had her cornered. He struck her twice across the face. Her head cracked into the wall behind her. He grabbed her arms and she bit him, her teeth breaking the skin. The taste of his blood made her gag as she spat it out.
He laughed. ‘Just do as I say and you’ll be fine. Now you’re really going to look a mess for your star role.’ He dragged her up, grazing her skin on the ropes, and positioned her on the stool again. Theresa was limp with exhaustion. She had stopped resisting. But he held her by the hair and punched her in the stomach anyway. Theresa clenched her teeth so that she didn’t cry out. She did not want to provoke him into doing it again – did not want to give him the pleasure of hearing her moan. He stood in front of her, his face relaxed, now that she was under control. He shoved a knee between her thighs and splayed her legs. Then he wedged the irises under her arm, almost toppling her from the stool.
The tape wasn’t rolling yet. Theresa had clawed several minutes of her life back from him. She wanted more.
‘Let’s make love first,’ she whispered through her cracked lips. ‘Let’s make love and then watch your film.’
‘You little piece of filth. I have you to do with as
Theresa could see that the film had been through post-production. Someone had watched it before her, had seen whatever she was going to see, had edited and tweaked it. Theresa wouldn’t be here if this person had said something, done something. The thought sent a surge of rage through her pain-racked body.
The camera was fixed on a girl huddled in the centre of a room. She was alone, her arms wound tight around her knees. Her bone-thin shoulders shook occasionally. Theresa could see that the hand she cradled protectively had bled, staining the skin on her knee. The images sucked the sound from the room, and soon the girl’s ragged breathing filled the dank boathouse. Theresa looked over at the man. The wet, pink tip of his tongue had crept out of his parted lips. She watched in revulsion as it glistened its way from one corner of his mouth to the other, knowing, anticipating what was coming on the screen.
The sudden click of a door opening jolted Theresa’s attention back to the television. The girl’s head had shot up at the same sound. Her large black eyes were glazed over in horror at what she could see off-camera. The camera moved in close until her eyes filled the screen. Theresa heard the faintest click and looked over to the source of the sound. The man had trained the camera directly onto her face. She knew instantly that he would have her in the same terrible close-up as the girl cowering on the screen. Then he panned to include Theresa, as well as the film she was watching.
She saw the four men prowl around the cowering girl like hyenas. The girl lifted her head. Her earrings – delicate crucifixes – flashed in the light. The men conferred briefly, then decided who was going to get the first, the freshest meat. Then the first one fell upon her. The others helped – subduing a leg here, there an arm. That was only necessary at first. It did not take very long for her frail, bloodied body to go limp and then jerk unsatisfyingly. A rag doll broken by the sea of rage that battered her. By now, the men were bored. It was over. They straightened themselves up, wiped themselves clean. One lit a cigarette, flipping the match onto the girl, where it died on her skin. Theresa’s flesh crawled when she saw the man kneel over the girl, unzip his pants, and place his penis in her unresisting mouth. His movements were rhythmic, swift, and then he stepped back, satisfied. The girl twitched onto her side and did not choke. Then the screen went black. The first part was over.
The tape whirred on, but Theresa could not bear to watch more.
‘You’re a powerful director.’ Her voice clattered into the silence, startling him, breaking the spell. He pressed ‘pause’: her comment had interrupted his mad flow. The image that hung on the screen looked familiar. She saw the time code on his camera flash rhythmically – she had as much time as was left on the tape: ninety minutes. She would not accept, though, that she had as little power as the girl she had just watched being brutalised. Theresa would fight. But her only weapon was to be quicker than the man on the other side of the camera.
‘We could work well together,’ she said. There was no mercy in him, she knew, but perhaps if she was useful she might survive a little longer. She summoned the actress in herself and imagined herself walking on stage, the audience obscured by the lights shining in her eyes. Theresa imagined her mother out there. The thought calmed her. It gave her the strength to improvise.
