Held (19 page)

I stepped out of the bathroom and faced Ron, who still hadn’t returned to his old self. He was still cold and distant, but really, what else did I expect of a psychopathic serial killer?

Ron grabbed my arm, cuffed my wrist, and led me to the basement.

Trying to sound as if I weren’t terrified, I asked, “Why are we going down here?”

“I think you have lessons yet to learn, Nicole. Don’t you agree?”

“No, I’m good. I’m pretty sure I’ve learned enough.” I
tried to sound light, as if we were just having an ordinary conversation. As if I wasn’t afraid to find out what lessons he had in mind.

I’d assumed he was going to put me back on the mattress. But he didn’t. Instead, he sat me in the chair and handcuffed my arms behind me, around the beam. When he moved away from me, I noticed Crystal. This was the first time I’d seen her in a while, and she looked awful. Beyon
d awful. She looked so terrible there wasn’t a word to describe it.

But there was a word to describe her baby bump. Larger. Somehow, the baby had managed to grow inside her. I didn’t imagine she was eating. She certainly didn’t look like she’d been eating.
She was stick-thin.

Ron walked to the cabinet to retrieve whatever implements of torture he desired. While he was across the room, I called to her quietly, but she didn’t hear me. I saw her breathing. I knew she was alive, but she didn’t respond.

“Crystal,” I whispered louder.

“She won’t answer you,” Ron said, turning to face me.

I watched as he walked over to her, cattle prod in his hand.

“Is she okay?”

“Does she look okay, Nicole? Really, you can be so ignorant at times. It’s disappointing and unbecoming of you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said as sarcastically as possible. “Did I make you think less of me? You, the psychopath. Thinking less of me, the victim. Bizarre, isn’t it?”

“Is that how you see yourself? As a victim?”

“It’s what I am.”

“We are all defined by the way we see ourselves, Nicole.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Well I see myself at home
, snuggled up with my husband and son.” I looked around, eyes wide with feigned shock. “That’s weird,” I said. “I saw myself one way, but that’s not the way I am at all. So odd.”

“There you go again, Nicole.”

“There I go again what? Showing you how stupid your way of thinking is?”

“No, there you go again, proving up your ignorance. There’s no need to continue proving yourself, Nicole.”

“Are you calling me ignorant?”

“If the shoe fits.” Before I could call him all the
bad names I had in mind, he spoke again, this time turning the conversation towards Crystal. “Crystal, wake up.” When she didn’t respond, he nudged her in the side with the toe of his shoe. When she didn’t respond the second time, he kicked her in the ribs.

She moaned.

He smiled. “There you go. Wake up and say hello to Nicole. She hasn’t seen you in a while. But today, your special day, she came. We both agreed that she should be here, and we knew you’d want her to be here as well. Isn’t that right, Crystal?”

She didn’t respond.

He stuck the cattle prod to her and shocked her to screams. It may have not been so bad if he’d put it to her belly or leg, or anywhere other than where he did. But he put it on the worst spot possible. Where there had once been a tattoo. A tattoo that he’d carved away, filling the remaining hole with salt.

From my position, I could see the hole, swollen and an angry shade of red. It was obviously infected, and the shock that he sent through it had to hurt like hell. Only a monster would do something like that. I looked at him as he shocked her wound and knew I was right. Only a monster
would do something like that. And his name was Ron.

When Ron had finished torturing Crystal by shocking her infected wound, he turned to me.

“Do you see, Nicole? Do you see what’s going on here?”

“If you’re talking about the psycho with the shock wand inflicting damage on an innocent pregnant woman who can’t defend herself, then yes. I do.”

I saw the anger wash over him. Then, I watched as he stomped over to me and stuck it to my chest, between my breasts.

My heart was racing. I held my breath, unsure of what to expect. I clenched my teeth and stared into his eyes, waiting for the pain to come, but it didn’t.

“I’d be sure I was prepared to reap before I started
sowing, if I were you, Nicole.”

After staring me down for a minute with the cattle prod pressing against my breastbone, he walked away. He went back to Crystal.

“I don’t think you understand me fully, Nicole. I think you believe you can toy with me and nothing will happen as a result. It’s painfully obvious that your parents never taught you that for every action is an equal and opposite reaction.”

He squatted down between Crystal’s spread legs.

My heart pounded harder. My palms grew sweaty behind me. I felt nauseous.

In his right hand, Ron held the cattle prod. As he aimed at Crystal’s private area, I was afraid he was going to shock her there. That would be bad for the baby. It had to be.

“What are you doing?” I nervously asked, trying to either buy time to think of something else or make him forget about her. “How is that an equal and opposite reaction to anything that I’ve done? And by the way, what is that I’ve done?”

He threw me a hateful look and said in an even more hateful tone, “You bled on my chair. I had to clean that up. Do you know how horrible that was?”

“Are you serious? Do you know how horrible it was to bleed on your chair? And then to sit in it for hours? It’s your fault. Besides, I’ve seen you clean up some pretty nasty stuff down here. I would’ve thought you were used to it.”

“Used to it doesn’t mean I like it.” He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He looked back at Crystal. “But since you bled on my chair, I’m going to make her bleed.”

“Wait,” I said quickly. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say, but I had to say it. “Why make her bleed? I bled on you chair. Make me bleed.”

“No.”

“Why not? That’s the only fair way to do it.”

“Damn it, Nicole. Would you shut up? I don’t want to make you bleed. I want you to feel bad because she’s bleeding because of you. That’s the punishment.
Making you bleed would only hurt you for a little while. Making her bleed because of you will make you hurt forever.”

