My Pretties

by Jeff Strand

  "It's totally up to you. Don't touch Gertie."

  "I won't."

  "Have fun."

  "If you wanted to give me an early birthday present, you could leave me here for an hour or so."

  "You're lucky you get the minute. Maybe not even that much." Ken walked over to the doorway. "Don't do anything until I'm upstairs. We don't want the neighbors to hear."

  Ken left, shutting the door behind him. Charlene assumed this meant there was also an upstairs door blocking the noise from the basement. If she waited for his footsteps to stop creaking, she'd know he'd opened the upstairs door. Yet if she screamed for help, their only option would be to make her stop screaming. That was something she'd save for when she'd accepted that there was no escape and wanted a quick death. For now, she still thought she and Gertie could get out of this.

  "I'm a lesbian," she told him.

  "So?"

  "So I bet you've never been with one, right?"

  "No. I'm a dude. That's kind of the whole point of how lesbians work. You must not be very good at it if you don't know that."

  "I'm just saying that this opportunity may never happen again. How am I going to stop you?"

  "Even if I did want to bang a lesbian—and I do, I'll admit it—I'm not going to do it when my mom could walk into the room at any minute."

  "Tell her not to come back down."

  Jared's laugh was surprisingly high pitched. "I'm going to pass on trying to rape you with my parents in the house. Like Dad said, you're trying to get me to make a mistake. Not gonna happen. And you don't have to worry about me gouging out your eye. I'm not doing anything to you. Just going to wait patiently for Mom and Dad to come back."

  "Pussy."

  "Whatever." Jared ran his index and middle fingers across Charlene's neck and licked the blood off of them. "Mmmm," he said with a smile.

  "I'm HIV positive," Charlene lied.

  Jared let out a horrified gasp and began to frantically wipe at his mouth. He spat onto the floor as he backed away from her.

  Gertie kicked him in the back of the head.

  There was no sense of accomplishment on her face. Moving her legs had obviously caused her excruciating pain. But she'd done it.

  Jared tumbled forward. The knife fell out of his hand and slid across the floor toward Charlene.

  Charlene jerked her body to the right. The chair fell onto its side, smashing onto the concrete floor and landing on Jared's hand.

  He shrieked.

  The arm of the chair hadn't broken on impact, but it had twisted a little. A sharp tug with Charlene's right hand and the arm of the chair popped out of the back. She quickly went to work at getting her hand free. Even if the soundproofing was sufficient to cover Jared's shriek, Ken and Vivian were set to return at any moment.

  Jared, now sobbing, pulled his hand free. For right now he was focusing more on his crushed fingers than Charlene's efforts to escape from the ropes.

  Charlene got her arm free.

  Grabbed for the knife. Missed. Got it on the second try.

  Jared might be useful as a hostage, but Charlene was still mostly tied to the chair and she didn't think he'd be focused on his hand long enough for her to completely free herself. So she slammed the knife into his throat.

  A gout of warm blood got her in the face.

  Jared made horrific gagging noises as he clawed at his neck.

  Charlene began to cut away at the rope binding her other hand.

  Please let them stay upstairs. Please let them stay upstairs. Please let them stay upstairs.

  Jared made an attempt to reach for her, but it was completely ineffectual. Charlene tried not to look at him as she sawed away at the ropes; the grisly sight would distract her.

  She cut her left hand free.

  Now it would be faster to simply untie the ropes. Though they hadn't done a careless job of tying her up, they also had obviously planned to be supervising her the whole time she was bound to the chair. She'd be able to untie herself. She just had to pray that they wouldn't come back too soon.

  Jared wasn't moving much anymore. The expanding pool of his blood touched Charlene's arm. But if she wasn't worried about her own blood right now, she certainly wasn't going to worry about his. She kept working on the ropes.

  "You're doing great," said Gertie.

  The ropes were coming apart quickly now.

  She heard the stairs creak.

