Crafting for Sinners, page 8
“Our Creator will tread down our foes,” he said, his voice distorted with bass, so loud it pierced her eardrums, as if his vocal cords had expanded. None of this seemed possible, but Ruth couldn’t explain it away, couldn’t make sense of the supernatural foreboding that raised goose bumps across her skin.
“We are conquerors through Him. We prefer to convert, to have you join us, but if you refuse, the Creator will help our cause with His great power. Wouldn’t you rather join us in heaven? Wouldn’t you rather revel in love and not hate?”
“I’m not the one spreading hate,” she growled.
“Do you really think you know better than our Creator?” the man boomed. “What if you are wrong?”
Now at close range, her nostrils filled with the stink of his breath, she aimed for his jugular. The shard caught his cheek beneath the sharp edge, the point skipping across the elastic skin like a rock across water. A second slash caught his neck, grazed it, not deep enough for permanent damage.
Still, he did notice these cuts, and he dropped her. The chunk of mirror slipped from her hand as she landed, hard, on the concrete. Beneath her was the crunch of breaking glass—sharp teeth biting into her flesh. Each one stung, lightning bolts of pain shooting up her arm as she pushed herself up and darted out of the aisle. She turned a corner, running without destination, all thoughts devoted to getting away from the hulking mass of muscles, not yet worrying about the exertion lowering her blood sugar.
Grumbling curses sounded from the broken-mirror aisle, then heavy footsteps. This one wasn’t silent like the other. He remained relentless in his holy task, moving slower, taking his time, but still in pursuit nonetheless. He would not abandon whatever mission he’d been assigned.
Where was the rest of the yellow cavalry? Why was there only this one hulking Mustard Seed trying to nab her? It made little sense—shouldn’t they send out everyone, all at once?
Ruth took a heaving breath as her adrenaline waned. She uncurled her palm. Little silver slivers jutted from her flesh like sparkling quills. Every cut on her body screamed in agony, the incoming oxygen like little teeth biting into her flesh. But the pain of every ache and scrape put together was overshadowed by the throbbing of a deep gash that bisected her palm.
“Shit,” she said under her breath. She needed to deal with that cut, needed to seal the mouth shut. The small cuts and scrapes weren’t too bad—she wished she had time to pick out all the little slivers, at least they weren’t gushing—but this? This long, jagged slash spanned the entire length of her palm, two diagonal lips that spat blood, starting at the base of her index finger and terminating at the base of her palm right across her lifeline. Too much blood loss, and her blood sugar would tank.
Nothing lining the shelves before her would help sew the ragged lips shut. She’d landed in the Live Laugh Love the Creator home décor aisle that rotated seasonally—they’d just changed over from Live Laugh Love America season to Live Laugh Love the Creator with a Pumpkin, but Absolutely NOT a Jack-o-Lantern season. She could Gather Here with a Grateful Heart, but she could not create a bandage with a foam pumpkin. Even the few scraps of ribbon adorning the fall squashes were made of mesh, too holey.
In the adjoining aisle, the man’s oversized feet stomped across the river of glass. Plodding, loud. As if he wanted her to hear his approach, to feel the vibration of each step closer, one stomp at a time, never relenting, as if his success was inevitable, as if he’d chase her forever.
He wouldn’t need to if Ruth couldn’t seal her wound. She tugged the worn sleeve of her sweatshirt over her bloody palm and wadded the cuff inside her fist, squeezing to try to stanch the flow, crossing her arms against her chest like a wounded bird, hoping the elevation would keep the waterfall at bay.
His footsteps continued. Stomp, crunch. Stomp, crunch.
“I will not be shaken,” he said, the words low and confident. “The Creator is right beside me.” He had nearly reached the corner.
For once, luck was with her, appearing at the end of the aisle. Lined up in neat rows beneath foam pumpkins were huge bottles of super glue. Her back against the endcap, she worked to strip the plastic seal off.
