Strings

by Dickson, Allison M.

  You did this, you know. You lured that poor man in here. Not that she’d had much choice. After the Madam got away, Junior was furious and he took every bit of it out on Nina. He strung her up by her neck, cutting off her oxygen until she began to lose consciousness. Then he dropped her just long enough to let her catch a breath or two before yanking her up again. All the kicking and exertion had caused her old wounds to open, and blood ran down her legs in streaks which she also hoped was possibly from a miscarriage. It was impossible to tell one way or the other. After he tired of the strangulation game, he started on Kali, slashing her face his long nails and doing who knows what else to her outside the bedroom. The woman refused to look her in the eye after that, shamed her faithful pet had turned on her. When the strange man arrived at the house, Kali pinched a place in Nina’s shoulder full of nerves, and an excruciating pain ripped down her arm.

  “If you don’t bring this one in for him, he will make us both suffer, baby or no baby. Do you understand?” There had been no wiggle room. Nina noticed the slash marks on Kali’s face narrowly missed one of her eyes.

  Speaking of which, the Madam had looked to be missing an eye as well. Nina had taken one more peek through the curtain when Kali noticed the visitor too. Her former mistress looked old and frail, hobbling her way unsteadily toward the window. Something bad had happened to her since Nina last saw her. Not that she cared. The bitch deserved to suffer at least a little bit, and Nina gladly would have traded an eye to be able to walk free of this place. But the bitch was as wily and lucky as ever, and she managed to escape. Nina hated her all over again.

  So yes, Nina had lured that poor man into Junior’s web, not only to save her own ass, but also to give the freak something to do with his time. Clearly he was in need of entertainment. And Kali had informed her this morning it was Halloween, his favorite day of the year. Christmas for freaks, and his present was a new victim to torture and then perhaps make into a new puppet. She wanted to feel terrible for the man. He had, after all, come here to find her, but the guilt seemed to slide off her mind like beads of water on a freshly waxed car. Guilt was too exhausting right now. She could feel the lullaby of madness closer than it had ever been before, beckoning gently but a bit more insistent.

  Come now, Nina. Everything is better here. You can make your own happiness and memories and nothing will ever hurt you again. Even Joey can be here if you want him to be. You can be together forever and ever, and nothing they do to you out there will matter.

  But she couldn’t go there. Not yet, anyway. The introduction of the new distraction meant that for the first time, Junior was fixated on something other than her, and by extension, so was Kali. This was an opportunity, and she damn sure wasn’t going to sit idly by and indulge in la-la-land delusions when she had a chance to get out of here.

  The promise to let her have more freedom within her confines still held, though it was likely more because Kali had new activities down in the basement requiring her attention than any of the platitudes she’d been spouting before the Madam showed up. So Nina considered that time best spent pacing back and forth in her room, building back up her strength. She refused to feel the pain between her legs, refused to let it slow her down, even though she was still soaking pads every few hours. It didn’t matter, though. She needed to walk. For the first time in her life, she actually cared about exercise.

  The voice called up from below again.

  “Hello? Are you there? If so, can you kill me? Please? I would like to die.”

  Though his tone was nearly conversational, it was devoid of all sanity. It reminded Nina strangely of the Mad Hatter. Her skin flushed with goose bumps.

  “Can someone please just say something to me so I know I’m not going crazy? I don’t want to be alone. I just need to hear another person. Please! Nina? Nina, is that you?”

  She stopped pacing and crept closer to the vent, wanting so much to call out to him, ask him who he was, but so afraid it would bring either Junior or Kali up here in a fury to hurt her or tie her up again. Sorry, dude, whoever you are. I feel really bad for you, but I just can’t do that. You understand, right?

  “No! Not you! Please don’t do that again. Dear God please don’t!” His words dissolved into weak screams and then defeated sobs that echoed up like the gibbering moans of a sad ghost. Finally, there was silence again. Nina would have told him it was a waste of time, begging like that. Nothing would move the spider-human to mercy, and it wasn’t like there was a God listening. She’d ruined her throat screaming, and her heart praying for a death that would not come.

