Strings

by Dickson, Allison M.

  “You think this is funny? You think you can just steal from me?” she screamed. “Well, I’ve got a hell of a punch line for you, freak.”

  She grasped the little stiletto between her knuckles and stormed into the house, trying to ignore the cold darkness that settled over her like a cloak. And the smell. Oh God, the horribly thick smell of things rotting and decaying all around her, both house and flesh. She could hear Nina screaming in the other room. It was the grating roar of a girl hanging onto the last shreds of her sanity. The figure before her didn’t move. It was as if he was some kind of dummy. Or maybe a corpse, her frenzied mind suggested. Absurd, but not completely improbable.

  A creaking sound from above caught her attention, and that’s when the Madam saw . . . it. The thing that would haunt her every waking moment in the hours and days since. It was white, nearly translucent, with long, spindly limbs. Like a . . . a spider. She caught only a glimpse of its face in the shaft of daylight falling through the open door, but that had been enough to wipe away any notion she was dealing with an actual person. She turned on her heel and fled, barely escaping the fingers grabbing at the back of her coat.

  When she stumbled out onto the porch, into the blessed daylight, the Cadillac was right there waiting, the front passenger door standing open.

  “Get in!” Clayton was screaming, but she barely heard him over the furious screeching coming from inside the house as she dove in and clawed the door shut.

  She thought she’d heard it say something, but even now she couldn’t be sure. It sounded like, “Mine! Miiiiine!” Tires spun in the dirt before the big black car sped off. She shared no words with the driver during the long ride home, despite his few tentative questions. She wouldn’t relive those few moments for his benefit. When Clayton arrived at the Willow, she stumbled out of the car before he could help her.

  “Not a single word of this to anyone, Clayton. Do you understand?”

  The driver’s face looked like a painted mask of terror. “I’m takin’ it to my grave, Madam. Count on that.”

  And in the two days since, she hadn’t left her room, not even to eat. Her body was frail enough, and she couldn’t afford to lose much more weight, but the thought of eating now seemed almost perverse. Her mind was consumed with what she saw, or what she thought she saw, inside that cesspit. There wasn’t a person living there, not even something as low as a man. It was a thing. With that knowledge firmly embedded in her mind, everything else ceased to matter. This morning, she greeted a red Halloween sunrise and knew this was the day she would have to act, before action could be foisted upon her. She considered just leaving. She could pack a bag, gather up what little money she had left, and light out for the territories, leaving the tenuous alliance between Victor and Benny to implode on its own. All this manipulation in order to conquer a dubious empire seemed like far too much work now. If she’d learned anything about her trip to the Ballas mansion the other day, and hearing that lost girl’s screams, it was what would be waiting for her if she spent another moment in this web.

  She then thought of Dante and their chess games in the boathouse, and how often and easily he would sacrifice his queen and still win. She asked once why he always did that.

  “Sometimes you have to give the illusion of weakness in order to achieve the greatest strength,” he’d said. “If I trade my queen for yours, you assume I’ve leveled the playing field, but that’s just an idea I’ve implanted in your mind. By giving up what’s most important to me, I still win.”

  The Madam understood what he’d meant, but she struggled to apply it herself both in chess and in life. Losing was losing. Weakness was weakness. Letting anyone see her weak was forbidden. But the game changed the night she took a gunshot to the face and started seeing the world through one eye. For weeks, she obsessed over how she could assume her old position of power and then rise above it to take the entire kingdom for herself. But she’d been looking at it all wrong.

  If she wanted to win, she would have to make a real sacrifice.

  The sound of a car outside pulled her attention to the window. She looked down to see a familiar black Maserati. Victor had finally arrived.

  She decided she would greet him at the front door this time.

  ***

  The look of surprise on his face quickly became suspicious. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Coffee, dear brother? I’ve just put on a fresh pot.”

  “Where are the girls?”

  She shrugged. “That isn’t really my business to know anymore, is it?”

