“Do you have something to tell me, Nicole?”
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said calmly.
“All I want from you is the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“Everything. More specifically, anything you may have been keeping from me. A secret, if you will.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. How can I have a secret? You know exactly where I am at all times.”
“Apparently that isn’t good enough.”
“What does that mean?”
The sharp pain in my neck came again and I realized that whatever it was, Ron was doing it. He seemed to be poking me with something sharp.
“Last chance to tell me, Nicole. Then, things will get bad for you.”
“Ron, I don’t know what you’re talking about. If I did, I’d tell you. I don’t keep things from you. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
“And now you’re lying to me.” He shook his head.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he screamed.
He held up a short piece of plastic, the item he’d been using to poke at my neck. The same piece of plastic that I’d used to try to unlock the handcuffs. The broken piece of comb tooth that I’d been unable to find was now held tightly between Ron’s thumb and forefinger. Somehow, somewhere, Ron had found it.
“Still sticking with that story, Nicole?”
“What is that?” I asked, trying to sound innocent.
“So you are. Well, that’s your choice. Just know that whatever happens to you now is your own doing. I’ve given you more than a fair amount of opportunities to come clean and be honest with me, but you’ve chosen again and again not to. For whatever reason, you choose to cling desperately to your lies. And for that, you alone stand responsible for your fate.”
I considered telling him the truth, but I figured it was too late for honesty.
He stood and walked away. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d left, but he didn’t. He walked over to the cabinet. That wouldn’t have been so bad either if I hadn’t known that inside the cabinet is where he kept his implements of torture.
Suddenly, I needed to pee. And puke. And cry. And scream. But I couldn’t bring myself to do any of those things. I was too afraid to move.
With his back to me, Ron fumbled around in the cabinet. It sounded as if he were picking things up and sitting them down, probably trying to decide on which to use. I thought of turning my head to look, but decided I didn’t want to know. If I saw the tools he was choosing, it would only make matters worse. Sometimes it’s better to not know. That’s why dentists always hold their tools down, out of the line of sight until sneaking them around your cheek and into your mouth. Dentists are in the know. And probably all five asked, not just the usual four.
I began to tremble.
Though I’d feared being in this position as I’d watched him destroy the other women, I’d never actually thought I’d be here. In my arrogant stupidity, I’d assumed his fondness for me would keep me from this spot. And now that I was here, I was terrified beyond words. Images flashed through my mind of things he’d done to them. And they were women who’d meant nothing to him. He claimed to love me. He felt he’d been betrayed by the woman he loved. So the very thing that I’d hoped would be my salvation, his love of me, was about to turn out to be my downfall.
I closed my eyes and wished with all my might that whatever he was about to do to me wouldn’t be that bad. I started out wishing that he’d let me go, but I felt like that was a long shot, so I concentrated my efforts on the lesser punishment. As long as I could survive and live the rest of my life in peace after this, I would be okay. But if he started slicing off my breasts, well, I didn’t know how I’d handle that.
When I opened my eyes, Ron was standing over me.
Holding a hammer.
Shit.
Chapter 39
“Ron, can’t we talk about this?”
He squatted beside me. “I tried to talk to you, Nicole. Talk time is over.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You’ll see.” Then he smiled at me. Had I had use of my hands, I would’ve ripped that smile off his face and shoved it up his ass.
He turned my left hand over so that my palm was flat on the floor. He placed his foot on the back of my hand at the base of my fingers. He put all his weight on it, causing me considerable pain. Of course, that was nothing compared to what came next. And somehow, I knew that’s how it was going to be.
I stared at my left hand, but I couldn’t see it because Ron’s leg was in the way. His right knee was on the floor, his left foot on my wrist. I saw him bend over, and then I felt him messing with my fingers. The same fingers which were starting to go numb from lack of circulation due to his foot on my wrist cutting off the blood flow.
Unsure of whether I actually wanted to see what he was doing, I alternately squeezed my eyes shut and tried to see around his foot.
When the pain came, I was glad I couldn’t see.
I tried to hold back, but the third time he hammered, I cussed loudly. I said every bad word I knew. I even invented some new ones.
After hammering five times, Ron stopped. He stood up. I looked at my poor hand.
The blood came rushing back to it, causing a pins-and-needles sensation that was agonizing, especially for my forefinger, where the tingling sensation faded into the background and was replaced by an intense throbbing. Lifting my hand off the floor as far as I could, I could see why that finger hurt more than the others.
The broken piece of plastic was about half an inch long. Almost every bit of it was buried under my fingernail. Nothing more than the very tip of it poked out from under my nail, which was cut off even with the tip of my finger. Blood ran from under the nail and slowly rolled down the side of my finger and into my palm. As it trickled its way down my wrist and under the cuff, I shot a hateful look to Ron.
“How could you?” I sounded pitiful. Even as I said it, I realized I was lucky. If this was all he done to me, I was thankful. I should stop bitching.
“You lied to me, Nicole. You’re lucky that’s all I did to you.”
He turned to leave the basement.