‘We could try something new.’ She prayed that he wouldn’t hit her again.
‘How old are you?’ the man asked.
‘I’m sixteen.’ replied Theresa Angelo. ‘I’m old enough.’
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Perfect. It’s time to get you ready, then.’
‘Do you want to make love to me?’ Theresa asked again, with a forced note of invitation.
‘Oh, I will, my dear. I will. But not in the vulgar way you are offering in order to save your worthless little skin,’ he spat at her. ‘Now let’s get you ready for your final act.’ He had a hairbrush in his hand. ‘Make yourself look decent,’ he ordered.
Theresa took the brush and pulled it through her hair, trying to avoid the parts that were caked with dried blood. She made herself talk to him. It delayed him, broke into his fantasy. He had to start again after each answer.
‘What kind of directing have you done?’ she asked. ‘Where did you learn?’
‘I did some work for the Isis Club. Adult movies.’ He turned back to the rope he was plaiting and twisting.
‘That market is so saturated, isn’t it?’ said Theresa, chattily. ‘I’ve done voice-overs for a few. Tell me about your market. These films you make here. Do you sell them? On the Internet? Mail order? That first one we saw was a good simulation. That girl was good.’
He looked at her, flustered. ‘That was not a simulation. You’ll see. These are the real thing.’
Theresa kept her attention on him. Hope flared in her again: she heard a sound – a single sound that stood out from the boom of the surf on the walls and the bleak moan of the foghorn at Green Point. She held her breath, but he seemed not to have heard it.
‘Snuff movies?’ Her voice was cheerful. She could have been asking for apple juice.
He laughed. ‘You could call them that, I suppose. You could call them educational films. They teach a lesson.’
‘Alice? Was she filth?’ His hand froze. ‘Your wife? A girlfriend? Your mother?’
‘Why are you so interested in Alice?’ He walked very slowly towards her. He had picked up a whip, was flicking it rhythmically across his left palm.
‘That was the name on the first tape. I imagine they go in order? I thought that if I knew her I could get into character better.’ The sound again. Closer this time. Louder. ‘Tell me about her, the first one. Was she your mother?’ The whip licked painfully at her ankle. Theresa had touched a raw spot.
‘No, she wasn’t my mother. That bitch died, as she should have, when I was very young.’
‘So, who was she? A girlfriend? Someone who let you down?’ The whip flicked again, ripping through the fabric of Theresa’s blouse, leaving a red welt on her exposed belly.
‘Alice was my big sister. Did she do her duty?’ He pushed his face, purpled with congested blood, into hers. His breath was hot, rank on her face.
‘What did she do to you? It must have been terrible.’ Theresa’s voice was cajoling, enticing.
‘She was a slut, like you. Like all of you. Liked to know, liked to watch. Pretending to be so innocent, so “I couldn’t help it” – when you know very well it’s you yourself who is the cause.’ He twisted her nipple viciously, pinching it, savouring the pain he saw in her eyes. Her fresh flow of involuntary tears seemed to calm him again, and he recovered himself. He turned and switched on the camera. Theresa hoped fervently that she had not been imagining the sounds beyond the room, beyond its darkness.
‘Tell me about the others. What did they do for you?’ The questions were a mistake. She would have given anything to snatch her words back: she had reminded the man of his purpose.
‘They were a lot more docile than you. Better behaved. Just did what they were told, stupid little bitches. They thought, I suppose, that if they made me happy it would be easier for them. Like you think that if you distract me it will be easier for you.’ He came towards her with the rope. ‘It won’t. You are going to watch them all now. You’ll see what happened to them. Before and after. So you turn that slutty little mind of yours to your performance. Give me your hand,’ he ordered.
He made two swift, deep cuts on the palm – across the lifeline, through the heartline. He picked up the key and folded her bleeding hand around it. Then he began to intricately bind her hand. She watched in fascinated horror as her hand – so familiar, the nails bitten down slightly – was transformed into a bound obscenity.
