by Sian Rosé
With a small, gracious smile, Minnie took his chin in her fingers and squeezed as if she were showing her fondness for a small child. “We just want to return the favour.”
“You fuck Min, we fuck you,” the man towering above him explained, his rough fingers stroking the smooth edge of the bat.
“What?” Norman gasped, eyeing the baseball bat with dread. “No… please…”
Minnie tightened her grip on his chin so hard that the skin pinched and stung. She grinned, revealing her teeth like a manic clown from a bad horror movie.
“We insist.”
With that, she stood up and walked back around the table to the kitchen counter, where the large rifle gun lay in wait.
“Pull his trousers down,” she instructed her husband, her brow furrowing with concentration as she delicately lifted the weapon and rehearsed once again in her head the plan of action. Norman began to writhe on the table, now giving high-pitched shrieks of fear as he struggled and began to beg through his pitiful sobs.
“No… no, please,” he pleaded, hot piss spilling from his crotch and stinging the insides of his legs as the man roughly tugged on his trousers, exposing his arse to the cold air. “I didn’t even fuck you… it wasn’t me, I just…”
“Shut up!” snapped Minnie, spinning back around to him and nudging the top of his arse crack him with the point of the gun. “Just shut up.”
“Mum?”
Norman froze.
It was a child’s voice.
He heard Minnie take a breath and sigh impatiently. “What is it, Zach?”
“Lloyd shat himself.”
His male captor grumbled to himself. With a final movement, he tugged the trousers and underpants down to Norman’s ankles so that the old man was now lying face down and exposed from the waist down.
Then, the child’s voice again. This time, a high-pitched giggle chimed into the air, tinkling in Norman’s ears like an eerie nursery rhyme.
“Looks like he’s not the only one!” the boy commented, clearly referring to the naked old man who had soiled himself. Both of the boy’s parents fell about in fits of laughter. Mocking Norman. Enjoying and savouring his agony.
Norman squeezed hot, bitter tears of humiliation from his eyes and forced himself to look down at Norah again. She was dead, free of pain and fear, but there was nothing peaceful about how she looked.
“Ronnie, can you go?”
“What? No, I want to see this motherfucker explode.”
“Ugh,” Minnie tutted, rolling her eyes. She turned back to the child. “We’re in the middle of something at the moment, sweetheart. Can we trust you to change Lloyd’s bum just this once? We’ll be done soon, and if you do a good job, we’ll go out for a nice dinner somewhere. You kids can pick.”
“And can I get that tattoo kit as well?”
“Nice try, mate,” Ronne smirked, “not till your thirteen. You can give yourself blood poisoning with those things.”
The child shrugged, “worth a try,” he said before turning and scampering off down the hallway again.
When he was gone, Minnie approached Norman’s rear, eyes gleaming as she fingered the smooth edges of the gun. “Now, where were we?”
Instinctively, Norman clenched his buttocks. But it took far too much effort to keep up for long because the flesh and tissue around his old muscles were so damaged from the night in the woods. The night that he burned.
“Please don’t do this,” begged Normal, bawling now so that his entire body jolted with each broken cry. “Please just… leave me alone…”
“HAHA!” Minnie shrieked madly, positioning the end of the gun at the entrance to Norman’s wrinkled, shit-pasted anus. “Those words sound familiar, don’t you think, Ron?”
Ronnie stroked his chin and pretended to think. “Why, yes they do, Minnie. Now, where have we heard that before?”
“Oh yes,” Minnie said triumphantly, “now I remember. That’s what I said to you, Norman when you and your friend attacked me.”
Norman shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Now…” Minnie continued, ignoring him. She wedged the barrel between his cheeks, applying soft, slow pressure so that it slowly widened him. “Let me think. Norm, do you remember what you said next?”
“Please… please…”
“You told me,” Minnie breathed, pushing the gun further, “to shut the fuck up.” As the sharp edge of that final syllable escaped her lips, her trembling, clammy hands lost control, and she rammed the gun as hard as she possibly good into the filthy crevice.
