The pain of the edge of his shoulder jamming into her bladder caused her to urinate down his arm. There was a slight pleasure to have pissed on him, but it was short-lived. The man did not react to the urine dripping from his jacket sleeve. However, he dropped her to the floor inside the room he carried her on her back. Her head slammed against the wood boards. It felt like a battering ram had rattled her teeth loose. With the air knocked from her lungs, she almost lost consciousness. Angela could not concentrate on what happened. The flat-faced man lifted her and the pale woman wiped her arms with a wet cloth. He held Angela against the wall with a strong push of his forearm into her throat. It kept her from regaining her breath.
The other men followed into the room and started drawing lines on the walls. They seemed only focused on their task and not what happened to her. Without explanation, the woman returned to stand in front of Angela holding a hammer. The flat-faced man raised Angela’s left arm against the wall while the pale woman held a long nail to her wrist. Angela tried not to scream, refusing to let them have that pleasure. After the third strike of the hammer, she could hold back no more. When they had crucified her to the wall and turned from her with blank faces, they joined the others in drawing lines on the floor. Angela cried as she tried to pull her arms from the walls and realized there was little hope to pull them free. The pain in her forearms faded to numbness. She knew it was because her body was in shock from the trauma, soon the feeling would return.
When she opened her eyes again, the first sensation was of fire in her forearms. She lifted her body back up the wall with her weak legs. Her focus was on the pain. It felt like ten-thousand insects stung her wrists. Her head seemed as though it could split open. Angela looked at the heads of the large nails sticking from her once fair and unblemished skin. They had made large deep purple bruises under the skin of her arms and hands. She tried to move each arm, to understand how secure the hold to the wall was. They were numb and unresponsive as if they had taken leave from her body. She did not see her captors and only heard the strange noises they made.
Why have they done this to me? What are they going to do next?
The tickle of fear was at the base of her skull, soon it would chew its way forward, and she would become lost to it. She chastised herself for allowing them to have that kind of power over her. Angela forced her legs to straighten as she pressed her back against the wall. Her eyes scanned the candlelit room. Black lines covered all the walls and the ceiling. They ran down and then across the floor. The pattern was of various straight lines that crossed over the next one and formed a strange block-shaped tangle. It had no obvious meaning. The only people who understood were the ones who made it.
She looked at her arms again, took a deep breath, and tried to see if she could pull them free. Shooting pain told her it was not possible. Swollen skin against the rusty nails and dark blood clots formed beneath, she assumed the damage was going to be permanent. Even the movement she made turning her head caused her arms to radiate pain. The muscles in her neck and shoulders cramped from the strain of her body’s position. Her feet had needles under them while her legs felt stiff and cumbersome. She leaned her head back and tried to rest. Angela wanted to gather her strength. The opportunity to make her getaway could come at any time.
A cold hand slid over her stomach, between her breasts, and along her neck. It stopped to grip her jaw. She opened her eyes, stared straight ahead, and could see nothing. Two large eyes appeared as the woman with the lines engraved into her face stood before her. Angela tried to understand the optical illusion, the lines on the wall and the ones on the woman’s face seemed to match detail and spacing. It was as distressing as it was confusing.
Angela struggled against the woman’s grip, but she was too weak. The pale woman lifted the cup in front of her mouth. Dark smudges covered the sides of the bright white coffee cup, smears from the unknown woman’s fingers. She pressed the cup to Angela’s lips and squeezed her cheeks until the pale woman forced open her mouth. Thick liquid poured in, and it had the smell of spoiled meat. It was a salty, metallic, rancid tasting fluid. The clumps that moved into her mouth and onto her tongue caused her to gag. She tried to push it back out, but her mouth held open by force prevented her. The congealed mass slid down her throat. Angela voiced her objections with angry grunts, but it was too late, the woman had poured the cupful into her gullet. The cut faced woman let her cheeks go and pressed her finger to Angela’s bottom lip.
