by Sian Rosé
At the sight of them, a high-pitched giggle spilled from Stella’s lips.
“What you laughing at?” Neil demanded, his cheeks reddening with fury. “Huh, bitch? You tried to steal from me. From my family.”
Stella threw back her head and then spat as hard and as far as she could in his direction. She tossed her long curtain of thin, blonde hair out of her face and stared at him daringly. “So what do you plan on doing? Beat the shit out of me with baseball bats? Then what? Your shitty caravan and your pathetic stash of money won’t be doing you any favours when you’re banged up in a jail cell?”
Taking her by surprise, Neil suddenly lunged forward, grabbing her chin hard in his sweaty hand and dragging her face so close to his that she could feel the stagnant steam of his breath congealing on her cheeks.
“I’ll fucking kill you and put your body ten foot in the fucking ground, where no-one will find you, you little bitch!” he licked her face, leaving a foul-smelling trail of slobber on her skin. Bile crawled up her oesophagus, silencing her at once.
“But first of all,” he continued, tightening his grip on her jaw, “first, I think me and the boys will have a bit of fun with you.”
With every shred of strength left in her body, Stella jerked her knee upwards so that it collided with Neil’s crotch. He let out a bewildered screech then fell down to one side, releasing her.
“MUM! DAD!” screamed Stella as loudly as she could. “ZACH! LLOYD! HELP ME!” she continued until she was red in the face. One of the other teenagers clamped a filthy palm over her lips whilst another began to pull at the bottoms of her trouser legs.
*
Approximately fifteen minutes away from where Stella had been taken, Sambuca was shakily moving through the rows of caravans, Minnie’s knife teasing the skin on her back. It was about lunchtime, and there was barely anyone from the travelling community about in the open, probably because they were inside eating their meal.
Typical.
“How far now?” Flo asked, adopting the stereotypical whine of an impatient eight-year-old. It was this social form of intelligence, this incredible acting skill of hers, that had allowed the family to slip through the net of the law so many times. Nobody ever looked at them and thought they were anything but a perfectly normal family. Certainly, nobody would ever look at them and think they were actually a family of violent, drug-dealing vigilantes, with a borderline rapist for a son, a thief for a daughter, and a sickening fetish for blood and suffering.
Sambuca swallowed back a croak in her throat, the thick knot of nerves bundling there uncomfortably. She was about to open her mouth to speak when up ahead, there was a welcome sight. Up ahead, walking towards them, his rifle wielded tightly in his hands, was Pat, Destiny’s uncle.
“Uncle Pat!” squeaked Sambuca, relief flooding from her lips as recognition flickered in his pupils.
“You alright, Sam?” he called out as he got nearer. He nodded at Minnie, too, a pleasant, if toothy, grin spreading out across his face. “Ah, Min! Good to see you girl, how long’s it been now?”
Sambuca felt her heart sink like a deceivingly heavy pebble in quicksand. “Pat…” she began before Minnie cut her off whilst also jabbing the point of the knife into the top layer of her skin.
“Pat!” she chimed, “how lovely to see you. It must’ve been a good year or so since we stayed here last. We only got here last night, see.”
“Where’s Ron? Are you staying long? We should have drinks before you set off again!” Pat’s attention was entirely consumed by Minnie, his eyes resting over her in that way that Sambuca knew so well. It was that perverted look of infatuation, the way that the men around here stared at the women as if they were juicy cuts of meat sitting in the fridge at the butchers.
“Ron’s off fishing with my other son,” Minnie smiled, her conversation effortlessly fluid and charming. “But we’d love to get together tonight for a couple of bevs.”
“Sounds good to me. I know the rest of the gang would love to see you as well.”
The woman continued to grin at the man, her eyes shining as though butter wouldn’t melt in the sunshine. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen my daughter Pat?” she asked brightly, as though just making more general chatter. She laughed, throwing in a casual wink. “Think she’s run off with one of the lads from around here.”
