by Schow, Ryan
From his pocket, he withdrew another set of cuffs, handcuffed her right hand to the bed post and went back to his seven series BMW to retrieve other, more important items. On the way out, he saw Rebecca struggling with the restraints. She was sniffling like a big baby. The skin on her wrists flared to the color of cherry red licorice ropes under the metal cuffs.
“Don’t struggle, Rebecca. In your condition, it could prove disastrous.”
This seemed to still her. Got her thinking. If only she knew what was inside her, she would not struggle. Her mind, however, struggled mightily.
In the bedroom, Savannah was coming around. When he found her, he punched her in the chin with all his might. She fell still once more. Using four lengths of rope, he removed the metal cuffs, then secured her spread-eagle to the bedposts. When he was done, he duct taped her mouth shut, then drove a knife at an angle down into her chest and heart.
She shot up against her restraints fast, writhing, eyes bulging the way anything getting gutted with a knife would, her mouth wailing against the duct tape.
Methodically, because he had done this before and knew exactly what he was doing (he wasn’t called the Butcher of Mauthausen for nothing), he fed the clear rubber tubing into her heart. In just the wink of an eye, he inserted a stopper into the tubing to keep blood from flooding the hose.
When he was ready, when the tube was all the way in her heart, he pulled a sports bottle out of his bag, then removed the stopper from the hose and poured the contents inside her. All this while she bucked and squirmed against the restraining ropes and duct tape.
His own special blend of gasoline turned the tube an amber hue. It was heavier than the gas one would use to fuel their automobile. Far heavier. He felt himself starting to smile. This was just like old times. The fluid slowly went down into the girl’s chest cavity, pushing the blood back into her heart.
She passed out. He waited for her to return. She did. Then, after a moment’s recognition, and presumably the pain of having been stabbed, she fought the ropes once more, but they were pulled tight, allowing him to finish his work nearly unabated. He added more gasoline. This time it went down easy. He looked down and the opened knife wound was already knitting itself together around the tube.
“Interesting,” he said. He didn’t expect that.
He slid another length of tubing, this one equipped with a fuse, down into the wound before it could close itself all the way shut, then eased the first tube out of the hole. He used a staple gun to hold the wound shut. Only the tube with the fuse remained. It sat like a sheltered shoestring left inside her. But much thinner. And with greater purpose.
Heim stood and removed a lighter. The girl’s eyeballs were rolling around, working their way up into her head. It was often like this. He lit the fuse and stood back.
“You brought this on yourself,” he said.
Instead of watching, however—he had seen this show dozens of times—he grabbed the feeder tube then turned and walked away. Rebecca was his focus now. She was so much more important. In the living room, he hauled her to her feet and took her with him. As much as he thought he wanted to watch Savannah burn, he had orchestrated enough death in his life. Among the various nicknames he had earned back in the second world war, Dr. Death had been his favorite. Although the Butcher of Mauthausen had a nice ring to it. But not anymore.
Genetics was now his thing, and he was playing a much larger role in this brave new world than even he had imagined. Killing people, torturing them, butchering them…these were selfish endeavors. Pursuits of a madman. Lately, he’d lost interest the minute his victims expired. The high just wasn’t there anymore. Like an well worn addiction, or a failed compulsion. The man he was today…that man was more than just a ruthless killer. In this new generation of himself, he was a proponent of life.
Inflamed
1
The fuse sizzles crispy down inside my skin. Whatever that bastard stuck in my heart, everything in me feels flayed and raw, unfixable even to me. Imagine an open wound, a fresh wound, being scraped with steel wool and that might start to describe the pain.
When the fuse burns into the closed hole in my chest, I feel my insides catch fire and whatever I knew to be painful before—whatever the gold standard in the worst pain in the world once was—this is infinitely worse!