  Before the Madam showed up, Nina might have been able to plead with Junior and use some of her newfound influence over him to convince him to let the man go, or at least die with some measure of dignity, but it seemed she hardly mattered to him now that he had this new play thing. Was it some sort of twisted jealousy she felt? No . . . that couldn’t be it. But what else could explain the indignation she felt? It kept her awake when all she wanted was to sleep. At least he hadn’t strapped her to the bed again. Maybe it was his way of saying thanks. The measure of comfort she found in that (I’m a Good Girl) was horrifying. This was how kidnappers won.

  The curtains were open, but Kali had come in late last night and spray-painted the windows black. No more sunshine for her. It was permanent nighttime now, a cave. The only light came from the purplish-blue bug zappers, and Nina was disturbed to find her eyes preferred them over natural daylight now. This was how Junior likely became Junior. Maybe in a couple more months, she’d be slithering along the rope web too.

  The lock on the bedroom door clicked and Kali entered a few seconds later. “Come with me,” she said. The woman sounded tired, and she didn’t look much better either. Her customary red sari was tattered and wrinkled, like a wind sock left out in a hurricane.

  “Come with you where?”

  “I don’t want to argue with you. I haven’t slept in three days, and my face hurts. He wants to see you. Just follow me.” She placed a loop of rope around Nina’s neck. It was fashioned into some sort of slipknot, and she saw it attached to a length of rope in Kali’s hand. A leash. Lovely. She could have asked Kali which “he” she was referring to considering there were two male creatures in the house now but it would have been flip and Kali really didn’t seem up for such things. Junior’s loyal slave always inserted that one syllable word with just enough emphasis to make it very clear.

  Nina couldn’t muster an ounce of sympathy for her. She was as bad as Junior, taking care of his household and letting him perform sadistic acts on innocent people. And for what? Money? Some twisted form of motherly love? Was she his mother? She hadn’t even given thought to that before, but somehow she doubted it. Any mother of Junior would have to be catatonic or dead, unable to bear the reality of spawning such a monster. Kali didn’t seem so much maternal as she did reverent, like Junior was someone she almost worshipped. Or, at the very least, represented like a talent agent of some sort. Either way, they made an interesting pair, one where it was impossible to tell who was in charge of whom. They were. . . symbiotic. The thought of actually being in cahoots with Junior made her feel sick, if only because she now understood it. She could see herself a bit in the woman now. Hadn’t she been in a similar relationship with the Madam at one point? Quietly subservient and resigned to her role in the Willow, keeping the monster in charge happy at all costs? Perhaps it was an act of self-preservation, but hadn’t there been a little desire there at one point too? Hadn’t there been a time when she wanted to please her mistress? If anything, just to lessen her own suffering a little. She couldn’t deny that, no matter how much she wanted to. Kali had said Nina would be just like her one day, and the pull of it was strong now, like weak iron shavings to a powerful magnet.

  She let Kali lead her out of the room like a dog, down the hallway lit with the orange flambeaux just as it had been her first night here. Not much else had changed from her original memory of it. She was thankful sh
e’d never had to see it in the daylight. Instead of turning left into the dining room, they went right. It took Nina a moment to figure out what sort of room she was in, but then she saw familiar shapes in the moonlight shining through a window. The handle of a pot on the stove, the bulky rectangle of a refrigerator, the swan-like neck of a sink faucet. It was an enormous kitchen, far bigger than the one in the Weeping Willow. It looked more like something from a restaurant. There wasn’t enough light for her to judge the cleanliness of it, but she was again grateful. After all, the meals she’d been eating the last couple of months likely were prepared in this room. Sometimes it was best to indulge in ignorance. She noticed the vast array of ceiling webbing carried through this room as well. There didn’t seem to be a spot in the house Junior couldn’t travel with his strange form of locomotion.

