“My foot’s not up your ass yet?” offered Tooth.
“Nope.” Then as if struck by inspiration he grabbed the ax handle and lifted the woman’s head off her chest so she was looking right at us. He rested it against the stove, the handle of the ax sitting atop the surface. Her clouded eyes bore through us. “Much better,” he said.
Satisfied with his work, he left the room and shut the door, leaving the three of us to get acquainted.
Slowly, like a glob of pudding, the woman’s head sagged forward and fell on her chest again. Was she defying him, or was the ax blade too heavy for her neck?
“I’ve got to get my phone out,” Tooth said, straining to get a hand around toward his back pocket. The handcuff prevented him from reaching it, only the tips of his fingers brushed the pocket. He held his breath as he stretched, as if this might help, then exhaled, defeated. “Shit, I can’t get it. Are you okay?”
Blinking away tears, I nodded yes. Working the rag out of my mouth with my jaw and tongue unleashed another wave of searing pain in my head, but I ignored it. I was having trouble breathing through my nose now, so there wasn’t much choice in the matter; I needed air. Tooth took another stab at reaching his back pocket. He was getting closer, I think.
“I can…just about…get it…”
A heartbeat later, the door crashed open and slammed against the wall. Skinny Man was back and he had an armload of firewood. He carried it over to the stove and shoved the logs inside, moving them about so he could stuff in as many as possible.
“Why don’t you just kill us and get it over with?” Tooth asked, no longer going for his pocket.
Again, Tooth’s remark went ignored. From his back pocket, Skinny Man took out a newspaper and tore it into sections. He twisted them up like he was wringing someone’s neck and placed them under the logs. Then he took out some matches and lit the contents of the stove. Immediately, my eyes darted to the woman chained to it. If he didn’t move her she would fry.
Like a bolt of lightning the man rushed at Tooth and punched him in the face. Hard. The smack of fist on jawbone was horrific. I closed my eyes and turned away, struggling against my chains, thrashing like a swordfish on a hook. Again, the smack of knuckle on jaw resounded. Again and again and again!
With each blow, Tooth’s grunts and gurgle-choking filled the basement. The sweet aroma of burning wood began to mingle with the stench of fear-induced sweat and blood. I cried. I prayed. But the beating wouldn’t end. Why was this happening to us? What had we done to deserve this? Why wouldn’t he just leave us alone? Just leave us alone! Stop, stop, stop! I jammed my tongue forward, pushed the rag out of my mouth.
“Hit me, you fuck!” I screamed.
He stopped.
I quivered.
Sluggishly, my best friend’s head lolled to the side-a mass of contusions. The man faked like he was going to punch me and I winced, but no blow came, and I guess that’s what he wanted because he just laughed. When I opened my eyes, I saw him stuffing the rag back in Tooth’s mouth, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. When the rag was tight, Tooth’s blood had nowhere to go but out his nose.
Skinny Man sneered at me for another half minute before coming over and running his hand through my hair. “I’ll hit you, little boy. Oh, man, I’ll hit you. But not yet, not like that. I’m gonna come at you with something special, something unreal.” He put my rag back in my mouth, tied it in back. “I’m going out to bury my friend, and I when I get back, maybe we’ll discuss your punishment a little more.”
He stopped to look at the woman, gave her a nudge with his boot, saw she was still in her coma-like state, and left.
Next to me, Tooth was mumbling incoherently and trying to open his swollen, puffy eyelids. Something started to smell like smoked ham and together we realized that, against the stove, the woman was starting to burn.
CHAPTER 12
She sat in a pool of blood that flowed from the stump at the end of her arm. Her hair, face and neck were stained with dirt and gore; fresh leaves stuck to her like reptile scales. She wore a pair of jeans and a button down flannel shirt. Her feet were bare.
As soon as I smelled her flesh cooking, I knew it was going to be bad. She was going to die horribly right in front of us. Considering her wounds, especially that ax in her head, she had little chance of surviving even if she escaped anyway, but to watch her burn to death was something I couldn’t stomach. Seeing her head get cleaved and her hand chopped off seemed far less cruel in comparison. Don’t ask me why, perhaps because those acts were quick and I didn’t anticipate them. This was different. We knew what was coming, and it was the waiting that was making us crazy. I could already feel the heat of the stove from where I was, a good ten feet away.
If only she would stay comatose, stay half asleep like she was, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she would just melt away without a sound, peaceful, quiet. But she woke up. And the show began.
She blinked her eyes, as if pulled from a restful
“I’m fine!” I managed to yell around my gag. “But she’s burning to death. He lit the stove. We’ve got to stop it.”
We both struggled against our chains but to no avail. She was starting to bleed from her back, frantically trying to scoot away from the heat. The chains were just loose enough that she managed to open a small gap about a centimeter wide between her and the hot iron wall of the stove, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. The heat melted away her skin like candle wax. Desperately she kicked and rocked, but still her flesh singed. Blood fizzled as it ran down the stove and pooled beneath her. A gooey cream-colored substance joined the mix; either skin or fat, I didn’t know which.
The screaming was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was guttural. It raked my bones. She spasmed, shook, saw us watching her die; she shrieked at us. The ax swung about as she flailed, and the handle banged against the wall, keeping time to this hellish nightmare. A nightmare so unreal I couldn’t look away.
Neither could Tooth. He was watching with tears streaming down his cheeks, his puffy eyes beginning to slit open just a little. The smell of charred flesh was so awful it made me want to stop breathing, but the rag was so full in my mouth that if I didn’t try to use my nose I would die. Which meant I was forced to smell her body cooking. Tooth started screaming. I started screaming.
We all screamed. We all flailed. We were in Hell.
Then one of the chains gave. I couldn’t believe it. It just went slack. Skinny Man must have left a kink in it which she pulled loose. Not missing a beat, Tooth was yelling at her to move, quickly, to pull at the chain. I doubt she heard him but her gyrating, twisting body instinctively tugged away and pulled free from the slack. She slithered out from her binds, leaving a sickening trail of melted flesh and blood on the floor like snail mucus. Tooth was screaming at her, “Get up! Get up and untie us!”
But she wasn’t listening; she was out of her mind in pain. She flopped on the ground like a wind-up toy that had fallen over, her feet kicking slowly, and lay with her back against the wall so I couldn’t see what damage had been done. Tooth kept yelling through his swollen, purple face. I couldn’t stand it. She wasn’t getting up, and I fucking hated her for it.
“C’mon! Bitch, move!” I screamed.
Unbelievable, this was our chance to escape and it wasn’t going to happen because this poor woman, who by all rights should have been dead by now, who was suffering beyond all human endurance, wouldn’t listen to us. Still, I pleaded because what option did we have? “Get up! Please get up! Please, please, please!”
I kept chanting the “get up” mantra for several minutes before I heard Tooth’s voice. “Enough, Roger.
