“What sort of preventive measures?”
I tilted my head to the side and gave him the attitude he claimed to like so much.
“Do you really want to know, Ron? Wouldn’t you rather be surprised? Wouldn’t it be more exciting if you didn’t know?”
His jaw lowered and rose but no sound escaped. It seemed that quite possibly for the first time in his life, Ron was struck speechless.
I nodded slightly. “Yeah. I think so. The element of surprise adds a little excitement to things, doesn’t it?”
“Nicole—”
“Shh. I think it’s best if we just do it and get it over with. I think you’ll agree that it should be done quickly, like ripping off a bandage. Or a piercing.”
I plugged the sander into the nearest socket and turned it on, watching as the belt of sandpaper whirled around and around at top speed.
The howling began when I pressed the sandpaper to Ron’s left foot. It started with him yelling my name, desperately trying to reason with me and convince me to stop. That was never going to happen, and once he saw that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me that way, he began to shout curse words.
To remind him of who was in charge here, I pressed harder on the sander, forcing the rough sandpaper to dig into his skin even further.
With his head tilted back, Ron opened his mouth wide and howled.
It was odd to hear him scream, to hear him beg and plead for mercy. Normally, he laughed as other people suffered, his guffaws drowning out their cries and their pleas. It was strangely satisfying to see the tables turn on him, to watch as he found out what it felt like to be on the receiving end of such excruciating pain.
If the bottoms of his feet were raw, walking would be next to impossible for him. And if he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t sneak up on me. I would finally be able to relax knowing that he was no longer an immediate threat.
When the many layers of skin had been stripped from his left foot, I moved over to his right and repeated the process. Gripping the sander firmly, I held it to his foot, making sure the coarse 50-grit sandpaper really tore into his flesh and ripped away enough layers of skin to give me the peace of mind I sought.
I had underestimated the amount of blood and chunks of torn flesh that would be flying through the air, most of which landed on my clothing. By the time I was finished destroying Ron’s soles, the bottom of my shirt and top portion of my pants were covered in goo and gore. Since my clothes were black, I couldn’t quite see the blood that had soaked through, but I knew it was there. The clothes were wet and clung to my skin, and white pieces of meat hung from the fabric.
My stomach turned at the sight of someone else’s flesh attached to my clothes, so I quickly looked away, turning my attention back to Ron, who had stopped squirming long before I turned off the sander.
The belt of sandpaper stopped spinning on the handheld machine, blood dripping from it and plopping onto the concrete floor. I looked up at Ron’s face and found that he’d passed out, pissing himself in the process.
It was funny to see the man who had inflicted so much pain and agony on so many others lying unconscious, underwear soaked with his own piddle. But I didn’t laugh. It wasn’t that kind of funny.
I put the belt sander on the work table and grabbed the water hose from its place on the wall. After turning on the water, I squirted the front of myself, knocking each piece of Ron’s skin onto the floor.
When that was done, I used the pressure of the water from the hose to push the blood and skin across the floor. I watched as it disappeared into the drain, both satisfied and horrified by what I’d done.
With the floor clean, I turned to face Ron. His feet were still bleeding, but the blood didn’t fall to the floor. Instead, it dripped off his heels and filled the trough that ran around the inside of table.
I left him as he was and returned the hose to the wall. Then I headed upstairs with a queasy stomach. It wasn’t that I felt bad for Ron or felt as if he had been through enough already. He certainly had not. But I had.
Though I tried to be a ruthless bitch around Ron, on the inside I was still me. I was still a woman who never wanted to hurt anyone, a woman who volunteered for charity events and donated to the homeless. I was a woman who enjoyed helping others, not hurting them.
Upstairs, I pulled a fresh pair of clothes from the duffle bag and headed into the shower, using the bathroom in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. With the water streaming out of the shower head as hot as I could stand it, I scrubbed myself clean, erasing all of the blood that had soaked through my clothes along with any trace of the deed I had done.
Once out of the shower, I transferred the contents of the cargo pants into the pockets of the clean pair. I pulled on the fresh t-shirt and clean socks. I brushed my hair and teeth, sprayed on deodorant, and finally headed downstairs. Using only two fingers, I carried the dirty clothes to the laundry room, holding them out in front of me as if they carried the plague.
After throwing the dirty clothes in the washing machine, I dumped in more detergent than was necessary. I brought with me only the two outfits. As I wasn’t sure how long I would be staying at Ron’s house, I needed to change back and forth. And since I was going to have to wear those clothes again, I needed them to be as clean as possible. No amount of detergent would’ve been enough.
With the chore done, I curled up on the couch and cried. It was a body-racking sob that lasted for more than fifteen minutes.
When I had purged my mind of the sadness and frustration, I pulled myself together and went into the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of wine and drank it down quickly, hoping it would numb me enough to make it through the rest of the day.
Not yet ready to head back down to the basement, I returned to Ron’s office and read the next few chapters of his latest book, hoping to learn more about what type of person he was. Obviously I knew what sort of things he did, the way he lived his life, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know why. Why did he kill women? Why did he enjoy torturing them?
