Chapter Twenty-One
The food I’d just consumed sat in my stomach like a heavy bag of rocks.
He led me through his kitchen, and through an open door I quickly realized led to a basement. The gritty stone walls were tight, opening up the further you went down. I didn’t have to wait very long to find out what was below.
From the kitchen, all had been silent. The closer we got to the bottom, the louder the muffled sobs got.
Stopping in my tracks, I shook my head, attempting to pull my hand free from his.
“No, Mason. I don’t want to see whatever this is.”
“If you don’t come with me, pretty girl, two people will die very soon.” He continued walking, ignoring my pleas. Knowing whatever I was about to see would forever be ingrained in my brain, I tried to prepare myself as best as I could.
Instead of another woman restrained in a chair, there were two women standing on crates. Both of them looked equally terrified.
“What is this?” Pulling my hand from his, I began to back away. His basement had the same look as the room upstairs. The old bloodstains on the floor let me know he’d done this before.
“The one on the left is an old fuck. The one on the right is my grade school math teacher, who hates my dad.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life with me. In this house, shit like this is normal. You need to get used to it.”
“I didn’t ask to live in your fucking house!”
He stared at me a minute before letting out a rich laugh.
“You’re sexy when you’re mad; we should do this more often.”
I think I may have felt every possible emotion there was to feel in less than two hours. My head felt as if it were going to explode.
I thought I had issues; Mason needed a straight jacket and some tranquilizers.
“You’re sick in the head.”
“So are you. That’s why we’re perfect for each other.”
I’d been speaking to myself in the first place, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m not watching this.” Turning around, I took maybe two steps before he gave his ultimatum.
“You don’t have to watch, but if you don’t pick one in five minutes, they both die.”
I looked at him over my shoulder, hating how attracted to him I was, even in the middle of this horrible situation. We were in a cruddy basement with two women about to be hanged, and I was still staring at him like he was the sun in the sky.
“Why are you doing this to them if you know them?” I looked between the two crates, searching for a way I could get them down.
“This was my father’s idea. I don’t have an issue with either one of them. Sometimes, things just happen. Four minutes, by the way.”
What kind of a father figure did he have?
“Three minutes,” he warned, staring at his watch.
“Your ex,” I blurted out.
“She’s not my ex; I said we used to fuck. There’s a huge difference.” Going right up to the crates, he kicked both of them away. It took that drastic action for me to see that it wasn’t rope around their necks. Thin razor barbed wire caught, snagging and slicing into their throats at the same time.
Crimson seemed to spray in every direction. I screamed, jumping back in horror. His math teacher’s head was almost severed from her body.
Parts of the neck I never wanted to see were exposed, tissue spilling outward. Neither could scream because of the way he had gagged them. They were dead within a few seconds of each other.
“I chose! I did what you said!” I yelled at him, hating how calm he still seemed to be.
“I said you had five minutes. I never said you needed to choose before then. The point of this was for you to hold out until the time was up. I realize I didn’t explain it correctly and that wasn’t fair to our guinea pigs.”
He stood there, watching bodies sway, and blood coat the floor without a care in the world. How many times had he done this before? Why didn’t it bother me more?
When he turned his head to look at me, he had the same look in his eyes he’d had when I was pinned to the wall.
I needed to get away from him.
Backing up with carefully measured steps, I waited until I was at the bottom of the stairs before turning around and darting up them. I heard his shoes hit the bottom step just as I reached the kitchen.
Slamming the door shut, I slid the lock into place and leaned against it to catch my breath. What did I do now?
“Katie, isn’t this a little childish?” He didn’t attempt to open the door; he must have heard the lock being engaged on his way up the stairs.
“You need help, Mason.” Turning so my forehead was resting on the smooth wood, I heard him hitting buttons on his phone.
Let him out; what are you doing?
“I’m not the one that’s split in two. I know exactly who I am. Do you?”
When my eyes started burning, I silently cursed myself. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I didn’t want him to get hurt. I could no longer think of him as a stranger when he knew every inch of my body and had saved my life.
“ Do you think the law is going to protect you?”
He laughed when I didn’t respond. How did he always know what I planned to do next?
“Katie, you’re so naïve, so sheltered,” he sighed, “Let me out, and we can go to the Riverview sheriff station together.”
Riverview? How far was that from Redwood?
Turning back around, I sunk down the door and dropped my head to my knees. This quick thinking plan of mind had already failed.
I couldn’t get out of his house. There were no phones, and there was a girl with no tongue somewhere lurking in the halls.
I was stuck with a man who killed without remorse. I was more afraid of me than I was of him, but I couldn’t let him know that.
The only reason I chose who I did was because the thought of her touching any part of him made me want to set her on fire.