by Jeff Strand
“Why not?”
“Because if you do, I will rip you apart with my bare hands.” The words sound less intimidating because of my swollen nose, but I hope they get the point across.
Mindy begins to walk toward me. “Then I’ll just have to chop off your hands.”
“You can’t chop off my hands with a knife like that.”
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t take a while.”
At least now I can get away from these ants. I smack at my pants a few times to kill the ones that are stinging me, and start to stand up.
“Don’t stand up on my behalf,” Mindy says. I’m not sure if she’s walking so slowly because she thinks it’s more frightening, or if she’s just uncertain about whether she actually wants to reach me.
I stand up completely. My foot hurts like hell, but I refuse to fall. “If you come over here, you die.”
“You’ve got something on your nose.”
“Screw you.”
She stops walking when about ten feet separate us. “So what are we going to do, Mr. Flatside Killer?”
“Go our separate ways. Forget this ever happened.”
Mindy shakes her head. “There’s no reward in that for me.”
“I don’t think there are any actual rewards for my capture. At least not anymore.”
“I didn’t mean a literal cash reward,” she says. She doesn’t say “you fucking idiot” but it is implied. “I’m still getting the credit for bringing you in.”
“Or skinning me alive.”
“Yeah. Or that. Which one do you prefer?”
“Why don’t you put down the knife? We could find out which one of us is truly better.”
“I’ll tell you what, Flattie. If I become mentally retarded in the next few seconds, I’ll consider that idea.”
I shrug. “I’m not going without a fight.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
I raise my fists. “All right, then. If you think you can beat me, then walk right over here and prove it. When I get that knife from you, I think I’ll start by cutting out your tongue. That hurts like hell. Lots of nerves in your tongue. Then I will start slashing your cheeks; give you a great big extra-long smile.”
She hasn’t resumed walking toward me yet.
“Then we’ll go for a good old-fashioned disemboweling,” I tell her. “Stretch those intestines out as far as they’ll go. I won’t make you eat them, because that would be gross, but maybe I’ll make you lick a few inches.”
No reaction from her that I can see.
“Then I’ll open up your chest and cut out your heart. I’ve never eaten heart. I think I should try it. You might be the inspiration for me to go on a heart-eating rampage. What do you think about that?”
“I think…” She trails off, but then shines the flashlight beam directly on my crotch. “…you pissed your pants.”
She comes at me with the knife.
I’m ready for her.
She swings it at me, and I block her arm with my fist. The knife falls to the ground.
Then she clubs me in the head with the flashlight, and I fall to the ground as well.
She bashes me with the flashlight four or five times, until the light disappears and pieces of plastic scatter. I think a D-battery knocks out one of my teeth.
There’s blood in my eyes, but I think I see her pick up the knife.
Yes, she definitely has the knife.
She crouches over me.
I try to say something menacing. All I do is spit up some blood.
She plunges the blade deep into my chest.
I scream. I wish I could suffer through the pain and horror without screaming, but I can’t. I have to scream.
Mindy presses the knife against my throat, and suddenly I don’t even care about the humiliation of my screaming. I’ve never been so scared in my life, and if she knows that, maybe she’ll take pity on me. Maybe she can’t kill somebody who’s terrified and completely helpless.
“Please!” I try to shout, though it’s less of a shout than a gurgle. “Don’t kill me! Please, don’t kill me!”
“You had your chance.”
I frantically shake my head. Blood flies off my hair like a dog shaking itself after a bath. “No! I take back what I did!”
“You what? I can’t even understand you.”
“I take back what I did! I take it back!”
“You take back what you did? Did you really say that to me?”
I nod. Oh, God, I’m going to bleed to death if she doesn’t help me.
“I don’t even know what you’re referring to. Do you mean you take back trying to kill me? You take back trying to run away? What the hell are you even talking about?”
I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just don’t want to die.
“Please!”
“If I let you live, you’ll try to pull more crap.”
“No! No! I won’t! I promise!”
“You will.”
“No, no, no, no, no! I won’t do anything! I swear!”
“How can I trust you?”
“You can!”
“But how do I know I can trust you?”
I have to make her trust me. I have to show her I won’t do anything. I’ll go to prison if that’s what she wants. But I don’t know what to say to make her believe me. I try to blink the blood out of my eyes so I can look her in the eyes and show her how genuine I am.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll take you back to the car with me. But I’m cutting your hamstrings first.”
* * *
I don’t think I completely lose consciousness again, but I fade in and out as I crawl along the path in the darkness. My feet hurt like hell at first but now they’re numb as I drag them behind me. My knees, however, are full of sensation. I think they’re practically shredded. My palms are almost as bad.
We’re moving very slowly, but Mindy doesn’t seem to be losing patience with me. She doesn’t even kick me.
When we reach the car, she bandages my cuts and gashes with duct tape. It doesn’t stick very well to the places that are bleeding the worst. I’m barely able to get into the passenger seat of the car, though some jabs in my back with the tip of the knife encourage me to put forth my best effort.
Suddenly we’re driving. I’m getting blood all over Terrence’s car. My hands are now duct-taped together behind my back, which is very uncomfortable, though I don’t complain.
Mindy glances over at me. “When you kill people, do you use any drugs to keep them conscious? An injection or something?”
“No.” I don’t tell her I’d been thinking about that earlier. No need to try to bond with her.
“Do you know of any? This is going to be less fun if I can’t keep you awake.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh well.”
“I think I’m going to bleed to death.”
