“Shut up.” Gia wiped her eyes with her hand that wasn’t cuffed.
“Shut me up,” Susan said. “If it makes you feel any better, she probably wouldn’t have got out of the way in time even if she was sober. Old Jack was flying.”
“Shut up,” Gia growled.
Susan laughed, but then suddenly stopped. Her voice went low again. “Of course, if you hadn’t left her all alone just like your father did, then maybe she wouldn’t have been out all night drinking and whoring to meet Jack in the morning. Just two sinners flying into each other out of control, right?”
Gia screamed making her throat burn worse than the stomach acid had. “Shut your fucking mouth, you psycho!”
“Leave her alone,” Justin yelled raising his head.
Susan jumped down off the counter and clenched her fists. “Are you kidding me, Justin? You are ready to defend her from my words, but you wouldn’t lift a damn finger when I was being hurt?”
Susan charged forward and kicked Justin underneath the chin. His head whipped back into the wall with a solid clunk. As his head lolled back forward she kicked him in the center of his chest. He grunted and she kicked him in the ribs cutting the noise off. Justin pulled his arm up against his side and she kicked his chest again.
“Come on, Justin,” Susan yelled down at him. “Come on, Jack. Show me how you are going to protect her from me.”
Gia gripped the back of her chair with her free hand and swung it around as she stood. The metal edge where the legs met the seat connected with the orb of Susan’s left eye. She glared into Gia’s eyes as Susan went down. Gia saw darkness in them as dead and empty as the lifeless clown.
***
Chapter 12:
Make Me
Gia let go of the chair like it weighed as much as the world. The thing bounced and rolled away from her across the floor through the orange juice. It struck the lower cabinets cracking one of the wooden doors next to the hinges. The handcuff key on the counter danced closer to the edge with the impact, but then came back to rest.
As Gia leaned out to the limit of where the handcuff on the radiator would allow her to go, she felt like she had made a terrible mistake letting the chair slip out of her grasp.
Susan laid on her back staring up at the ceiling. The flesh around her eye socket had not had time to bruise, but it was swollen up enough to make her face look misshapen. The eye seemed to be drifting independent of her undamaged right eye and the lids were forcing shut with the swelling.
Susan let out two short grunts and held up her open hands in the air grabbing at the empty space. Whatever she was trying to catch, only she could see it.
Gia pulled against her cuff trying to pull free, but the radiator was solid, if lifeless. The noise of the metal seemed to bring Susan back from the world of things she was trying to catch in her vision to reality. The glassy stare in her disconnected eyes began to drift into angry focus. Susan blinked, but with the swelling in her face, it looked more like one eye twitching and the other winking.
Gia stretched out to the end of the cuff along the front of the radiator reaching up Susan’s body. She could only reach as far as her knee where Susan’s legs were splayed.
“Jack … ugh, Justin?” Gia said. “Get her phone out of her pocket.”
Justin was curled in a ball in the small corner at the other end of the radiator where the swirling pipes connected to the wall. He was staring down at Susan in the floor with eyes wide. There was a bloody, skinned mark on his chin where his sister had connected with her shoe when she kicked him.
Gia reached across and took hold of Justin’s jaw over his chin. He blinked several times rapidly and peeled his lips back from his teeth.
“Justin, reach in her pocket and get her phone. Hurry.”
Justin recoiled from her grip and hit the back of his head against the wall again. He folded to the side away from her head and covered his head with his free hand.
Susan got one elbow under her body and lifted her head up off the floor with her eyes squeezed shut.
Gia grabbed Susan by her ankle and yanked her across the floor toward the radiator. Susan slipped off her elbow and bounced her head on the concrete. She covered her eyes with both hands as Gia leaned back and pulled her again.
Gia reached out and patted the front pockets of Susan’s pajamas and found the phone exactly where Susan had pointed when she talked about checking the news on her phone. She pulled the phone out with two fingers, but Susan shot up, sitting arrow straight on the floor and grabbed her phone with both hands pulling it away from Gia.
Susan pumped her legs pushing herself back away from Gia with the phone. Gia grabbed Susan’s ankle again. Susan kicked until her sneaker popped off, but Gia held onto the bare foot. She pulled hard and dragged Susan back toward her through the mess on the floor. Susan kicked with her sneakered foot connecting hard enough with Gia’s shoulder for her to feel it through her skeleton. Gia rocked backward into the wall, but managed to hold onto Susan’s ankle somehow.
Susan rolled over onto her stomach and clawed at the floor. Gia saw the phone in one hand scrap along Susan’s side as she tried to get away. Gia let go of the ankle and grabbed the phone again.