  “You’re here alone?”

  “Alone enough.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Shall we have coffee?”

  Reluctantly, he led the way, pushing through the swinging door into a space dominated by an enormous butcher block island. “You know why I’m here,” he said.

  “Of course. But there’s no reason to be uncivilized about this. We can share a cup of coffee first.” She moved to get it, but he stopped her.

  “No, I’ll get my own.” Clever man. Of course, she would have been disappointed if he hadn’t done just that. She’d laid out their cups ahead of time. A large, bulky ceramic one and a delicate fine china one. Victor wasn’t completely unpredictable; she knew which one he would pick, and he didn’t disappoint. He poured hot brew into each one and brought them to the table.

  He sat down and put a spoonful of sugar into his. All the better to help the medicine go down, she thought.

  “I’ve been in touch with a friend of ours,” he said. “You should have told me about your dealings with Benny Rosen.” He took a sip from his carefully tainted mug. Excellent.

  “I haven’t had any dealings with him.” And that was true enough. Just pillowtalk. Everything else regarding the Shanghai deal was between the two men. She was just, what, window dressing?

  “But you’ve been fucking him, haven’t you?”

  “I fail to see how that’s any business of yours.”

  He glared at her from deep eye sockets, his eyes rheumy and bloodshot. Victor Cassini looked his age tonight. “You are my business. Always have been.”

  “So now you want to play father. If you’re worried about whether I’ve shared the family secrets, you can rest easy. The truth doesn’t exactly make me look appealing, does it?”

  She took a sip of her coffee and he followed suit. The medicine should be taking effect shortly. It wasn’t enough to kill him. There wouldn’t have been any fun in that. “To what truth are you referring?” he asked. His hand was quivering, but it was difficult to tell if it was from the drug now coursing in his system or his mounting rage. It was likely both.

  “Oh how deep your denial runs, Victor. It would almost be sad if it wasn’t so sick.”

  Beads of sweat were forming on his artificially plumped brow. Oh this was going splendidly. She probably wouldn’t even have to use the stun gun she’d concealed inside her robe.

  “You watch your fucking mouth, whore.”

  “You don’t like hearing the truth, do you? You’re actually ashamed of what you are.” He was really starting to shake, and he nearly dropped his coffee cup. The Madam knew it was more than just fear now. She pressed forward. “What did you tell yourself when your own sister gave birth to your own child? Did it just split your brain right down the middle? I can’t even imagine.”

  He tried to get up, but faltered, gripping the tablecloth with his age spotted hands. “You . . . You’ve poisoned me. Put something in my drink.”

  “Oh, it isn’t poison. Just a little digitalis. Not enough to kill you, don’t worry. I wouldn’t let you go out so mercifully.”

  He clawed for her, but she easily dodged him. She walked behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. His shirt had grown wet rather quickly. Maybe she did overdo it a little on the dose, but Victor was a strong buck for an old fart. He’d live a little longer yet. And if he didn’t, she had ways of bringing him back around too.

  “Come now, brother. Help me o
ut. You’re heavier than I am, and I don’t want to have to lift dead weight onto the butcher block.”

  He struggled, nearly slipping out of her grip, wheezing like an asthmatic. If he fell, she would just use the stun gun and manage. She could even work on the floor if she had to, but she didn’t want to get on her knees for him ever again, even for this. Victor didn’t much look like he was in the mood for fighting just then. Sweat poured out of his skin, making his face look like it had been dipped in corn syrup. His complexion, even with the sprayed-on tan, was bordering on ghostly. He was muttering something, but the Madam could only make out a few words. “Forgive us our trespasses. . .”

  The bastard was praying! She slapped him across the face. “None of that nonsense now. I don’t expect anyone’s listening, anyway.”

  Just then, the kitchen door opened and a girl walked in. One of the newer ones. The Madam couldn’t remember her name right then, a sure sign that she’d fallen from her perch. The girl got a good look at the scene and turned to flee, but the Madam called her back.

