Housebroken

by The Behrg

  “If this performance isn’t everything I hoped it would be, we make another call to Dwew,” Joje said.

  “I understand,” Blake said.

  Adam returned and, at Joje’s suggestion, uncorked both bottles. For some reason Joje wasn’t willing to trust Blake with the knife. Blake wafted his hand over the top of the port, taking in the smell of the wine. It had a sweet scent to it, almost overbearing. It had always been Jenna’s favorite, not his. Blake knew, however, when it came to wines, port had the highest alcohol content—this one even higher than most. The absinthe was just in case the port failed.

  Blake tipped a small amount of the absinthe into a wine glass. He knocked it back, gagging as the heat poured down his throat. He had forgotten how strong that was. And how awful.

  “Start from the side of the bed on the right,” Joje said, instructing Adam with the camera.

  “You want me to go up there?” Adam asked.

  “We need close angles. I want you weaving in and out, hovering just above them.”

  Adam moved back to the upper landing, coming around to the opposite side of his father, Lucy and the bed between them.

  Blake turned his back to Joje as he filled one wine glass from the bottle of port. The other he filled with absinthe. The fumes of almost pure alcohol carried up, clearing his sinuses as if he had swallowed a chunk of wasabi.

  “Lucy,” he said, proffering the port. She did not reach for it. He sat on the bed, scooting himself toward her. She lashed out, tossing the pillow at him and causing the glass to dump.

  “Don’t touch me!” she spat, distancing herself from the slosh of red liquid bleeding into the bedspread.

  Thank you, Lucy, Blake thought.

  “You’re going to let her do that to you, Bwake? This is how you conquer?” Joje shouted.

  Blake looked directly into the digital camcorder his son had pointed at him. “My name is Blake Crochet. I live at Sixteen Vanilla Banks, Malibu, California. My family has been kidnapped by two madmen who have forced us to commit acts against our will and better judgment. To any whom I’ve hurt, I’m so sorry. To my family,” he paused, looking up at Adam. “Sorry isn’t enough. It shouldn’t have taken this for me to realize my life is nothing without you. In this life or the next, I hope you can forgive me. And to my kidnappers—I hope you rot in hell!”

  The object Blake had pulled from his drawer had been kept low, hidden from Joje’s view. Blake’s thumb felt raw, too close to the blue flame spitting from the end of the lighter at his side. The pillow Lucy had thrown at him was just beginning to catch, yellow flames replicating along its tethered fringes.

  Please let this work, he thought as blackened fringe curled up, flames sinking into the pillow and not rising again. There was no burst, no fireball, and though he had been tussling with the burner since the start of his speech to the camera, the bedspread as well had yet to take to the flame.

  “Point the camera away from your father,” Joje said, voice already drawing nearer. “It seems he’s looking for a final lesson.”

  Come on, come on, come on!

  The first pillow he had lit had already gone out. A second’s fabric shriveled beneath the flame but failed to expand.

  Lucy’s hands suddenly cupped his own, her large brown eyes boring into his. “I’ve got this. Stop him.”

  Without a word Blake transferred the lighter to her, its blue flame continuing at a steady pulse. He tried running the numbers in his head; maybe he had dumped too much of the wine out, the soaking of the sheets and bedspread preventing the flame from spreading. He could go for the absinthe but not without it blowing in Lucy’s face—he had heard of a man who tried to drink what the Czechs called a flaming pistol, a burning sugar cube dropped into a glass of absinthe that set the alcohol on fire, only this man’s lips had burned away, the inside of his cheeks hollowed out to the point you could see through his skin it was so transparent. If he threw that second glass at the lighter, Lucy would go up with it.

  He turned to face his adversary, realizing once again he had miscalculated, hadn’t fully considered the course his actions would run. As desperately as he needed a miracle, he was in no position to petition divine intervention. He may not be the murderer Joje was making him out to be, but how many skeletons, skin and gristle still clinging to bone, resided in his closet? The countless people he had stepped on, livelihoods he had destroyed, businesses he had crushed in the wake of his own ascent. Was success even possible without climbing on the shoulders of those around you? With cleated hooves stepping on faces and bodies, forcing them into the mud so your shoes would stay sharp and shined and you could stand another inch taller?