No longer on the river of glass, the man’s footsteps grew quiet. Fighting to open the seal one-handed, Ruth had stopped listening for them. Just as she peeled the seal away with her teeth and uncorked the spout, the oversized man appeared beside her, wrapping his enormous hand around her arm, blood crusted over his fingers. Forefinger to pinky, his meaty hand spanned the entirety of her upper arm.
“Come with me,” he said, “and I can give you the gift of heaven. Aren’t you tired of struggling? Join us, and all of your troubles will be gone. You’ll do good. You’ll save the world and go straight to paradise.”
Ruth resisted, planting her feet as though she’d doused them in the glue. Sighing, as if disappointed, the man yanked her forward like she was a knit doll, dragging her back through the décor aisle, revealing a perfect breadcrumb trail of bloody droplets that had led him right to her. Ruth dropped her weight, making herself as heavy and unmovable as possible—something Abigail’s mom, Judy, had taught her.
Ruth didn’t remember what had spurred the conversation. It seemed like Judy always wandered her way back to the topic of safety, always had some sort of sage advice: never stop for a broken-down car if you are a woman alone; hold your keys in your palm in the parking lot; make yourself heavy as a rock, limp as a rag doll if someone is trying to kidnap you.
Judy had always been nervous that way, as if she were being hunted down, as if someone would appear in the middle of the night to break down the door and steal her and Abigail away. Even when Ruth was a child, she remembered the long series of locks that lined the inside of Judy’s front and back doors. Each time Ruth visited Abigail, the pair inseparable since kindergarten, Judy would close the door behind her and spend what felt like hours redoing all the locks, sliding chains through some of them, twisting knobs on others, even turning keys through several of them, requiring her to sort through a giant ring she kept on her hip at all times.
After Ruth had moved in, Judy jangled as she moved through the house, keys always safely at her side. Judy had seemed even more guarded than she’d been when Ruth was a child. Maybe it was the difference between living in Judy’s home and witnessing her habits all day, every day and not in small bursts. Or maybe she simply hadn’t noticed that kind of thing as a child. Had Judy always mummified herself in scarves and sunglasses when she left the house? Had she always kept the shades drawn and taped in place? Had she always paced, bitten her nails to the quick, any time Abigail stepped outside the safe cocoon she’d built for them? If Ruth had listened to Abigail—had heeded the constant warnings Judy had doled out to stay the hell away from the New Creationists—she’d be safe in the cocoon right now.
But Judy was gone—had gotten sick last year and had passed away only a few months ago. Now, both Ruth and Abigail were, effectively, orphans. They only had each other.
So Ruth had to get out of here. Whatever it took.
Chapter 9
Ruth relaxed each and every muscle, every tendon slackening besides those in her two hands, one still squeezing the sopping sweatshirt cuff and the other clutching the bottle of super glue. Her tote bag remained hooked around her elbow, clacking against the concrete along with her shoes. She thought her arm would be pulled from its socket, her ligaments turned to taffy before he’d release her. What was going limp supposed to do, again? Maybe it only worked in crowded spaces—only when your kidnapper was bold enough to try to grab you in the middle of the street. Not in a locked store, you against everyone else. Not when the person snatching you had muscles stitched to their muscles. Had Judy said anything else of use? Ruth couldn’t remember now.
Toward the end of the aisle, the Mustard Seed finally did drop her, apparently annoyed or frustrated with her rag-doll weight, an exasperated growl escaping between his clamped teeth.
“Why do you insist on resisting the Creator?” he asked. “We’re trying to help you!”
She scrambled to her feet at the same moment that he wrapped his arms around her torso from behind, hefting her into the air. He continued his meticulous plodding toward the back, toward whatever fate they held for her, grumbling beneath his breath at her ungratefulness.
Ruth thrashed, kicking wildly, aiming for his groin, for some sensitive part among the muscle, but always missed, always hit a rubbery coil or a rock-hard thigh instead. In a repeat of their first dance, she flung her balled, bleeding fist backward, striking his collarbone, but he, again, did not seem to register any of her movements—like she was a tiny, harmless fly, buzzing close to his ears. His arms remained clamped around her waist, so tight she could feel purple bruises forming. Her rib cage bent inward, seeming to poke into her stomach and lungs, leaving her gasping for air.