A sudden wave of something washed over Pat’s face then, his features instantly hardening so that they were stiff and rigid momentarily. “Pretty blonde lass?” he asked, too solemn for Minnie and Zach’s liking.
Minnie raised an eyebrow and tightened her grip on the handle of her knife. “Have you seen her, Pat?” she asked.
Pat laughed and shrugged, “no,” he said. “No, I’ve not seen her. Probably shacked up with one of the lads. Just a bit of harmless fun.”
Zach’s lips thinned as they tightened, and his fists clenched down by his sides. Minnie blinked and nodded, feigning stupidity as the stupid hillbilly tried to lie to her. She wasn’t dumb, not by any stretch. This guy knew something, something he wanted to hide. Something about that pretty blonde lass, her daughter. “Fancy coming back for a drink now, Pat?” smiled Minnie, flirting shamelessly with her eyes. “Ron won’t be back for some time, but there’s no reason we can’t start early, eh?”
Pat looked like a child who’d received all of his birthday presents at once.
Flo marvelled as she watched the man willingly walk alongside her mother, obedient as a lap dog. She kept her beady eyes fixed on the man’s grubby hands, his beefy fingers loosening their grip on his gun. No doubt he carried it purely to intimidate others or to make himself feel more impressive. But, with the bat of her eyelashes, her mother had removed this thin veil of pride from the foolish man, leaving nothing but an unsuspecting victim, trudging merrily along, right into her trap.
Chapter Thirty-five
Summer, 1999
Ronnie was awoken, for the first time in around twelve years, by the thick, unpleasant stench of piss invading and mercilessly attacking his nostrils. He shuddered, his sweat-covered skin jolting in the gloom, the insides of his mouth crackling and splitting from being so horrendously dry. He groaned, intense pain searing through his skull, drilling relentlessly into the base of his brain.
The teenager jerked his body and let out another involuntary moan as he felt the material of his trousers sticking uncomfortably to his thighs. He felt his cheeks burn red, even in the murky atmosphere.
He’d pissed himself.
Like a fucking animal.
With aching limbs, the young man shakily pushed himself up onto his feet, placing his palms against the darkened corner of the tiny room and using their surface to hold his balance.
Tears of horror leaked uncontrollably from the corners of his eyes as his disorientation quickly ebbed away. Terrifying memories quickly began to flood and overwhelm his senses in a deadly tsunami that spun and stormed chaotically through every inch of his body.
A pitiful croak projected from the back of his hopelessly parched throat. The sharp edges of the noise seemed to bounce against the four small walls, ricocheting back onto him like a group of taunting schoolyard bullies circling in, closer and closer. On his feet, he stumbled, blinking as he struggled to make sense of the dark shadows around him.
He was, he was certain, alone.
Half-naked, in agony, so dehydrated that he felt faint and stewing in his own filth. But definitely alone.
Crying, he moved around the walls, feeling their roughness beneath his fingers, pleading God for a way out or some kind of solution. He must’ve made a fair bit of noise because, within a few moments, the shrill echo of a key scraping against metal filled the space, causing him to freeze. Instinctively, his head snapped towards the sound just in time to see a door swing open, allowing a tall rectangle of light to flood into the room.
A rough, scrawny young man dragged a skinny woman into the room by her shoulders, releasing her so that her flimsy body collapsed onto the cold
hard ground, like a sack of shit being left at the dump. Ronnie watched, stuck rigid and unable to move as the man pulled two plastic bottles from a sack and tossed them also onto the girl’s body, causing her to whimper and sob from her broken sprawl.
“Minnie,” Ronnie muttered, sinking down to his knees and crawling over to her desperately, enveloping her quickly in his stinking embrace.
Both of them shuddered as the door was slammed shut again, leaving them both there in the darkness. “Oh, Minnie,” he whispered. “What did they do to you?”