“Wait,” I said urgently.
He slowly turned to me as he stepped onto the first stair.
“Aren’t you going to take it out?”
“No.” He continued up the stairs.
“But it hurts,” I whined, still aware that things could be so much worse.
“I know.” With that, he shut the door at the top of the stairs, leaving me alone in the cold, damp basement, naked and bleeding from the finger.
I cried for a while, but finally decided to stop being a baby about it. I’d had worse pain. After all, I’d had natural child birth. But still, the tip of my finger throbbed ferociously with every heartbeat.
Ron must’ve found the broken comb tooth while sweeping. I hadn’t been able to see it, but he’d found it somewhere and had known that it was because of me. Of course he’d known it was me. There were only two of us in the house and he knew he hadn’t done it. It was painfully obvious that it was me. And when questioned about it, I’d lied to him. That pissed him off. It was funny how a psychopath who lived in a world of delusions could be so hell-bent on people being honest.
Chapter 40
Ron left me shackled in the basement. Minutes felt like hours, and then became hours. Hours felt like days, and then became days. I had no way of knowing this. I could only guess at how much time had passed by the angry growl of my stomach and the amount of times I’d peed and defecated.
At first, I did a lot of thinking. I thought about my husband and son. I thought about my mom. I thought about everything I could possibly think about. When I’d exhausted my thoughts, I slept.
What started out as an escape from my boredom soon became a necessity. I was weak and growing weaker by the second.
My serious thirst was evident in more
than just my dry mouth and guttural craving. I was urinating very little now and far less frequently. I held it as long as possible, pleading with my body to hold onto it and suck as much sustenance from it as it could. Eventually, I lost out and what little urine my body had produced seeped out of me, ran across the floor and dripped away into the drain, following the same route the blood of so many others had taken.
Along with the lack of urination, my defecation soon ceased. Taking in no food, I was producing no waste. That didn’t mean that the waste I’d already produced wasn’t still lying on the floor underneath me. I gave up the hope that Ron would come and wash it away. Apparently he wasn’t going to.
Scary thoughts crossed my mind. What if something had happened to Ron? What if he’d been killed in a car accident and no one knew I was down here? How long would it be before anyone came? I tried to push those thoughts away before I succumbed to madness.
Instead, I thought of all the things I was going to do as soon as I got out of here. Because damn it, I was going to get out of here. As hard as it was to keep pretending that escape was possible, I clung to it with every fiber of my being. There had to be a way, and all I had to do was find it.
As I imagined myself soaking in a hot bubble bath, surrounded by lit candles and classical music, I fell asleep. I dreamed of water. Lots and lots of water. It started out as a babbling brook nearby, then turned to rain, and then became a raging waterfall. I tilted my head up and enjoyed the feeling of the water as it splashed off my neck and chest and against my face.
I slowly opened my eyes and realized that it wasn’t a waterfall at all but a crazy man with a water hose.
When he saw me open my eyes, he didn’t smile the way he used to. In fact, he didn’t smile at all. He briefly met my eyes, and then looked away, continuing to spray around my body.
“You’ve made quite a mess down here, Nicole. I understand the urination and defecation, but what I don’t understand is the vomit. Are you sick?”
Was I? I couldn’t remember throwing up. I vividly remembered feeling sick at my stomach because I still was.
I tried to speak, but my mouth was too dry. I closed my mouth and wiggled my tongue around in a futile effort to work up some saliva to coat my mouth and throat. It was no use. My body was too dry to even make spit.
Ron must’ve seen this. “You thirsty?”
Had I been able to talk, I would’ve called him some of the new cuss words I’d invented as he’d hammered a splinter of plastic under my fingernail. But all I could do was nod.
He aimed the hose at my face, particularly my nose and mouth. I had to turn my head to avoid drowning. While he laughed, I let my mouth fall open and allowed the steady gush of cold water to pour in. It tasted like old, dirty rubber, but it was delicious. I swallowed until he moved the hose.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “How long have I been down here?”
Continuing to spray the floor around me, he said, “Five days.”
“Why’d you leave me down here so long?” I wanted to yell and scream, but my throat was sore, and the words came out no more than a husky whisper.
“I needed some time away from you. I planned to leave you down here a day or two, but I got so wrapped up in the novel, I lost track of time. I might still be in my room writing if it weren’t for my physical needs.”
“Physical needs?” I assumed he’d been eating and using the restroom over the past few days.
Tossing the hose to the floor beside me, he stepped over to me and I suddenly knew what physical needs he was referring to. With the water streaming from the hose beside me, Ron unfastened his slacks and took his position between my legs.
Before I could begin to fathom how anyone—psychotic or not—could be aroused and feel okay about taking advantage of someone in this position, the nausea overwhelmed me and I vomited, though it was no more than water and stomach acid. I turned my head to the side and let it run out of my mouth as Ron went at me frantically.
