Strings

by Dickson, Allison M.

  “My god, Tessa, are you okay? What happened?”

  He looked genuinely worried, and for a moment the weak love-starved kitten in her wanted to take control, go to him, and tell him she was sorry, it was an accident, she was okay. But there would be none of that. Not right now. The broken mirror brought some clarity back into her mind. That, and the name he’d just called her felt like a slap to the face. It was the one Victor liked to use. She imagined Benny had picked it up after all his meetings with the pig.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, turning back to her magazine, enjoying the slippery feel of the pages in her fingers. “Don’t ever call me Tessa.”

  For a minute, he stood there looking like a flummoxed goat, his bushy eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What would you prefer I called you?”

  She put down the magazine and plucked out something she’d been concealing in her robe—a four-inch piece of broken mirror, its base wrapped in a hand towel. Gripping it, she held it up and pointed the tip in his direction. “Ever since we began this little adventure of ours, you’ve called me honey, baby, darling Madam, Contessa, Connie, and Tess. You’ve never called me Tessa. You may call me any of those other names. You may even call me Queen Cunt of the Amazon, but if you call me Tessa one more time, I’m going to jump up from this couch like something on springs and cut you with this piece of mirror. You won’t even know I’ve moved until you’re bleeding out on your fancy cashmere carpet. Understand?”

  He ran a hand through his thinning curly mop before taking a seat in one of the U-shaped chairs across from her. His stiff body language matched that of someone who had just walked into his house to find it rigged with a very large bomb.

  “Okay. Contessa. Let’s talk. What is this? What happened in the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t like what I was seeing, so I broke it.”

  “But . . . But why? I don’t . . .” He rubbed his face and the Madam felt a brief bit of pity for him. He was trying very hard not to upset her more. He, Benny Rosen, the ambitious and rich Jew who was in the middle of buying up half the Jersey shore and millions in cheap Chinese real estate looked like he wanted to find his mommy and climb into her lap. The Madam felt her chest warming up the way it did when she had one of her girls shaking in the corner for running the hot water too long in the shower. She relished that feeling, oh yes. It had been far too long since she’d experienced it.

  “What’s your plan?” she asked.

  “Plan? What do you mean?”

  Her temper flared and Benny, who must have seen something dangerous in her eye, leaned back in the chair. “With me! With all of this. You’re planning something else, some alternative agenda, and I want to know what it is!”

  “Tess, Contessa, I assure you, I don’t have any other agenda.”

  She flew off the couch and aimed the tip of the broken glass at his bobbing Adam’s apple. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, but he wasn’t sweating. If she’d seen one bead of sweat, she would have ended him right then and there.

  “You’ve been plying me for weeks. Making me soft. Making me depend on you, all so I won’t notice when you hamstring me, like you plan to do with Victor. Once you have all that money in your pocket.”

  “Tess, you came to me, remember? You had nothing, nowhere else to go. I agreed to help you, and that’s what I’m doing. That’s all I’m doing now. There are no other cards up my sleeve. Please . . . put down the glass. If you hurt me, you’ll be right back where you were.”

  “I’d kill you and then kill myself. I’d rather die than let another man take advantage of me. Do you understand that? I have nothing more to lose that you swinging dicks haven’t already taken from me!”

  “Yes. I do understand that. I truly do. Please, Tess . . .” He reached up and brushed her hand, which had begun to tremble. She didn’t want to believe him. Couldn’t! No man this powerful acted out of kindness and generosity. He was a criminal, a sociopath shyster just like her brother, like every man she’d ever known, and there was no honesty among thieves.

  Inexplicably, her hand turned traitor and released the glass shard. It fell to the carpet with a thump, and Benny promptly stomped on it like a Jewish groom before the big mazel tov. He took her face in his hands and drew her in for a long kiss. The Madam remained rigid at first, but finally gave in. Just as she always did. The love-starved kitten came forward, groping at him like she was drowning.