Susan screamed and came up swinging. She hit Gia across the cheek, but Gia kept pulling on the phone with one hand. Gia felt Susan’s nails dig into the flesh of her cheek as Susan bared her teeth and stared wild with her one open eye.
Gia let go of the phone and drove the heel of her hand into Susan’s closed eye near the spot where she had struck with the chair. Susan fell back covering her face with both hands.
Gia looked around the floor, but the phone was gone.
Susan rolled away until she slammed into the legs of the table. Her blue pajama bottoms were pasted dark to her skinny legs from the orange juice and dotted with pieces of Gia’s breakfast.
Susan scrambled to her feet and ran out of the kitchen into the main room wearing one shoe. She kicked the phone with the toes of her bare foot with a dull ring and she yelped. Susan stumbled through the cord and ran into the side of the couch.
She recovered and kicked herself free of the tangle. She lifted her one open eye and glared at Gia. “I’m going to the van and I’m getting something to make you suffer for this.” Susan stared for another couple beats and then said, “I’m putting you into the dirt next to your drunk, whore mother.”
“Fuck you!” Gia screamed and lurched out toward Susan along the radiator as far as the handcuff would allow her.
Susan smiled at the reaction and vanished around the corner. Gia screamed again and picked up the loose shoe. She threw it over the couch and bounced it off the wall between the clown’s balloons and a giraffe.
***
Justin lifted the phone in his hand and held it out to Gia. She stared for a second and then snatched it away from him. “We have to get out of here.”
“She’s crazier than I thought. No one will get here in time.”
Gia thumbed the buttons and the phone came up with a keypad and the message: Sorry. Try Again.
“Oh, God,” Gia said, “What’s her code?”
“She uses her fingerprint,” Justin said. “I was hoping it was already unlocked.”
“It would have a four digit code too. They all do. What is hers?”
Justin shook his head. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.”
“What numbers mean something to her?” Gia asked. “Addresses? Birthdays? What? What does she care about?”
Justin swallowed and shook his head. “She’s obsessed with you. Your movies. Facts about you. Ever since … the accident.”
Gia licked her lips. She typed in the year her mother died: Sorry. Try Again.
Gia stared up at the ceiling. She typed in the date and the year in two different combinations: Sorry. Try Again … Sorry. Try Again.
She heard the door to the van slam outside. Gia felt a wave of panic wash through her. There was no time for anyone to save her. Susan
was going to kill Gia and maybe Justin too.
Justin said, “There’s a gun in the clown.”
“What?” Gia stared at the number pad on the phone.
“There’s a gun in the clown cookie jar,” he said. “I hid it there. Susan doesn’t know I have it.”
“Why did you bring it?” Gia asked. “For me?”
Justin shook his head. “No. I don’t know. Susan told me to bring it just in case. I did, but then told her I forgot it. I shouldn’t have done anything she said, but she told me it was all part of the game.”
“Did this feel like a game?” Gia shook her head.
“After what we did in your apartment?” Justin shook his head. “I don’t know. Susan has me all messed up. She’s one year younger than me, but she’s always been in charge.”
Gia stared at the phone. She typed in her own birth date, May 5th and then the year. The keys faded out and the icons popped up.
Gia hit the green phone button and tapped in 911.
It was ringing.
Gia heard a slide guitar that reminded her of nights sneaking into the bar across the bridge. She heard an engine rev.
“Nine-One-One. What is your emergency?”
Gia opened her mouth and took a breath, but then the wall to her right exploded inward. Wood paneling peeled away, split and folded under the front wheels of the van. Plaster, splintered two-by-four boards, and sections of corroded pipe blasted out into the air. Some of it soared within inches of her face. Something hard slammed across her knuckles bringing up blood on each one and knocking the phone away spinning in the air with the cone of debris. White fissures erupted across the windshield in deep cracks. Water sprayed out across the side of the van and rained down into the room.
The van kept coming and swerved toward her. Gia watched the grill bounce as it approached. The corner of the bumper struck the refrigerator and peeled it open like a smashed fruit as it jammed the dead appliance back into the wall. Cracks spider webbed out from the point of impact all the way across in both directions.
The van bounced off changing direction, just missing Gia, and obliterating the counter from the end. Cleaning supplies toppled out as the cabinets on that side blew apart and the clown jar fell off the back and shattered behind what remained of the counter.
The van stopped and glass dumped out onto the concrete in shards from both headlight covers. Something dark and thick leaked out in globs from under the engine.
Thank God for concrete floors in the clown house, Gia thought.
The radio inside the van clicked off in the middle of the guitar solo.
Gia looked over past the sink at the opposite counter where Susan had been sitting before the violence was unleashed. The toaster tipped over and fell into the space for the main room. The tiny key was spinning on its tip like a top, but then came to rest at the edge of the counter without falling.