“FUCK!” screeched Norman, the pain surging up into his chest as his legs juddered on the table. “PLEASE NO! STOP!”
Ronnie wordlessly placed his hands over Minnie’s, and the two shared a small, sad smile of mutual understanding. He bent his head, and she lifted her face upwards. Their lips met, their souls on fire as they felt the adrenaline coursing through their veins.
Remaining silent, enjoying the sweet, calming sound of Norman screaming, pleading, and sobbing, the couple forced the gun further into him. Again and again, they penetrated the man who had caused them so much pain, but in a sick, twisted way, had actually somehow helped them to find their true selves.
It wasn’t until spidery trickles of blood began to steep in cracks from Norman that Minnie moved her hands to the trigger. Ronnie stood back and licked his lips excitedly. When he was ready, he gave Minnie a small nod, and she turned to face the grim, satisfying image that lay out in front of her.
“Goodbye, Norm,” he said simply before shooting.
The noise was deafening- so loud that it felt like razor blades being rammed into their ears. In an instant, Norman was no longer a solid being but just a big, slimy, slippery mess. Every fibre of his miserable, pathetic being exploded, the shot sending shreds of his blood and flesh splattering high up on every wall and surface.
For a moment, Minnie and Ronnie stood still, contemplating the mess.
They themselves were covered in thick lashings of his entrails.
After some time, Ronnie walked back towards her and put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s dead,” he said dumbly.
Minnie smiled, eyes shining as she absorbed the gore.
“And I’ve never felt so alive.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
2019
“Jesus fucking Christ,” wheezed Minnie, clutching her chest as she stared, unblinking, down at the news story that blared up at her from her phone. “Oh my god…”
“I know,” Ronnie said sympathetically, reaching a hand over and planting it on the top of hers, rubbing her knuckles with the pad of his thumb. “I’m so sorry, my darling. We could try and break him out if it wasn’t for Flo.”
Minnie nodded, her lips remaining firmly pursed shut as her eyes glazed over.
The couple sat in a state of complete shock in the driver and passenger seat of the RV. Well, at least one of them was. Ronnie was pretending. He’d gotten good at that over the years.
“He didn’t do it, did he?” Minnie said, looking at her husband with hurt in her tear-glazed eyes. “I bet it was Flo up to her tricks. And he must have retaliated.”
“Don’t think that way,” Ronnie retorted, keeping his own gaze firmly locked on the road ahead as he sped as fast as he could through the grey evening. “I know Flo is smart, but she is only eight.”
Swallowing, Minnie sat back in her seat and attempted to breathe normally. Maybe the reunion with her parents hadn’t been as sweet and heartfelt as she had feared it would be. But that didn’t take away from the fact that Ross was her brother, and no amount of years apart could make her stop loving him.
Now, he was in a cell at a police station somewhere.
Arrested for the murder of his own daughter and the attempted murder of another, unknown child.
The headline on the news page haunted Minnie’s thoughts, even after she’d turned off her phone and thrown it onto the ground as if
that would stop it from hurting her anymore.
“My brother wouldn’t have done that,” she said slowly, with so much certainty that it was difficult for Ronnie to even attempt to argue with her.
Ronnie sighed, guilt twisting in his gut.
“Flo killed the girl, didn’t she?” Minnie whispered softly, staring into space in a kind of daze. “We taught her to do that. To destroy everything.”
Her husband cleared his throat, flicked on the indicator, and turned off the main road, following a sign that announced the hospital nearby.
“Let’s be honest, though, Min. Would you even care if he hadn’t been caught?”
A breath caught in her chest as she paused and considered this. Did she really care if her niece died? No. It was a link from Ross to Paul. And there was no room for Paul in her life. But there would have been for Ross.
“We could’ve taken him along with us. It’s not like we would’ve killed him just for beating Flo.”
At that, Ronnie’s brow collapsed and furrowed as her desperate words sunk in. “Minnie, Flo is our daughter. She is a child…”
Minnie shot him a stony glare, “she also murdered somebody else’s daughter. Also, a child. Her own cousin, no less.