“Nah. I taped you up pretty good. You won’t bleed out for a while. And once I tell the police who you are, they’ll want to keep you alive to make sure they get your full confession.”
I start to say something. Start to remind her that she went beyond what was necessary to subdue me. Turned me into a half-mutilated mess. The general public is not going to adore her for this, and the rest of her life will turn out better if people don’t know what she’s done.
But I don’t say anything. Because I promised I wouldn’t try any more tricks, and I don’t want her to stab me again if I break that promise.
Also, I think I really will bleed to death if she’s the only one taking care of my wounds. Even if we stop at a pharmacy and she picks up some gauze and antiseptic, I think I’m dead without an actual medical professional.
I wish I had connections in the criminal underworld that would patch me up, no questions asked.
“It’s too bad,” Mindy says. “We could have buried Terrence and gone our separate ways.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to listen to some music?�
�
“Nah.”
“I do.” She turns on the radio and flips through the stations. But there’s nothing good on, so we resume driving in silence.
I cough up some blood that I can’t wipe off my mouth.
“You’re disgusting,” Mindy tells me.
I fade for a moment, and then suddenly I jolt to full attention as I see several cop cars. They’re all parked in the lot outside of the police station, and we’re driving right in front of the building.
Now I don’t want to go to prison.
Mindy pulls up directly in front of the main entrance and shuts off the engine.
She looks over at me. “You ready?”
“No.”
“How long do you think somebody could sit in front of a police station with a passenger in their car completely covered with blood?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t guess very long.”
“Probably not.”
“I could open up your door for you. Let you run away and go down in a hailstorm of bullets. Would you like that?”
“No.”
She drums her fingertips on the steering wheel.
“Won’t be long now.”
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Waiting.”
She takes the key out of the ignition, puts her finger through the key ring, and spins it around a couple of times, while humming a cheerful tune.
“I bet they’ll put you in solitary,” she says. “That’s good. Less raping for you.”
“Okay.”
Mindy puts the keys back into the ignition, starts up the car again, and drives away from the building. We pull onto the street and drive off.
“Scared you, didn’t I?” she asks.
I’m so relieved that I can barely speak. I don’t even care about the imminent bleeding-to-death issue.
“Tell me something,” she says. “What were you really planning to do to your girlfriend after you killed Terrence?”
“I don’t have a…” Then I smile, even though it hurts and makes blood trickle down the sides of my mouth. “I’d take you with me,” I say. “We’d be tired from burying him, but we’d be energized, too, and she’d have no idea we were coming for her…”
I tell her everything we would do, in pornographic detail.
Mindy loves it.
* * *
We’re in a rowboat in the middle of a lake. It’s a pretty crappy rowboat, but it was easy to steal.
Mindy stole it. My arms are still bound behind me. She doesn’t completely trust me yet.
“This is where I dreamed I’d get rid of the bodies,” Mindy says as she rows. “I could never figure out if it would be safer to put them all in one lake, or use lots of different lakes.”
“I’m not sure,” I admit.
“Even during my most vivid fantasies, I knew I could never really do it. Not like you. I wanted to, believe me, but I don’t know if I was too scared of getting caught or if it was a moral thing. Later, I just thought I’d been a fucked-up teenager. I haven’t even thought about those feelings in years.”
“There’s nothing wrong with those feelings.”
She laughs. “Of course there is. I know that. But I discovered tonight that they’re still there. What I went through with you was scary and miserable, but—and I hope you don’t take offense to this—I liked hurting you. Not because of revenge. I just liked doing it.”
She reaches down and lets her fingers trail through the water. “I’m going to try it. At least once before I become a mom. I’d love to be the hero who captured the Flatside Killer, but, sick as it sounds, I think I’m just going to follow in his footsteps. I want a different name, though.”
“Mindy the Mangler?”
“Nah.”
“Mindy the…Mutilator? Machete Mindy?”
“No, and no.”
“I have a shitty name. If we’re going to be partners, why shouldn’t you?”
“I don’t think ‘Mindy’ is a good killer name. Anyway, you’re not supposed to make up your own nickname. The press does that. By the way, what is your real name?”
“I didn’t tell you?”
“Not that I remember.”
“It’s Clyde.”
“Clyde? Really?”
“Yeah.”
Not really.
She leans over and kisses me gently on the lips.
“Nice to meet you, Clyde. But I hope you didn’t think we were going to be partners. You’ve helped me, more than you’ll ever know. And I wouldn’t feel right asking for more than what you’ve already given, so…good-bye.”
I struggle, and when it becomes clear I’m not going to win, I try to turn myself into dead weight, but she gets me over the side.
My wounds explode with pain as I strike the cold water. It was a belly flop. Not dignified.
I sink quickly.
I frantically kick my legs and try to rip the tape binding my hands. The kicking is not working. Nor is trying to rip the tape. Adrenaline has failed me.
I think I’m going to have another heart attack before I hit the bottom.
Will I hit the bottom? I can’t tell if I’m sinking or rising. Am I floating?
Everything is completely dark.
I don’t stop screaming until I run out of air.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe…
About the Author
Jeff Strand is the author of such demented novels as Pressure, Dweller, A Bad Day for Voodoo, Wolf Hunt, Benjamin’s Parasite, Fangboy, Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to “Shirley”). Visit his Gleefully Macabre website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.
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Table of Contents
Other Books by Author
About the Author
About the Publisher
Share Your Experience
Table of Contents
Other Books by Author
About the Author
About the Publisher
Share Your Experience