by Jacob Rayne
His eyes returned to their normal position and he said, ‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t clear whether this was to her or to God.
Before she knew what was happening, he had darted out of the room.
When he returned, he was holding a hosepipe.
‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ he said. ‘After all, cleanliness is next to Godliness.’ He smiled a psycho’s grin then turned the hose on her.
The force of the ice cold water took her breath away. She felt certain it was hitting hard enough to leave bruises.
‘Turn around,’ he ordered, his tone suggesting that his moment of despair and penance was over.
Once more he was in charge.
She did so, welcome of the break on her front.
Her back was pounded with the water.
When he’d finished, she was red raw, shivering and dripping ice cold water.
He shoved a bath towel through the bars, taking care not to take too close a look at her naked body while he did so.
‘I bet that feels better, doesn’t it?’ he said, nodding his head and smiling.
She was starting to learn his moods already and how to respond to them.
She knew when he was in psycho mode that utter capitulation was the best way.
‘A lot better. Thank you very much. I feel closer to God already.’
He smiled until this last sentence and she cursed herself a little bit, having seemingly ruined the delicate precipice on which his mood teetered.
‘Well so you should,’ he said with a smile that she could easily imagine on his face at church fares and when talking to elderly parishioners.
She felt his eyes on her while she was getting dried, and begged to ask him if he’d seen enough, if his wank for that night was sorted, but she knew that this was akin to suicide so she bit her tongue.
‘I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘But I need the towel back once you’re done with it.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer, just kept staring at the floor by her soaking feet.
She hurried up, eager to get his eyes off her.
‘My clothes are wet. Do you have others for me?’
He shook his head. ‘Put them back on please. It will be warm today, they will dry.’
She did as she was bid, more to have his leering gaze off her naked body than anything else.
She shoved the towel through the bars, having the crazy idea that she could grab him and attack him while he was there.
But when he came in, she realised that she didn’t dare to do it.
‘Can I have some food, please, Reverend Cross? I’m starving in here.’
He shook his head, solemn.
Suddenly, his mood changed back to the overprotective father figure.
‘My goodness,’ he said. ‘I have forgotten something else too.’
He beckoned her to the bars, and she thought that finally he was going to give in to the thoughts that it was obvious he was having about her.
But instead of grabbing a breast or poking at her genitals, he gingerly touched the first of the wounds where he’d cut the flesh loose from her thigh.
‘That looks infected,’ he mused, pressing slightly harder until Deborah grunted with the pain and a small amount of white-green pus dribbled from the edge of the wound.
‘Again, I’m sorry. My thoughts are very unfocussed at the moment.’
He disappeared again, and she noticed that he was in such a flap that he forgot to close the door to the room.
She noted this for future use; surely it would come in handy if he dropped his guard again.
She counted, trying to figure out how far he had gone.
Ninety-two seconds later he came back, clutching what looked like a cannula.
Her fear of needles hit her with a vengeance, and she was again struck by the little peculiarities of the situation; she was learning to cope with the nutjob carving a chunk of her thigh out on a daily basis, but a needle was what terrified her.
‘No, please, I don’t like needles,’ she sobbed.
‘Whether you like it or not doesn’t come into it,’ he said. ‘In order to give you a fighting chance you need to take it. Or else you will die in the next few days.’
‘I’d rather die than go through this day after day,’ she blurted.
His brow furrowed, his lips pursed.
His head slowly shook from side to side.
‘That is not acceptable,’ he said. ‘You will never meet God if that is the way you feel.’
Before she could respond, he moved in, shoved the syringe through the side of the cage.
Her legs betrayed her, dumping her on the soaking wet floor of the cell.
He unlocked the door, ignoring her terrified cries as he shoved the antibiotic needle into her thigh and pressed the plunger.
‘Day three,’ he said. ‘Another day closer to finding Him.’
And then the cutting began again.
Over the next few days, Deborah’s mood slowly lowered.
The defiant mind-set she’d had in the start had deserted her.
Already, she felt broken and she wasn’t even a week into this Hell.
She felt ashamed of herself; she’d thought she’d have been strong enough to get through this.
Her tears were warm on her cheeks, drawing small clouds of steam as they hit the air.
It was cold in here now and the water lying around on the floor from the twice-daily hosedowns made it hard to find a dry spot to sleep or sit in.
Her clothes were chafing on her skin horribly now.
She’d have preferred sitting in her own filth over the ice cold hosings.
At least I’m getting a dose of antibiotics every day, she thought grimly.
After the pound of flesh had been taken this time and the poker used to cauterise the wound in this sinister little ritual, she felt at a particularly low ebb.
She counted the number of missing chunks of her leg.
Nine.
Thirty-one more days of this Hell.
Another month!
She felt this was the most depressing thought she’d ever had.