  He drove her backward toward the couch, ripping away her robe as she yanked at his belt buckle when a sudden hot pain ripped through her chest as his hand found her wounded right breast and squeezed, his thumb driving straight into the ruined aureole. She screamed and the world went super bright with agony. Her stomach started churning and she thought she was going to throw up. She pulled away from him, but he held her fast in his lean but deceptively powerful arms. “If you ever threaten me again, I’ll hurt you, Contessa. Do you understand me?”

  She looked in his eyes and saw a capering and tenacious meanness there she’d never seen before. It reminded her so much of Victor she nearly screamed again, but then his other hand gently squeezed her left nipple, and he planted soft kisses down her neck, one by one. She sighed and let him take her down to the couch, where he parted her legs and began kissing his way down to what lay between. The wound on her chest was throbbing painfully and a spot of blood about the size of a half dollar bloomed onto the white satin, but the hurt and the shock of the injury was gradually being washed away by his gentle touches everywhere else.

  “If you hurt me again, I’ll kill you,” she murmured as his tongue slid into her cleft. She shivered and moaned, arching her back.

  Benny looked up, the mad sparkle in his eyes now enhanced by his sexual excitement. “I’d like to see you try.” He buried his head between her thighs and she let herself float away.

  ***

  Two hours later, Clayton was driving her home. She used the time to consider her options. Despite the very strange morning she’d just had, she wasn’t ready to give up on Benny just yet. After they’d finished their sex, the most ferocious round of it yet, he was as tender and loving as a kitten. He’d massaged her, changed the dressings on her breast, and even got a little teary-eyed when he saw the damage he’d done. Forgive me, Tess. Please forgive me. My mother always said my temper would hurt everyone I ever loved, but I never want to hurt you, ever.

  He’d begged her forgiveness, and she had no choice but to accept if she hoped to leave at a decent hour, but she didn’t really forgive him and never would. He concealed that lunatic spark of his well, but it would appear again, and she didn’t intend to be around when it did. But there was too much at stake to back out right now. The most important thing was that Victor be dealt with, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d be heading overseas to Shanghai never to return. At least she wouldn’t have to get her hands dirty. While she wanted nothing more than to feel Victor’s life run out of him, she realized she was still too physically weak to have those honors to herself. Her pride, prodigious as it was, had limits. Whatever happened following that, she would deal with. And deal with it she would have to sooner or later.

  The cow-eyed girl act never suited her much anyway. The sex that came along with it was great, but it was also a distraction, and if she were distracted, asleep behind the wheel, she would miss something vital, like Benny attempting to strangle her in her sleep or slipping poison into her coffee. Or whatever he did when he no longer required someone’s company. She didn’t believe he loved her. That was nonsense, and she knew that on a personal level. People like the two of them were incapable of such a thing. She knew she was just a sex toy to him, something he could manipulate in his off time while he worked on bigger and better things, but like most play things, she would become boring to him. He would require a different sort of amusement, and frankly, so would she. But most importantly, this wasn’t supposed to become the Rosen Empire. She was still a Cassini, and she didn’t intend to let Benny or any of those fucks
on the Commission forget that name. There was only one seat at the top of the heap, and it belonged to her. And anyone who tried to squash her or ruin her as she tried to claim what was hers would howl for mercy by the time she was through with them.

  That made her think of Ramón, the one who’d started this particular ball rolling. The one who had tried to squash her. Even if she miraculously recouped the millions she’d lost and achieved her original goal of shoving her brother out of the picture and fulfilling Dante’s true wish, it would still not erase what the thieving Mexican had made her into, a pile of ash from which she was now struggling to rise like a phoenix. He would receive his due one way or another, and he would receive it from her. No other alternative would be acceptable. No one escaped without reprisal. No one committed a misdeed against a Cassini and walked away. She’d spent the last twenty years of her life milking remittances out of common whores. Getting what was rightfully hers was in her blood.