  A day in a box, a week with a monster, and Blake was no longer the man he once had been. His own blue flame had been set against his body, his soul, setting ablaze the cardboard beliefs he had thought were golden. His only option at this point was to hope that the flame inside would leap farther and faster than the one behind him.

  9

  Drew showed no more emotion than a Cabbage Patch doll, retreating from Jenna after her declaration of paralysis. He pulled aside a hanging curtain meant to surround her bed. Leaning against the wall was a fold-up wheelchair.

  “You’re not going to scream. You’re not going to cry for help. Because if you do, I will plunge this into the back of your neck.”

  He held up a small scalpel, its quarter-inch triangular blade as deadly as the sword he had kept with him earlier. “Then you really will be paralyzed.”

  Jenna swallowed hard. She wished she could have had that water.

  Drew unfolded the chair, wheeling it toward her.

  “What did they do to me while I was out?”

  “Surgery,” Drew said.

  “They used anesthesia, didn’t they?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You. You told them to do it, didn’t you,” Jenna said. “I have a reaction with anesthesia. My nervous system shuts down. I couldn’t even get an epidural when I was delivering!”

  Drew tilted his head at an angle, watching her. Observing her. “How long does it last?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t had it since I was a kid. They put me under for a root canal. I ended up in the hospital for two weeks.”

  “You don’t know why you had surgery, do you?”

  “I don’t even know where I am,” she said.

  Drew grabbed ahold of the blankets at the end of the bed, drawing them back in one full swoop. Jenna’s nightgown, the blue hospital dress her ass would be hanging out from, stopped halfway down her thighs. Below, her left leg extended, skin still a horrific sight, but it was her right that caused her breath to catch, her heart to skip a beat.

  Her foot and calf were no longer there.

  Bile rose in her throat, searing her esophagus both on its way up and going back down. Her knee, swollen to the size of Drew’s thigh, was wrapped protectively, a cone funneling down to the part of the bed with no indentation from where her foot or leg should have been. A clear thick tube slunk out of the wrapping, brown and red chunks visible every few inches along its curve.

  Her eyes were welling to the point she couldn’t see. “You had them do this to me? This!”

  “I saved your life,” Drew answered.

  “You’ve taken everything from me! Everything I ever cared about. I don’t even know who I am anymore.” Her breaths came in ragged spurts. “Why . . . why couldn’t you have just killed us?”

  “George has his reasons. You were mine.”

  “I swear to God I’ll kill you,” she said. “I will rip your throat out with my teeth if I have to, but I am going to kill you!”

  “Plan B it is. Strangle you till your unconscious and then wheel you out.”

  At least if Drew took her now, there was a good chance she would die. Infection, dehydration, without the proper care at this stage, it wouldn’t take long.

  Though a few days will be like an eternity with him, she thought.

  “I h
ave to make sure,” he said.

  “Of what?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he plunged the scalpel into her left thigh. Though the blade was short, there was no doubt with the force of his impact he had severed more than skin and arteries—this had gone straight through muscle to the bone.

  His eyes never left hers, watching for the smallest sign of pain, the slightest tremble. He pushed the handle of the blade left and right, digging in farther. She stared back unflinching, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

  “Imagine that. You were telling the truth,” Drew said.

  He let go of the handle, leaving the blade sticking from her leg like a junkie in the throes of a soaring high, unaware of the still-protruding needle. A trickle of blood rolled down her thigh, spreading on the white sheets of the bed.

  “We’re gonna change,” he said. “Less questions that way.”

  He came around behind her, tearing at the gown and dragging it over her body. Her arms slumped back to the bed, lifeless, the gown snagging on her hair until finally breaking free. She now sat on the bed naked from the waist up, the panties they had dressed her in as thick and attractive as an adult diaper. One arm lay in her lap turned upward, the other resting at her side.