The lack of food was making her belly crawl beneath her skin.
She constantly felt sick from the incessant blazing hunger.
Her ribs now poked through her flesh.
The curves that Lee had loved so much had dwindled away to nothing.
Oh God, Lee! She thought.
The ordeal hit her anew and she cried for her boyfriend, her sister and all of her friends, but especially for the life which had been beaten out of her womb.
Head in hands, she sobbed uncontrollably, able to see only one way out.
When he came in with the hose this time, she racked her brain for how she could put him into his frantic state of mind where he seemed to forget things.
She had it.
He came in, whistling what she was sure was a hymn, but coming from his thin lips it was sinister as hell.
‘Good morning,’ he beamed.
She didn’t let him get into his spiel.
‘Where were you with the hose yesterday? You missed a whole day. I’m unclean. God is angry at you again.’
He furrowed his brow, and she could see he was trying to think if what she was saying was true.
In his panic, he dropped the hose and the towel and ran out of the room.
She saw what she needed there and she crawled on her belly over the edge of the cage.
If she stuck her arm through the bars she was sure she could reach it.
She did so, and the towel was easily within her grasp.
She smiled at the rare piece of luck in this vile episode.
Towel in hand, she managed to twist it through the bars to fashion a makeshift noose that hung from the top of the cage.
The cage was high enough for her to swing from, so she carefully climbed up the bars, gripped them tight with her knees and shoved her head into the noose.
&
nbsp; She looked around the squalid basement room that was currently her entire world, to take a final decision.
Then she let go with her legs, pulling her body down hard.
The towel cinched in tight around her neck, swiftly cutting off the flow of air and blood to her brain.
She began to panic a little at the feeling, but she didn’t fight it.
She welcomed it.
Her peripheral vision began to close in, and with a smile she realised that this was what dying felt like.
2.7
Deborah was rudely thrust from death’s merciful embrace by angry shouting and slaps to the face.
Another blow turned her head to the side and her mouth was flooded with the taste of pennies.
‘What on earth were you thinking?’ Cross spat, his face red and twisted into a mask of rage.
‘I can’t bear another month of this.’
His expression mellowed slightly. ‘You’re struggling,’ he said, as though the thought was brand new to him.
She looked up at him through eyes that bled tears.
‘Well what do you fucking think?’ she spat.
He let the curse slide for the moment; he was more concerned with her welfare.
‘He told me you were coping well. He even suggested upping the ante a little bit. I had no idea you felt like this.’
‘Well if you lock someone in a cage for a week, starve them, cuts lumps of their fucking flesh out how do you think it’s gonna make them feel?’
He nodded, again letting the curse go.
It was as if he had never taken the time to think about the pain he was inflicting on her.
‘You will get through this,’ he said, clasping one of her hands in the most tender gesture she had seen from him so far. ‘I know you will because He has told me so. It may get worse before it gets better, but He is waiting for you on the other side so talk to Him, welcome Him into your soul.’
She thought about what he said, and if she took the time to try and see it from his perspective it did kind of make sense in a psychotic way.
His hand still clasped hers in that curiously way. ‘Now, I’m sorry to tell you that your indiscretion must be punished. After all, suicide is a sin. But remember I’m doing all of this for your own good. To bring you salvation.’
With that he released her hand and she found that bizarrely she missed the touch, though she also found it repulsive.
Without another word, he slammed the door shut, leaving her in darkness.
She screamed and cried and beat her hands against the bars until they were bloody, though she knew it was no use.
Her arms and legs ached with the effort.
When she could punch no more, she slammed her head into the bars until her face was bloody and bruised and sore.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, stinging the fresh wounds.
How could you be so stupid?
You’ve pushed it too far.
You’ve lost his trust.
Now her suffering was going to worsen – if such a thing was even possible.
She wished the towel had done the job, had let her fade into darkness in silence and serenity.
She felt cheated from the merciful death of which she had seen a glimmer.
Instead she’d returned to Hell for more suffering and terror and despair.
Screaming at the top of her lungs, she slammed her head against the bars harder and harder until he came in and sedated her.
When she woke up, her head pounded, and it felt like her entire face had been pulled tight, as though her skull was growing too big for her skin. The after-effect of the pounding she’d given it, she reckoned.
As she became more alert, she realised that her entire body felt tighter.
She realised that she was sat upright, strapped to one of the corner posts of the cage tight enough that she could barely move.
There was a lot of strain in her shoulders, her back and her neck.
She grunted as the discomfort turned to pain.
It took her a good few minutes before she noticed he was staring at her curiously.
He was crouching naked – par for the course now – with the knife he used to take his ritual pound of flesh in his trembling right hand.
His left hand fidgeted with the bottom of his dog collar.
His eyes crawled over her.