Gia felt her heart drop.
The engine of the van sputtered, but then continued running. Something was hammering like a sledge inside the engine every tenth or fifteenth cycle. It vibrated the entire building.
The key danced on the edge of the counter, but still did not fall.
Gia spit out dirt flavored water from wash that was blasting against the ceiling and dripping down onto her hair and face. It still tasted better than the flavor of fear and stomach acid already in her mouth.
Chips of plaster and moist powder fell around her from the wall behind them with each rough vibration.
She waited for the van to back up and have another go at her where she was chained in place. Instead, the driver’s door opened wide with a creak and hit the breakfast table. The table finally tipped dumping the plates and glasses along the wet concrete.
Susan slid out of the van in her soaked, blue pajamas with one shoe and one muddy, bare foot. She hoisted a silver tire iron curved like a giant candy cane. “Where’s my phone?”
“You dropped it,” Gia said.
Susan lifted the iron above her head with the hooked end nearly touching the ceiling. She stalked forward towards Gia.
Gia tried to pull away out of fear. The cuff jerked against the radiator and Gia felt the pipes shift.
Justin stood up on his end bent over by his bound arm and shouted. “Leave her alone, Susan. Stop it.”
The radiator shifted again.
Gia spun around and planted both feet against the cracked wall beside the radiator. She locked her free hand over the bracelet of the cuff over her wrist and pulled with all her might. The pipes pulled out from the wall, but only revealed more discolored sections of pipe.
Susan swung down at Gia’s head. Gia twisted sideways. Justin lunged and shoved against Susan’s hip pushing her sideways. Her aim went off hitting the wall and rang off the metal of the radiator as she staggered. Chunks of wall fell to concrete and broke apart.
“Stop it, Susan,” Justin yelled. “You’re crazy. You are fucking crazy.”
“Stop me, Justin,” Susan said.
She brought the tire iron back over her shoulder like a baseball bat.
Gia pushed her feet against the side of the radiator and pulled sideways. The skin on her hand bunched up and went pale. The discolored pipe on the other end of the cuff bent and pinched, but would not break.
Susan swung and Gia braced herself for her lights to go out even as she kept pulling.
Justin ducked and the tire iron hit the wall above his head knocking a hole through it.
“You don’t love me, Justin,” Susan said. “You didn’t save me; I had to save myself. You don’t love her; only I love her. You couldn’t save me and you can’t save her.”
Susan lifted the tire iron above her head with both hands over her brother. “Go on and stop me, Justin, stop me.”
The radiator held as Gia continued to pull, but her hand popped out of the bracelet and she propelled herself back from the radiator a couple feet along the wet floor.
Susan turned and looked down at Gia with the iron still raised. “Justin, can you do anything right? Tighten the cuffs.”
Gia stared at her hands like she couldn’t believe she had gotten them free. She hadn’t even considered trying to slip her hand out.
Susan took a step toward her.
Gia rolled over to her stomach and scrambled away in the direction of the van.
“Stop trying to hurt her,” Justin said.
Susan took another step. “Make me, Justin. Make me stop.”
Justin lashed out and drove his knife into the back of Susan’s calf and she screamed.
***
Chapter 13:
Put It Down
Susan staggered and whipped around with the iron in her hand. Even with the water spray against the ceiling and raining down, the blood ran out thick from the wound. Susan’s eyes were wide and her jaw hung open like it was unhinged.
“You fucking stabbed me! You chose her over me,” Susan said the words like they were some form of curse.
Gia wasn’t sure if the curse was on Susan or cast toward Justin.
Justin held the knife up between himself and his sister. “Put it down and give up, Susan. This is over.”
“Make me,” Susan said.
Gia continued to scoot back toward the side of the van.
Justin lunged out toward Susan. His target was not clear from his aim. It could have been toward one of her arms. Susan swung and caught Justin across the knuckles of his knife hand. He cried out as he pulled his hand back to his chest and the knife twirled away in the air skidding across the main room floor under the couch.
She came back on the back hand swing toward her brother’s head. He brought the palm up beside his head absorbing the impact and catching the shaft of the iron. He tried to pull it away from her, but his knuckles still throbbed from the strike and he couldn’t lever it away from her with one hand.
Susan charged and slammed her elbow and forearm into his head pinning him to the wall. He brought his knee up into her stomach and she press
ed the bar of the tire iron into Justin’s throat. He tried to twist it away from her again.
Susan pulled backward ripping the weapon free of his grasp. As her weight came down on her injured calf, she lost her balance and collapsed backward crashing through the top of the tipped kitchen table.
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