A Better Life, page 10
Thank Christ she never fell on me.
I’d be flat as a Taiwanese whore by now.
Catching his breath, Pete stood over her. She was actually snoring.
How about that…? he laughed in surprise.
Had no idea that was even a thing!
Every day’s a school day.
“Okay, Lisa. One more, for old time’s sake, then we’ll get this show started properly, whadd’ya say?”
Pete raised his right foot from the blood-slick floor and stomped his boot down on her face, like he was stomping a bug.
20
“Did you hear that?” Emily asked. “Downstairs…?”
Jess, hadn’t heard a thing, lost as she was in the terrible reverie of what she’d witnessed take place with her own eyes. Everything she’d believed about the world was a lie. There was no logic to the universe. No pre-ordained pattern to the natural world. Everything she’d thought she understood, she now realized was a nonsense. A fiction. A safety net to protect the human mind against the darkness pressing in from all sides, just out of sight.
She was a child again, lost in a dark and dangerous world, where magic was real and could reach out and grab you from the shadows, tearing your mind and body to bloodied scraps.
A place where monsters, too, were real.
Since Emily’s display of power, Jess had been rooted to the spot, still as stone, her mind spinning down endless corridors of dark possibility.
The girl could open doors in people’s minds.
No…not in their minds.
In their souls.
Unimaginable as it was, Emily had the power to bridge worlds.
What else could she do? What had she seen?
Had the girl conversed with Gods? Had she stood before Devils? What would she be capable of as her powers began to grow with age, wisdom and experience?
Nothing was outside the realm of possibility anymore, not when babies…
…dead babies…
…could crawl from beneath a bed and scratch blood from a carpet like it was made of skin.
“Jess,” Emily said, grabbing her by the arm. “You should go see what’s happening down there, I think.”
“Huh?” Jess asked, miles away, drifting on a sea of confusion and wonder. Again, Emily tugged at her arm. And suddenly, she was back in the room, pulled from her terrible awe and glad of it. “Shit…what’s going on?”
“I think you should go see what’s happening downstairs, Jess. It sounded like there was shouting.” The little girl looked concerned and for a second Jess could almost believe she was a normal child. Just an everyday kid who liked comics and She-Ra and Mario Kart and…
She can send people’s souls to…
Where?
Hell?
Don’t think about it. Not now.
Jess gave herself a shake. “Emily…I…”
“I know. Please, don’t be scared of me. I needed you to believe. And I meant what I said, I think I trust you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You think you trust me?”
“Can that be enough, for now?” Emily asked.
Did it even matter whether it was enough or not?
What Emily wanted, Emily would get.
Jess studied the girl’s startling, emerald eyes.
She cast her mind back to when all this had started. In the back of the van. Staring into the endless depths of the girl’s eyes. Seeing herself reflected there.
Screaming.
“You should go and see what’s going on.”
Jess still felt far away. “Yeah…yes…I’ll go see. It’s probably Curt getting back.”
“You really love him, don’t you?” Emily asked. “I can tell. I watch lots of movies. Some of the people in those movies look at each other the way you look at him. The boy on the Titanic looks at the girl that way. I never understood why she wouldn’t share her floating wood with him.”
Jess amazed herself by bursting into laughter. Despite all she now knew, Emily could still disarm her with innocent charm.
“I do…yes.” Jess knelt before Emily, while the girl shifted around on her butt till she was comfortable on the bed. She was already picking up a comic book and set to lose herself in its pages as though nothing had happened.
Wondering if gods read comic books, Jess took Emily’s small hand in her own.
“Emily?”
“Yes?”
“We took you from your home and I’m so, so sorry for it. I know Curt is, too. We were desperate. So desperate. And sometimes desperate people do desperate things. I’m telling you this because you say that you maybe could trust me. I want you to know that you can. You really can. And I’m asking you…no, I’m begging you, to trust me when I say that Curt is a good man. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Please don’t hurt him.
Please.
“Okay,” Emily said, nodding.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
Was the girl being willfully obtuse? She had no idea. Emily was an enigma sealed within a great and secret puzzle.
She asked no more.
“I’ll go see if they’re back.”
Emily looked up from her comic. “I think they are. I think I heard something smashing, too.”
“Probably just my friend down there, breaking another coffee mug. She can be pretty clumsy at times.”
“Probably…”
She thought about what the girl had said.
Open a doorway.
All the way.
And you’re not going to like it.
“Emily…is there something you want to tell me?”
Emily, all innocence and light, replied, “No. Not a thing.”
21
Jess made her way down the stairs slowly, moving as though through a quagmire. Stunned by what she’d seen and heard in the room behind, she felt as though she was passing through some secret door and into a world where nothing real held sway, where nightmares took form and fantasy could turn deadly in the time it took to blink. She worked her way downwards, stair by stair, moment by moment, only half-aware of where she was going and why.
What in the hell am I doing?
Something going on in the kitchen...
A crash.
No big deal. Lisa being Lisa…
Where was I going?
Or Curt. Maybe he’s back.