Ron’s latest novel was written in third person, but it was obvious to me that he’d put a lot of himself into the main character, which in this case was a man who collected his victim’s feet and kept them in a jar on a shelf in his basement.
Reading about it reminded me of the jars I’d seen on the shelves in Ron’s basement. They really were feet. I’d suspected that’s what they were when I first saw them, but I hadn’t been sure. Now I was positive that they were feet, and I didn’t even need to see them to know I was right. It was all there, written about in gory detail in his book. Ron was a liar in real life, but he was honest on the page.
A few chapters into the story, I had to stop reading. There was only so much killing I could take before I needed a break, and when I felt myself sinking into a depression at the thought of what these women had gone through, I knew I needed some happy to offset all the sad.
In the living room, I turned on the television and clicked through the channels until I found a movie, a romantic comedy that was sure to erase the blues that lurked in the shadows of my soul.
With my shoes off, I stretched out on the couch, adjusted the pillow behind my head, and immersed myself in the movie. Whenever thoughts of Ron slipped into my mind, I shut them out, paying extra close attention to what was being said on the screen. It was a trick that worked, and by the time the movie ended, I was in a much better mood.
To quiet the grumbling in my stomach and give my body the boost of energy it needed, I went to the kitchen and made a sandwich, thinking nothing of what I’d done earlier to Ron or of what I’d read about in his book.
I ate at the breakfast bar, lost in thought and engulfed in the silence of the house.
It wasn’t until I had finished eating that I realized Ron got mail. Of course he got mail. Everybody did. For that very reason, there was a mailbox at the end of his driveway, the black one with the white numbers. I needed to check that mailbox. Not because I was in
terested in who sent him what, but because if the mail piled up, the carrier would become suspicious. Authorities may be called. I couldn’t let that happen.
I waited until night fell before walking to the end of the driveway and retrieving the contents of the mailbox. Even if someone had been looking, I doubted they would’ve been able to see me. Dressed in black clothes, cloaked under the cover of darkness, I was virtually invisible.
Back inside the house, I laid the mail on the table in the entryway. It would be a lie to say I didn’t flip through the stack of envelopes to see if there was anything of interest, because I did. But I found nothing other than formal-looking correspondences. There was nothing that captured my attention.
I planned to let Ron stew in his misery for the rest of the day and night, and then deal with him tomorrow. That meant I had the whole evening free. Unfortunately, free time didn’t mean what it used to. I needed something to keep my mind busy, to keep my thoughts occupied.
In Ron’s office, I settled in to read the next few chapters of his latest book. However, after reading only one chapter of the horrific acts he’d carried out, I became enraged with him. I was furious that a person like Ron was free to do whatever he wanted—which just happened to be torturing women—while those around him suffered. Not just the women whose lives had been cut short by his hands, but also their families. Mothers and fathers. Brother and sisters. And then of course, there were the children. So many kids had been rendered motherless because of him, left with no one to kiss them goodnight or wipe away their tears when they cried. Children like my Mason.
I was pissed.
18
It seemed like forever passed before Nicole came back to the basement where Ron had spent the day drifting in and out of sleep. Or unconsciousness. He wasn’t sure exactly which it was. All he knew was that he would drift off in the middle of a thought, only to open his eyes some time later.
The soles of his feet felt as if they were hovering above a scorching fire, the flames licking at his skin. Skin that was no longer there.
In his waking moments throughout the day, he’d cursed Nicole. Sometimes in his mind, other times aloud. He wondered how she could do something so horrible to someone who loved her as much as he did. Though he kept trying to see the sense in it, he just couldn’t. He’d done nothing to deserve bearing the brunt of her misguided anger.
It was during one of his awake periods that the overhead lights flickered on, causing Ron to squint his eyes against the sudden brightness. He heard Nicole pounding down the steps, and he turned to face the sound, though his eyes had yet to adjust to the light.
When he was finally able to see her, he smiled, though what he really wanted to do was gouge out her eyes and piss in the empty sockets.
“Hello, Nicole. It’s good to see you again.”
“You shut the fuck up,” she shouted as she stormed across the room, stopping at the foot of the table on which Ron lay with his feet still oozing blood and some kind of clear liquid.
“What’s the matter?”
Clearly angry, Nicole’s chest heaved with her breaths, shoulders rising and falling, keeping time with her flaring nostrils and clenching jaw muscles.
Ron could only watch and wonder what had made her so angry.
“Nicole, talk to me.” The worry was evident in his voice, though he tried to hide it. He didn’t want her to know that she frightened him, even if it was only a little bit. Frightened people had no control.
For a minute, neither one of them said a word. Ron figured that if he said anything else, he would be relinquishing what little control he had left. Nicole appeared to be too angry to speak, so he figured his best option was to wait and see what she had to say.
Then he saw what he’d failed to notice earlier as the love of his life had entered the room. When he saw it, his curiosity got the better of him and he decided to speak, even though it would make him appear weak and vulnerable.
“What’s that in your hand, Nicole?”