A sarcastic chuckle trickled from Ronnie’s mouth as he lifted his eyebrows. “You’re really going to act like we haven’t literally raised the child to be a criminal? Come on, Min.”
“Family is different,” said Minnie icily. “And what if the roles were reversed? What if it was us finding our little girl dead in the woods?”
Silence fell over the both of them as Ronnie quickly swerved into a dark, quiet-looking side road. As much as it was an awful thought, they were both forced then to wonder what it would feel like to see their own child die. To know that they had been murdered.
“That would never happen,” Ronnie replied finally, his voice gruff. “We’ve taught her well.” He parked further up the road, driving deeper into a row of parking bays that he hoped would not arouse any kind of suspicion. “Anyway, we can discuss this later. For now, we’ve got to get Flo back and get the fuck out of here.”
Obediently, without another word, the couple slid into the back of the RV, rounded up the remaining three children who were already dressed for the occasion. Each of them bagged up the necessary tools, then departed their mobile home, a sort of bittersweet mixture of exhilaration and unease dancing wildly in their stomachs. Outside, the jet-black night was cold, stinging their skins as it swallowed them up.
In particular, Ronnie felt his skin crawling with nerves. He hung back, allowing Minnie and Stella to walk along together in a pair, with the boys trotting along behind them.
He felt guilt for lying to Minnie.
But, he kept reminding himself firmly, he’d had no other choice.
Out of anyone else on the planet, he knew his wife best. He could see her softening, her exterior breaking when Ross had come back into the picture. He’d had to get him and the rest of their family out of the picture. As quickly as possible.
And, like on so many other occasions, the opportunity seemed to just fall right into his hands. It was as if the devil himself had given him a blessing.
When he’d gone searching for the girls, it hadn’t taken him long before he had found them. His daughter gravitated to woods, always had done. She loved to feed the ducks and also had a keen interest in starting fires and trampling on small woodland creatures. So Oakwood had been his first port of call.
He’d seen Flo, making her vain but impressive attempt at ramming the rat down Annie’s throat. Endearing as it was to watch his little girl’s efforts, he’d had to step in, for it was becoming pitiful.
Once the child was dead, the plan had unfurled naturally in his head.
Get Ross to the woods, and frame him.
Obviously, Ross hadn’t intended for Flo to get beaten the shit out of. It’d taken everything in every fibre of his being not to leap out from behind the tree where he hid and to throttle the prick.
But he’d had to bide his time.
He couldn’t let his emotions fuck things up.
*
The bright but pasty green lights in the hospital stung Stella’s eyes. She strode with a confident swagger down the corridors, the heels of her shoes clicking along the lino floor as she went. Her eyelids throbbed beneath the lashings of makeup that she knew she didn’t really need but still wore as a kind of armour. Although she would never say it out loud or outwardly show her true feelings, Stella felt terribly vulnerable. Every time she closed her eyes, she was transported back to that woods, naked and strung up from the tree, being tortured as a form of entertainment. And every time she relived it, she felt that huge wave of shame and sadness come crashing down on her all over again. She despised herself for being so weak.
Clearing her throat, Stella tried to force those thoughts to the back of her head. They could remain locked up until later, and then she’d release them when she was in the shower or curled up in her bed. Or perhaps using a blade to puncture somebody’s flesh, to try and drain her emotions. But for the moment, she was on a family mission. And it wasn’t about something dumb like robbing cash or killing some lowlife her parents had a history with.
This was about Flo.
Stella’s chest tightened as she entered the elevator and waited beside another couple of grey-faced people that filed in after her.
It hadn’t been too difficult to find Flo. Not when the police were almost as corrupt and twisted as the criminals of the country. There wasn’t much some newly qualified, underpaid constable wouldn’t divulge when corned at the pub by a pretty face in a short skirt and stilettos. After just one hour of pretending to be interested in going home with the stout, red-faced young officer, and with the help of her brother slyly spiking his beer when he wasn’t looking, Stella had gotten the information she’d needed. And all she’d had to do was tell him how impressive it was that he was in the police and express a minute bit of interest in the case of the little girls in the woods.