  “I could get used to that view,” Drew said. He glanced at the door leading out of the room, probably wondering how much time he could get away with before someone came barging in.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  “I thought you couldn’t feel anything.”

  “My head, it feels like . . . glaciers colliding.”

  Drew came around, staring down at her chest with a twisted smile. “I’ll have to find a way to get more anesthesia if it keeps you from fighting back.”

  Her shirt was on the seat of the wheelchair next to him. He grabbed it, leaning over her from the side and lifting one arm, his bare flesh pressing against hers. He tilted her head forward to bring it through the outstretched shirt.

  Now, she thought.

  Her left hand reached down, clasping at the handle protruding from her leg. She ripped it out with one quick pull, reminding herself she loved pain. Turning the blade, she thrust it into Drew’s stomach. He lurched backward, one arm slapping her across the face so hard she was almost stunned. Unfortunately for him, his arm was entangled in Jenna’s shirt. She tried scratching at his face with her other hand, but his arm slipped free of the shirt just in time. Instead she pulled the blade back out and swung it upward, putting everything she had into her lunge.

  The blade slid deftly between soft tissue, warm blood bursting and covering her hand and arm, splashing onto her leg. It felt like an egg breaking, its yoke dripping out in a continual flow. Drew staggered, turning slightly toward her. In her horror she let go of the handle, yet the blade remained wedged into the flesh just below his chin, sticking straight down.

  Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. He tried to speak, but only a gurgle came out, thick with froth. He wore an incomprehensible expression on his face as if he couldn’t understand why she would do what she had done.

  “You were wrong. This whole time? You were mine,” she said.

  He dropped, legs giving out, his head connecting with the rail of her bed, and with it Jenna heard the scalpel drive through his skull, rail becoming hammer, scalpel the nail.

  His face, completely motionless, rested atop that rail, his body propped against the bed as if he were kneeling in prayer. His unseeing eyes somehow still conveyed a sense of surprise.

  Jenna broke down and cried like she had never cried before, huge gasps of grief, relief, revulsion, rejoicing. When she thought she had regained herself, she pressed a finger against Drew’s forehead and pushed. His body slumped to the floor, hitting the wheelchair on its way down.

  When the nurse finally came in to check on her, she found Jenna laughing hysterically lying on the tile floor in a pool of smeared blood. Her “husband” was in a similar state with one major distinction: he was not laughing.

  Next to Jenna’s hand, partly immersed in a pool of red, was an old flip phone.

  10

  Joje’s phone began to ring to the unmistakable tune of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.”

  Woo-hoo, Blake thought.

  Joje stopped at the foot of the landing, pulling the phone from his back pocket and holding it out. “Do it now!” he yelled into the speaker. “I want him to hear her die! Kill her now!”

  Silence from the phone.

  “Dwew!”

  “It’s not ‘Dwew.’”

  That voice, that angelic voice, broke through every dark cloud swirling over Blake’s head. “Honey? Jenna!”

  “Here,” she answered. “And I’m not going anywhere. Drew’s dead. In case you were wondering.”

  Blake couldn’t keep the smile from his face. “I love you,” he shouted. The words were unfamiliar. He hadn’t planned on saying them, but they were words he didn’t regret.

  “Love you too dar—”

  Jenna’s voice cut off midsentence, but her message had been received. Loud and clear.

  The phone dropped from Joje’s hand, bouncing off the first step to the carpeted floor below. He was trembling. “Where’s Adam?”

  Blake looked back—both Adam and Lucy were gone. They had used the call as the distraction they needed to get clear of Joje. A smoldering pillow atop the bed was the only evidence of their attempted diversion. That and the strong aroma of sweetened alcohol.

  Joje was bent over, a fist held to his mouth. It was so odd to see human emotion on that face. Blake half expected Joje to break character at any moment, laughing or shouting.