Having sex on the floor was uncomfortable. Having sex on a concrete floor was worse. Being raped on a concrete floor while naked was the worst. Ron was putting everything he had into this, slamming himself against me furiously. His forceful thrusts had slid me on the concrete, creating scrapes on my backside. The shackles holding my feet were pulled taut now, and with each of his thrusts, the chains jerked my ankles and caused stabbing pains in my hips. Eventually, every inch of my body was hurting in one way or another.
He grunted in frustration. Occasionally, he stopped and repositioned himself.
After a while, he said, “Damn it.”
He stopped, sat back on his heels, ran his fingers through his hair and wiped the sweat from his face. While he struggled to control his ragged breathing, he stared at me.
Deciding to give it another go, he forced himself into me again. He stared into my eyes. When it was apparent to him that just slamming into me wasn’t going to bring him to orgasm, he wrapped his right hand around my throat and squeezed.
When his squeeze became tight enough to restrict my airway, I started to struggle. I jerked my head back and forth, desperately trying to shake his hand off my neck. I gasped for air and tried to scream. He laughed and continued going at me, seeming to enjoy it now.
As he grew closer to climaxing, his grip around my throat tightened and my vision grew dark. When he closed his eyes in ecstasy, I closed mine in submission, both welcoming Death and hoping he would pass me by.
Chapter 41
I was shocked awake by the cold water hitting my face. I opened my eyes and turned my head. Ron was standing beside me spraying me again with the hose. Up and down he went, spraying my body.
“You’re a pretty dirty girl, Nicole,” he said while he sprayed me. “We’ve got to keep you clean.” He walked down and stood between my legs, spraying my private area. “We need to keep this clean, now don’t we?”
I’d thought I was cold before, but lying on a cold wet concrete floor while being sprayed with cold water made me rethink it. I was freezing. My teeth were starting to chatter.
“Please,” I managed to say between teeth chatters.
“Please what?”
“Let me go.”
“Let you go?” He stopped spraying me.
I nodded.
“You want to go?”
I nodded again.
“Where do you want to go, Nicole?”
“Home,” I said, my teeth clicking harder.
Ron threw down the hose and stomped away, toward the cabinet.
I closed my eyes and hoped he was just going to turn off the water. When I opened them, I saw that I was wrong. He hadn’t turned off the water. What he had done was retrieved the knife. The same knife he’d used to carve my name into other women’s flesh. The very same knife he performed mastectomies with.
The dim light of the bare bulbs bounced off the shiny blade and briefly illuminated Ron’s eyes as he turned the knife around in front me, making sure I saw it. When he saw my eyes fall to the blade, he smiled. Not the usual smile he gave me. This was an evil smile. The smile of someone about to do something bad. Something very bad.
“Nicole, you know what I’m starting to think?” When I didn’t answer, he yelled, “Do you?”
I shook my head slowly, which took all my waning strength.
“I’m starting to think you don’t love me. I’m starting to think you don’t even like me. Only someone with no heart could not like someone like me. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I nodded slowly, feeling that this is what he wanted me to do.
Ron slowly lowered the knife to my chest. I thought he was bluffing. Even as I felt the tip of the long blade poke into my cold flesh I thought he was bluffing. I was certain he’d say something he found to be clever, and then he’d stop. But I was wrong. It seemed I was always wrong.
He sliced into me and I screamed. I didn’t want to, but the pain was terrible. It was sharp and it burned, making an
y paper cut I’d ever had seem like lotion on the skin. He made two cuts that crossed each other in the middle, forming an X between my breasts. When he was done carving on me, I lay crying and shivering.
“If you ever make me think you don’t love me again, I’ll open you up right there,” he said as he tapped on the cut with the bloody blade. “Where X marks the spot. And I’ll find out if you have a heart or not. Do you understand that?”
When I failed to answer quickly, he stuck the tip of the knife in the center of the cut where the two lines met and twisted it.
I nodded.
“Good.”
He got up and used the hose to rinse the blood from the blade. He returned the knife to the cabinet and finished hosing me down. When the water filled the open cuts on my chest, the burning intensified and I cried harder.
When Ron felt he’d sufficiently cleansed me, he turned off the water.
My entire body trembled uncontrollably. My teeth clanked together loudly.
I was so caught up in my agony, I didn’t notice Ron digging around in a dark corner of the basement. It wasn’t until he turned it on that I realized what he’d been doing. He’d dug out a fan, plugged it in, and set it on the floor at my feet. It blew air up and over my body, making me colder than I already was.
“Can’t leave you down here wet, now can I?” He smiled and turned to leave. At the bottom of the steps, he said, “I’ll be back soon.” At the top of the steps, he said, “You’ll be happy to know that the book is coming along nicely. I’ll be finished in no time. Isn’t that great?”
I planned to nod in response, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and walked through the door, leaving me freezing and bleeding on the basement floor.
Chapter 42
Cold. It was so cold. My muscles had been tense with shivering for so long, they ached and knotted up in spasms. My teeth clanked together so hard, I was sure they’d shatter at any moment. I couldn’t feel my toes. I could barely tell that I was wiggling them, which made them ache and throb angrily. It’s the only way I could remind myself that they were there.
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