“It’s just awful,” Stella had moaned sadly, pouting so that her pink, glossed lips puckered slightly.
PC Retard had shrugged it off with a lazy smile that indicated the drugs were working, “at least one of ‘em is okay. Recovering at St. Jerome’s, she’ll be right as rain… “ he’d then begun to prattle on about something else, but Stella had what she needed. She’d cut the conversation short and marched out of there with a determination to get her sister back, not giving the blindest of fucks about the fact that PC Retard was due for a drugs test the following day.
The elevator dinged and rumbled to a stop. Stella stepped out onto an empty corridor as the doors creaked open, and shivered as the strong stench invaded her nostrils. She hurried down it, gooseflesh prickling up and down her legs as she approached the secured double doors. Glancing quickly around her, she dug the plastic card she’d stolen from a gormless-looking nurse in the café downstairs and swiped it on a control pad, releasing the entrance to the ward.
As she had hoped, the place was chaotic and overcrowded, a mixture of patients, visitors, and hospital staff walking and standing around, talking or staring worriedly into space, so involved in their own dramas that nobody even gave Stella a second look. Perfect. Discreetly, she dropped the card by the door, just before closing them behind her and briskly streaming through the din. As she went, her eyes flitted up towards the large whiteboard with a list of numbers and names scrawled over it.
Bed 28. Child R. In a sea of normal names, it stuck out like a sore thumb, which was clearly the opposite of what the intention was supposed to be.
In spite of how busy the place was, Stella navigated its narrow, heaving corridors like an expert maze runner, her eyes frantically flickering around, scanning the place for a sign. In the end, she didn’t need to look too far because Flo’s room was a private one and was also the only door that was guarded by a stern-looking police officer, his head buried into the pages of a newspaper.
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For the first time in a while, everything went just to plan. Like a well-oiled engine, the family’s mission to extract their youngest member from her hospital bed unfolded so unbelievably smoothly that it almost felt like everything had finally returned to normal.
Stella batted her eyelashes and schmoozed the bored officer guarding Flo’s room, long enough so that he barely gave a nod of acknowledgement to the doctor that swept past them a few moments later. Ronnie, dressed in a shirt, tie, with a fake stethoscope around his neck and clipboard in his hands, slipped into his daughter’s hospital room, carefully closing the door behind him. Fighting back the pangs of guilt that struck him in the centre of his chest, he faced her small, barely alive body lying fragile and still beneath the hospital quilt. Her eyes tried to open, but he pushed his finger roughly to her lips and shook his head vigorously. He knew that there was not a lot of time, so he quickly dropped the clipboard and unbuckled his trousers, where he’d hidden a stolen tiger onesie down one of the legs. As he pulled Flo’s limp, bruised body out of bed and began to dress her, Zach was also using the stolen card to access the ward. Wearing a porter’s uniform, he pushed a wheelchair through the ward; throngs of people parting to let him through as he went. Casually, with his usual air of arrogance, he glanced around for his sister, nodding in greeting to people who looked at him. If Zach was honest with himself, he was also looking for any unattended trolleys of drug doses or left open drug closets. By the time he found Stella, still flirting shamelessly with the seemingly besotted police constable, he could see the door to Flo’s room slightly ajar, signalling that his father was ready. Breathing out, Zach quickened his pace, whilst rocking the handles of the wheelchair, then at the last minute, swerving it round to hit Stella hard in the back of the leg. She let out a perfectly timed and pitched screech of pain before collapsing down onto the floor, the back of her head colliding with the floor with a large whack!
“Oh my god,” PC Dumbarse exclaimed, sinking to his knees to help up the damsel in distress. It was at that moment that Ronnie quickly slipped the child from the room and placed her in the wheelchair, battered face covered by the oversized fluffy hood of her onesie. Promptly, Zach made a U-turn and was once again moving quickly back through the ward, his entire body pounding with adrenaline as his palms sweated and the bones in his legs turned to jelly. The double doors to the ward were in sight, and the feeling of ecstasy was making Zach feel quite giddy. He had to stop himself from grinning like an idiot and arousing suspicion at the last moment, especially when the end was so deliciously close.