  “You, girl, back here. Now!”

  The girl crept slowly back into the kitchen. At least she still recognized authority when she heard it. “Yes, Madam?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “K-kelly, Madam.”

  “Kelly, grab this fucker’s ankles and help me lift him onto the counter.”

  “What’s wrong with him? Is he having a heart attack?”

  The Madam closed her eyes and counted to one. Patience. “That’s none of your concern. But you’re going to help me if you don’t want to end up just like him.” That got her moving. She grabbed Victor’s ankles and together the two women hoisted the most powerful crime boss in New York on to the island. The Madam pulled a length of butcher’s twine out of her pocket and tossed it to Kelly. “You ought to know how to tie a man up by now. Do it right. There should be some drawer handles to anchor him to.”

  “Yes, okay.” She moved quickly while the Madam did the same to his wrists, all the while Victor howling out one obscenity and threat after another, between his huffs and wheezes.

  “Whores. Cunts. When my men come back, you’re gonna wish you were in hell.”

  Once she was done with her end of the job, Kelly stepped back from Victor like he was some diseased thing. The Madam supposed that was accurate enough. The girl remained still, a vacant look on her face. “What?” the Madam barked at her.

  “Can I just say I’m glad for what’s happening right now, whatever it is? He’s . . . a monster.”

  The Madam, who had only recently come to face to face with something much worse, nodded. “Listen to me, Kelly, and listen well. What’s about to happen here is going to be very ugly. He’s had it coming for a long time. You can stay and watch if you want, but I think you’d be doing me and yourself a bigger favor if you just got out of here. For good.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Go back to whatever life you had before you became dumb enough to wind up here. And take whoever’s left up there with you.”

  The look of gratitude in the girl’s cow eyes was almost nauseating. “Okay. Give him hell,” she said and went out the way she came.

  “You dumb bitch,” Victor said. “You dumb fucking slut. You think this ends here? The whole family will come after you for this. You won’t make it past the next block. You won’t even make it out the front door.”

  The Madam pulled out the instruments and vials she’d taken from her emergency kit and arranged them on the counter. Picking up the scalpel, she began to cut along the length of his inseam. Expensive trousers were nothing against this baby. She nicked skin along the way, but she didn’t care about that. There would be many more where that came from.

  Fully exposed to the dull kitchen light, his legs looked like something off a sad chicken, pale and skinny and flabby. Victor’s spray tanning didn’t extend below the neck, apparently. Next, she went to work on his shirt, cutting off the buttons one by one, taking delight in the way his breath hitched with each slice. Old man chest to go with the old man legs, but she had plenty of real estate to work her magic. She could already smell the blood, and it excited her more than sex ever could.

  Finally, she began cutting off his underwear. Black silk bikini briefs. So disgusting, so telling of his vanity and how deeply he held it. When his balls touched the air, he screamed.

  “Okay okay! Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did to you. Is that what you want me to say? I’m sorry!”

  The Madam put down the scalpel and looked at the trembling piece of meat lying on the slab before her. She hadn’t even touched him yet, and he was already dissolving into a quivering puddle of contrition. “You’re sorry? That’s it? After everything you’ve done? I should have never been conceived. You can’t apologize for a fuck up that big.”

  She pulled the pins out of her hair. Her handy little stilettos she may have picked up for just this somewhat Oedipal purpose all along. The one she’d been holding at the Ballas house was gone, likely dropped in her blind haste to escape. But she still had three more and only needed two. She grasped Victor’s head and held it tight.

  “What are you doing?” His voice was almost girlish with fright, and the Madam heard liquid spatter onto the tile as his bladder let go. It was going to happen sooner or later.