I hope it’s Curt. God, how I hope it’s Curt!
I need to tell him. I need to make him see.
This whole thing…this kidnapping…it had to stop. He had to listen to her and if he didn’t…
If he doesn’t, she thought as her blood seemed to freeze in her veins, Emily will make him listen and, dear sweet Jesus, don’t let that happen, please.
She moved from the bottom stair to the hallway and drifted down the long corridor towards the kitchen, wondering just how she would handle things if Curt thought her mad. Yes, he was a good man, a trustworthy man, but what she’d seen…
It was impossible. No sane person would take her word for it.
Jess needn’t have worried.
All thoughts of how he’d react to cancelling the plan were wiped from her mind when she stepped into the kitchen.
“Lisa!?”
Her sister-in-law lay, spread out, on the kitchen floor, with her hair strewn around her head, soaked black with blood. Lisa’s nose was pulverized, mashed into her face, flattened, ruined. Thick blood oozed from the mess like oil, running into her mouth, over lips torn to shreds. What remained of her teeth were peppered around her neck and chin, some stuck in the coagulating blood. Others, Jess saw, gathered between her ample bosoms.
Jess quickly scanned the room, searching in the shadows and peering down doorways for the assailant. Whomever had done this to her poor sister-in-law…they had to be close.
In Lisa’s hand, a knife.
Jess fell to her knees before Lisa, immediately taking Lisa’s wrist in her one free hand while she grabbed the blade with the other. Her eyes darted madly around the room as she searched for a pulse, expecting at any moment to be attacked by the bastard who’d done this.
“Please, Lisa…please be alive…”
Lisa’s pulse was there, slow and dangerously weak, but it was there.
Jess swallowed hard.
She lowered her face to Lisa’s ruined mouth and felt the softness of the woman’s breathing.
Good, that was good.
“Lisa! Wake up, honey! It’s me…it’s Jess.”
There was a second or two of silence, then, instead of words, Lisa coughed out a mouthful of blood. It sprayed Jess in the face and she ignored it, relieved that her friend was coming around.
Lisa’s eyes flickered open then closed. She blinked blood from her vision and peered up at Jess, confused.
“What the fuck?” she rasped. She sounded drunk, slurring badly as she fought to form words around the ruins of her mouth.
Jess whispered. “Lisa, honey, whoever did this is probably still in here. We need to get you up and get the hell out of here right now! Can you move?”
Lisa moaned something under her breath. The sound of her breathing – broken and rasping – filled Jess with fresh concern.
“Come on, babe. On your feet,” she said, gently.
“Pete,” Lisa gasped, fighting to breathe. “Pete.”
“He’s not back, Lisa. They’re still out there. We have to go!”
“No! No…you don’ understand…it was…it was him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pete did this.”
Shock tore through Jess like lightning. “Shit...”
“Jess…run! Just get the girl and go. He’ll kill you both. He’ll…”
Lisa’s words died on her lips. She stared over Jess’ shoulder, her eyes wide and alight with fear. Her head shook from side to side. “No…No! You leave her alone you son of…”
Already knowing who stood behind her, Jess spun around.
Pete, painted in blood that was not his own, smiled down at her. “Surprise,” he said to Jess.
Then he kicked her in the face.
22
Jess went down hard, grunting as her head collided with the kitchen floor. She clutched the knife in her left hand and prayed he hadn’t noticed it before he’d attacked. To her side, she could make out Lisa, fighting to get to her feet. A swift kick from Pete to the big woman’s ribs stole whatever fight she had left in her. Jess heard something cracking as Pete’s boot landed the devastating blow. Lisa was wheezing, as though on her death bed, when Pete swung a second vicious kick at the big woman’s temple. The crack was sickening. Then Lisa, again, was out cold.
The grinning maniac turned his attention to Jess.
She moved to get up.
“Now, now…” Pete admonished. He swung out again with his foot, aiming for Jess this time, catching her beneath the chin. Jess’ head snapped back, blood sprayed from her mouth as she collapsed once more on the floor.
Pete stood above her, his feet on either side of her. He looked enormous, like a giant torn from terrible myth, looming over its next meal.
Jess spat at him. “Fuck you!”
“We’ll get there, hot stuff,” Pete crooned.
With all the strength she had left, Jess swung the blade upwards with her left hand, aiming for his crotch.
Her arm got no further than an inch off the floor, before Pete brought a punishing boot down on her hand.
There was another sickening crack. Jess screamed as her fingers snapped like wishbones under his heel. Someplace, off in the distance, she could hear metal hitting the floor as the knife slid uselessly from her destroyed hand.
“Won’t be jacking off old Curt with that hand again, baby,” Pete laughed. Turned her head left, Jess stared in horror at her hand. The fingers jutted out at crazy angles. One of her nails was torn off. The glistening skin beneath was bloody and ragged.
“Now,” Pete said. “What was it you said? Oh yeah….’fuck you’. I like the way you think, bitch. Your wish is my command…”
23
At the foot of the stairs, Emily listened.
