by The Behrg
“I will make you feel more pain than you have ever felt. What do I text him back? What do I say!”
“Doesn’t work that way.”
“Tell me, damnit!”
“You might as well shoot me,” Joje said, resting his hands back on the carpet.
“You think I won’t?”
“Come on, pull the trigger! Right here!” Joje tapped at his forehead furiously.
Blake’s hand ached from his tightening grip on the barrel. “Last chance! Please, Joje, tell me where they are.”
“Come on, you can do this.” Joje lifted his head, back straightening to look squarely into the barrel. In the reflection of his eyes, Blake caught a glimpse of himself—bruised, battered, bloodied, and as insane as the man he was staring at. The reflection of a complete stranger.
“One,” Blake said.
With his busted nose and blood slithering down his face, Joje’s smile was the creepiest it had ever been.
“Two,” Blake shouted.
Joje closed his eyes, face held high.
“Three!”
Blake pulled the trigger.
3
“Steady your shoulders, now slide your head forward, that’s it, nose touching the charging handle—it won’t move on you. Now deep breath, exhale partially, hold . . . and squeeze that trigger like your lady’s thighs.”
The M4 burst in a staccato of automatic fire, Adam’s arms through his torso vibrating all the way to his bones. He kept the nozzle from rising and watched as the aluminum hull of a rowboat disintegrated.
The clip ran dry. He let the gun drop in his hands, admiring his handiwork. Bullet holes began in a migratory path, then condensed in one area, punching a much wider gap through the metal. Brush and wild weeds could be seen on the other side.
“Pretty awesome, huh?” Stu said.
“Yeah. One more round?” Adam asked.
“Thirty more rounds—one more clip. But that’s it.”
Adam handed the automatic machine gun back to Stu, who discharged the spent clip.
“There’s no cell reception up here?” Adam asked.
“Not out here in the boonies,” Stu replied.
“So how will we know when I’m supposed to go back?”
Stu squinted, looking off into the distance and avoiding Adam’s eyes. He wiped down the rifle with a black cloth, pressing it into the empty chamber where the clip had gone. “We wait till we get word. No more questions unless you want to go back in the shed.”
“You’ve gotta have some way of communicating. Do you have, what do you call those radio things?”
“Walkie-talkie?”
“No, the one you need a license for?”
“Oh, a ham radio? No. Milt or Gary go down once a day to get messages. George ain’t our only client, you know. But we prefer staying out of reach,” Stu said, handing Adam the gun. “This time I want you to try making an X.” He stood back, arms folded, allowing Adam to do it on his own.
Adam pushed the butt of the gun into the crook of his shoulder, lining the sight up and bringing his head forward. He was able to control his breathing, but his heart was racing, turning the last corner with the finish line in sight. Now or never, it screamed.
Would he be heralded as the boy who saved his family from these monsters or become a monster himself?
A light breeze jostled the scraggly weeds topped with little purple flowers, as if that little color could hide what they really were.
Now or never.
He spun his body toward Stu, gun positioned so tightly it didn’t move, his heart thumping louder, ghetto-blasting his intentions as the bearded young man began to rise, eyes widening, realizing exactly what Adam was planning.
“The hell you two doin’?”
The voice shouted from the bottom of the hill. Adam broke his gaze to track the other gunman. Gary. He was unarmed, a hand held to his head to block the sun. Stu ripped the machine gun from Adam, a silver pistol appearing in his other hand, catching the sun’s rays and sending them back out.
Adam forced himself to exhale.
“What do you need, Gare?” Stu shouted, his eyes never leaving Adam’s face.
“You teachin’ him to shoot or becoming the target?” Gary called back, a cold laugh following.
Stu nodded at Adam to walk back down in Gary’s direction. In that look Adam knew no matter what he said or did he was no longer “just a kid.”
“Milton wants the boy,” Gary said as they got closer.
