung open as if she were screaming but had been put on mute. Though he knew it could never have happened, he’d fantasized some kind of life with her and Joel in this house, but he should have known better. He had kissed those dreams good-bye.

  All he’d brought them had been pain and torment.

  One quick spin of the wrists would snap Joel’s neck, ending it all. The agony, distress, the loneliness. A quick crack and he’d be free.

  The perceptible chant was thunderous as if they were waiting for him to kick a field goal.

  And his mind was made up. Joel shall be set free. It ends now with a mercy kill.

  (II)

  With everyone’s attention diverted, Haley began working at the bounded wire on her wrists. Being able to gulp down scorching hot coffee without having it touch the back of her throat wasn’t her only talent.

  She was also very flexible.

  And she had been for as long as she could remember.

  Leaning over, she sucked in a breath to make her stomach even flatter than the paper elevation it naturally was. This allowed her to contort herself so her mouth could touch her wrist. She gnashed her teeth to a snarl and bit down on the rusting wire. Her mouth lit up with a flurry of stings like crunching aluminum foil, but she didn’t stop. She carried on like a mouse caught in a trap, gnawing and chewing. Her lips formed around the rudimentary knot. She felt her canine tooth penetrate its fold, permitting her to lock down. Her rows of enamel met, then she tugged with all the strength in her neck.

  The knot came free; the wire drooped around the chair.

  (III)

  The pressure didn’t come right away in one quick squeeze. Pillowface slowly applied it as if he was undecided to do so. Joel could still breathe, but it was hard. When he tried to swallow, his spit became lodged behind his Adams apple. If Pillowface squeezed any harder Joel realized his throat would be crushed.

  Joel wished he’d go on and do it. Dragging it out like this was torture. He wanted it to be over and done, so that way he would no longer have to live with knowing what he’d done to so many people. Sure, it wasn’t his hands that had murdered Tonya, her parents, or Ethan…but it might as well have been. He hadn’t been the one to tear Clay Ray’s scalp from his head, but he’d been the one to put the chainsaw in his hair so Pillowface could do it.

  It was his fault. He should have never allowed Pillowface to come into his life.

  A tear spilled from Face’s eye as the pressure increased.

  Here it comes.

  The chanting stopped. Instead of hoots and cheers, he now heard grunting. A shriek of rage that sounded like it could have come from Haley tore through t
he tight room.

  Pillowface released Joel’s throat and together they turned towards Buddy and Carp.

  Carp held his hand away from him at neck level, struggling with some kind of wire or something that was trying to coil around his throat. He turned to the side, revealing Haley behind him with the barbwire she was tied with now wrapped around each hand and trying to strangle Carp with it.

  As Buddy moved in to assist Carp, Carlee speared him in a nearly perfect tackle. He hit the coffee table and smashed through it to the floor. Carlee rolled across him. On the floor, she reeled back and forth, apparently also stunned from the impact.

  Joel looked at Pillowface who in return looked at him. Much like Joel, Pillowface probably didn’t know what to do. Joel should help his sister, and Pillowface should be helping Carp, but neither of them could budge from their spot.

  Holding his stomach, Buddy got to his knees. “Face…for fucksake, help him!”

  Pillowface glanced at Joel one more time before charging.

  But, so did Joel.

  He went straight for the gun still clutched in Carp’s hand. It wasn’t going to be as easy to dislodge it as he’d thought it would be. Carp had a firm grip, and even worse, his finger was inching closer to the trigger. With the barrel pointing directly at his face, Joel fought to pull the gun away from him.

  Face ignored Joel to walk around behind Carp where Haley was, and yanked her back. The barbwire slid across Carp’s hand, ripping it open. Blood secreted from the gash in thick spurts.

  He finally let go of the gun.

  Joel caught it before it hit the floor. Then he staggered back, thumbing back the hammer, and aiming.

  He wanted to shoot Carp, but Pillowface was too close and since he was struggling with Haley as she slapped him with fists layered in barbwire, he was afraid he might hit either one of them, or both.

  “Damn it, Face!” yelled Carp. “Look what you made her do to my hand.”

  There was a swoosh of movement to Joel’s left. He turned as Buddy sprung at him. Joel quickly pointed the gun and fired. Explosions shot up his right arm to his shoulder and back down to his fingers, locking them up. Screaming, he dropped the gun. He pulled his hand close. It dangled loosely at the wrist, flopping this way and that.

  It had been snapped completely.

  He could vomit from the pain.

  Buddy was also screaming. His hand was clutched to his ear as blood jetted down his forearm. When he pulled his hand away, Joel saw he hadn’t shot his entire ear off, but only the top half.

  It would do. Seeing Buddy injured in any fashion brought a smile to his face.

  Carlee ran to Joel, swiping the gun off the floor on her way. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him tightly against her. Holding him close, she aimed the gun at Buddy and cocked the hammer with her free hand.

  “Leave Haley alone!”

  Pillowface was holding her by the wrists, but he wasn’t trying to harm her, only subdue her by the looks of it. If he wanted to kill her, he could have done so three times already. Joel had witnessed displays of the man’s strength enough times to know that Haley posed no real threat to him.

  “Kill her, Face!” shouted Buddy.

  “You do it, and I’ll blow a hole straight through your leader here!”

  Carlee’s tone sounded serious, but it was hard to be afraid of her from how her swollen lips made it almost impossible to pronounce the words she was trying to say.

  Carp approached Buddy, but was slapped repeatedly for doing so.