  Charlene had already been untying the ropes as fast as she could and there was no way to accelerate the process, even with imminent danger. If she'd had a little more time, she could've lain in wait behind the door. Ken and Vivian would have walked into the room, gaped in horror at their dead son, and she would have killed both of them with the knife. That plan—which wasn't a foolproof one anyway—was off the table now, unless they walked down the stairs very, very slowly.

  She got free of the chair just as the doorknob turned.

  What to do? Charge across the room at them with the knife?

  Minutes ago, Ken still had his gun. She could see the bulge underneath his shirt. There'd be no reason for him to get rid of it. Even if Charlene ran at him faster than she'd ever run in her life, he'd have time to draw the weapon and shoot her in the head.

  There was no place to hide.

  The door swung open.

  Of course, they saw Jared immediately. He was lying motionless in a large pool of blood and was difficult to miss. In a perfect world, Ken and Vivian would have dropped to their knees, unable to cope with the loss of their offspring. And, in fact, Vivian pushed past her husband and rushed toward the body. But Ken took out his gun.

  Charlene jumped up, grabbed hold of the side of Gertie's cage, and pulled herself up. She tried to do this while holding onto the knife, but she dropped it and it clattered onto the floor. She hoped, even in this moment, that her friend would realize that she was not trying to use her as a human shield, but trying to take advantage of Ken's desire to keep Gertie alive. He might not risk accidentally hitting Gertie as he shot at Charlene.

  It was entirely possible that Ken no longer gave a shit about Gertie, or at least didn't care in the moments after gazing at his son's bloody corpse, but Charlene had no other option.

  Vivian let out a wail of such intense sorrow that Charlene was incapable of not feeling pity for her, even as she could see Ken coming toward the cage, revolver raised.

  Charlene pulled herself up higher, so that her head was even with Gertie's. Now she realized that this was absolutely ridiculous. The only way Ken wouldn't be able to kill her was if he laughed so hard at her predicament that he slipped on Jared's blood and knocked himself out. Yes, there was a ninety-nine percent chance that she'd be lying on the floor with her brains scattered around her head if she'd rushed at him, or tried to throw a knife or the chair at him, but at least she would've retained some dignity.

  Ken did not seem amused by her predicament. He walked around to get a good angle at which to shoot her down, so at least she'd been correct—he didn't want to kill Gertie quite yet. Charlene climbed around the cage, trying to keep Gertie between herself and Ken. This tactic would only keep her alive for a few more seconds, but she'd do what she could to make the most of them.

  Vivian was on the floor, still wailing as she cradled Jared's body.

  Ken kept his distance, as if worried that Charlene had a trick up her sleeve. He was still only a few feet away. It didn't matter that his arm was violently shaking. If he pulled that trigger, he wasn't going to miss.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Charlene cried out as the bullet tore across her left leg. He hadn't missed, but obviously he'd planned to do much more damage than this. The pain was intense but not enough to make Charlene lose her grip on the cage.

  "Don't shoot her!" Vivian screamed, her voice cracking. "Make that fucking bitch suffer!"

  Ken set the gun on the ground and stepped forward. Then, apparently deciding he shouldn't leave the gun so close, he kicked it to the
other side of the basement.

  "Get down from there," said Ken. "Don't make this any worse than it needs to be."

  Charlene was pretty sure she'd already maxed out how bad her punishment would be if and when he finally got her down from the cage. She simply braced herself, ready to kick the shit out of him for as long as she could.

  "Where do you think you're gonna go?" he asked.

  Vivian, no longer wailing, was now whispering to her son. Charlene was glad she couldn't hear the words.

  "I asked you a question," said Ken.

  Charlene continued to ignore his question, which she'd assumed was hypothetical. She didn't think she was going anywhere. Even if she had the athletic prowess to leap from cage to cage, it wouldn't do her any good.

  Ken moved forward.

  Gertie kicked at him. It was a terrible kick, and did little to dissuade him.

  "I'll break your goddamn legs," Ken told her.