  The kitchen was longer than it was wide, and at the end were two doors. The one on the left wall led outside. It didn’t look particularly well fortified. It had a single lock and a pane of glass with a blind covering it. She briefly entertained a fantasy where she grabbed the nearest heavy object to bash Kali over the head, and then broke the glass, not caring if she shredded her flesh as she climbed out. She was used to bleeding.

  But Kali was not frail or petite by any stretch. The chances she could hit the woman hard enough to incapacitate her were nil. Nina had seen a show on TV once explaining how the “Hollywood knockouts” were largely fiction. It was actually almost impossible to knock someone unconscious with a random hit to the head. All she’d earn from her troubles would be more punishment from Junior, and probably a return to life under the bed straps. If she was lucky.

  She turned her attention to the other door, since that’s where Kali seemed to be leading her, and she already had an idea where this one went. There would be stairs, likely steep and squeaky planks of wood in an old house like this. Kali opened the door and Nina saw her hunch had been right. They were going down to the cellar, where the creature of the house was almost certainly keeping his new prisoner. The web of ropes ended here, oddly enough. Rigging hung over her head, awaiting the return of its master. For whatever reason, he was content to roam freely on the floor down there.

  The greenish fluorescent light gave everything a sickish cast. The smell of sharp chemicals mingled with blood and dirt wafting up made her stomach roil. Down there was Junior’s shop of horrors. His lair where he truly lived. She wanted to raise a protest, but the unflappable Janie Quick, who had been mysteriously absent from her mental dialogue the last few days, finally spoke up. She sounded as tired and defeated as Nina felt. Save your energy, girlie. I have a feeling you’re gonna need it. Kali turned to her before descending.

  “These steps are old. The ceiling is also quite low. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that running into me as we go down would be a very bad idea for both of us.”

  Nina nodded. “Got it. Just go.”

  She held tight to the rail as she made her way down, the steps bowing slightly under her weight. When she reached the bottom, she gagged. The reek of blood and filth was still there, but the chemical smell was even stronger. She was vaguely reminded of the time she dissected a cat in her high school anatomy class. The stench from the preservatives would sink into her hands, even through two layers of gloves, and it refused to wash off, no matter how much she scrubbed. And now, down here in this dungeon, she felt like she had buried her face in that preserved cat’s hide and took a deep whiff.

  She retched and the back of her throat burned with acid. Kali shook her. “Not here, not now. Swallow it back and keep moving.”

  For a moment, Nina didn’t think she would be able to stop it. In her experience, once the puke button was pressed, there was no going back. But a brief memory of Junior stringing her up by the neck again helped, and she stood up straight. “I’m okay, I think.”

  Kali yanked the leash again and led her away from the stairs. The basement was as enormous as the house itself. She could hear the rumble of a furnace, the drip-drip of water from leaky pipes. She also heard a few scratching sounds here and there, but pushed them away before she started ruminating on the possibility of rats. As she walked deeper into the crypt like space, the air grew colder and droplets of damp mist clung to her skin. The green light ahead grew brighter, coming from the other side of a five-foot piece of wall jutting out from the right. She could hear him shuffling around on the other side doing God knew what.

  But what she could hear even louder was the sound of the man moaning and mumbling to himself. She didn't want to see him. She wanted to plant her feet in the packed dirt like a stubborn mule and not move another inch. Whatever was on the other side of the wall might rip away the remaining shreds of her sanity, because the horrors Junior had inflicted upon her over the last several weeks were going to be even worse for someone who had come to his abode uninvited.

  They stopped just before the wall and Kali turned to her, eyes wide and glassy. The bandage on her face bore spots of fresh blood, like little poppies. “This is all for you. He has been working very hard. It would be best not to react in any negative way. You have seen how he deals with insult.”

  I’ve also seen how he treats his invited guests, she wanted to say. It’s all the same to me. She followed the woman around the wall and took in the sights before her through a mental veil. He couldn’t be real, he couldn’t possibly be real. He must be a dummy. A plastic thing. He most certainly couldn’t be alive. It was the only way she could bear the sight of him without screaming or vomiting, or both.