  “Ow…shit…what was that for?!”

  “Get them!” He pointed at Carlee and Joel.

  “Fuck that…”

  “She can’t shoot all three of us at once.”

  Carp was doubtful. “No…but she’ll get one of us for sure.”

  “Then so be it.”

  Joel saw Haley step away from Pillowface and kick, planting her foot squarely between his legs. He moaned nearly as loud as he had in the woods when fighting Clay Ray. It was a low blow, and even after all of this, he still felt bad for Pillowface.

  Haley managed to pull her hands away from him as he dropped to his knees and ran past Carp to join up with Carlee and Joel.

  Buddy began to laugh. “You two are completely ridiculous. Do I have to do everything?” Still holding his ear with one hand, he used the other to reach behind his back, and when he brought it back he was brandishing a white canister.

  It looked like the can of pepper spray that Carlee showed Joel back in the car.

  Before Carlee could even react, Buddy had used his thumb to flick the plastic stopper off the top, and pushed the button down. A stream of thick white foam shot across the room, lapping Carlee’s eyes. Her shrieks murdered Joel’s ears. She pawed at her eyes, swiping them with her fingers as if she could pull the burning out.

  Buddy and Carp lunged.

  Carlee didn’t even notice, nor did she try to shoot.

  Haley yanked Joel away from Carlee so fast his toes slid across the floor a couple feet before finding traction again. The last thing he saw before being hauled outside was Carp clouting his knife deep into Carlee’s stomach.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  (I)

  Haley pulled Joel behind the shed. She leaned over, looking past him and around the side of the building. Through the windows she could see Carlee being sliced repeatedly by Carp. No way was she still alive. She was being punished extra brutally.

  Buddy stood near Alan, gazing directly at her, but she doubted he could see her.

  “I know you’re out there,” he said. “We’ll be along shortly.” Then he went back inside.

  “What’s happening?” Joel asked.

  “Don’t look,” she warned. Thankfully he listened. “We can’t get to the cars, or they’ll nab us on the way. We have to go through the woods, make our way up the road that way. Get to someone’s house and have them call the police.”

  Joel nodded, but Haley doubted he’d comprehended anything she had said.

  “We have to move quick…They’ll be coming after us.”

  Joel didn’t say anything.

  “Joel?”

  He looked at her. His eyes were two white spheres in the dark.

  “Are you going to make it?”

  “Yuh-yeah…I’ll be all right…I think.”

  “How’s your hand?”

  He looked down at it. From where it was broken it made his right arm look longer than the left.

  “I can hardly feel it anymore.”

  That wasn’t good. Shock was probably setting in, making him numb to everything. Haley needed to keep him moving before he became completely catatonic.

  “Let’s go before they come after us.”

  “Pillowface…He…didn’t kill me…”

  “Come on!”

  She grabbed his left hand and tugged him along. Together they ran to the trail directly behind the house. If Haley remembered correctly when they got to the fork in the trail they needed to take a right and it would lead them up to the bend on Marble Lane. Even if it didn’t, it would still lead them away from here.

  The darkness enveloped them when they entered the woods.

  “He didn’t kill me Haley….”

  “I know, Joel. Come on!” He was lagging and it felt like she was about to rip his arm off. With an already broken wrist, she didn’t want to add a dislocated shoulder to his injuries. “We need to move faster!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right, I don’t.” She sighed through her huffing breaths. “Come on!”

  He jogged with her, but not fast enough. They stumbled over rocks and roots. Haley’s bare feet were being poked and pricked by acorns and jagged sticks, and though it hurt, she was not going to let it slow her down. That responsibility was Joel’s and he was doing a damn fine job of it.

  “We are friends,” added Joel. “He didn’t kill me because we are friends!”

  “That’s wonderful, Joel…bu
t he killed Alan and God knows who else.”

  “Tonya.”

  “He killed Tonya?” Her legs went rubbery. “And you knew this?”

  “Not until afterward!”

  He spoke as if that was a perfectly logical argument.

  “Joel…if we get out of this…you and I need to have some serious discussions about your well-being.”

  She might be able to save him physically, but feared that mentally he was already dead.

  (II)

  “She’s dead, Carp. You sick bastard, that’s enough!”

  Carlee lay on her back while Carp was knelt over her with his knife to the hilt in her belly. He twisted the knife so the sharp edge of the blade faced her breasts, then heaved it up to her ribcage. Finally, he pulled the blade out, syrupy dark strings of blood seeping off. There were at least a dozen stab wounds on her front side and Buddy had lost count of those on her back. She’d been mangled beyond recognition, which was a shame because she was so pretty. Buddy actually liked her and had hoped to let her live, but when she got hold of the gun, everything changed.

  He put the piece of gauze he’d taken from their first-aid kit to his ear, and tore the tape across it to hold the square of white mesh in place. Carp would need his hand bandaged but the idiot could wait. “Carp, get next door and set it ablaze, posthaste.”

  Carp wiped the blood from his knife on the one spot of Carlee’s shirt that had remained unsoiled, so now it matched the rest. “What about the two runners?”

  “Face is going to get them.”

  Face, who’d been fretfully pacing the floor, stopped and gawked at Buddy. Buddy wasn’t sure if he liked the new look, but assumed he’d warm up to it eventually.

  “You heard me, old friend.” Buddy stood up, grabbing his camera and mask as he got to his feet. “I’m going to pack up here, Carp’s going to torch the neighbor’s place, then come over and torch this one. We’ll meet up at the creek in one hour.”