Circle Jerk

by catt dahman

  He went to Ruth. Gently, he took the bat and laid it on the floor. Her hands were bruised from the force of her blows to Randy. She was not okay at all. She had gone to some place that was not quite sane . She had taken all she could, and in beating on her attacker and killing him to save their lives, she had lost most of who she really was. Cutting off a finger hadn’t taken away her mind, but killing someone had.

  Jake, tears on his face, wiped his nose on his shirt and dug in Randy’s bloody pants and found keys. “Nick, how could he have done that to Lovie?”

  “Because he was evil,” Nick said.

  “Can we go?” Jake asked.

  “I want that chick. I intend to screw her until she dies, and maybe burn her the whole time or something? I want the rest of the payback. We can’t go. We have to wait. I mean I done been thinkin’, and I have this idea, see? I mean Karl and Carl died way too easy, and so did this turd, right?”

  Easy? Nick cocked his head and said, “Huh? Randy died badly.”

  “Naw. He was gone fast and with a bat. That was easy.”

  “Not for him.”

  “It wasn’t a good, long death. Anyway, so I was thinking we could take Julia and tie her up, and we could play some games, too. I think any real bad people need that. There’s this bitch always coming into the bar, see….”

  Nick winced. Skot droned on about what he thought should be done to various people, adding that some types of people should be treated to certain torments. Skot grinned as he spoke, really explaining and getting into the details which was an abomination in light of what they had survived.

  Skot told Kim and Jake that they hadn’t been starving, and after some discussion, they agreed that it was probably true. He was furious at being fooled, and as Kimberly listened, something hit her. She understood Skot’s fury. She squinted her eyes. Everything came together in her head at once. Listening for some time, she kind of agreed with him while Jake and Nick looked appalled, and Ruth stayed quiet, in shock.

  Peace filled Kim. She knew that had she been the one to choke Karl, she wouldn’t have felt bad or have been pale like Nick did. Had she beaten Randy to death, she wouldn’t be in shock. As it was, the others couldn’t look at his corpse, but she could and didn’t feel a thing.

  Kim spoke, “Hear me out, Nick, Jake, and Ruth, you three are very smart and well respected in town. If all of you were to claim not to remember parts--let’s see-anything after Mike died, and maybe tell authorities that there were drugs in the water we got and then you three escaped, would that work? Or about fighting Randy but unsure how it went? Or that once up here…yes…we got something out of the refrigerator to drink….” She mimicked pouring something into glasses. You are confused after that and think it was drugged. You stumbled out the door, and the rest is hazy. Your stories can be off some because you don’t remember much.”

  “We could. I don’t get why we would. You and Skot and what about Julia?”

  “Stay off the road. Let Julia come home to us. Let Skot and me have payback, please.”

  “We’ll all stay.”

  “No. One, you don’t wanna see Lovie die, Jake. Walk away from that last death. She can’t survive, and we know it. Second, it will make it harder for us to keep the story right. Skot isn’t that bright, right Skot?” She chuckled, and he nodded. “And I am a terrible liar. If they know we waited for Julia and then killed her when we weren’t in danger, Nick, you know that’s murder.”

  “But.”

  “It is. Even if some excuse it, we’ll know, and we might be punished. Third, Ruth needs medical attention. She’s in shock. She needs to be taken away. Fourth, I deserve payback. All of you got yours.”

  Jake shook his head, “I can stay, too.”

  “Nick needs your help with Ruth, and go back to point one: Don’t watch Lovie die. Get ready: Get your stuff and your weapons, and I’ll get Lovie a blanket. Help me, Jake?” He nodded and followed her as she went to get a blanket. Kim talked to him a little and explained a few things she needed for him to know. She felt that Nick was way too crazed right then to listen to her.

  When the pair came back, Nick got Ruth to her feet, and she more or less understood his directions. She was trying to, anyway. He had to stay right with her and keep talking to her, or she would lose focus and be confused. There would be little trouble convincing anyone that she was mentally and emotionally trashed.