“He can have him,” Stu said, shoving Adam in the back. The ground came out from beneath him. He fell, stickered weeds and hot dirt raking his hands and arms as he tumbled the remaining few feet down the hill.
4
The blindfold was lifted over Jenna’s head. A dull light revealed walls that had aged from white to the color of bone—a shade not quite white, not quite gray, but equally disturbing. She moved to fix her hair, then thought better of it. She didn’t care how she looked to these assholes.
Drew hadn’t been gentle in getting her out of the house. Thankfully the bruises on her arms and aching in her legs were all she had suffered from his wrath.
At least so far.
She felt his breath against the back of her neck. His hands clamped down on the handles behind her shoulders as he turned her chair, the fold-out metal stops her legs rested upon scraping against the side of that pale wall.
The carpet was thin and ancient, a light purple with dried splotches of white paint near the baseboards. She didn’t recognize where they were, passing a tiny bathroom on the left, its hard yellow-tiled walls and small taupe-colored toilet reminding her of her grandmother’s house in Nebraska. Even at five years old she had known the reek in that house had been of old people, no cinnamon candle or potpourri sufficiently able to mask the stench.
She could almost smell that candle now, that sweet scent mixed with the delicious aroma of wood chips burning in the stove . . . and then the smell began to change. Cinnamon warping into the rot of burning meat, flesh going black, charcoaled and continuing to burn . . . Her legs blistered beneath her, the meat’s juices dripping between the openings in the grill, flames leaping higher, smoke rising to her mouth and nose, slipping down her throat, tendrils grasping, clutching, puncturing, and no matter how she turned her head, she could still smell herself cooking, melting beneath the flames.
She wiped at the dampness on her forehead. There was nothing she could do about the moisture beneath her arms or between her legs. Did this house have no air conditioning?
The hall ended in a plain white wooden door, round brass handle no longer holding a speck of its coppery shine. Drew reached over her, his gut pressing into her face, to open it. He banged the wheelchair forward against the door. The room caused her breath to catch.
Pink wallpaper in bright spotted patterns sporting cherubs and clouds, flowers and hearts, swallowed the room, making it seem at once a vast hall and a shrinking cell. The ceiling had small circular mirrors spaced apart to give the appearance of stepping stones leading from one corner to the other. A large mural of an elegant woman with long, straight black hair running over her neck and covering one breast, her other exposed, was the only picture in the room. The woman’s cheek was bruised, her eye just beginning to show its shine. The rest of the wall was covered with more glass—circular mirrors, rectangular mirrors, mirrors with paintings of flowers along the edges or dancing across the bottom, some hand mirrors awkwardly hung, some in frames, some without. Lights spun as if a disco ball had been hung with all the reflections of pinks and reds.
In the center, taking up almost the entire bedroom, was a large heart-shaped bed, its headboard made of foam or cloth and forming lips in an upturned smirk. Candles and dried rose petals adorned the few shelves in the room, though covered in dust. A small glass statue of a naked woman arching her back, disproportionate breasts thrust into the air, the lone decoration atop the dresser in the back.
This wasn’t a room, it was a tor
ture chamber.
“You know where we are? Whose house this is?” Drew asked.
Jenna shook her head, almost imperceptibly.
“The old owner of your house. Jerry Welchsetzer. Lucky for us this property was kept off the books. You know what line of business he was in?”
Jenna’s head continued to shake.
“Porn. Movies mainly, but the special ones were all shot here. The productions with a very limited release. Often filmed for a party of one.”
Jenna noticed the cameras for the first time, mounted in the corners of the room. How many were hidden in other objects—frames, mirrors, naked statues?
“No actors. Just a guy and a girl and only one leaves the room alive,” Drew said.
“How do you know all this?”
“I worked for him. Mr. Welchsetzer.” He said the name with contempt. “Always liked the movie industry, but Jerry, he made a mistake. Tried screwing over the wrong guy.”