She kept swatting at his head but succeeded only in knocking the headset from his ear. She kicked more purposefully now, aiming for the pocket that held the receiver. It clattered to the floor. The Holy Hulk did not stop to pick it up. He was out of range of his cohort now. If she was able to scramble out of his grip, he wouldn’t be able to call for backup or report her location—at least not before she could dash to a new place in the store.
Something else dropped from his pocket, too—something unrecognizable to Ruth, something odd: a small vial, sealed with dripping wax, filled with a dark, syrupy liquid, hanging from a long chain.
Ruth continued buzzing—nasty, persistent fly that she was—trying to scratch at his face, his neck, hoping her fingernails might find their way to his eyes, might carve a notch into his cornea or hook beneath his eyelid so she could pull, could peel it away from his face in one tacky, red strip.
A piercing drop of super glue sizzled against her skin. With sudden inspiration, Ruth stilled herself, took a breath, and hardened every muscle into a rock. He continued on as though nothing had changed. Just as he had not registered her constant movement, neither did he seem to realize she had suddenly stopped resisting.
She gripped the bottle of glue firmly in her hand, positioned it above and over her head, the tip pointing behind her, and squeezed hard.
“What the—” the man exclaimed, before his words turned foul and guttural and indistinguishable, syllables wobbling behind the goop. Glue puddled across his cheeks, already clotting among his eyelashes, crusting over the bridge of his nose and filling his mouth. His arms released her, and she thought she was free.
Her feet danced on tiptoe, each follicle threatening to rip itself from her scalp, perhaps even to bring the flesh with it. Her hair had become stuck in the glue, right along his cheeks like a beard. The man, now bumbling around the aisle like an enraged bear, his fingers fused to the skin of his face, one mass of sticky flesh, paid no attention to her. He towered above Ruth, so tall that she could do nothing but attempt to keep her feet on the concrete beneath her, to let him lead the waltz. With each wild turn of their dance, the bond grew stronger, her hair matting into the hardening glue.
The glob retained a tackiness that attracted and collected each speck of matter, searing into his retinas, fusing his eyelashes to his fingertips to Ruth’s follicles to every crumb of dust hovering in the air. So much glue had been squeezed onto his face that fat droplets fell away from it, latching onto their shoes. It nearly locked their feet in place on the floor, two sitting ducks forever entwined.
She had no choice but to yank her hair free, to peel the flesh of either her scalp or his face. Ruth wrapped both hands around the hank of hair caught on his chin and tugged as hard as she could. The hulking man led the waltz backward. The opposing forces reached an impasse, finally tearing them apart. A bead of blood bubbled at her lip, her teeth slicing through to hold back her scream as chunks of hair were left behind, taking her scalp with it.
The man’s face was a shiny, globby mess, complete with a beard of her own hair, little scraps of scalp hanging loose at the ends. There were weeping coins of exposed flesh on his chin where her hair had torn free. The glue had begun to solidify around his eyes, one nearly glued shut and the other open, his cornea searing red, perpetually staring through the thick, glossy lens wedging the lids open. His hands, too, were stuck against his face. The left was fused to the bottom of his cheek and the other clamped over his nostrils and mouth, air forever out of reach.
Still conscious, purple edging into the unmarred skin on his face, he bumped and wobbled like a sloppy drunk, his body walloping into the shelves. He no longer had a mouth to scream, but he created a cacophony just the same. Ceramic pumpkins and candle holders and mugs toppled to the floor with a clattering smash. The shards skated across the concrete toward her feet, skittering into the fallen headset’s earpiece. Ruth plucked it from the floor, the exact same model she’d worn as an employee.
She’d grown to hate the stupid headset when she’d worked there, but now she yearned to feel its sweaty embrace. She wanted to hear every single snippet it could transmit, any sort of hint about what they wanted her for, why they needed her alive. Why that was even a question. Why the fuck any of this was happening.