I scream into the duct tape on my face as my insides roast, scream as the flames eat through my organs. I scream and I scream and I motherfreaking scream. My shirt catches fire but it does not burst into flames like I feared. The center of my bra burns in half, separates a half inch. Its flame retardant material doesn’t ignite, and thank God.
But me?
My mind is desperately trying to get away from this, from my smoking skin, from the moaning and terrifying noises my mouth and nostrils are making, from the indescribable agony of my chest being turned into a fiery, flesh consuming chasm. If this is the end, and I pray it is, it’s taking too damn long. I buck and thrash only a bit more because the smell of my cooked skin is wafting up my nose with every frantic breath and it’s making me sick. My body finally gives up, my mind slinking away to some other place it can handle. The pit of my chest is a coal pit that burns bright orange, and still I can’t believe it’s over. But it is.
It is.
2
All night long I twist and wriggle against my restraints, my body purging gallons of sweat, my skin and organs twitching, aching, crawling against the vigilant efforts of beetle-sized fire ants with their bonfire sized torches. The heat my body is generating isn’t like the gasoline fire that nearly burned me to death from the inside out, but it’s damn close. My mind feels insane. I cry into the duct tape because it hurts, because I’m going crazy, because I’m not dead when I should be. But mostly I cry because Rebecca is gone. My mouth screams into the duct tape, but it all sounds desperate and muffled.
It all sounds so utterly abortive.
Fortunately I don’t throw up into the duct tape and choke myself to death. Fortunately I haven’t pooped the bed. Yet. This will happen eventually, and it terrifies me to think about both. Hopefully my father will find me in time. But it’s still dark outside, I’m still tied to the bed, and I’m still all alone. My eyes close…and I dream of gasoline fires, of surgical knives, of the murderous doctor.
Then, when I finally awaken from my fever state, when the burning inside me steadily subsides enough and my head doesn’t feel so rowdy with madness, I try to think about what’s next. Getting my sanity back, if such a thing is possible, is the first thing. Getting free is the next.
Outside, the sun is coming up. My mouth remains taped shut, and my shirt and bra are burned open. I can barely look at myself without significant strain to my neck, the way I’m tied to the bed. If there is one silver lining in the abysmally dark cloud that is this morning, it’s that I’m not yet bleeding from every orifice, and my nipples aren’t exposed. When my father finds me, both of these things are going to feel extra important.
Even more important, though, is Rebecca. I’m terrified thinking about what that creep is doing to her. What he’s already done to her. The ropes continue cutting into my wrists and ankles, but I still have circulation. Barely.
How have I survived this? I wonder. How is my heart still beating?
Then it occurs to me: I am immortal.
No.
Yes?
I can’t be.
Seriously, though…no one survives such a thing. No one!
But I did.
Holy shitballs, I did.
3
My father finds me an hour later and he completely freaks out. He pulls the duct tape off my mouth, cuts the ropes away and just hugs me. He hugs me and, honest to God, he won’t let go.
“Who did this to you?” he growls.
“Gerhard’s doctor. The one I stole Rebecca from.”
“Did he—” He can’t finish, and this lets me know exactly the question he’s asking.
“No,” I say, “n
ot like that.”
“Why is your chest black?” he asks. I barely want him to look at me because my bra is hanging on to my smallish tits for dear life and, just as I alluded to earlier, no girl my age ever wants their father seeing her upper-body girl parts.
“I don’t know,” I lie. If my father knows I’m immortal…if he knows I know this…there’s no telling what kind of trouble he’ll think me capable of.
“But you’re okay?”
“Yes. Did you see Rebecca? Is she here?”
He races from the room calling her name. Would he have worried like that for me? I wonder. But then I tell myself I’m stupid because he just got done practically hugging me to death.
“She’s gone,” he says, reappearing in my room. The look on his face is frantic. He’s breathing heavy, and the story behind his eyes is he can’t believe this is happening.
Well it is. It did.
“He said he had her,” I say as he’s untying the ropes. “That he was taking her.”