Drew grabbed her head, her body tensing as he dropped down, whispering into her ear. “This is what George has planned for you, once he’s finished with Blake. He doesn’t know I brought you here, but I needed you to understand. What your options are. Do you? Understand?”
Jenna whimpered beneath his grasp.
“I can help you. Protect you. If you help me,” he said.
Her breaths came in gasps, her eyes no longer seeing.
“We can run away, you and I. From this. From George. But it’s your choice.”
Some choice, Jenna thought.
“And Joje is not as gentle as I am,” Drew continued.
“He’ll come after you. After us,” she said. Let him think there was an us. If it kept her alive a little longer.
“Then I’ll kill him,” Drew’s lips whispered in her ear, his tongue brushing against it. She shuddered, unable to stop her body from reacting. “Come with me. Or I’ll kill you.”
5
Click.
The empty chamber resonated through Blake’s teeth, as quiet as a trickle of water, yet more forceful than a waterfall. He could have sworn he felt a recoil, though the gun had barely moved. Joje looked up at him with that smile, blood spouting from his nose.
“No,” Blake screamed, firing again and again.
Click, click, click, click.
He held his hands out in front of him, turning the gun so it faced down. He tossed it onto the piano, metal striking wood, making gouges that no longer mattered.
He was done. He had failed. Perhaps for the last time.
They won’t even know I tried.
It was perhaps the worst thought. Adam and Jenna. There would be torture, agony, and in the end they would die believing Blake had been incapable of helping them, unwilling to even try.
Joje rose to his feet, pulling a mix of hanging snot and blood and flinging it to the carpet.
“I’ll get your son. And your wife, but you are staying here.”
“Your gun was loaded . . . before,” Blake said, mind still trying to make the leap that would catch up to the present. “In my office?”
“Blanks. Did you find a bullet hole in your wall?”
Blake felt the walls collapse in around him.
“Mine’s never been loaded. I told you from the beginning, I don’t like violence.” Joje walked past the dining room table into the kitchen. “Come.”
As Blake entered the kitchen, he found Joje standing next to the table, a large butcher knife in his hand.
“Don’t make me use this,” he said, then pointed to Conrad’s crate next to the wall. “Get in.”
Blake’s bare feet felt cold against the wooden floor. “You can’t be serious.”
“Very,” Joje answered, his busted nose making him sound more nasally. Combined with his lisp, he could have been voicing a cartoon character on some Nickelodeon show.
“I won’t fit in there,” Blake said.
Joje brandished the knife. “Then I’ll make you fit. Fight me on this, and your wife and son will come home to your corpse.”
Conrad’s cage took on the role of a gaping mouth, its thin black bars sharpened teeth, preparing to swallow Blake whole. It was small, stretching about four feet in length, three feet wide, three—maybe three and a half—high. They had purchased it when Conrad had been a puppy. Blake really should have gotten a larger one when he had started using it here in their new home but had decided the cramped space would be part of the punishment.
“Go ahead. You can tie me up, gag me, throw me in a closet, a trunk. I don’t care! Just . . . I’ll be quiet.” Blake tossed his hands in the air and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What about your family?”
Blake shook his head, breathing heavily to keep from crying. “I sometimes meet with business owners looking to restructure, revive a business that’s already gone too far. Buried in debt, fighting markets that have passed them by. There are times when your only option is to fold.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Just do it already!” Blake yelled. “End this. Kill me!”
A spike of pain flashed through Blake’s hand resting on the table, causing him to jump up. Joje pulled the butcher knife out of Blake’s hand with a quick tug.
“I don’t have time for you to feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “Now get in that cage, or I will cut you into a thousand little pieces and feed you to your son. As bad as things are, they can always get worse.”
Blake looked from the gash in the back of his already-burned hand to Joje’s face. “What did I ever do to you?”
Joje slammed the blade down again, and Blake pulled his hand back just in time to see the blade sink an inch into the table. “Two minutes,” Joje said. “Whatever’s not in that cage is coming off.”