  Gertie kicked at him again, with even less energy.

  Charlene had not been dangling from a steel cage all night, so her kick was a lot more vicious. She got him in the chest. But he grabbed her leg and pulled. If it had been the leg that got shot, she suspected that the pain would be so intense that she would have released her grip on the cage and let him do whatever he wanted with her, but instead she yanked her leg free and kicked him in the face.

  She didn't hear a satisfying crack and he didn't fall to the floor.

  He grabbed her injured leg.

  The pain was every bit as intense as she'd feared. Yet she didn't let go of the cage. She kicked him with her other leg and her injured leg popped out of his hands.

  She glanced down at him. Ken looked absolutely batshit insane with rage.

  He let out a furious bellow that was even louder and more unhinged than Vivian's wailing.

  Charlene climbed as high as she could. There wasn't room for her to perch on top of the cage, but she was right up against the ceiling.

  Ken picked up the knife that had been used to kill his son. "You can't get away from me!" he screamed.

  He grabbed the bars and pulled himself up. The cage suddenly tilted toward him.

  And then the cage, which probably had not been installed with the intention of supporting the weight of three people, came free of the ceiling.

  For a heartbeat, it seemed to float in midair. It felt like that moment right before a rollercoaster goes down the first terrifying hill.

  Then the cage crashed down onto the floor.

  It landed on its side, crushing Ken beneath it.

  The cage rolled over, but his ruined body was stuck to it and went along for the short ride.

  Charlene had injured something in the impact, maybe even broken a bone, but she'd worry about that later. She leapt off the cage, toward the corner where Ken had kicked the revolver.

  Vivian's sense of self-preservation clearly outweighed her need to be with her dead family. She hurried out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her. There was a beep on the other side.

  Charlene picked up the gun and staggered back to the cage. She hadn't even thought about whether she'd be able to walk on her injured leg—she'd just done it. It was a little difficult to breathe, but not painful, so she suspected that she had bruised ribs rather than broken ones.

  Her first task was to see if Ken was still a threat.

  He was not. His body was no longer stuck to the cage, and he wasn't dead yet, but at least three different bones were visible and he was choking on his own blood. She wasn't going to waste a bullet putting him out of his misery.

  She turned her attention to Gertie, who lay unmoving in the cage.

  Blood had soaked through Gertie's pants on her upper thighs. If the cage had fallen straight down it would have shattered Gertie's legs, but despite the blood her injuries didn't seem horrific. No limbs appeared to be twisted. And as she watched carefully, she could see that Gertie was breathing. Though Charlene wasn't prepared to give her a clean bill of health quite yet, she was pretty sure that Gertie had just been knocked unconscious in the fall.

  She went over to the door and tested the knob. Locked. There was a keypad next to the door, so she went back to Ken and crouched next to him.

  "What's the code?" she asked.

  He opened his mouth—barely—but no sound came out.

  "Tell me the code or I'll break your fingers."

  Though his mouth moved, she was pretty sure that even if she'd been able to hear what he was saying, it would not have been the combination.

  Then his mouth stopped moving and his whole body went still.

  Okay. They were locked in the basement. But Charlene had a gun. As soon as Vivian opened the door to check on them, she'd shoot her. No problem.

  This assumed that Vivian did check on them.

  If the basement was soundproofed, and her husband and son were dead, she might have no motive to check on them. At least not anytime soon.

  Charlene suddenly became very much aware of how much blood had spilled from her neck onto her clothes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Charlene began to feel dizzy. With the immediate danger over and the adrenaline no longer rocketing through her veins, the severity of her injuries was becoming clear.

  She shook it off. She still had shit to do. Maybe Vivian was going to leave them down here to die, but if she didn't, Charlene had to be ready.

  Moving as quickly as she could with a body that was no longer fully cooperating, Charlene picked up the knife and cut away a non-bloody part of the leg of Ken's pants. She tied it around her neck, tight enough to hopefully hold off the bleeding without choking her. She cut off another strip of his pants and tied it around her leg, much tighter than around her neck.

