Endurance

Eleanor looked at her wrists. The strappado cuffs were on her.

No. Not this.

I’m royalty. I have presidential blood in my veins.

They can’t do this to me.

“The answer,” Maria said, “Is fuck you.”

Then the man, Felix, kicked Eleanor in the face.

Eleanor fell backwards, through the gate, off the edge.

The next thing she knew, her head was hurting again.

She looked around, saw she was on the first floor.

Those fools. They must not have put the chains on correctly.

My head still hurts. But other than that, I’m perfectly fine.

Eleanor reached up a hand to rub her temple.

It didn’t work, for some reason.

She tried with the other hand, and that didn’t work either.

Then she felt something drip onto her face.

Looking up, Eleanor saw Maria and Felix, staring down at her. She also saw the two lengths of chain.

Each chain had an arm attached to it. Each arm trailed veins and arteries and tendons and torn muscles that stretched down and were still tenuously attached to the torn sockets of Eleanor’s shoulders.

Oh, lordy. Those are my arms.

Then there was pain. There was amazing, excruciating, unbearable pain.

Eleanor screamed through the pain for the entire four and a half minutes it took her to bleed to death. But to her it felt a lot longer.

# # #

Felix pulled his eyes away from Eleanor’s death throes and turned to look at Maria, but she was gone. Before he had a chance to panic, she walked out of one of the bedrooms, a baby in her arms.

“Her parents are dead,” Maria said. For someone who had been through hell, she looked positively radiant. “I want to keep her.”

The baby was adorable. And Maria was beaming.

But this isn’t right.

Felix shook his head sadly. “Don’t you think we need to do something else first?”

Maria’s smile vanished. “What do you mean?”

Felix took her hand, which hurt like hell for him. Using his thumb and pinky, he placed Maria’s pear-shaped engagement ring on her finger, the one he took off of Eleanor when he was cuffing her wrists.

“There,” he said. “Now we’re ready to start a family.”

They kissed, lightly because they were both so injured. Then the three of them held each other until the helicopter arrived.

One Year Later

Deb had never been so terrified in her life.

A sea of eyes watched her, judged her. Deb turned and looked at Letti, who gave her an intense stare and a nod. Beside Letti was Maria, who mimicked Letti’s gesture.

Deb’s throat was dry. Her heart was beating so fast she felt ready to faint. The oppressive silence hurt her ears.

Then someone sneezed. A child. Deb glanced at the audience, saw it was the baby Maria and Felix had adopted, sitting on Felix’s lap. Next to them, Kelly was leaning forward in the pew. Kelly spoke silently, urgently, mouthing the words so Deb could read her lips.

“Say it!”

Deb looked down at her ridiculously expensive dress, the long train covering her prosthetics, making her appear completely normal. She looked at the minister, who was smiling patiently at her. Then she looked at Mal. So handsome in his tuxedo. So much love in his eyes.

And suddenly, Deb wasn’t scared anymore. With him by her side, she didn’t think she’d ever be scared again.

“I do,” she said.

Then she kissed him before the minister even had a chance to pronounce them man and wife.

# # #

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in the talking booth at West Virginia’s Northern Correctional Facility, waiting for his visitor. Franklin missed life on the outside. He missed the food. He missed sex with women. He even missed his job as hotel manager in Monk Creek. But most of all, he missed his Momma, and his kinfolk.

Prison life wasn’t so bad. The state gave him monthly transfusions, though they weren’t nearly as much fun as the ones he used to get at the Rushmore Inn. Franklin ran a tiny black market store within the walls, selling cigarettes, drugs, tattoo supplies, candy bars. After the Rushmore Massacre, as the papers had called it, Franklin inherited a tidy bit of money from his many dead siblings. And that didn’t count all the money Momma had stashed away. It was enough to hire a hotshot lawyer, who got his charges reduced from Murder to multiple counts of Accessory. Franklin got eight years, but would be out in four for good behavior.

Franklin’s mood brightened when Chester walked over and sat across from him. Chester B. Arthur Roosevelt was one of only five brothers still alive. The other four were wanted by the police, and had to stay in hiding. But Chester had bought hisself a swell fake ID, and the law couldn’t touch him.

“You find a place?” Franklin asked.

“Boardin’ house. Southern Georgia. Deep in the woods, outta the way. Big ole basement. Perfect for us.”

A boarding house? That would be easier to run than a bed and breakfast. Franklin never really warmed up to Momma’s plan for making the next President. All he really cared about was the fun he had with the women they caught.

At the prison, Franklin learned there was some newfangled chemical enzyme that turned regular blood into type O negative. That meant they didn’t have to be so picky and choosy. Now they could grab whoever they