Blake knelt in front of the crate, heart pulsing. The opening was the size of his laptop screen, maybe a little taller, but no wider. Probably smaller than his waist. The cage became a complex Rubik’s Cube puzzle, Blake envisioning one body part at a time moving into the tiny wired box, folding limbs back, rolling shoulders, stretching, cramming.
And failing to fit.
“A minute forty-two.”
“I can’t—” Blake said.
“Then prepare yourself for real pain.”
“Promise you won’t hurt my family,” Blake said.
“I only make promises I know I can keep. And I can promise you’ll see them again.”
Blake could feel his exhaustion—a living, breathing entity that had entered his body, demanding him to stop.
Stop trying, stop caring, stop fighting.
Stop.
Adrenaline long gone, he let out a long breath, then brought one arm into the cage. It felt like shoveling the first scoop of dirt onto his own grave. He lowered his head, turning onto his back and sliding farther in. With some contortions, and a slice through his shirt, he was able to pop the top half of his body through. His head hit the back of the cage, waist and legs still hanging out.
“One minute,” Joje said.
Blake tucked his head forward, scooting farther into the cage and raising his head up. It rattled against the top bars. He breathed out, already feeling a bout of claustrophobia gripping him. His waist was caught at the opening, the rounded edges of the thin bars surprisingly unsmooth, digging into his skin. He floundered to the side of the cage, seeing if it would open up more room to bring his knees up. It didn’t. He was still only halfway into the cage with no idea how to get the rest of him inside.
“We can do without your legs. I’m sure Jenna can empathize.”
“Wait, damnit!” Blake shouted.
He hunched up, ducking his head and bringing it forward to the center of the cage, his back arching. It enabled him to slide back another few inches, his waist falling through the opening, gashes scouring the small of his back and hips. Now his butt was against the floor of the cage, a hard plastic lining that ran from end to end. With the back of his neck craning ag
ainst the top of the cage, Blake realized he had no leverage to move forward or backward. He tried to wriggle his body in farther, but there was nowhere to go.
“I’m stuck.”
“Thirty seconds,” Joje said.
“I’m serious, I can’t move!” Blake tried inching his head forward, but it was levered up at an angle that blocked him from any movement. He strained his neck to the other side, his head notching forward an inch, or at least a single square grid in the cage. His back was shaking, but he forced it flush against the end of the cage. Still his legs dangled out, nowhere near close enough to bring up his knees.“ There’s not enough room—this isn’t going to work!”
“Make it work!”
The cage felt like it was shrinking, and though the gridded bars had no way of blocking the passage of air, Blake could feel the oxygen expiring. He had to get out.
With effort he managed to bring his body back into a lying position, then wriggle slowly back out. He knelt on the wooden floor, sucking in air like he had just come up from beneath a wave. He felt lightheaded. Had he been holding his breath in there? Maybe it had just been the contortions of his body preventing him from drawing in a normal breath.
“I . . . I can’t, I can’t,” Blake said. Blood trickled down from the palm of his right hand running the length of his arm.
“I ever tell you I’ve been here before?” Joje asked. “In this house? Your office was a wine room. That’s why it has its own temperature control.”
“Welchsetzer?” Blake asked.
Joje smiled. “How much do you know?”
“I don’t. The neighbor—the lawyer you murdered—he told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That Jerry went crazy. Murdered his family,” Blake said. “Wife, kids.”
“You believed him?”
“No. Yes, but no. I never found anything. But it was you, wasn’t it? You killed them?”
“They had a large oak table here, you know, thick legs . . . like Dwew’s?” He smiled before continuing. “China cabinet against the wall. Drapes—this awful pattern. And a signed Marilyn Monroe against that wall—the one where she’s laying backward on the couch, topless, not the typical skirt-flying-up-trying-to-hold-it-down pose. Always felt bad for those kids, their girls.”