The thought infuriates and nauseates me. I hate that son of a bitch, and I hate what he did to me. If he thinks I’m dead, though, then it’s to my advantage. The bad news is when he realizes I’m not, it’ll be because I’m about to end his miserable f*cking life.
“I’ll get her back, dad. If it’s the last thing I do, I promise I’ll get her back.”
Epilogue
1
The way everyone’s faces looked on September eleventh when the twin towers went down—stricken, so rattled with disbelief, so shocked that even breathing and moving took a tremendous effort—that’s how I feel. My face is bloodless, my hands made into unconscious fists. Every day I feel these sparks of rage, but my anger is grossly overshadowed by the pervading feeling of weakness, and defeat. Zombies aren’t this depressed. Jesus Christ, I can’t even cry. I can’t even puke.
The doorbell rings.
It’s Jacob.
I open the door and he takes a moment to appraise me. I can tell by the way he’s looking at me he knows I’m not well. “How are you?” he asks, tentative.
At this point, why should I pull punches?
“Rebecca was taken from here last night. After Maggie killing herself, trust me, you don’t want any part of my life. Not now, maybe never. I’m so sorry, Jacob.”
I close the door, even though he starts talking. It’s rude and I promise myself I will apologize to him one day, but I won’t. My feet take me to Maggie’s room. The bed feels pillow soft, the blankets so heavy as I slide under them, like a constant hug in the dark silence of the room. I close my eyes, hoping for sleep. It doesn’t come easy, and I fear the nightmares.
There’s no way I can go back to my bed. Having your insides barbequed out by some psycho is guaranteed insomnia. It’s borderline insanity. In Maggie’s bed, removed from the horrors of my room, I plan on sleeping all day. Eventually, sleep sneaks up on me, pulling me under with delicate efficiency.
My phone rings several times. I roll over, ignore it. Hours later, my father pops the door open to check on me. I tell him to go away in an almost polite mumble. Half my brain is torn. I’m in and out of sleep, in and out of sanity. Do I risk everything to find Rebecca, wherever she is? Do I start that war? I want to. I want to end the doctor who took her. It would be warranted.
After all, he tried to kill me.
But where does this end? With more murder? I’m still in high school for God’s sake! And I’m half in denial about my mortality. Twice now I have been beaten to what I consider a reasonable death, yet I lived, and somehow this makes me feel more vulnerable than I’m willing to admit. If the serum I’d been given by Dr. Gerhard after surviving my own personal Chernobyl hadn’t been coursing through my veins, I would be dead. I should be dead.
My phone rings again. I continue to ignore it. Night descends and eventually my eyes open on their own and refuse to stay shut. I check my caller ID. It was Damien who’d called. Silent curses fill my head thinking of him calling me a glorified lab rat. I keep scrolling. Netty called, and so did Cicely. But then I stop scrolling when I see the number I’ve been dying to see for so long now.
I dial it and the girl that answers sounds nothing like my old friend.
“Georgia?” I say.
“Hello, Abby. How are you?”
“Good, how did you get my number?” I ask.
“Victoria, I mean, Cicely.”
We start talking and it’s apparent that whatever Gerhard did to her, however she came to survive what might have been her complete disintegration, it left her a completely different person. Her tone is cold, clipped and lifeless. Like someone dragged her dead body out of a lake, pumped a few breaths of life back into her, then immediately stuck her on the phone with me.
Quickly, startlingly, there is nothing to talk about. I want to tell her about Maggie, about Jake and Damien, about the girl I think was Brittney Spears, even though now my mind is telling me other things. I want to tell her how I slapped Blake in the face and it felt euphoric. The old Georgia, she’d understand. This new version, however, is no conversationalist. She might as well be asleep. Or ten feet from the phone this whole time.