  “Hold still. You won’t even see it coming.” Moving swiftly so she wouldn’t catch him with his eyes closed, she stuck the pointed end of the hairpin into his eye. It ruptured with a not-so-subtle POP. His agonized howls were delicious. “You’re just like me now,” she muttered. “But not for much longer.” She moved fast with the second pin while his one remaining eye was bulging from its socket. The arteries in his neck were thrumming through the thin fabric of her sleeve as his heart rate skyrocketed. Blood and ocular fluid ran down his cheeks and temples like tears. She loved the poetry of it.

  By now he was so hysterical, he likely couldn’t hear a thing, but she spoke to him anyway. Perhaps some of it was getting through. “I’ve done you a mercy, you know. You wouldn’t want to actually see what I have planned for you. Far better than you deserve after all the people you’ve tortured and maimed over the years, but I guess that means I still have a little bit of a heart beating in my chest. Strange.”

  Upstairs she could hear footsteps running back and forth as the exodus of whores commenced. Percussion to the symphony of Victor’s crumbling empire.

  “Just wait, dear brother. The best part is yet to come.” She picked up the scalpel and watched it gleam as she moved to the end of the butcher block. “Now hold still. I’m going to liberate you from the thing that’s poisoned your brain for far too long.”

  She cut, and then she cut some more. She sliced and sliced until the blade went dull, and then she switched to a bigger blade. At some point, Victor’s screams stopped but the Madam hardly noticed. She was having far too much fun to stop.

  ***

  She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but by the time she’d finished her dissection, Victor was an unrecognizable pile of viscera on the butcher block and she was drenched in blood. It streaked across her face and up her arms like war paint. She dropped the scalpel and listened to it clatter across the tile and then stepped carefully around the slippery puddles on the floor. Her shoulders ached, and her temples thudded from the exertion, but she felt better than she had in years.

  However, her work wasn’t finished yet.

  She went to the front door and stepped into the chilly night. A few kids in costume walked by. They gave her bloody clothes a wide-eyed look, but they kept right on walking, assuming it was a particularly gory costume. No one ever rang the bell at the Weeping Willow for Trick-or-Treat. Not for candy, anyway. She walked back to the garage and opened the door. Two gas cans were resting just inside, and they were full.

  She carted ten gallons of gasoline back into the house and immediately began soaking the curtains, the cheap rugs, the books, the wood furniture
—much of it antique, brought over from the old country. Not that she ever cared about such things. It was just stuff, and none of it had been hers. After making sure she’d expended every last drop in the cans, she stepped back into the foyer. Her eyes and throat were burning from the fumes.

  “If anyone else is in here, I suggest you get out now! It’s about to get real warm in here!”

  No answer but the tick of the mantel clock. The exodus was complete. She pulled out her silver Zippo, lit it, and tossed it into the nearby puddle. It was tempting to stay and watch the flames lick everything they touched, but she didn’t much want to join Victor in the afterlife just yet.

  Outside, she pulled out the little souvenir she’d taken from his pants pocket. The Maserati keys. She hadn’t bothered packing a bag. There was nothing from this house she wanted. With one last place to go, she intended to get everything she needed there. As she drove off, flames exploded from the Weeping Willow’s living room windows. She’d sacrificed her queen, and she’d never felt stronger.

  Chapter 17

  Nina’s Declaration

  The Madam and the man had both come for her, one right after the other. She didn’t know who the man was, but he seemed to know her. He didn’t look like one of the Cassini men, but she couldn’t think who else it could be. The Madam got away, and that was good. Nina hated the witch, but she didn’t want her to die the way the man had. Or would. She could still hear his screams coming from the floor vent in her room, which meant he was likely in the basement, begging for his life. Occasionally, he would call out for someone named Cameron, whom Nina assumed was the man’s kid.

  “Cameron, Daddy loves you! I’ll be home soon, Cameron! Get you ice cream, buddy!”

  But right now, he was silent. Maybe he was finally dead. Nina would ordinarily say there was only so much torture a human body could take, but she was living proof it was far more than anyone could imagine.