She said, “Hush, it comes soon.”
Angela tried to bite the finger as it pulled away from her exposed teeth. The pale woman smiled and showed a mouthful of broken teeth as she turned to leave. Angela spit what remained in her mouth, aiming for her face, but the woman had turned. It landed on her shoulder, just below her chopped black strands of hair. The dark liquid ran from her shoulder, flowed down her back, and soaked into her dirty blue tube top. The color of the liquid on the pale white skin was striking, the darkest of red on the whitest of flesh. Angela became disgusted at the possibility she presumed.
“What did you give me?”
The woman walked from the room. The gentle sway of her hips, the way she held the cup out from her side and poured the last drops onto the floor, was to taunt Angela. She hesitated at the door and glanced over her shoulder at Angela. Exposing her shattered smile, she let out a long cackle that continued as she disappeared from sight. Her sinister laugh faded down the hallway.
Angela tried to rid the awful taste on her tongue by spitting. A hot wave rushed up her spine. Saliva flowed from her mouth and her throat tightened. Angela braced herself as she expelled the foreign substance from her belly. In an attempt to keep from pulling at her wrists, she tried to allow the vomit to surge out while she held herself back against the wall. Languishing from the convulsions of her stomach muscles, Angela held her head back and gnashed her teeth until they subsided. After they passed, she eased her jaw open to gasp for breath. She lowered her head and let her chin rest against her wet chest. The view of her feet covered in a sticky dark mess surrounded by deep crimson splatters angered her. She looked at the puddle as tears formed, burning her eyes with the sting of them. They dripped from her cheeks, landed with audible impacts onto her feet, and thinned what she realized was blood.
She welcomed the silence of unconsciousness. There was peace and nothingness in the void. However, it would not remain for long, a hand pulled her head up by the hair. It forced her senses to revive. Smells flooded her nostrils, cold prickled her exposed flesh, and there was an unending pain inside her skull. Her arm muscles cramped and she could see the knots that formed under her skin. Her forearms throbbed around each metal nail each time her heart beat.
The men entered the room and set about their personal tasks. The hand pulled her head farther back until it was against the wall. She looked to see the revolting scarred face. His hand cupped her left breast, she tried to pull away from his touch, but the nails held her in place while his fingers pinched her nipple. She grimaced at his touch and turned away only to have him snatch her head back to look at him again. He stared at her eyes, unblinking, expressionless. His fingers rolled her nipple between them in a slow continuous movement. She spit in his eye and watched as the bubbled spittle slid down his cheek. He did not react to it. His eyes remained motionless as they held a penetrating gaze on hers. The man continued to rub her tip of flesh until it was raw. She gathered enough spit in her mouth to cast another glob his way, but as she inhaled to propel it, his flat forehead landed square and hard into her lips. Busted lips and loosened teeth. The world spun again and ended in silence.
15
Amy watched her father sleep, his breathing came in strained wheezes. Her mother patted the sweat from his forehead as she sat on the floor beside the small bed. Maggie found an old pencil and a small notepad in a drawer under the bed. She occupied herself with scribbling on the yellowed pages. Amy stared out the small window at the front of the trailer and thought about the place she
had called home. Amy remembered its smell and the way the boards creaked when she walked down the steps to the living room. That little white house at the end of a long gravel driveway was all she had ever known in the world. It was the only place she had ever felt comfortable and safe.
She even had a special place all her own. One she could escape to when the house was too noisy. It was a swing hung from a large limb of an oak tree in the backyard. That was until Maggie fell off it and her mother insisted on its removal. Amy tried bargaining with her mother, but she would not hear it. When her father cut the ropes, Amy cried louder with each swipe of the knife blade across the thick tan strands.
Stupid little Maggie. It wasn’t the swing’s fault she couldn’t hold on. Mama knew how much that swing meant to me. But Maggie, the big baby, is more important. She always is. I mean nothing compared to spoiled crybaby Maggie. She’s just too sweet and precious.
