Held (12 page)

I tried to pull away from him, but I had nowhere to go. My right hand was bound to the underside of the table. He was behind me, and I was trapped in his arms.

To my surprise and his, I managed to keep my teeth tightly together for a full minute.
But no more than that. He stuffed his dirty, meaty fingers into my mouth and pried open my jaw. With his left hand, he managed to cram in a handful of the stuff he held, which I now knew to be the rotten dog food I’d so cleverly hidden from him.

He’d found it.
He must’ve been down there cleaning and lifted the mattress. So as it turns out, I wasn’t quite the genius I thought I was.

I was more afraid than I had been so far. Even more afraid than I’d been as I’d watched him hack Stephanie into pieces. I knew that he was angry. Not just angry, but directly angry at me, with me, for lying to him. I didn’t even want to imagine the kind of punishment he had for something like this.

“Eat it, you stupid bitch,” he said as he continued cramming wads of rotten dog food in my mouth. Some pieces were still hard and crumbled as they scraped across my teeth. But other pieces had gone soft in their decay and fell softly into my mouth, threatening to slide down my throat. It was a battle to keep any from going down.

I only had one free hand and I used it to alternate
ly beat him in the face and pull at his arms. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe with my mouth and throat full of the foul kibble. I was trying to keep it all in my mouth so when he let go, I could spit it all in his face.

“You think you can lie to me and get away with it?”
he screamed in my ear. “Eat it!”

I began to cough and choke. He stopped shoving more food in, but refused to allow any out. He cupped his left hand, which was still covered in dog food
crumbs, over my mouth and bloated cheeks. With his right hand, he lifted up on my jaw, tilting my head back against his chest where I could feel his furiously pounding heart beating against his ribs, adding to the pounding I already had in my head.

“Eat it, bitch, or I’ll snap your neck and
then shove it down your throat while your heart still beats.”

Trying not to choke, I swa
llowed what was in my throat, some of the pieces scratching as they went. It took a few swallows to get it down, but I finally managed. Then, I chewed what was in my mouth. He didn’t give me any slack to chew, so I had to grind the bits of food against my teeth with my tongue to get it small enough to swallow. And worse, I could only breathe through my nose which meant I could smell. And taste. To say that it was a struggle to keep from puking was like saying that it was warm in Death Valley. A total understatement.

When he was satisfied that I’d swallowed enough of the vile stuff, he let go of my mouth and jaw.
Just as I began to relax a little, he put a hand on the back of my head and shoved my face down onto the table hard enough to rattle my teeth and blur my vision. I’d managed to turn my head slightly to the left, making my cheek cushion the blow and avoiding a certain broken nose. I had not been able to keep from biting the inside of my jaw, however. The metallic taste of the blood was welcoming, as it masked the putrid taste of rotten dog food.

He leaned down and spoke directly into my ear loudly. “If you ever, ever, lie to me again, I’ll bring your family here and make you watch as I slowly kill them. Do you understand me?”

I tried to nod, but his hand had my face pinned tightly against the table, so instead I said, “Yes,” in a weak and defeated voice.

He let go of my head and stom
ped back downstairs. To the sound of his fading footsteps, I vomited. I threw up all the dog food, spilling it onto the kitchen floor. When I saw the maggots writhing around in it, I vomited again.

Using the back of my hand and the tail of my shirt, I wiped my face and mouth free of as much of the gross stuff as I could. Still, I could smell it.
To expel as much of the smell as I could, I blew my nose into the tail of my shirt. It helped, but I still ended up breathing through only my mouth for the rest of the day.

Also for the rest of the day
, I didn’t speak to Ron or look at him. He didn’t speak to me either.

When he finally allowed me to use the restroom, I saw myself in the mirror. I had bits of dog food in my hair. My face was bruised on the right side, where he’d slammed it against the table.

I didn’t give a damn what he said. I stayed in the bathroom until I’d cleaned myself up a bit.

I brushed
my teeth twice. I ran the sink full of icy water and plunged my face into it. I considered leaving it there and drawing a deep breath. It shouldn’t take long to drown. The only problem would be my body working against me, fighting for life. I wasn’t sure I could overcome the will to live. And as Mason popped forward in my mind, I knew I couldn’t. His adorable little face was enough to make me pull my face from the sink and suck in a deep breath of air instead of water.

So what? What was the worst thing that had happened to me really? He’d shove
d rotten dog food down my throat? Left me hungry in the basement? Left me without water for days? Made me piss the bed? Hacked up the body of a woman he’d killed only feet from me? Gave me a slap and some bruises? That wasn’t so bad. I could handle that. I had to. For Mason. And Wade.

I walked out of the bathroom with my head held high, though I still wasn’t in the mood to talk to
Ron.

He seemed to have forgiven me. He talked to me as though nothing had happened. He made our dinner
, and we ate as usual. We had drinks after dinner while playing cards. I said little to him, but he made more than enough conversation all by himself.

Shortly after we’d finished dinner, I began to feel groggy. It became a battle to keep my eyes open. I’d only had two drinks, so I knew that wasn’t the problem. When the cards became blurry, I put my hand on the table and rested my head on it, thinking I’d just lay there for a minute
until the feeling had passed.

Right before the blackness overcame me, I remembered the last time this had happened. It was a repeat performance of the last time I’d made him angry with me.

He pretended he was over it, made us dinner and drinks, and I became sleepy. When I woke, I was in...Oh no. I knew as I fell into a deep sleep what I would find when I awoke.

Just as I suspected, I woke in the basement. Only this time, I wasn’t on the mattress and cuffed to the pipe. I soon wished I was, though.

With my head pounding, I opened my eyes and surveyed the room around me.