‘You’re a strange one, Deborah,’ he said, pursing his lips and tapping the tip of his knife against his front teeth. ‘I’m really struggling to figure you out. Most girls I bring here give up totally by this point. You can see the fight go out of them. You, you’re different. Sure, you tried to kill yourself, but I can see a fire blazing behind those bloodshot eyes. If you got out of that cage you’d do your utmost to break me.’
She didn’t want to say anything, as her jaw and gums pulsated from the repeated collisions with the side of the cage, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Just fucking kill me already,’ she spat. ‘Quit milking it.’
He laughed, tutted, tapped the knife on his teeth again. ‘No no no. But I have had to set you up the way you are to prevent you trying to hurt yourself any more. He has great things planned for you, as do I. We cannot risk you doing yourself any more damage than is necessary.
‘And speaking of damage, it’s that time we both know and love. Time to cut the devil away, piece by piece.’
She didn’t even resist this time, just hoped he hit a major artery and let her bleed out for good.
A week of misery and agony followed where she didn’t move from the cage post.
The Reverend came in every now and then and forced fluids on her.
She wished he hadn’t; her mood had deteriorated further.
Her wrists were scraped raw and oozed blood that dripped from the pale tips of her fingers.
She hadn’t even bothered trying to escape; it was just the friction of her moving up and down trying to get comfortable enough to sleep.
Despite being more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life, she hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time.
She felt too weak to even hold her head up.
Her thighs blazed from where he’d torn away the pounds of flesh.
The wounds were all in various stages of healing, a calendar of her pain.
She doubted there’d be any pounds of flesh left to take by the end of this ordeal, judging by the way she was losing weight.
When he did come, she found she was pleased to see him.
The fluids were always welcome, as her throat was permanently dry.
The stench from her piss told her she was badly dehydrated.
It looked as though the end was near, and she welcomed it.
He kept her just hydrated enough to keep her alive.
She managed to wring extra water from her sodden clothes after every hosedown.
This tasted foul – she’d had the same blood-soaked, mould-stinking clothes on for a fortnight now – but was like manna from heaven to her parched throat.
Finally, when she thought she was so weak she could take no more, he’d taken the latest pound of flesh – this time from the small of her back, which was already a seething raw mass thanks to the time spent against the cage wall – and unfastened her.
He laid her carefully in the centre of the cage.
‘Don’t try anything so stupid again,’ he said, his words seeming to swim around her in her dizzy, exhausted state.
‘Can I please have something to eat?’ she managed, her voice hoarse and weak.
He silently shook his head.
Left her alone again.
The next thing she knew it was hosedown time again, and she was amazed to find that she’d had what was possibly the best sleep of her entire life.
She awoke refreshed; still in agony, still terrorised, but with a slightly more positive outlook on the whole situation.
Her defiant mind-set began to return.
If he won’t feed me, I’ll have to feed myself, she
thought, unable to stop herself letting out a high-pitched giggle.
She rolled up her sleeve as high as she could.
Hunger blazed a hole right through her core.
She knew she needed to eat, but was loathe to inflict any more pain on her battered body.
Feeling truly sickened by what she was about to do, she moved her mouth over to her left bicep.
Her entire body trembled like a leaf in a gale.
She swallowed hard, removing the last of the moisture in her mouth.
She faltered as her teeth hit her skin.
Closed her eyes, unable to believe what she was about to do.
Then, without thinking, she bit down hard enough to draw blood and pulled a mouthful of skin loose.
The taste and feel of the hot blood hitting her throat made her gag, but she forced it down, knowing it was her only chance of sustenance.
She gripped her nose hard – sending waves of pain spiralling through it from where Cross’ fist had broken it – and swallowed the flesh.
She debated taking another bite, but wanted to save some of herself for the coming days.
Counting the wounds on her body was the only way to tell how long she’d been in here so she reckoned there were still another eighteen days left in here.
She sunk into a solemn silence, doing her utmost not to think about what she’d just done.
Her arm stung like hell and she was certain she’d given herself a nasty infection from the effects of not brushing her teeth for the best part of a month.
The coppery tang of blood still tainted her mouth.
When she managed to distract herself, the tiny bit of food made her feel slightly more energetic.
Until she laid down, and the taste of the flaccid skin and the blood that had surrounded it flooded back up her throat.
She bent double, heaving it up on the floor of her squalid cell.
It lay next to her, a partially-digested chunk of her arm in a small, frothing pool of blood.
Now her mouth tasted even worse.
Her stomach was wracked with spasms after she’d heaved it up, but there was nothing else to come up, just blood-streaked bile.
When the sickness abated, she fell into an uneasy sleep.
When she woke next, the room spun and a foul concoction of equal parts blood and vomit befouled her mouth.