  Speaking of remittances and common whores. . . There was another itch she had to scratch, but hadn’t been able to for many weeks. The trip she’d been intending to take the night Ramón shot her in the face and left her for dead had never been completed. Ballas was still minding his roost up there, and even if he had in fact left an extra case of money to compensate her for the purchase of Nina, he never consulted her first. He never asked permission to buy. In the Madam’s mind, no deal had been made. She’s still mine. The odds were overwhelming the girl was dead by now, but there was no telling for sure. The Madam never got any confirmation one way or another that the girls she sold back to him were killed. Maybe he was forming some kind of ruined whore commune up there, and they were all feeding off of that fortune he was squatting on. Equal parts curiosity and indignation burned in her gut, along with a slight trickle of fear. The man who had done those things to her girls made Victor seem like an innocent choir boy by comparison. You sure you want to go messing around with that? Picking at that scab?

  “Clayton, how do you feel about making a little side trip?”

  “What sort of side trip, Ma’am?”

  “Are you familiar with the Ballas house a little ways upstate?”

  Silence. “Yes, Ma’am. I believe so,” he finally said.

  “There’s an extra hundred dollars in it for you if you take me up there. And another hundred for the price of your discretion in the matter.”

  He frowned at her in the rearview mirror, like he was a trifle offended by her offer. “I can’t take more than small tips, Ma’am. Mister Rosen pays me to drive you anywhere you want to go. But can I ask why you want to go pokin’ around up there?”

  That was a good question. There was nothing good waiting at the Ballas house. But she needed an ace in the hole, even if it was a very demented ace in a very scary hole. Besides, she was only going to look. “Don’t worry yourself about that, Clayton. You just handle the driving.”

  The black man gave a single and solemn nod. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Chapter 13

  Nina’s Lesson in Purity

  A miscarriage would come. It was inevitable. After everything she had been through, all the stress, the poor nutrition. The certainty the thing growing in her womb would expel itself grew by the day. The hour. If she even was pregnant, which itself was doubtful. She’d been fucking men for a living for years. Even with a few missed pills now and then, she’d never once had a scare. Her uterus was an impenetrable fortress, her menses an atomic clock of regularity.

  Nevertheless, the dark and lonely hours following Kali’s horrifying revelation were filled with deep and determined meditation aimed directly at the alleged being inside her. Out. Get out. You are not welcome here. She anticipated every twinge of pain from her healing womanhood to be the start of a cramp, and she would have gladly suffered the pain of her grotesque rape all over again if it meant her body was disposing of the cluster of cells growing inside her like a cancer.

  You could always scare yourself up a clothes hanger. You know, once they decide to trust you again and stop strapping you down.

  Yes. Earn their trust, and then open the escape hatch for the demonic progeny. Nina tried to imagine how she would go about performing an abortion on herself. Inserting the looped end of a clothes hanger, pushing until she’d broken through the stubborn wall of her cervix, twisting and scraping and stimulating the contractions that would wash it all away. She would undoubtedly perforate her uterus and bleed to death soon after. Barring that, an infection would almost certainly finish her off. What a beautiful relief that would be. If the unthinkable happened, if her body did manage to hold onto its cursed brood, she would certainly lose her mind. Her sanity would uncouple itself from the rest of the crazy train and go sailing off the rails, flipping end over end down a jagged cliff and landing in a fiery pit.

  Fuck all that. Why do you always try to over-complicate things? Take the clothes hanger and open your jugular with it. Die and take the demon freak baby with you.

  Nina didn’t want to admit her mother had a point. But did she want to die with that thing inside her? She imagined a tooth-filled, sentient fetus chewing its way out of her womb to save itself, like something out of a scary sci-fi movie, and that looming maw being the last thing she saw as she bled out.