  Or smiling.

  His grief for Drew looked heartfelt. “This is all wrong!” he shouted. “All of it! It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”

  “Cops are on their way. You must know that,” Blake said. “Probably seconds from our door. Go. Leave. We can still both walk away.”

  “Adam,” Joje said, squaring his shoulders. “Are you coming with me?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Adam said without raising his head from behind the side of the bed.

  Joje exhaled a long breath. “It’s not the journey, it’s the destination that matters.”

  “Dad—get down!” Adam yelled, jumping up and over the corner of the bed to pull Blake back.

  The roar of the gun echoed in the room. Blake felt the vibration of a bullet skim just past his face, a loud thunk following as the projectile meant for his skull sunk into the bed’s headboard. He had time to see Lucy standing by his nightstand, clear liquid flinging from the glass in her hand, then he hit the bed, and the room exploded.

  The initial blast of heat went up with a whoosh that seemed to suck the air right out of Blake’s throat. Adam was propelled off the bed. Blake slammed into the corner bedpost. The post suddenly burst into flames, fire consuming the cologne Blake had poured down its side.

  Blake rolled from the bed, falling forward and dragging himself down the three steps to the lower level of the room. Above him orange and yellow flames billowed out across the ceiling like clouds set to fast-forward. Joje was on the ground, hands covering his face, the gun nowhere to be seen.

  As quickly as the burst began, it ceased, a vacuum drawing the flames back. And then a second wave rushed forward. Like the tide of the ocean. The bed was ablaze, front bedposts now flaming pillars, the ceiling above turning a cancerous black.

  “Adam!” Blake shouted, but before he could move, Joje was on his feet, rushing toward him. He didn’t have the strength to fight back, not anymore. The crisp smell of rising smoke, the crackling of flames.

  Joje stepped over Blake, rushing up the steps onto the landing that had become a roaring furnace. Jenna’s dresser and the silk curtains along the window had caught fire, oppressive heat now pushing against Blake like a physical presence.

  Joje was down, crawling beneath the bed. Blake climbed back to the upper landing, another roar sending him to his knees as flames
licked the air above his head. Joje slowly backed out, dragging with him his fourteen-year-old brother. Thick swaths of gray smoke followed in their wake.

  Blake pulled his son up, wrapping one arm around his shoulder to keep him standing. Adam was unresponsive, his feet bent back on the floor, arms dangling at his side. Joje stood, wrapping his arm around the other side. A silent agreement seemed to pass between them as Blake looked at Joje, and then together they walked Adam carefully down the steps.

  Joje bumped into Jenna’s armoire, a drawer crashing out, bracelets of gold and silver and dark exotic stone spilling onto the floor.

  A body slammed into Joje on his right side. He lost his hold on Adam, Blake falling against the doorframe as his son’s full weight rested upon him.

  Lucy stood from the ground, her shoulders and arms covered in black streaks. She steadied herself against the wall, staring at Joje, who was still on the ground.

  She brought her leg back and kicked him in the stomach, then groaned, clutching at her bare foot. Joje rolled to his other side, facing away from her. Blake could see in her face the intense desire to kill the man who had taken her.

  “Wait,” he said. “I need him . . . help carry my son.”

  The look she turned on him was so reproachful Blake almost cowered back.

  And then Joje’s hand shot out. He grabbed her by the ankle, pulling her to the floor. She screamed, falling atop him. Joje rolled over to pin her beneath.

  “Let me go!” Her hands flailed. She must have connected, because the next moment she scrambled out from beneath him.

  Joje lunged forward, his fist coming down like a hammer. It barreled into Lucy’s right ankle and foot, catching her just as she was bringing the foot up and forward. The scream that followed was louder than the crackling flames behind them.

  Blake hefted Adam back up, placing both his arms beneath his son’s armpits. Adam lay limp, his head lolling back and forth. A blast of hot air surged forward, and Blake didn’t have to look back to know the fire was spreading, and fast.