Amy pushed the thoughts from her head and tried to focus on the immediate problems. She looked up at the sky and watched the white clouds float by overhead. A thought came to Amy, sudden and serious. She kept it to herself for fear of what it meant and what she would have to do. And so the day passed for Amy with a steady singular fixation. They did not have enough food or water. The latter was far more important. She knew they needed to deal with the problem soon.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Do I need to fetch some water from that creek down the road?”
Jessica looked at her daughter, smiling at first, but it faded as the stark look of realization crossed her face. Amy was correct, they would need more than the three small bottles they had left. She wanted to ask Evan what to do, get his advice on it, but she knew he could not say. After a long pause, she turned to her oldest daughter.
“Yes, Amy. You will have to get some.” She sat beside her daughter at the small fold down dining table. “I want you to listen to me carefully. Go back to the van, get the camping stove and any empty bottles or jugs you can find.”
Amy nodded her head as she listened to her mother speak. She checked the gun’s magazine to count the rounds. Her uncle’s shotgun would remain for her mother in the camper. When she stood and grabbed her backpack, Maggie stood as well. Amy put her hand on her younger sister’s shoulder.
“Where do you think you’re going, little miss?”
Maggie shrugged her shoulders and sat back down. Jessica looked at her children and then to her husband. She sighed aloud. Worry furrowed her brow.
“Take Maggie with you.”
“But—”
“No. She can help carry some jugs. We don’t need to make a second trip for anything.” Jessica held up her hands to stop the protest.
Amy nodded her head in acceptance. She grabbed her sister’s hand, squeezed it tightly, and they stepped from the camper in silence. Slipping between the trees, they walked in a winding fashion until they came to the road. Amy knelt at the tree line looking to the opposite side and down along the highway. She held her hand up to her mouth and whispered into Maggie’s ear.
“Maggie, stay close,” she said. “Don’t you dare make a sound. If you need my attention pat my back.”
Maggie pulled Amy’s head to her face and whispered back to her.
“Are there bad people?”
“I hope not. But just keep an eye out. I’m not going to wait on you.”
They stepped from the protection of trees and onto the open road. Amy held the pistol clenched in her sweating hand. The sound of a squirrel barking came from the hardwood trees as though to protest or offer a warning to them walking on the road. She could not yet see the van. It was past a small curve and a short distance farther after. Amy felt the warm sun on her skin and forgot about the violent world for a brief moment of time. She pretended they were on an afternoon stroll.
Her thoughts drifted to memories of the time before. She did not feel Maggie patting her, but she heard her sister’s sudden loud gasp. Turning her head to see the look of terror in her sister’s eyes, she followed them to where Maggie was looking. She saw the three visions of ghostly white, their faces covered with bleeding scratch marks. They moved from the concealment of the young pine trees while holding hands and walked through the tall grass of the ditch. The women looked like nightmarish ghouls wearing elegant white dresses. Their surreal appearance was unnerving. Amy grabbed her sister’s hand as panic took over.
“Run, Maggie.”
She pulled on the girl’s hand as she tried to run. Maggie stood frozen in fear. Amy dragged her a few feet before noticing the women ran toward them. She had no other choice but to carry her sister to the van. The top of it was visible down the road a few hundred yards. Maggie’s screams deafened her left ear. She heard strange shrieking noises coming close behind.
I can’t hold her.
It did not come to her at first, but as she ran closer toward the van, she noticed the gun was no longer in her hand. She realized she had dropped it when she lifted Maggie. Thinking she could outrun the women and hide in the trees was not a possibility while carrying Maggie. Her strength faded fast, and she breathed air in loud gasps.
I should drop her.
“Maggie, I have to put you down. I can’t—”
Maggie clung to her sister, the scary looking women were on the road right behind them. She was afraid they would get her. Amy tried to pull her free and Maggie gripped her neck tighter.
