front of one another and, for all intents and purposes, it looked as if he were about to fall flat on his face at any given moment.
Instead, the bearded man lifted his arm as slowly as someone who’d been hypnotized into believing it was weightless. His lips moved as he said something, but his voice was too weak to compete with the wind’s hollow moan.
But words weren’t necessary. The unsteady muzzle of the pistol pointed directly at Matt spoke volumes.
SCENE NINETEEN
Every time the ice pick plunged into Mona’s flesh, the slobbering beast scrambling on top of her groaned as if in the throes of a miniature orgasm; her screams seemed to fan the fires of excitement in his eyes and his hand trembled visibly. This caused the tip of the pick to wiggle inside each new wound and the pain flared along her body as if trying to escape the point of impact. It shot through her leg and raced up her side, causing her to intuitively want to pull her body into a fetal position. But he’d clawed his way on top of her to the point that his knees pressed into the wounds on her hips now; no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t even roll on to her side, much less curl into a tight ball.
Panting almost as heavily as her attacker, but for entirely different reasons, Mona fought to keep the waves of darkness that threatened to overtake her at bay. It would’ve been so easy just to let them wash over her, to allow the searing agony to melt into the void of unconsciousness. Free from the pain of Daryl’s furious assault, she would bleed out eventually and slip into the cold embrace of death, leaving him to do whatever he pleased with her lifeless body. But that was precisely what gave her the strength to resist the undertow’s seductive pull.
All of her life, men had simply taken what they’d wanted from her. First Uncle Louis with his promise of kittens in his basement. Then Mr. Chambers, asking her to stay after class so he could give her individualized attention. Her brother. After her father had joined in, that bastard didn’t even bother to drug her anymore. And she’d simply swallowed it all. She’d let the shame and guilt and anger fester into a burning ember in the pit of her stomach. She’d choked back the protests and sobs, had eventually learned to just lay there and accept whatever disgusting thing they wanted to do to her. On some level, they’d managed to somehow convince her that she really was asking for it. That it was her fault and they were just giving her what she actually wanted. That she would never amount to anything more than a slutty whore….
Until Matt had come into her life. . He’d shown her the beauty that was in her soul. It was like a radiant jewel so deeply hidden within her that their thrusting dicks could never hope to shatter it. They could leave her bruised and aching and make it hurt to walk for days afterward… but they would never own her. They’d never control her. And, once Matt had taught her what it meant to take the power back, they would also never violate her again.
And she’d be damned if she was simply going to lay there and let this degenerate, redneck animal do whatever the fuck he wanted. It didn’t matter if it was a prick or a pick… nothing entered her body without her permission.
The little weasel had stopped stabbing and had her shirt clenched in both hands now. He yanked it so hard that her torso rose slightly off the ground and Mona could tell by his expression of stupid bewilderment that he’d simply expected it to rip right off her chest. He pulled again, but still the fabric held and he clenched his teeth as frustration flared in his eyes.
“Stupid fuckin’ whore!”
He spat the words from his mouth as he glared at her breasts, totally oblivious to Mona’s balled fist until it smacked into the center of his throat. Something between a cough and a gag erupted out of him and Daryl’s hands flew up as if to protect his neck from another assault. Mona, however, had anticipated this reaction and, as she struggled to sit from the waist up, drove the heel of her palm into Daryl’s solar plexus.
She’d hoped the blow would send him reeling away from her, but instead his body fell forward. His weight crashed into her and the little progress she’d made at sitting up was instantly neutralized. She fell back against the old woman’s corpse again and her right hand reached out in attempt to break her fall. Instead of hitting the floor, however, it sank into something cold and squishy, something that felt like she’d just plunged her hand into a vat of chilled jelly.
Before it even had a chance to register in her brain that her hand had fallen into the old hag’s sliced abdomen, though, her left hand formed into claws and raked at Daryl’s watering eyes. The pain broke through the temporary paralysis that had overtaken him and he yowled as he tried to roll to the side.
Not getting away that easy, you piece of shit!
With her hips free, Mona managed to coil her legs around Daryl’s waist. She crossed her ankles and squeezed as he squirmed like a worm on the end of a hook
“How do you like that, mother fucker? What, you don’t want my legs wrapped around you anymore? You don’t want any of this?”
She ground her crotch forcefully against him as she yelled, causing him to whimper. At the same time, he seemed to remember the ice pick in his hand and he thrust it downward in an attempt to break free of her grasp. However, blood streamed from the deep furrows that Mona’s nails had carved into his face and the salty liquid trickled into his eyes. Momentarily blinded, the pick missed its mark and pinged against the concrete floor so hard that the shock waves traveled up Daryl’s arm. His hand reflexively opened and his only weapon rolled across the uneven floor as Mona squeezed her legs more tightly.
At the same time, she pulled her hand out of the old woman’s body. However, something sharp sliced through her palm before she’d even managed to free it. She’d spent so many hours cutting her arms with razor blades as a teen that Mona instantly recognized the stinging sensation for what it was: a sharpened blade.
Part of her mind couldn’t help but wonder what the hell a blade was doing inside the old bitch’s body; but this was the same part that always watched passively while the more primal portions maintained full control. Those parts of her consciousness didn’t question the improbability of the situation at all. They simply saw an opportunity presenting itself and made her grasp at the blade again.
Mona yanked at the broken knife, hoping that it would pull free of the dead flesh and provide her with a weapon. However, the cold metal was so slick with blood and gore that her hand simply slipped over it again, opening a new wound in the process.
Daryl doubled his efforts and thrashed about on the floor as he tried to pull Mona’s ankles apart from each other. Though unable to free himself entirely, he’d twisted around so that his back was now facing her and, in the hopes that he might connect with her face, threw his head backward again and again.
The wounds in Mona’s thighs and hips protested with searing waves of pain but she squeezed even more tightly and ground her teeth against one another to keep from screaming. She knew she had to do something soon: she couldn’t simply keep the man in a leg lock indefinitely. Sooner or later, pain and exertion would get the best of her and the bastard would manage to pry his way free. The blade of the knife, however, was stubborn. Time and time again, it stayed lodged within Mary’s carcass as it slashed fresh incisions into Mona’s palm.
The most recent injury had cut so deeply that her hand had balled into a fist afterward and, when it did, it had closed around something that felt almost like a coil of wrinkled, fleshy rope. Slippery, cold, and spongy to the touch, Mona’s mind instantly seized on what it was.
Still clutching the organ, Mona yanked hard. There was a moment of resistance but then, with a sound that was partly a squish and partly a slither, her hand pulled free from the old woman’s body. At the same moment, Daryl had thrown his head backward again and Mona took the opportunity to rise up just enough so that she could throw a loop of the intestine over his head. Then she pulled back with every ounce of energy she could muster.
Daryl fell on top of her and she tugged on the guts as tightly as if they were the reins of a horse she were trying to control. Passing one hand over the other, she curled the intestine around his neck again, forming a garrote of sorts.
His fingers clawed at the entrails like a man frantically trying to loosen a tie that had become so tight that it was cutting off his air. Mona, however, pulled on them so forecfully that her arms shook with exertion and his grasping fingers couldn’t even wedge themselves between his throat and his mother’s viscera.
Daryl’s heels kicked at the concrete floor and his neck truly was red now: the flesh looked as if it were swelling up around the length of intestine and his carotid artery bulged as his heart tried to force blood through the