  The man was naked and strapped to a gurney set to the vertical position, his arms and legs spread wide. She thought of the classic drawing, the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci, only there the subject had been an intact and idealized representation of the human form. Here, this man had been mutilated beyond all recognition. His skin was deep red and bubbling into blisters that popped before her eyes, running with thick pus, as if Junior was melting off his flesh with acid. That was the chemical smell, combined with liquefying flesh, Nina had gagged on from several feet away. Here the smells wrapped around her head like a blanket, suffocating her. She took measured sips of air, and only when she absolutely needed them.

  His eyes were gone, already replaced by the strange white orbs that were in all of the other human puppets. The pupils this time were black question marks staring up at the ceiling in eternal inquiry. And he’d been made into a puppet. His arms hung from strings attached to hooks in the ceiling.

  Except those aren’t strings, honey girl. Not the kind you’re thinking of.

  No, the alternative was too horrifying to accept. He couldn’t have survived all the cutting, the excruciating torture of having his . . . his muscles flayed from his body in such a way, like pieces of tough jerky.

  But it looked as if he had. He was still alive, because Junior was keeping him alive. Tubes fed into exposed veins, pumping in blood and other fluids. Nina saw a defibrillator standing by. For whatever reason, the sick freak wanted to keep the man alive. He wanted to milk every bit of pain he could out of the man until he was beyond any lifesaving intervention.

  Why won’t you let go? Why won’t you just give up and die, you idiot?

  As if she’d been so good at it.

  Junior walked out from behind the gurney just then. He was standing upright, and that was perhaps the biggest shock of all. Nina didn’t know he was capable, but then again why wouldn’t he be? It had to take some strength to spend most of one’s days crawling around on an artificial web and operating human puppets. And he would have to come down at some point to do his . . . handiwork. He didn’t stand very tall. Nina guessed he was probably about five-three, a few inches shorter than her. The racks of his ribs and the knobs of his spine stood out sharply beneath his translucent skin. In the harsh light, she could see even more of his mutations. The pointed ears, the knobby bone of his skull, the webs between his extra toes. He was naked. He was always naked, but the shadows had always concealed his genitals from he
r. Now she could see why he never tried raping her himself. His penis was not much bigger than a small child’s. Good enough for masturbating but not much else.

  She next wondered if he was even fertile. A lot of mutated animals weren’t. And if he wasn’t fertile, then whose baby was she carrying? Was it possible she could have been pregnant before she even came here? Is that maybe why he wanted to keep her and not the others? Maybe he’d smelled it on her, if that was even possible. Or maybe he used someone else’s semen. Like his father’s. She didn’t even want to imagine how that might be possible.

  How pathetic is it you don’t even know your body good enough to know if you’re with child? When I was pregnant with you, I knew the second it happened. A cloud crossed the sun and the shadow hit my heart and never left. That’s how I knew I was havin’ a baby.

  Nina remembered the first time her mother had told her that story. She’d been in the first grade, and Janie Quick liked to re-tell it often, though mostly on the days when the arthritis was really getting her, or when she’d guzzled enough beer. The Lupus hadn’t kicked in until after Nina was born, so of course the kid was the most logical scapegoat.

  She didn’t know what to do with all this information. Not now. Not with Junior standing there looking at her with those strange eyes, the third eye in between the two. At this distance and in this light, it looked like it could be fake, but what did it matter? Didn’t change a damn thing. She was in its basement with little hope for escape.

  “What are you doing with him?” she asked.

  He snarled and Kali urged her with the leash to sit down in the chair she’d dragged over. Nina resisted at first, but finally bent her knees. She was tired of being choked for someone’s enjoyment. Her eyes fell onto a table of sharp instruments sitting near the man. On one of them was something she recognized immediately, and she had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from having a verbal reaction to it.