What are we going to do with you.

His grin tells me. He’s already decided what he’s going to do with me. He’s just waiting to see if I catch up.

“What happened to you to make you like this?” I whisper.

Ray stops for a moment, his grin shrinking. He pulls the same matchbox car out of his shirt pocket and tosses it at me. It lands on my chest, and if I crane my neck I can see all of the tiny bits of rust on its metal frame.

“What happened to me? What happened to me.” He takes a pair of paramedic shears from his jeans pocket and steps into the space in front of me, pressing his thumb and forefinger into my thigh until I yelp. I know they’re paramedic shears — metal scissors with the very end kicked out on an angle, to run along clothed skin without stabbing into somebody by accident — because I watched them cut my mother’s clothes from her in the hospital after her accident.

I crane my neck harder, watching as he reduces my jeans to ribbons of denim in seconds. “What are you doing?” I whimper.

“It’s not what I’m doing that you need to worry about, darlin’,” he says, finishing his handiwork. “It’s what I’m about to do.”

He chuckles.

I hyperventilate.

The air is cold, I am naked from the waist down, and he is right — It’s what he’s about to do that has me shaking. My whole body, trembling on the table like I’m having a seizure, the little matchbox car on my chest bouncing every time I drag in a shallow breath. Ray, having cut every strip of clothing from my body from the waist down, takes his beer and sips it casually, grinning as he glances down at me. As if we’re at a bar, on a date, and he isn’t about to rape and murder me.

I’m cold, and I’m half-naked, and this cannot be happening. I buck like a wild animal when Ray’s fingers find their way to my thighs and push them wider like it’s nothing, like I’m a piece of paper he’s tearing in half. I scream so loud, I’d put Jennifer’s death wails to shame.

“Don’t!” I scream. Fuck. I scream as loud as I can, blood-curdling and shrill, and even though I told Leo to never come near this house again, I hope he didn’t listen. “Please. Please. Don’t.”

I didn’t want to beg but I beg now. Please don’t. It doesn’t matter, though.

Amused Ray is suddenly furious, raging Ray. He smacks me across the face, hard enough that I see stars. Before I can lift my head again, he’s shoving a wadded-up bunch of denim into my mouth, a crude off-cut from what used to be my jeans. I gag, trying to dislodge the material with my tongue, but it won’t budge, conforming to the shape of my mouth and making me retch.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says angrily. “You think lover boy down there is gonna save you? Huh? You think my brother’s gonna bust through that door and stop me?” He drains the last of his beer and leans over me, spitting the liquid right into my face. I try to draw back but there’s nowhere to go, and all I manage to do is smack the back of my head against the table. Beer, warm from Ray’s mouth, dribbles into my eyes and nose and down the sides of my face, into my ears.

“Stay still,” he demands, spitting into his hand and slapping his palm against the spot where my panties should be. Where they would be, had I not lost them somewhere in Leo’s bed. “Stay still or you’ll get what you deserve, just like your mother got what she deserved.”

My mother? I don’t stay still. I struggle. I fight. Ray’s trying in vain to get himself inside me, but he can’t. It’s like trying to get that last scoop of ice cream from the bowl. It’s slippery and you chase it but you can’t quite get it on your spoon.

There is blood and beer and saliva and Ray can’t quite get the ice cream on his spoon, can’t quite get his dick wet. Not with me thrashing like a wild animal. He punches me, and I don’t stop struggling. He screams in my face, “Lie. Still,” and I don’t stop struggling.

Clearly agitated, he takes a kitchen towel and presses it over my face, not so bad. I can’t see, but it doesn’t hurt. Then he pours cold beer all over the cloth, making it stick to my mouth and nose so that when I try to take a breath, all I get is burning liquid. He grips my chin with one hand and pushes my face up so that the liquid easily flows into my nostrils. It’s waterboarding for rednecks. It’s like being plunged headfirst into Gun Creek in the middle of winter, and held there. But it’s worse. Because I can’t stop the beer flooding my nostrils, from pouring into my mouth through the cloth that vacuum-seals to my face the moment I try to take a breath.

I’m going to drown inside my house, without a single drop of water, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“I got no problem fucking you when you’re dead if that’s what it takes,” Ray says, pulling the wet cloth from my face as I retch. “Lie. Still.”

I lie still.