I should just drop her.
“Please…Maggie…”
The women screamed louder in unison. Their mouths held wide, eyes full of rage, bony hands clawing at the air. They were so close Amy could hear their bare feet hitting the blacktop.
I have to drop her.
The van was almost within reach, a few dozen yards and they could climb inside.
I’m going drop her.
Sky and ground flipped as the world spun. She fell and rolled over Maggie on the highway. The first shrieking woman fell to the pavement before Amy even heard the gunfire. A third shot hit the other woman in the chest. She fell backward and slid to a stop. The third woman was gone, hidden from her sight. Amy knelt on the asphalt and held Maggie. They stared at the first woman who fell, lying with her back to them, a large portion of her skull was missing. Amy waited until she felt certain the women no longer chased after her before she sat down on the pavement with Maggie in her lap.
In the ditch amongst the tall dry grass sat the third woman. Amy watched her as she reached her fingers into the cavities where her eyes had once been. She pushed Maggie’s face into her chest to keep her from seeing. The woman’s fingers moved in and around the open sockets, working at the soft tissue inside. She pulled them out, placed them in her mouth, and made loud sucking noises. The woman repeated the same perverse actions in a slow, unending motion.
Amy tried to move, to look away, but her body refused to respond. She heard the sound of boots on the blacktop, followed by the loud crack of gunfire and the smell of burnt black powder. Amy sat and rocked Maggie as her gaze fell on a strange man.
“Are you okay, anyone hurt?” he asked.
“No. She’s just scared.”
Amy rocked back and forth with Maggie’s head close to her. She waited for him to rob them, murder them, or do something far worse.
16
Frank opened his eyes. The loud squabbling of crows in the distance pulled him from his sleep. He stared at the ashes and dead coals that remained of his fire. A thick fog hung in the warm morning air. The misty dampness obscured the sunlight. He considered continuing to lie on the wet ground and let the world pass by him. Stiff joints needed to move, however, and he wanted to get started for the day’s walk. Listening to the various pops and cracks, he stood upright, yawned aloud, and stretched his arms out as he arched his body backward. He exhaled from another long yawn, tilted his head upward, and cursed himself for letting his temper get the best of him. His hands were sore. He was positive he had broken something in his left hand.
He
rubbed his eyes to clear them. While he yawned again, the thought to take his morning piss on the dead man sprang to mind. Frank chuckled to himself and decided to do it just so the other men could see what happens when they mess with him. He found the body was gone, only a patch of dark blood-soaked grass remained. A sense of uneasiness and confusion gripped him. He spent some time looking at the ground for slide marks, trying to decipher which way they pulled his body, and his anxiousness grew as the long minutes passed. After he gave up the search, he rubbed his stiff neck and tried to rationalize what happened.
The damp ground offered no clues other than the few footprints he left himself. There were no visible signs that offered the direction they took him. For the better part of an hour, he stood considering the various possible methods they used to carry the dead man and leave little to no trace behind. He concluded they lifted him up and hauled him away, on their shoulders no doubt, before the dew fell on the ground.
He emptied his full bladder on the cold fire. It took longer and longer to relieve himself each year, he knew it was a sign of aging. Frank lifted his arm to check the time and discovered the man called Theo was not the only thing they took. The men had managed to slip his wristwatch off while he slept. The watch was the only sentimental thing left from his past he still carried. It was an anniversary gift from Clara, and it reminded him of how things were before the disease destroyed it all. He felt a firm pressure inside his chest, and a cloud of anger descended over his mind. He resolved to deny the men the satisfaction knowing it infuriated him. He raised his arm above his head, shook it, and presented it bare of the metal it wore the night before.
“You know, I can always find another one. You dumb bastards.”
There were no returning laughs, no hushed whispering, only the stillness of calm morning air. He smiled to himself as he gathered everything into his bag.
The Wretched Page 11