  And while she thought these most morbid thoughts, Junior continued to watch her from his nest, no doubt observing his experiment to see if what he’d put in the human test tube would grow. Over time, Nina’s eyes adjusted to the strange bluish light of the room. At certain times of the day, some of the outside light filtered in through the shuttered blinds, and the room grew brighter. She could now see the man-thing living here in his full glory, and she was startled to find herself growing accustomed to the look of him, that strange third eye that rested in the bridge of flesh between the other two, like a pool of oil. She doubted he could see through it. Instead, it was likely just some vestigial opening, the result of a series of genetic misfires that had also given him extra digits and a taste for the deranged.

  Nina could easily imagine the upbringing he must have had. The house of horrors this place truly became after the child was born. She’d seen enough horror movies, read enough books in her life to let the gothic drama unfold in her mind. Ramón had said Mrs. Ballas disappeared while pregnant, but it was likely she died in childbirth. Or maybe she took one look at the freak that slid from her womb and killed herself.

  That’s what I would do. What I will do if I haven’t taken care of the problem beforehand. And I will.

  She imagined Hank Ballas, stuck with a mutant baby and already a little loony to begin with, secluding himself in this place, raising the infant terror into a boy terror and then eventually into the man terror who would kill him and dress up his corpse—and the butler, don’t forget the butler—like a puppet. Maybe he’d learned his sexual perversions from his old man. Or maybe he’d come up with it all on his own. But how did Kali fit into all this?

  Who’s to say, and what did it matter?

  The only thing your little mind movies are going to accomplish, dearie, is making you start sympathizing for that freak, like in some twisted Beauty and the Beast fairytale. Before you know it, you’ll be asking corpses to dance and you won’t even need the strings. Then you’ll be begging for that spiked pecker. Then you’ll—

  She shoved her mother’s voice away. Not true. Not fucking true. She would never—

  —let him suck on your toes again.

  “Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you fucking cunt!”

  Junior jerked himself upright in his nest like a startled animal, and Nina knew right then she’d actually screamed aloud. She’d been so immersed in her internal dialog she hadn’t even noticed. Oh Jesus, I’m really losing it. He snarled and climbed down, moving with an eerie fluidity reminding her so much of an insect. Her skin crawled.

  “No, please,” she murmured, trying to move away as he loomed closer, but not getting very far before the straps pulled tight. “I was just having a bad dream. Please . .
.”

  “Shhhhh . . .” He reached down with one of his index fingers and glided his long fingernail across her forehead, down her cheek, and across her lips. Drool dripped out of his jagged nightmare smile, landing on her cheek and rolling down like a tear. Her heart fluttered like a trapped and terrified bird as she anticipated those cannibal’s teeth biting off a piece of her as punishment for disturbing his slumber.

  But he didn’t do that. Instead, he climbed back up his rope and moved along the web until he reached the enormous empty fireplace. A second later, Nina saw a concealed door open just to the left of the mantel. Some secret passage. Interesting. Nina forgot all about her imminent hysterics and watched intently as Junior went through the door. A white light came on, casting odd elongated shadows on the floor.

  She could hear him muttering. Unintelligible grunts at first, and then she heard a voice that made every hair on her body stand on end.

  “Who wants to visit Daddy?”

  And then another voice, so different, so feminine, Nina might have thought there was a group of people back there if she didn’t know better. “Ooh, pick me. I miss Daddy sooo much! No me! Pick me!”

  The effortless change in the tone of his voice made her feel violated somehow. Her body racked with chills. Something on wheels rolled across the floor, and she didn’t need to see in order to know what it was. The dread in her stomach had become such a familiar thing she felt no reaction at all, no real anticipation of her own terror. She might as well have been a kid lying on her back in the middle of a field, watching the clouds float by.

  When Junior emerged from the secret room, he was yanking on ropes until finally the cart emerged. In it was another human doll, propped up just like the butler. Only this wasn’t the butler. This one was a woman, with big blue irises and black eyelashes painted on her ping-pong ball eyes. She had long red hair too shiny and smooth to be anything other than a wig. Her skin looked like bleached leather, and her mouth . . . Something was wrong with her mouth. It was frozen in a permanent O of agony, with lips painted blood red.