She smiled. It wasn’t the kind of smile that lit up her face. No, this was a dead smile, one that found her lips but never reached her eyes. It was cold and calculating. Ron knew the smile well because it was the same one he’d so often flashed to women, many of them in this very room.
“What is it?”
“You’re about to find out.”
She held it up, a green bottle with a yellow label, and unscrewed the lid.
“Nicole, listen to me,” he gushed. “Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, don’t. We can talk about whatever you want to talk about, work out whatever needs to be worked out. But don’t do anything brash out of anger. Think it through first.”
“Oh. You want me to think it through? Okay. Well, let’s see. You’re a big ol’ asshole who tortures innocent women for your own enjoyment. You ruin life after life with no remorse, and you do it all without the fear of being punished. But you can’t go on like that forever. Surely even you knew that at some point, something would happen. Whether it was the police or one of your victims, there would come a time when someone stopped you. That someone is me.”
She stared at him, a cold and an intense stare.
“Is that thinking it through enough for you? Because all I’ve been doing for the past two years is thinking about what I’d like to do to you when I got you alone. Notice I didn’t say if. It was never if. It was always when, because I knew that one day, I would get to you. And I would make you pay for everything you’ve ever done. Not only to me, but to Stephanie and Melinda and Crystal and all the other women you’ve murdered over the years.”
“Nicole, be reasonable.”
“I feel that I’ve been more than reasonable. I probably should’ve killed you already. Then again, maybe not. Maybe I should’ve made you suffer more. A lot more. So let’s go ahead and start doing that right now.”
She threw the lid to the floor and stepped closer to the end of the table.
“Nicole, wait,” he nearly shouted. He still wasn’t clear what she was going to do, but he knew it wouldn’t be good. “Please. You don’t have to do this.”
Slowly, delivering each word deliberately, she said, “I know I don’t have to do this. I want to.”
His eyes widened, fear gripping him. How many times had he said those same words to a woman who was pleading with him to stop, to let her live?
Ron’s blood ran cold as Nicole took the final step toward him, placing herself at his injured feet. He realized there was no talking to her, no stopping her. She was going to do whatever it was that she came down here to do and all he could do was endure it.
He didn’t realize just how difficult that was going to be.
She held the bottle just above his raw and bleeding left foot and began to tilt it slowly, antagonizing him. Several tension-filled seconds later, right before the liquid poured from the bottle and drenched the bottom of his foot, Ron read the label.
Lemon juice.
He gasped, sucking in one last breath of air before the pain set in. At first, he clenched his jaw shut and grunted through the intense stinging, but it didn’t take long for the grunts to turn to shouts and then to screams.
His head jerked from side to side and spit flew from his mouth as he screamed. His body writhed in agony as the pain increased, a pain from which there was no escape.
She continued to pour the lemon juice on his feet, drenching first the left, then the right, until the bottle was empty. She turned it up and thumped on the end to make sure every drop had been used. Then the bitch tossed the bottle into the trash can and left the basement.
The lights blinked out, leaving Ron to scream in the dark.
19
When I checked my cell phone for missed calls the next morning, I found that Wade had tried three times to reach me. Each call had come while I was in the basement with Ron.
It made me feel good to know that he’d thought of me and had wanted to talk to me, but I felt horrible about missing his calls. I felt even
more horrible that I wasn’t there with him, that our communication had been reduced to nothing more than short, painful phone calls.
I took a Xanax to calm my nerves, and half an hour later, after the effect of the pill had taken hold, I called him back.
It was good to hear his voice, the sound of him talking in my ear. My nerves calmed and my anxiety eased. It wasn’t all the work of the medicine either. Wade had always had that effect on me. It was one of the many things I loved about him.
It turned out that Wade wasn’t calling for any particular reason. He had just called to hear my voice and see how I was doing. I told him I was doing fine, that my therapy was going great and I felt I was making some real progress. And it wasn’t exactly a lie. Of course Wade thought the therapy I was referring to involved psychiatrists and psychologists, skilled professionals trained to help people like me overcome their problems, but I didn’t think it mattered which type of therapy I was undergoing. All that mattered was that I was on the road to getting better.
The best part of the conversation was when Wade put Mason on the phone. He talked and talked about his toys. Most of the words were unintelligible, but that didn’t matter. I was talking to my son and loving every second of it.
Before Wade took the phone back, I heard him say to Mason, “Tell Mommy you love her.”
“I lub you, Mommy,” Mason said.
Tears sprang instantly to my eyes, his tiny words tugging on my heartstrings.
Wade said something else, something I couldn’t quite make out, and then Mason said, “Bye, Mommy.”
There was no holding back the tears after that. Before I completely lost my composure, I somehow managed to tell him I loved him with no more than a crack in my voice and a lump in my throat.
Wade’s voice came back on the line. When he spoke, I could tell he was smiling. “You just made his day.”
I tried to hide it, tried to move the phone’s microphone away from my mouth before it happened, but it wasn’t soon enough to keep Wade from hearing the sob that erupted from me.
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