And with that, he plunged
the cattle prod into Crystal’s vagina.

I screamed no, but he couldn’t hear me over her. Once he turned it on, her body jerked and spasmed a
s she yelled and gurgled. I thought he’d pull it out and stop, but he didn’t. He kept it in her, kept shocking her.

“Stop,” I screamed.

If he heard me, he gave no indication.

As her body stiffened and shook, her heels and elbows scraped across the concrete, leaving red stains on the floor.
Her right breast rolled out of the way at one point and I had a clear shot of her infected wound. It was worse than I’d thought earlier. There was a large area that was dark red, but worse than that, there were areas that were black. I could even see the pus from this distance. I was sure it was worse than just an infection. If she survived the basement, she would surely lose a large amount of flesh.

Finally, Crystal stopped jerking around, but the yelling didn’t stop. Ron yanked the cattle prod from her vagina and cursed as the blood dripped from the tip of the prod, falling to the concrete with a splat.

“Damn batteries,” he said. He jumped up and ran over to the cabinet in a frantic search for more batteries.

“Crystal, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Nothing came from her except yells and moans. When the yelling began to taper off, I was relieved that her pain was coming to an end. Little did I know that her pain was only beginning.

As I lowered my head and wept silently, Crystal began to scream. Assuming Ron had replaced the batteries and was shocking her again, or maybe brutally removing some of her other tattoos, I looked up. But he was still at the cabinet, fumbling around in his search for batteries.

I watched as she screamed and wondered what sort of agony she was going through, simultaneously hoping I would never find out.

“Damn it. Well,” Ron said, returning to Crystal sans cattle prod. “Since I don’t have any spare batteries, we’ll just have to do things the hard way.”

I saw the knife as he brought it up and ran his finger slowly along the blade. He glanced at me to make sure I was looking. I was. I’d stopped crying, but the tea
rs on my cheeks were still wet.

“Aw. Don’t cry yet, Nicole. Cry later, when I’ve finished with her.”

“Please stop,” I begged. “I won’t make any more messes, and if I ever do, I’ll clean it up. I swear. You don’t have to do this to her.”

“Actually I do have to do this.”

“No, you don’t.” Before I could tell him that I’d learned my lesson, he spoke.

“Yes, I do. It’s not all about you, you know. The whole world doesn’t revolve around
you, Nicole. Don’t be self-centered. It isn’t fitting to you. I’ve reached a slow spot in the novel. I need a little spice. This will serve two purposes. It’ll teach you a valuable lesson, and it will help me liven up the story.”

“Novels are fiction. Fiction means fake. You can make it up, Ron. Please leave her alone.”

“Made-up stories don’t sell.”

“Uh, yeah they do. Every single day.”

“Well not mine. My book was fake, and it didn’t sell. This time, though, it’ll be a bestseller. Why? Because it’s going to be real. It’ll be believable. And I owe that to you, and the other women.”

He squatted down beside Crystal’s torso and watched her face as she screamed.

He waited until her screams became sobs before he set to work, carving away the tattoo above her other breast. Her sobs quickly returned to screams.

Unable to watch him slicing through her flesh, I looked away. That’s when I saw the rapidly growing pool of blood gushing out from between her legs. Dark red blood ran out of her and across the floor toward the drain.

I gasped, but over her screams, no one heard me.

“Ron,” I said, but he didn’t hear me.
I couldn’t look away from her blood. I knew what was happening. It was inevitable, but it still shocked me to actually see it. “Ron,” I yelled over the screams.

He looked at me, f
rustrated at being interrupted.

“She’s having a miscarriage,” I
said, nodding toward the blood.

He looked at the steady stream of blood coming from her and smiled. The son of a bitch smiled. I couldn’t believe it. Well, I guess I could. What I couldn’t do was imagine how anyone could smile at such a horrible thing.

I watched as he went back to removing her tattoo, paying no more attention to her miscarriage.

He carved.

She screamed.

I cried.

The baby died.

As if I needed another reason to hate Ron, I now had one. It was bad enough that he tortured and killed women, but to kill an unborn baby and smile about it was an unspeakable act of evil. Had Crystal not came into contact with Ron, she would’ve had the baby, and the baby could’ve grown up and lived a full life. Now it was dead, having never fully developed.

The fact that Ron smiled when he saw what he’d done was just a further testament to his capabilities. I don’t know what I’d expected of him when I’d pointed out that she was losing the baby. Maybe I expected him to be shocked, or at least to look sympathetic and sorry. A man who could smile at causing a woman to miscarry a baby was capable of anything.

And he was about to show me some more of what he was capable of doing.

When Ron had finished slicing away her tattoo, he held it up.
A piece of skin slightly bigger than a half dollar dangled between his thumb and forefinger, dripping droplets of blood onto Crystal’s neck. He turned to me to see if I was watching. Unfortunately, I was. Satisfied that his audience was captivated, he turned back to Crystal. He dangled the piece of tattooed flesh inches above her face, which was twisted in agony.

“You shouldn’t mar your body in such a way, Crystal,” he said, slapping the piece of meat against her cheeks.
“Tattoos make you look trashy. They’re vile and disgusting. And worse, they’re permanent. Well, they’re usually permanent. You’re lucky I came along and removed them, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

Crystal continued to scream,
though her voice was weakening.

“Answer me,” he screamed at her.

Angered that she wouldn’t answer his ridiculous question, he grabbed her jaw roughly with one hand. Ron shoved the flesh that was formally connected to her chest into her open mouth, mid-scream.