At some point, I must have dozed off because when I opened my eyes again we were no longer moving, and it took me a few seconds to remember where I was.
“There’s my girl.” Romero’s voice broke through my disoriented haze. I turned my head and was greeted by his perfect smile. I reached up and touched the side of his face, as if I needed reassurance he was real.
Was he going to pretend the last few hours never happened? Apparently so. He kissed my open palm before pulling my hand away from his cheek, waking me all the way up.
Unsticking my cheek from the leather seat, I peered through the windshield.
Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness around us, I saw a single light on up ahead and instantly knew where we were.
“What are we doing here?” I asked as soon as I was out on solid ground.
He looked down at me with a sinister smile and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, turning me in the direction of the old farmhouse. “They took one of mine, so I’m going to take all of theirs.”
“Let’s get this done,” Cobra hype-manned, coming around the back of the Jeep with the bloody pillowcase he had stashed in the hatch before we left. He turned it upside down and a severed goat head hit head the ground with a soft thud.
I wrinkled my nose and frowned. “That is fucking sick.”
“Sick like rad? Or sick like ew?” he asked, picking it up by its tiny horns.
“Definitely the latter. Where did you even get that? And where is the rest of it?” Arlen asked, curling her lip up.
“I don’t remember,” he shrugged.
“Come on.” Romero dropped his arm from my shoulders and grabbed my hand, setting off at a rapid pace.
As we neared the wraparound porch, the only sound that could be heard was faint sobs coming from inside the barn.
“Are you going to break in?”
Grimm walked up the stairs and turned the door knob. He strolled into the house like he lived there and spun around to face us. “We don’t need to break in; they never lock their door.” He smirked and disappeared out of sight.
If life were a movie, this was the part that would be paused as a wise narrator explained just how fucked I was about to find myself. This is the part where they would say I should have turned and ran as if hellhounds were on my heels.
It was the part where I would understand why they called my lover the devil. It was his kind way of giving me the pamphlet version of an introduction to the world he talked about that normal people couldn’t survive in.
Going into this house was the beginning of my end, the catalyst for everything that was yet to come.
Romero kept his hand clasped around mine as we walked forward with Arlen and Cobra. The tip of my boot was barely over the threshold when a woman screamed and a man landed at an awkward angle on the hardwood floor a few feet ahead of us.
“That’s one!” Grimm called down from the upper level.
Blood began to pool around the man’s head. He wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of drawers. His lifeless, wide-eyed stare was locked on us.
Cobra walked around him, goat head in hand, and entered the kitchen. Doors slammed from upstairs and footsteps thundered across the floor, making the ceiling fixtures rattle.
Romero looked towards the staircase and let me go, giving me a little nudge forward. “You two, go set the table.”
“What the hell do we need to do that for?” Arlen asked from beside me when we could no longer see him.
“Romero’s methods only make sense to himself.”
“And him.” She gestured to the kitchen where Cobra was dumping cooking oil into a saucepan.
I walked forward, chalking my jitteriness up to bad nerves and Romero’s precarious mood. The kitchen and dining room were side by side. Spotting a china cabinet in the back corner, I steered Arlen with my shoulder and made a beeline for it.
“This place is filthy.”
“That’s an understatement,” Arlen muttered.
Clutter and dirty laundry were everywhere. There was a thick residual stench of cooked flesh in the air.
Searching the dining room for a light switch, I swept my gaze past the kitchen and saw it was even worse.
Dishes were piled a mile high in the sink, chunks of black grime were smeared on faded yellow tile, and a plastic pitcher with questionable content was tipped over on the counter.
Finding a light switch, I flicked it up with the tip of my finger, having zero desire to touch anything around me.
“Table’s already set,” Arlen pointed out.
“Good, we can get started then,” Romero responded, walking into the room half-dragging a woman by the back of the neck. I instantly recognized her from the day we escaped.
“It was Bill. You know I know the rules! I would never be so stupid, Romero.” She clutched at his arm but he simply shook her off.
“Martha, we had a deal and you violated our terms. You had no business being in my woods in the first place. Did I not provide your family with enough to eat?”
I crossed my arms, watching their interaction with furrowed brows.
These people were cannibals. The only way he was giving them food was by giving them other people. Why the fuck would he do that?
He sat her down in a chair and reached in his back pocket, retrieving the Browning knife he always carried. “Place your hands on the table, Martha.”
She looked up at him with tears rolling down her face and shook her head. Chewing my bottom lip, I glanced back into the kitchen to check on Cobra. He was rifling through the drawers, placing things I assumed he intended on taking with him in a pile.
“I need your help, Cali.”
Bringing my focus back to Romero, I uncrossed my arms and made my way around the table, stopping beside the woman.
“Place her left hand on the table.”
Wondering where he was going with this, I pried the woman’s stiff hand away from where she clutched it to her chest and held it down as he instructed.
“I’m going to count to three.”
At his words, the woman began to struggle and push at me with her other arm. Arlen grabbed it and held it identical to the way I was.
“Three,” Romero said calmly, driving his knife through the side of her left hand, removing it and plunging it straight through the back of her right. I winced and turned my head away as she screeched in my ear. Her blood quickly made its way across the table, some making it onto my skin.
“Pin em down,” Romero instructed in the same level tone.
Searching for something that could do what he wanted, I swiped up the steak knife from the now bloody table setting beside me, and pushed it through the hole he had just made, sticking it into the wooden table with a twist.
Arlen didn’t hesitate to do the same.
The woman dropped her chin to her chest and moaned, more than likely slipping into shock. I wiped my blood hand on the back of her shirt and stepped back.
“Look what I got.” Grimm came from the opposite direction with an unconscious man in a choke-hold and the little boy from the barn like he was a sack of potatoes.
“Give me the kid.” Romero held out his arms, taking the crying little boy from Grimm.
As Grimm situated the man across from the woman who had yet to stop groaning, I gave Romero a questioning look.
“What are you doing?” I asked with a calmness I didn’t feel.
“What do you think I’m doing?” he shifted the kid around so that his back was pressed into his chest and his feet dangled off the floor.
“Grease is ready!” Cobra called out over the sound of the oven door slamming.
“Let him go.” I kept my eyes locked with his, my voice low but demanding.
“Why would I let him go?”
“He’s just a kid, you fucker!” Arlen lunged forward in a stance meant to snatch the kid away but Grimm moved quicker. He let the man fall out of his chair and snaked an arm around Arlen’s waist, hauling her backward.
Not so much as batting an eyelid, Romero lifted the boy higher and gave a sharp twist to his neck, strong enough to sever the connection between brain and nervous system, before dragging his knife across the boy’s throat. He dropped the body right beside his mother’s chair, and then proceeded to torture her further by removing two of her fingers.
I was cemented to the floor, watching everything happen as if through a periscope. Arlen’s screams were muffled as Grimm smothered her mouth with his hand.
Cobra walked in, carrying the saucepan of oil, and placed it down in the center of the table. Romero dropped the severed fingers in and they immediately began to pop and sizzle.
I watched the man on the floor wake slowly at first, startling awake when the scene before him fully settled into his brain. Grimm swapped Arlen for him, letting her break away from him.
She wasted no time taking off out of the room. I heard her footsteps hit the porch and knew she was making a run for it.
I looked at Romero and he already had a knowing smile on his face, two steps ahead of my thought process. With a slight, almost unnoticeable nod of his head, he dared me to run.