Whatever joy I feel in knowing she is safe is suddenly eclipsed by the notion that my friends are all leaving me. Maggie is gone. Rebecca has been kidnapped, again. Georgia is a different person, the girl I know now just a distant memory. Brayden is somewhere in Las Vegas and for whatever reason, he hasn’t called me. Netty is in San Francisco, her innocence torn from her, her virtue nearly violated, the course of her life dramatically altered by her father’s arrest and the perverted behavior of two idiot boys. I want to wallow in the sadness of my life thinking of Netty and Maggie and Georgia and Rebecca, but in the end, I say a polite good-bye to Georgia and I just sit in the darkness, in my cocoon of pillows and blankets, and feel sorry for myself.
My pity party starts a downward spiral. I call Netty and the minute she answers I start bawling. The relief I feel is religious. Never underestimate the healing power of a good cry. Netty tries to calm me. Her voice, as awkward and as clunky as it can be, hypnotizes me. Stabilizes me.
We talk for about an hour. I tell her everything. Everything. She takes it all pretty well, but it’s going to sit hard inside her, I know this.
She says, “I’m coming over.”
“I’d rather come to you, if that’s okay. There have been too many bad things that have happened in this place and what I need most is a change of scenery.”
She gives me her address, and I tell her I’ll be there in an hour and a half.
When I tell my father I’m leaving, he objects. I love him for it. I give him a big hug and tell him I’m sorry. As I’m packing my things, I hear him in the other room, on his cell phone. He’s telling the person on the other end about me, about how I’m leaving. I’m too inconsolable to protest. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s talking to Margaret.
The monster.
Except maybe she’s not a monster. Maybe I’m the monster now. For all the things I’ve done, for who I have become, I’m starting to believe the real monster here is me.
I hear him tell the person on the other end of the phone that he would like her to come over, to stay with him. I think it’s a good idea. Even if it is Margaret. I’m pretty sure she’s single again. All thanks to me and the pornographic tendencies of the scumbag writer. I still can’t believe he hit on me while out on a date with her! Then again, she bamboozled my father, so perhaps she’s being force-fed her just desserts and now she’s ready to not be such a shifty bitch.
Before leaving, I go into my father’s study and give him one last hug. He excuses himself from the conversation for a second, holds the phone away from him and wraps me in his arms.
“I wish you weren’t leaving,” he says.
“I know, daddy.”
“Please be careful. Drive slowly and safely.”
“I will.” I look at the phone and say, “Who are you talking to?”
“Your mother.�
�
This gives me pause. Are they getting back together? Oh, God, I hope not. I suppose time will tell, though. Loud enough, so she can hear me, I say, “Tell the monster I said hello.”
My father just frowns, and I frown deeper. He kisses me on the cheek and says to call him in the morning. I promise him I will.
“I love you, daddy,” I say, sad I’m leaving, but resolute.
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
The drive to Netty’s mother’s apartment in the city is lonely. The emotional burden of these last weeks overtakes me and I find myself in a desolate place. Sometimes the boy DNA in me finds the right song on the radio and gets me to a hundred miles an hour on the freeway, but then the more reasonable female DNA in me slows back down and observes the rules of the road.
I’m a mess. I’m in tatters.
And then I’m not. As the city comes into view, I’m struck with a moment of perfect clarity and I realize two very important things: one, I have to learn to fight, to defend myself against hard-boiled men who are determined to kill me, and two, like I promised my father, I have got to get Rebecca back. How I’ll accomplish either, I can’t say for sure. What I do know is, come hell or high water, I’m doing both.
2
Arabelle walked Gerhard to the lab. He wore a long, silk robe and he seemed a bit nervous. He didn’t want to do this, Arabelle knew, but it had to be done. Dr. Heim was already in the lab. He was staring longingly into the glass canister with the pink gel, the canister holding the young Rebecca Taylor once more. She floated there, soft and naked, suspended in perfect stillness.
“Is the child okay?” Gerhard asked.
Arabelle looked at Rebecca’s belly for the first signs of the girl’s pregnancy, but she didn’t see anything. The girl’s waist was as flat as hers, and this concerned her.