Ruth slipped the earpiece around her neck, scanning for the receiver. She spotted it between the man’s feet, just inches behind him. His exposed skin was now a dark hue beneath a topographical mass of glue, starved of oxygen, and he seemed to be attempting to pry his hands away from his face, his elbows fluttering like wings. He produced soft grunting sounds, only a sliver of vibration making its way through the thick stopper of glue. If he had been able to uncover any air holes, he’d surely be gasping for breath.
Ruth skirted around the man, keeping a wide berth. She didn’t want to risk being hit by his wild jerking and twisting, didn’t want to chance the man regaining his ultrahuman strength, purpose reinvigorated, ripping his hands free along with the skin of his cheeks. Who knew what he might do in the name of his Creator?
Each of the Mustard Seeds she’d encountered were a strange concoction of desperation and cockiness: cautious enough to lock her in and disappear the blades, but confident enough to wield none themselves—like it was a testament of their faith in the Creator, that they needed only to trust in His eternal, all-powerful love, and using anything but the two hands He had bestowed upon them would negate that trust.
Or maybe they were unprepared because she’d been a timid Good Girl when she’d worked there, never setting a finger out of line, always seeking a pat on the head. Always biting her tongue raw and swallowing her anger over the shitty management and shittier practices until she got home, when it could bubble over to Abigail while they cooked dinner.
The receiver sat behind the glue man, just beyond his twitching feet and flapping arms. Ruth sidled closer, pressing her back against the shelving, the metal lip pinching between the bones of her spine. His elbow swiped backward toward her, forcing her to jerk her head back to avoid the impact, her already scalped head slicing painfully open against the sharp lip of the shelf. She clamped her uninjured hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
The exposed skin of Glue Man’s face was almost entirely purple now. He seemed to be convulsing, his elbows shimmying and his calves straining to keep his knees from buckling. Ruth inched a bit closer. He stepped backward, his huge heel folding on top of the receiver with a crunching of plastic. When he fell forward to his shivering knees, she slipped behind him and plucked the cracked brick from the floor.
Next to the receiver lay the wax-sealed vial, the dark syrup inside still and unsloshing, the glass small and thick enough to have survived the fall intact.
It didn’t resemble anything the store would have sold—maybe all the pieces separately, the vial, the wax, surely, but what rolled thickly inside? What was it? And why was he carrying it around?
Ruth stared for a moment longer, almost mesmerized by the thing. Goose bumps crawled up her spine. It seemed to draw her in, like some power permeated the inky substance inside it. Behind her, Glue Man collapsed to the floor, his torso careening into the shelves, a hailstorm of seasonal décor crashing down with him. The noise startled her back into motion, and she grabbed the thing along with the receiver. It felt warm and right inside her hand.
Chapter 10
The first bottle of glue was long gone—probably a permanent relic glued to the floor—so Ruth grabbed another as she rounded the corner into the next aisle. She made sure she didn’t leave another trail of bloody breadcrumbs behind.
Dizziness consumed her, and she moved slowly. Her blood sugar was lowering, fast—she could feel it draining along with the blood and ooze still pumping from her scalp and palm. She needed to stay alert and conscious. Something sugary might hide at the bottom of her tote bag, but first she needed to sit down. Before she fell down.
She’d landed in the aisle of heavy things—cast iron hooks and pans, stone doorknobs and stops, paperweights. On the bottom shelf, she carved out a Ruth-sized divot as quickly as she could without clanging the iron pans together like a siren, careful that no misplaced pans or knobs poked into the center of the aisle, a beacon that would lead them right to her.
Ruth nestled into the hole she’d made, knees to her chest, curled out of sight like a burrowing rodent. If someone came sniffing down the aisle, they’d spot her. But if they merely peered down the aisle from the ends, she’d be invisible. Her raw scalp sent daggers through her skull as she leaned back against the plywood shelf. Closing her eyes against the pain, she exhaled deeply. It would be so easy to fall asleep right now, to just breathe until the pain dissipated into a hazy cloud of nothingness. Maybe this was all a nightmare, and if she fell asleep here, she’d wake up, warm and cozy, in bed next to Abigail. She could feel it happening—her muscles unclenching, her limbs growing heavy, her chin dipping toward her chest.