“Good girl. You’re learning.” Ray pushes into me, the awful sound of his teeth grinding matched only by my stifled sobs. It hurts. Ray grunts as he ruts himself into me, back and forth, like a blunt saw trying to fell a tree. Back and forth.

Back and forth.

I lie still. Beer burns lines of fire inside my sinuses, in my chest. Rope burns at my wrists, around my ankles, biting tighter into my skin every time Ray pushes deeper, everywhere is fire.

I surrender to the pain. I let it take me, like a wave, like a tsunami. Drowning isn’t peaceful, but it is easier once you stop resisting it.

I’ve left my body, taken it off like a dirty dress and left it puddled on the floor while I float on the ceiling and watch. And wait. Please hurry. Hurry what, I’m not sure. For him to finish. For him to kill me. Or for somebody to open the front door. Brother, you’d best get home. Ray’s words, when he called Damon. How long ago was that call? Ten minutes? An hour? I have no sense of time. I don’t know how long I was blacked out on the table while Ray tied my limbs and watched me sleep. I don’t know how long he’s been on top of me. All I know is Damon should have been home long ago.

Never thought I’d be wishing for my worst nightmare to turn up and rescue me.

Then again, I never thought I’d be tied to my own kitchen table, the one where I sit and eat cereal that tastes like sour milk and lies every single morning, while my not-uncle rapes me to death.

Some things you just can’t imagine until they’re happening.

And then he’s… there. Here. Standing in the kitchen, his blue eyes wide and bright, hand on his gun holster.

“Ray.”

You would think that Ray would stop.

He doesn’t.

“Ray!”

Ray. Doesn’t. Stop.

I want to scream out to him, but I can’t.

Help me. Please help me. Save me from this man.

But he doesn’t. He just fucking stands there, looking like he might cry.

Ray stops his rutting long enough to address his brother, to take a slug of beer. What a multi-tasker, our Ray. I moan through the cloth stuffed into my mouth, vying for the attention of a seriously fucked-up police sheriff who should be shooting Ray right now, if he had any moral compass.

“I caught her sneaking in the front door,” Ray says, panting from exertion. “Stinking like a dirty cum bucket, weren’t you, darlin?” He jabs a finger into my stomach hard enough that I scream. “She came straight from that little shit’s trailer down there. No panties and a nice little cream pie to remember him by.”

Ray glances down at me. “What, you think I didn’t check you out before I started to fuck you?”

Pleasemakehimstop.Damon!Youhavetohelpme.Please.PLEASE.

My words are one long unintelligible tangle, muffled through my gag. I beg with my eyes. But Damon doesn’t hear.

“Pull up a pew, brother,” Ray says, rearing back and driving into me so hard I scream. “Grab a brew. We’re gonna use this bitch up before we bury her.”

Ray takes the paramedic shears and cuts through my shirt and bra, throwing scraps of material on the floor, everything gone now. My nipples tighten in protest against the cold, my body shivering even more violently without any cover.

I am as naked as the day I was born, and probably just as bloody.

I stare at Damon in disbelief. My fear blossoms, it becomes anger, it becomes rage, warm and thick in my veins as my heart beats vicious and fast. I watch as he takes a seat. As he scrubs his hand across his stubble, his anxiety palpable. As he looks at the spot where Ray is violating me, over and over, and does nothing.

He finally looks at my face again, and that’s when I understand: this is my punishment. This is my lesson. I broke the rules. I went to Leo. And now, I’m going to wear the consequences.

Damon looks sick. I wonder what I look like. I’m covered in blood and beer, and the side of my face is swelling rapidly from Ray’s fists.

“Remember, Danny?” Ray says, panting heavily as he continues to thrust into me. “Remember how good we used to be together? I bet we could both take this one at the same time. Just like old times.”

He called him Danny.

“Shut up, Ray,” Damon snaps.

Ray doesn’t let up. “We haven’t shared a girl since that junkie Creek bitch,” he says, wrapping his hands around my throat and squeezing tighter. The part of me that’s left in my body — that tiny sliver of Cassie — looks at Damon, pleading with her eyes as she starts to smother. “Remember?”

We haven’t shared a girl since that junkie Creek bitch. Something about that statement hits me, and I mentally catalog it so I can study it later. Assuming there is a later for me.

I see Damon reach behind him for something. I’m on the ceiling again. Floating. I can’t hear and I can’t feel. All I can do is float, and wait until it’s over. Suddenly, I miss my snowflakes. Miss having something to count. Ray has stamina, that’s for sure. I thought for sure he wouldn’t be able to last more than a minute or two. But he just keeps going and going, relentless, back and forth, his fingers around my throat stealing my breath, stealing my life.