As he listened to his girlfriend’s muffled cries, he scrambled across the floor to pick up the water bottles. Hungrily, he practically ripped the cap off of the top of one and poured the liquid straight into his mouth so that the slightly stale water saturated his tongue and sloshed down his neck. Within seconds, he’d devoured the entire bottle and was sitting upright, struggling to regain his breath, contemplating opening the other.
It occurred to him then how stupid it’d been to demolish the water so quickly, with no idea how long it would be until they’d get more, if at all.
Biting back the bitter lump in his throat, he crawled back to Minnie and hugged her bent, cramped body tightly into his arms. He listened intently to the pounding of her heart and the painful, hoarse breaths that went in and out in irregular rasps from her lungs.
The last time he’d seen her was when she’d gotten into the house. The blonde German woman had brought her in, then knocked her unconscious with a cloth doused in some kind of poison. They’d dragged her away then and left him sitting, bleeding in that kitchen chair for what felt like a long, agonising eternity. He must’ve fallen asleep because his next memory was waking up there, in this damned room.
“It was awful,” she suddenly whispered, her voice like a blade cutting through her flesh. Her voice vibrated in a way against the inside of his arms that made fresh tears suddenly prick his own eyes, and a spike of pain surge up through his spine.
“What did they do?” he asked quietly, although everything within him screamed that he did not want to know the answer.
Minnie sobbed; a heart-breaking sound erupting from the deepest depths of her stomach; staining the air with something awful and ugly.
“They took me to some place,” she gasped as if each word was like a gunshot to her oesophagus. “Some place where there were lots of men…”
Ronnie listened to her continue, bile churning in his stomach as he gripped her tighter and listened to the horrific ordeal that the poor girl had endured. Every sentence was like a sharp, jagged blade of glass ripping roughly through his heart, tearing apart his organs, re-opening the deep lacerations on his chest.
The more she spoke, the clearer the harrowing realisation that formed in his brain became. At first just a blur; the image sharpened and sharpened; until it reared its horrendous head in all of its hideous, earth-shattering glory.
It all made sense.
The fake-ID guy wanting that folder of official paperwork. Official paperwork that allegedly proved the identity of a young woman. Ronnie had not asked questions. He’d followed the man’s instructions out of desperation because he needed the fake ID. Minnie and their unborn child needed him to have it.
So, he’d broken it at the exact time, through the exact opening at the back of the house. He’d followed all of the directions that he had memorised so carefully, tip-toeing through the upstairs corridor, climbing the short, partially concealed staircase to the attic room.
Except, when he got the door open, he’d found more than just documents.
He’d found a girl. A frantic, desperate girl whose hair was matted in blood, whose yellowing eyes bulged from her skull, and whose traumatised screams alerted very much unwanted attention.
Now, it all made sense.
Blindly, he’d been tricked into burglarising the home of a sex ring leader into attempting to release a clearly half-dead woman from an insane, dangerous maniac. And in the process, he’d gotten himself captured and tortured, and the girl in question shot dead on the spot.
She hadn’t even made it down the staircase.
Ronnie spluttered, trying with all of his might not to let his tears spill onto Minnie’s clammy flesh.
One girl had died, and one girl now had to take her place.
And it was all Ronnie’s fault.
It was his fault that the mother of his unborn baby was being used; her body solicited beyond her control to a pack of disgusting animals.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
Chapter Thirty-six
2019
By the time Ronnie and Lloyd were trudging back over the dry grass; the sun was starting to beat down on their heads; both of them felt exhausted.
Getting rid of Destiny’s body hadn’t been difficult; she was a skinny little thing, and disposing of her corpse had been no trouble between father and son. They’d worked mostly in silence, with only the odd, occasional growl from Ronnie to gruffly give Lloyd instructions. As planned, they’d dumped her into the stream, which was not as deep as Ronnie had hoped. Her body would turn up sooner rather than later, which only intensified the urgency in Ronnie’s step as he hurried back towards the RV.
It was that urgency, the rush that tired him out.