  It wasn't much. It might not get her through the night. But since she hadn't been locked down here with a first aid kit, it would have to do.

  She checked the cage door. It was held shut with a padlock. She could possibly shoot it off with the revolver, but she'd be squandering a bullet she might need later. Gertie wouldn't be able to walk, much less help her fight Vivian, so there was no reason to try to free her from the cage yet. Though she would try to wake her up.

  Ken had taken the smelling salts with him when he left earlier. Charlene reached through the bars and patted her leg. "Gertie? Hey, Gertie?"

  Gertie, though still breathing, did not stir.

  What if she'd bashed her head hard enough to cause brain damage?

  That wasn't something to worry about right now. Until she discovered otherwise, she'd assume that Gertie was unconscious but perfectly fine.

  Maybe it was for the better that she wasn't waking up. As long as she was asleep, she didn't know that she was in a cage within a cage.

  Charlene felt that she was doing a surprisingly good job of staying calm, considering that she was bleeding from the neck and leg and surrounded by carnage. Not too long ago she'd been haunted by memories of Lee killing himself, which she'd assumed would be the most horrific sight of her lifetime. She'd never expected to surpass it so soon. Jared's pool of blood was still slowly expanding, and Ken's body was just a mangled mess.

  She walked back to the door. She wasn't sure which side was best for an ambush. On the left, she could shoot as soon as it opened a crack. On the right, the door would hide her until Vivian stepped inside. But either way, Vivian knew she had a loaded gun, and she'd take precautions.

  If she ever opened the door.

  * * *

  Let them rot down there. Let those bitches rot.

  Vivian opened some kitchen cabinets and quickly found a bottle of whiskey. She unscrewed the cap and downed a large gulp. Then she had a huge coughing fit, stumbled over to the sink, and vomited.

  She'd lost everything.

  Her son and husband were dead. She'd never see them again, because she was never going back down into that basement. Both doors were locked. Charlene would probably bleed out before she starved, but she hoped Gertie died a slow, lingeri
ng, agonizing death.

  Vivian didn't believe in ghosts. But maybe the ghosts of Jared and Ken would stay in that room, tormenting the girls until they finally succumbed to their demise. Perhaps continuing to torment them in hell.

  She took another drink of whiskey, this time without vomiting.

  She'd clean herself up, then find a place to dispose of the bodies in the trunk of her car. Then she'd go home and do nothing. Eventually she'd call the police and report her family missing, but since they'd gone on a weeklong father/son camping trip with unreliable cell phone service, she hadn't been worried. She'd have plenty of time to practice her response when the police informed her of what her husband and son had really been doing.

  She went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet, making sure not to look in the mirror. If she saw her reflection now, it was the only way she'd ever see herself.

  The doorbell rang.

  Fuck.

  Vivian couldn't ignore it. There'd been a lot of chaos in the basement, and not all of the sound had been masked. If she didn't convince whoever was at the door that everything was fine, they'd surely call the cops. Assuming it wasn't the cops at her door.

  Her clothes were drenched in blood. She could strip out of them, but she'd still have blood all over her, and there was no time to rinse off. Instead, she hurried to the door.

  "May I help you?" she asked.

  "Hi," said a man on the other side. "We're your neighbors. We wanted to make sure everything was okay."

  "It's fine. Everything here is totally fine." Did she sound hysterical? Vivian thought she might sound hysterical. That was not the tone she wanted to convey. "Sorry I can't open the door, I was in the shower when I heard the doorbell and I'm not decent."

  "No problem, no problem," said the man. "We heard some commotion over here. Sounded like screaming."

  "Yes, that was the TV. I was watching a horror movie too loud. I'm sorry—I didn't realize the sound carried that far."

  "Sounds like a crazy flick. Which movie? We'll have to check it out."

  "I don't remember the title. They're all pretty much the same, right?"

  "Are you sure everything's okay?" a woman asked.