  Jake covered Lovie with the blanket and hugged Kimberly goodbye. Nick did the same. They kind of gave Skot a look but didn’t shake hands. What he said about raping and torturing Julia had unnerved them. He didn’t seem to notice or care but was muttering again about what he wanted to do to Julia.

  “You’ll be along right after Julia is dead?”

  “Sure. We’ll be along,” Kim said.

  “I don’t like it,” Nick said.

  “Whatever. Go on, ya big baby. Take care of Ruth. You three, you can make it. Be careful.”

  She and Skot only watched for a second for fear Julia would come back at any time. They had to be cutting the timing close, anyway. When Kimberly closed the door, she smiled and said, “It’s just us.”

  “’Till the bitch gets here. Then, look out. She’s hot, so I think I can manage yanno,” he winked.

  “Oh, no doubt,” Kim said calmly. She and Skot took their places and waited. The time was very close indeed because Julia slammed through the door ten minutes later. And the events unfolded slightly unexpectedly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “That was Julia,” Ruth shivered, ‘”did you see?” She shook so much that she could hardly walk.

  “She didn’t see us,” Nick told her. They were off the road behind trees where it was harder to walk but safer. They could use the road now that Julia had gone by and wasn’t a threat. Nick knew Kimberly wouldn’t let her leave the house again.

  “Should we wait for Kim and Skot?” Ruth asked. She looked back from where they had come.

  “I really hate him,“ Nick said, “he’s the one bad person who made it when so many good people didn’t. He scares me.”

  “He said things that gave me the creeps. I honestly feel he was excited to hurt Julia.”

  “He was,” Nick said, “and I am not an expert, but I’m sure he won’t be right, not that he ever was, I guess. I mean he’s going to be dangerous once he has a taste for hurting people. I’m worried about Kim. Maybe we should go back.”

  “Kim is fine.”

  “How do you know that, Jake? What if he does something to her?”

  “He won’t. She’s smart. And he won’t be hurting anyone else.”

  “Why?”

  “Karma.”

  “Huh?”

  Jake said it again, “Karma. It’s real. Well, a kind of karma. Kimberly Karma.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You heard him, Nick. What he said. All of us hate Julia. We’d kill her gladly. But would we torture her? No because we aren’t that sick even after what we went through. Would you or I rape her? Hell, no. We aren’t that sick. Skot is sick enough for both. He really plans for that. This didn’t make him that way. He was always a bad person. This made him worse. He wanted us to die and would have helped that happen: to be the last one standing in that sick game. You know that.”

  “We shouldn’t have left him with Kim.”

  “Oh, she’s going to be fine. They’ll get Julia. Don’t worry about his hurting Kim. She has plans. I helped her a little before we left. He won’t do what he said, and he won’t ever leave that house. One way or another, we won’t see her again, either. She’ll either move on and drift to another town or….”

  “But.”

  Jake shrugged and said, “It’s how things go, Nick. All in a circle.”

  “Jerk,” Nick muttered.

  “Circle, jerk,” Jake said.

  Nick frowned, and they kept walking. He looked back several times.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kim and Skot exhausted themselves arranging th
e cages into a line of five, removing those unneeded after they grabbed Julia and used the syringe on her, knocking her out. They borrowed shoes and were able to work easily. Kim brought down a blanket and covered Andre, but his cage was not in the line of five; she owed him better.

  Kim sat and waited.

  At one end was Prissy, and at the other end was Mike whom Kim hadn’t felt much of a connection with now that she reevaluated things. She was angry that he hadn’t used the lighter fluid to help save them, and in the middle was Mattie. Those three were dead and would begin smelling vile soon.

  Julia was asleep in the cage between Mike and Mattie.

  Telling Skot he could have Julia later, Kim convinced Skot to let her use the shot of knock out drug on Julia which Jake had helped her mix. He liked the plan. Julia would be scared to death to awaken in a cage. Skot thought that was funny, so he carried Julia down to the cage after she had come into the house and Kim had crept up behind her and injected her.