This life he and Minnie had chosen was thrilling and exhilarating and more satisfying than anything the two of them could have ever hoped for as young, naïve teenagers. But it was the running away that he hated. The irritating fingers of doubt and anxiety that tickled the back of his mind, reminding him that they’d been extremely fucking lucky to have gotten away with so much of their impromptu criminal activity.
Murder, theft; torture; and all that other good shit was best pre-planned and pre-meditated. Planning ahead meant there was room to savour the experience and ensured the absence of concern. But when shit like this came about, the stress almost always outweighed the thrill.
Maybe, Ronnie had considered, both to himself and to Minnie, it was his age.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Lloyd muttered, just as the top of the RV parked at the edge of the caravan site came into view above the crescent of a hill.
Ronnie grumbled, his brow furrowing as he forced himself to look at Lloyd.
The kid was just fourteen; and almost completely hopeless. He was overweight, and the only one out of the four kids that Ronnie could clearly see was not attractive or naturally charming in their manner.
Hopefully, it was just an awkward, pubescent stage that Lloyd Garnet would eventually grow out of. But for now, it made him a lumbering idiot and, frankly, a great deal of the time, one hell of a liability. Not that Ronnie was wholly impressed with his other kids at that moment in time. Attempting a robbery on a group of rough traveller kids who likely slept with rifles beneath their beds and fucked their own sisters. The only one who’d shown a single grain of intelligence that day was Flo, who wasn’t even a decade old, for fuck’s sake.
Abruptly, he stopped, startling Lloyd. The middle-aged man groaned and rubbed the back of his neck, frowning at his son.
“This has got to stop, mate,” he said sternly, although his expression finally began to soften. “Me and your mother love you dearly… you’re our son,” he added.
“I love you too, Dad.”
Ronnie took a step closer to the boy and fixed his sharp, piercing eyes on the teenager’s piggy pupils. As he moved into his space, the gross stench of body odour infiltrated his nostrils.
“There’s not a lot me, and your mother won’t allow you. Barely anything we won’t support you with…”
“I know…”
“But there is a line,” Ronnie said firmly. “And we’ve made it very fucking clear to you from the day you were born what that line is.”
Lloyd bowed his head, colouring rising to his cheeks, betraying his childish shame.
“Now, this is your final warning, Lloyd,” Ronnie continued, lowering his voice. “Any more of this rapey shit and I’ll chemically castrate yo
u myself. You understand?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Father and son continued the rest of the walk up the hill in comfortable silence. Outside the RV, Flo sat on a green camping chair, swinging her little legs and furiously tapping away at the touch screen of her iPad with her thumbs.
“Lloyd- get inside,” Ronnie instructed, “Flo- what the hell are you doing, girl? We need to go.”
At the sound of her father’s voice, Flo rolled her eyes and hopped up off of the chair. “We’ve still not got Stella,” she said, glancing around the otherwise empty space; wise suspicion dancing in her iris.
“What?”
“I’m keeping watch, in case she comes back…” Flo sighed and frowned grimly, “Mum suspects she’s in trouble. Got one of those gypsies in the RV. He’s got a gun. She was waiting for you to go with her to find her.”
Ronnie’s mouth fell open, an unpleasantly familiar pang of dread hitting him straight in the stomach.
“Trouble?” he repeated faintly.
Flo nodded and gestured towards the RV. “I think you’d better go inside.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Winter, 1999
It was impossible to know exactly how much time had passed. All that the teenage Ronnie and Minnie knew was that their misery was being dragged out as agonisingly slowly as possible. They stayed contained in that tiny, dark box room, living off of plastic bottles filled with stale water; and pitiful scraps of rancid food that were often tossed straight onto the floor where they were forced to shit and piss.
He’d never dare to say it out loud and even began to despise himself for thinking it privately, but Ronnie soon began to think that maybe Minnie had the better end of the deal after all. At least once every couple of days, she was forced out of the room. They’d wash her and ply her with drugs and alcohol so that she’d be compliant.
For at least a small, fleeting scrap of time, she could be numb to it all.