She could hear everything that was going on down the hall and it hurt her heart.
She didn’t want to see Jess in pain, nor hear it. She liked her. She hadn’t lied when she’d said it.
She’d only half lied when she said she trusted her, too.
Jess had been part of all this. She’d brought her here and she’d put her in danger, or thought she had, but she seemed genuinely sad about it.
It had been hard on the girl, showing Jess the things she’d shown her. There was no pleasure in seeing the fear bristle and simmer in someone she liked.
But it had been necessary.
Just as it was necessary to allow the horrible man in the kitchen to do what he was doing, at least for a time.
In her short life, Emily had seen terrible things. She understood horror. She was acquainted with death. With pain.
Her parents had turned on her, just as she knew they would. They’d left her out here, surely hoping that the people who took her would hurt her bad. Kill her, even. They wanted her gone. They wanted her dead. She knew it, just as surely as she knew the man downstairs wanted the same thing. When the bad man realized her mom and dad weren’t going to go along with the plan, he’d come for her and he’d hurt her. She read a lot of comic books. She watched a lot of movies.
These things always ended only one of two ways…
With smiles and love and relieved embraces, or with tears and heartbreak and bodies put beneath the ground before their time.
And there’d be no smiles at the end of this story, if the bad man had his way.
Emily winced as she heard Jess groaning in the next room. She knew what the man was doing to her. She’d seen that in movies, too. It was gross, but she understood that grown-ups liked doing it.
Or, at least, they liked doing it when they had a choice.
When it happened like it was happening now - to Jess - there was nothing good about it. It hurt the woman it happened to. It hurt her deep down in her heart, where hurt never healed.
Emily wanted to cry.
More than that, she wanted to go to Jess. To help her.
To make the bad man stop.
And she could. Oh, how she could.
She could make him scream and scream and scream, and it would last forever.
But she had to wait.
Jess had to understand.
The other man, the one Jess was with and who she said was nice…he hadn’t come back. The bad man had probably killed him. Just as he’d kill Jess and the big woman and her, if he had the chance.
From the kitchen, she heard Jess plead. “No! Please…no!”
Then Jess screamed.
Emily covered her ears, feeling sick.
When the screaming stopped and the sobbing began, she wiped the tears from her eyes.
It has to be this way, she told herself. Jess needs to know I can protect her.
The bad man screamed himself then. Though there was no pain in it. No sorrow nor shame nor guilt. Only a delight and satisfaction Emily could barely understand.
And then, the kitchen fell silent.
Emily sat a moment longer, allowing the sadness to engulf her. She’d taken a great risk in allowing the bad man to do what he’d done. He could just as easily have killed Jess, then Emily would be no closer to her goal than ever. But that had been a chance she was willing to take.
Now, though, that the bad man had done what he’d wanted to do, Jess would soon be killed. Emily was sure of it.
She got to her feet and made her way down the hall.
24
“Damn, girl! That was fun!” Pete laughed.
Jess watched in mute disgust as he gripped his still-hard penis in his fist, squeezing until the last drop of his orgasm oozed from the tip of his cock and swung there like a little white tear.
Seeing her eying the thick, slowly elongating string of fluid, Pete feigned innocence. “Oh…sorry, baby. Do you want a taste? Is that it?”
Jess said nothing.
Laughing softly, he pinched the dangling pearl of cum between his fingers and pulled it free from his urethra. He licked his fingers clean. “Don’t know what you’re missing, bitch.”
“Where’s my husband?” Jess hissed.
Pete’s eyes widened. “Oh shit! I’d forgotten about good ole Curt, what with fucking his wife in the asshole and all. Where in the good Lord’s name are my manners!?”
Jess ignored his taunts.
“Where is he?”
“Have you any idea how long I’ve wanted to slip it to you, Jess? Have you any fucking idea? It’s been a long damn time, let me tell you. Curt…he never even wanted us to meet,” Pete flashed her a leering smile. “Guess he figured you’d fall for me or something, huh? Anyway, I saw you, baby. I saw you. Your asshole husband kept a picture of you in his wallet, wouldn’t you know? Nice picture too. All folded up and all, but none of the creases were over your face or nothin’. He’d leave that wallet of his laying around all over the damn place. Fucking loser never had any damn money in it, so I guess he never felt none too protective of it? Shit, Jess…the times I had looking at your picture when he wasn’t around. Used to spit my nut to it so hard you’d think I hadn’t cleaned my tubes out in a month. Even got some of my milk on it once. Damn stuff shot so far outta my meat, it sprayed you right on the lips, Jess. Right on the fucking lips!
“Damn, if it wasn’t fun! Still, though…there ain’t nothing like the real thing. Getting you up here all alone like this, with Curt out of the way…it’s all a man could wish for ‘n’ more. I’m sorry I had to nut in your asshole, but that’s just the way it is. I prefer it that way. Nice and tight, yes, ma’am! Snug as a bug in a rug, up in there.”
“WHERE IS HE!?” she screamed.