And then, just like that, I am brutally thrust back into my abused, naked body, as the whole room explodes.

At least, that’s how it looks. Something makes a dull bang-hiss beside my ear. Ray’s head explodes like a watermelon under a jackhammer, bits of blood and slush splattering a 360 around where he was standing just a second ago. I feel him pulled from inside me, and then a crash as what’s left hits the hardwood below.

Ray has disappeared — he’s just gone —and Damon is standing beside the table, a gun in one hand, complete with a silencer screwed onto the barrel. No wonder the noise wasn’t louder. But could Leo have heard it from his place? I doubt it. Damon looms over me, the knife suddenly in his hand, brandishing it above my face.

I scream. I’m covered in wet stuff — in what’s left of Ray — and now Damon is going to stab me to death?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he hisses, taking the knife and freeing my wrists. They’re still bound together, but no longer attached to the length of rope that runs under the table and secures my ankles. The rope tears loose under the blade and I instinctively curl my arms back down and around myself, the pain in my shoulders indescribable. It’s as if someone has cut off my arms with a rusty butter knife and then stapled them back on.

Damon circles around to the end of the table and frees my ankles as well; I draw my knees to my chest, slipping on the blood and beer coating the table, and then I’m falling, landing hard on my side on something wet.

I’m on the floor, my arms wrapped around my knees, and I’m resting on warm, bare flesh. I turn my head to the side and scream into my gag, feeling my eyes practically bug out of my head at the sight of Ray’s half-missing skull. There is blood everywhere. I’m laying in it, it’s splattered against the side of my face, all over my arms, I’m laying in Ray’s blood and brains.

I’m laying in what’s left of Ray.

Damon scoops his arms under my shoulders and gets me to a sitting position. “You gonna be quiet?” he asks.

I nod feverishly, and he sticks his fingers into my mouth, scooping out the cloth jammed in my mouth. As soon as my mouth is free, I lean over and throw up. My hair is loose and I’m pretty sure I get vomit in it, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.

On hands and heels, I crawl away from Ray, backward, never letting him out of my sight lest he should spring back to life and murder me. I feel hands behind me, yanking me up on shaking knees, and the soft knick sound of Damon cutting my wrists free.

My back is against his chest, and I sag into him as he holds me off the floor. My head lolls back against his shoulder, and I can’t find it in me to try and run, even though he’s probably going to shoot me now, even though he’s a murderer. I must be in shock, I think to myself. I’m frozen, and not just from the bitter cold. I can’t get my limbs to work. Can’t get my brain to kick into gear and tell me what to do next. Can’t stop looking at Ray, at the top of his skull, the way it just smashed apart like a piñata full of watermelon slices.

“I have one question,” Damon murmurs, his mouth so close to my ear I can feel the graze of his teeth on my earlobe. “Was he telling the truth about Leo?”

My silence is enough of an answer for him.

“Oh, Cassie,” Damon says sadly. “I try so hard to make you happy. And you are such a disappointment to me.”

His gentle hands turn hard. One stays on my arm, his fingers like a vise. The other hand threads into my messy hair, fists a bunch of bloody strands, and rips me to my feet.

“Wh-what are you doing!?” I shriek, trying to get his hand away from my scalp. It feels like he’s going to pull my skin off right down to the bone, peel off my mask and leave me just a faceless skull.

My entire body starts to shake violently. Because I thought this was over. I thought I was safe. But I’m not safe, am I? I’ve traded one monster for another. There’s a reason they pretended to be brothers. Somebody took Damon all those years ago, put him in their car and drove away, and something so bad happened that Damon never went home. Never went to the police and told them he’d survived. Survived what? What happened to that ten-year-old boy to turn him into this? What was so bad that he’d rather have a gravesite for himself instead of admitting that he lived?

He drags me to the upstairs bathroom by my hair. It hurts more than you’d think, being dragged by your hair. I’m still covered in pieces of Ray, blood and skull and sticky from having taken a face full of Pabst more than once. A bright red line paints my forced ascent up the stairs, onto stark white tiles, and into the small shower stall where Damon shoves me. I land awkwardly, pain shooting through my knees and up my body. It can always get worse, I remind myself, as freezing cold water erupts from the showered and douses me. So cold. So, so cold. It’s winter — a few degrees cooler and the pipes would freeze over in our house.