Melinda was still spread out on the floor as she’d been the last time I’d seen her, but she didn’t look as good as she had then. Her hair was filthy and caked with blood. Her skin was covered in dirt and bruises. Her wrists and ankles were raw and bloody from struggling against the restraints. And worse still, the fight had gone out of her. There wasn’t even any left in her eyes.

I sat in a
chair, hands cuffed behind my back and around the vertical beam not far from Melinda. I was only a few inches away from her right foot. She didn’t appear to be awake, but at least she wasn’t dead.

“Melinda,” I said with a dry throat.

She didn’t respond.

Once more, I said, “Melinda.”

“She doesn’t seem to be willing to talk to you, Nicole,” said Ron behind me. I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs, so he must’ve been back there silently waiting for me to wake up.

I was terrified of anything he may have planned for us, but I had to keep my wits
about me, and more importantly, keep him liking me before I ended up like Melinda.

Slowly,
Ron walked around me and stood on the opposite side of Melinda, in a position where he could see us both.

“Nicole, I’ve given much thought as to what your punishment should be. You have no idea how angry it makes me that you would lie to me like that,” he said, his voice starting to boom. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm down. Then, he continued. “I thought about putting you back down here on the mattress that you hated so much. But I felt that just wasn’t going to teach you anything. After all, it didn’t teach you anything the last time. So then I asked myself what would be worse than that? Do you know what I decided?”

I shook my head.

“I’m sure if you thought about it long enough, you’d know. Go ahead. Guess.”

“Sorry, Ron. I’m afraid I left my crystal ball in my other pants, and I’m no mind-reader,” I said, hoping to remind him that he liked me.

He smiled, but it was faint. “I’ve decided that as your punishment, I’m not going to punish you.”

“Good. I agree with that.”

“I’m going to punish her.”

“What?”

“Yes, I’m going to make you watch as I punish Melinda for the things you’ve done. Maybe that will teach you what the mattress cannot.”

“No, just put me back on the mattress. You know how much I hate it. Isn’t that punishment enough?” I said quickly, trying to talk him out of hurting poor Melinda, who’d clearly been going through enough punishment already.

He smiled broadly. “I knew this would work.”

I watched as he walked across the room and retrieved some items from the cabinet above the utility sink. He returned quickly to Melinda’s left side, where he knelt facing me, in a position for me to watch. How very thoughtful of him.

Slapping her face, he said, “Melinda. Melinda wake up. There’s someone here to see you.”

Melinda’s head slowly rolled from side to side, and she began to moan. She said something, but I couldn’t make it out. It was probably her husband’s name, thinking he’d come to rescue her. I myself had woken up many times uttering Wade’s name, having dreamt that he’d shown up and busted down the door, killed Ron, and rescued me.

Using
the cattle prod he’d brought from the cabinet, Ron shocked her awake with a scream.

“There,” he said. “I don’t want you to miss a thing. Now look who’s came to see you.” He pointed at me
with the cattle prod, and Melinda’s head slowly turned my way.

I expected to see hope in her eyes
, or fear. I would’ve been happy to see any emotion at all, any sign of life. What I saw instead was nothing. She had dead eyes. Just as Stephanie had.

“Nicole has been a very bad girl, Melinda. And we’ve decided that as her punishment, she will watch me punish you. How does that sound to you?”

She groaned what I thought was a no and tried to shake her head, but it was so slow, it appeared her head was just lolling back and forth.

“I didn’t agree to that,” I said. I wanted to make sure she knew this hadn’t been my idea
, though deep down, I knew that it wouldn’t matter what she knew. The hours, possibly the minutes, of her life was ticking down to zero. It was only a matter of time until he killed her, and then it wouldn’t matter if she knew that I wasn’t a part of his sick and twisted punishment or not. But I had to tell her. I had to know that she knew.

“Really?”
Ron asked. “Are you saying you’ll trade places with her? Would you like me to tie her to the chair and put you in her place?”

My heart raced. This was one of those moments in life that no one ever thinks is going to happen
to them. And when thinking about what if it did happen, they always thought they would do the noble and honorable thing. And here it was, all laid out before me, unfolding both in slow motion and at the speed of light.

I said nothing. I felt horrible about it, but I couldn’t volunteer to trade places with her. I just couldn’t. I tried to rationalize it by thinking that she was a used-up prostitute whose husband urged her to sell her body.
Looking at her arms, I could see she was a heavy drug user. Probably an alcoholic. She was middle-aged. Living the life she was living, she surely only had a few more years ahead of her. If she had any kids, they were probably grown. Unlike me, whose child was only a year old, and who hadn’t even lived to see the end of her twenties. If it had to be one of us, it should be her.

But she was still a human, still a person with feelings and a family. And she would be receiving torture for things I’d done. That just wasn’t fair.

It also wasn’t fair that I was here. In this situation, in this moment, I had to choose my life over hers. This wasn’t the time to be a hero and throw myself in front of a speeding train to save her. I had to save myself. Not for me as much as for my little Mason with his little brand new teeth and his wobbly newfound walk.

So I said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” Ron said.

In all the years to come, assuming I survived, I would hear those words echo in my mind.
That’s what I thought.
But the words weren’t going to be what would haunt me. What would haunt me would be the look on Melinda’s face when she realized that I wasn’t going to trade places with her. If a soul could shatter into a million little pieces, hers just had. And if a heart could snap in half and drain the life juice out of a person, mine just had. If I lived a thousand years, I’d never forget the look on her face or the way I felt about myself in that moment. But even knowing all these things, I still couldn’t bring myself to trade places with her. Had I not been a mother, maybe. But I was. And I just couldn’t do it.