  What would Julia do when she awoke to find only water and a bare metal cage? What would she think when Kimberly explained that if she got hungry, she could reach over and gnaw on Mattie or Mike? And in a few days? And in two weeks when they were nicely rotted, what would Julia do?

  Kimberly wouldn’t offer Julia prizes of knives or anything else to take her own life with. Julia was stark naked in her cage. Kim could hardly wait for Julia to wake and find out where she was. Karma. Just like Jake said.

  As for the other cage, well, that was where Skot was, knocked out with the second syringe of the drug that Jake fixed for her. He couldn’t be allowed to do what he wanted to Julia; as bad as she was, that wasn’t something Kim could live with being a part of. In the cages, people made their own choices, right? To eat or starve to death? And a well gnawed bone could become a possible tool for suicide. There were choices.

  Julia would make her own fate.

  Skot was in the cage between Mattie and Prissy. He had the same choices. He could decide his fate, but he couldn’t be allowed to do what he wanted and have Kim or anyone else help him. And Kim couldn’t leave Skot alone with Julia for fear the woman might find a way to escape.

  Someone, and Kim didn’t know who it was, said something about those who didn’t learn from the past had to repeat it. Skot had to repeat his past. He hadn’t learned a thing. He enjoyed the kill. He enjoyed suffering: Payback.

  It was really all she could do. She couldn’t let Julia get a trial and maybe claim insanity and go free, and Skot would tell things and could never be trusted. Some people could come out of these things and still be human. She saw Jake and Nick flinch when Skot said what he planned to do to Julia. They looked horrified and disgusted.

  But Kim had been looking right at the only thing hanging on a wall in that house: a mirror. She saw her face never changed. She didn’t go pale or look shocked or upset. Kim understood Skot’s fury. She knew it right then. She got it. Oh, she really got it.

  She couldn’t let Skot do it, but she got it, and she could have easily been talked into helping him. She was weak that way. Andre had been wrong about her being of value, but he was right about her being valuable. All she had left were the last vestiges of sanity, the last bits of unruined morality, the last of her mind. Maybe not for long. She would chicken out. She would sit and watch and enjoy the misery of Skot and Julia if she weren’t careful. Slippery slope.

  Maybe Ruth, Jake, or Nick would have. That’s why she offered to make sure all the monsters died. And really, one couldn’t do this and then go back to a normal life.

  Kim understood Skot’s fury. It came back to that, over and over again.

  That’s why she locked herself in a cage that she positioned against Mattie’s cage, catty cornered from Julia and Skot. She hadn’t learned mercy. She hadn’t learned from the recent past. She had to relive it. Or did she?

  And if things got too bad, there was always a well gnawed, broken bone to use, one way or another.

  As Kim threw the key far across the room, she looked down to the floor of her cage and saw a ‘little box with a teeny lock’. ‘What she saw inside was like pure gold but far more valuable.’ She smiled as she saw the glimmering content: another key.

  Chapter Twenty

  You wouldn’t know this last part unless I had gone back and found them. I burned the house myself. Yeah, I said I wouldn’t say my name, and I won’t. Let it stand that of the other two who left with me, both committed suicide within two years. I think their nightmares became too bad. I stuck around because I’m stubborn like that.

  So far, I have anyway. One night I may awaken, terrified that I am back in the cage, panic, and kill myself. I consider it about twice a week. I’m sure none of us ever escaped our cages, not really.

  Without trying, we confounded the investigations. We really were that messed up. The media tried to explain why Julia and her helpers did what they did to us, and experts theorized. We never stopped dodging people who asked questions, and no one was ever sure if we were the first or second experiments. I never cared, to be honest.

  The three of us could never be together because the depression became worse, not that it mattered since they left me alone with the bad dreams. I don’t blame them. That covers everything, I think. How I am judged, again, I can’t change that, but everything was really over for me once I was put into the cage.

  Anything else?

  Not sure who I am? Sure, you know. I’m the one who types with only a few working fingers. Figure it out. I’ve finished my story.

  Bite me.

  (Fort Worth: 2014)