I try to scream, but barely a whisper comes out. I’m so cold. So stunned. So weak. I can barely make a sound. I gasp as Damon reaches in and shoves my head under the steady stream of ice cold water, panting as I watch Ray’s blood wash off me and circle around the drain.

“Look at me,” Damon snaps.

I look at him.

Everything is pale in here; white tiles, white ceiling, white towels. Even the whites of Damon’s eyes. But it’s the irises that fix me to the shower floor, the same way a pin might fix a dead butterfly inside a glass case. So blue. Blue used to be my favorite color. That was before. Now, I hate the color. Now I want to forsake the sky, the ocean, because they remind me of Damon King. Daniel Collins, I correct myself. His real name is Daniel Collins.

“I should take you outside and hose you down in the snow like a fucking animal,” Damon breathes. “That’s all you are. A fucking animal.”

He shuts off the water and leaves me there, on the tiles, shivering, my arms wrapped around my knees. I hear water running and realize he’s filling the old claw-foot bath that sits beside the shower. A moment later, he’s pulling me out of the shower, picking me up like I’m a feather and lowering me down into the bath.

I find my voice when my bare ass hits hot water. I scream. After the cold of the shower, it’s as if he’s dropped me into a vat full of acid. Maybe he has. Maybe this is how he kills me. Damon claps a hand over my mouth. I hold the sides of the tub as if it’s a lifeboat and I’m being tossed around in the middle of the ocean, instead of being boiled alive in my own bathroom. Onetwothreefourfive, and the burning sensation recedes ever-so-slightly.

Damon takes his hand away from my mouth, handing me a bar of soap and a washcloth. “Clean yourself up,” he says, his jaw set. He takes a step back and watches intently as I shake and scrub the blood from my skin. I should be crying, shouldn’t I? Crying or having a breakdown or something. Instead, I’m thinking about Ray. About Jennifer. About Karen.

“Are you going to bury Ray with Jennifer?” I ask suddenly.

Damon glares at me. He’s starting to look a little worse for the wear, my philandering stepdaddy. His clothes are covered in blood, his eyes are bloodshot to hell, and the black circles under his eyes weren’t there when I met him. It must be hard to keep your youth when you’re busy stealing it from everyone else.

“What kind of question is that?” he snaps. “Of course not.” And then, “Sometimes I worry about you, Cassie.”

There’s a dead man missing half his skull downstairs, a teenage girl and her stillborn fetus buried in the yard below this window, and this is what makes him worry about me? The ridiculousness of his thought process makes me laugh in my head at first, and then a whole body convulsion that brings tears to my eyes and a cramp to my stomach. Laughter is so close to crying, that pretty soon my cackle is a full-blown sob, strips torn off my soul, my eyes bleeding salty tears that burn my eyes.

I bring my knees up to my chest and hug my arms around them, just a small ball of a girl, naked and waiting to die.

I break.

I cry and cry, cracked open, falling apart, or just plain falling.

This is not a fairytale and there is no happy ending, no prince to ride in on his horse and save me.

It’s just me and my monster, just us in our house built out of bones and lies.

“Cassie,” Damon says, his tone softer this time. Almost like he’s pleading. For what, I don’t know. There’s a longing in his tone, a need. He puts his hand on mine, squeezing gently. I would recoil, but there’s nowhere to retreat to.

“I went to Lone Pine today,” I whisper.

His entire demeanor changes. He squeezes my hand harder, and when he speaks, there is fear in his voice, incredulity. “What?”

Now he knows that I know. Now he knows that I have his secrets. Maybe this will be my end. Maybe he’ll thread his hands through my hair and hold my head under water until I suck in a watery last breath.

Maybe that would be the very best thing for him to do.

“I went to your grave,” I say sadly, crying again. I don’t know why I’m crying for him, because he’s never caused me anything but darkness. But as I look at Damon King, a person who doesn’t exist, a boy from a milk carton, I cry. His grip on my hand is so tight now he’s crushing my bones. “That’s where I went. I found your milk cartons in the attic. I needed to know. I needed to know.”

When his words come out, he sounds like a little boy. “Did you tell anyone?”

I shake my head. “There’s nobody left to tell.”

He lets go of me, sagging to the floor. He starts to cry, too. All these years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry.