Becky
I stand in the corner of the room watching as the strange man does strange things. Strange things like grabbing the bald man and dragging him across the room and placing a gun in his hand and aiming the gun at the man in the hallway, who has been moved so that he’s clutching his shotgun in death. The man—Chance Baylor, I remind myself, though my head is aching and remembering is painful—is older than me, but not by much. I’d guess around thirty. He has severe, hawkish features, sharp and serious, black hair cropped close to his head, curling slightly, and eyes almost as dark as mine. He’s wearing a black hoodie and black cargo trousers and a black hood, but even beneath the clothes I can see how huge and muscular he is, at least six-one, and trim. His face is clean-shaven, and his mouth is set in a line, showing absolutely no emotion. When he speaks to me, there is no emotion in his voice, either. I think I see some in his eyes, but that might just be my imagination. I recognize him vaguely; I think I’ve seen him around the Family places a few times, but I don’t remember him as one of the guys drinking and making lewd comments.
“Right, come here.” After he’s arranged them how he wants, he walks across the room and grabs me by the shoulder. His touch is firm, and I don’t know if it’s the shock, or just how firm he is, or what, but all of a sudden I feel lust grip me. A burning in my pussy that wasn’t there a moment before fires to life and I get the urge to reach down and grab the front of his pants. I can’t believe it’s there, but it’s strong, and I end up clutching onto my thigh to stop myself. I see his gaze move to where my hand clutches at my thigh, and I know what he’s thinking. When I don’t move, he sighs and grabs both my shoulders, lifting me above the men and carrying me from the room.
“It’s just adrenaline,” I whisper, so quiet he can’t hear. “That’s all.”
It must be. What else could it be? I’m a virgin, not some sex-crazed woman who throws herself at a man minutes after they were just pointing guns at each other. My heart is drumming, loud, drumming dirty thoughts into me that have no place in this situation. I think about what he’d look like naked, I wonder what he’d like to do to me. Stop it, I tell myself. Just stop it. I swallow it back, the misplaced lust, and remind myself that the scent of blood is in my nose; this is no appropriate time for feeling like this.
“You’ll want to close your eyes now,” he says. “I’ve gotta fuck with things in the other room and the other room is…well…you’ll wanna close your eyes, alright?”
He’s standing opposite me, looking down on me. His eyes are brown, I notice, but with a spot of light blue in one of them which gives him character, a tiny glint of light in the dark. I try and speak, but I find my voice has deserted me. All that comes out is a babyish babble. He shakes his head, and repeats to me slowly that I should close my eyes when we get to the room. I manage a nod, and he takes my hand and drags me through the warehouse corridors. I keep thinking about the men, the men and what they were going to do, and I begin to cry; and all of this is confused when I also think about how warm and firm Chance’s hand is. It’s a confusing mess that makes no sense and—I’m tired, achingly tired. I just want to pass out and wake up and find that all of this is a dream. Dad never sold me and Julian never traded me and those men didn’t almost rape me.
“Stop it.” Chance has stopped us outside a door, facing me, face stern. “Stop it.”
Stop what? I don’t even know what I’m doing, what I’m supposed to stop. Chance has his hands on my shoulders, looking deeply into my eyes. “I ain’t got time to play babysitter,” he says. “So get your breathing under control and close your eyes, alright? I’d take you to the car but the state you’re in…”
I close my eyes, just wanting him to stop snapping in my face, and then let out a low moan when he lifts me and throws me over his shoulder. He pushes the door open, and I immediately know why he wanted me to close my eyes. The smell is awful. The smell is worse than awful. I remember once when I was a kid and one of my friends and I was walking home from dance class and we found a dead cat flattened on the side of the road. It was summer and flies were buzzing around it. Its smell was so bad I had to run to a nearby bush and spew my guts up. The smell that hits me as Chance carries me across the room is like that, only multiplied by ten, twenty, thirty. It’s like all the dead dogs from every roadside in the States have been brought to this one room. I vomit, but my belly is empty and I just convulse in Chance’s grip.
He sets me down, and says, “Stay here, keep your damn eyes closed. I won’t be long.”
I wobble on the spot, eyes clamped shut, gripping my nose to try and stop the smell from hitting me. But I have to breathe, which means the scent of death and shit and piss and blood fills my mouth or my nose whatever I do. I hear Chance walking around the room, his movements sending echoes all over, and I guess that he’s doing the same thing he did in the office: trying to make it seem like a shootout gone bad.
“Just stay calm,” he says, his voice carrying to me. I get the sense we’re in a large cavern-type room. “Just keep your eyes closed and breathe deep and stay calm, alright? The last thing I need is a panicking woman to deal with.”
I try and do as he says, but the more I stand here, the scent of dead men all around me, the more I begin to freak out. My mind keeps replaying the scene in the cell, over and over until it’s like I’m still in there and this is just a dream, and I’ll wake in the cell with the tattooed man standing over me again. I have to keep my eyes closed, so I don’t see what’s in the room, but keeping my eyes closed means living in the hell of my mind. Keeping my eyes closed means reliving the tormented minutes spent in those men’s clutches, with their hands grabbing at my flesh like I am a piece of meat, not a person at all. Surely nothing in reality can be as torturous as the amplified scenes in my mind.
Steeling myself, I open my eyes.
Big mistake.
The scene is like nothing I have ever imagined, so sadistic and depraved that at first I struggle to accept it as reality. All over the place, there are dead men, splayed over each other, most of them with fingers and eyes and tongues missing, gouged out like you’d gouge out the inside of a pumpkin before carving it up for Halloween. I clutch my sides, unable to control my breathing now, and perversely unable to look away. I find my gaze flitting from dead man to dead man. Chance works quickly, ignoring me, arranging the men, and then turns to see me staring and panting breathlessly.
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, coming toward me. He reaches me, offering me his hands so that I can steady myself, offering me hands that minutes before provoked adrenaline-fueled lust in me.
But there’s blood on his hands, blood on my face…blood, blood everywhere. I was in a dress at a restaurant and now there’s blood and—
I collapse to the floor, hunching up, burying my face in my knees and whispering frantically that all of this is just a dream, just a sick twisted dream and soon I’ll wake up in California with Mom because I made the wrong decision staying here and trying to fix Dad. I’ve tried to do good but how can a person do good in a world where men cut other men’s eyes from their sockets and stuff them in their mouths?
“I—I—”
My eyes grow heavy, Chance’s voice dim.
“It’s alright, come on, it’s alright. I’ll get you outta here now. It’s alright.”
My eyelids close and I see nothing, just darkness, just sweet darkness.