Am I in the house? Have I been moved somewhere else? All my clothes still appear to be on, so I silently thank God for that small miracle.
“She was looking for Sebastian—that’s why I called you!” Two-Face is pretty agitated and talking on the phone. He keeps wiping his nose with his arm, which can only mean he’s tweaking right now. A nervous, violent meth head—this is not going to end well.
He looks at me. “Black hair. Twenties.”
With all eyes on me, there’s not much I can do. I struggle against my binds—I’m trapped.
Two-Face paces around the room and continues to go through my wallet. “Are you coming down here or not?” Then he freezes as he stares at the last card from my wallet. “Shit, man. She’s a private detective?” He flashes my ID in my face as if that’s information I didn’t already know. He is not happy with the response from the other line. “You know what? Fine. We’ll handle this.”
He hangs up and throws my phone and cards on the floor. The others follow him as he moves away, and my line of sight is opened to the rest of the room. It looks like a shop of some kind, with a low ceiling and metal shelves all around. Glass tubes and plastic jugs litter each tabletop. Beakers. Pipes. Hoses. I’m in a meth lab.
As my vision clears, I can see a giant crucifix hanging on the far wall. I strain to look, and the image comes into focus. Not a crucifix. A person.
Sebastian. Long copper pipes pierce his arms, legs, and body and impale him on the wall. Blood drips from his mouth onto his bare chest. A slice carved along the base of his stomach allows his entrails to dangle from his drying wound.
Panic sets in as I register what I’m looking at. I try to scream out, but the gag muffles my voice. My wrists chafe as I struggle against the rope.
One of the cohorts pipes up. “What do we do with her?”
Two-Face stares at me. I can guess what he’s debating. He approaches me and gently touches my leg. I kick and struggle, trying to recoil from his touch.
“Get my knife,” he finally says.
I try to use all my strength to break the binds, but I can’t.
“Open her shirt,” orders Two-Face.
One of them rips open my shirt, and buttons go flying. I feel exposed, violated, and for the first time in a long time, powerless. My arms continue to push and pull against the ropes holding me down.
The alarm on my watch goes off, but no one pays attention. Two-Face stands over me. I stop struggling and brace myself for their next move. The goons start praying in unison. Some chant in Spanish I don’t understand.
What the actual hell are they doing? Again, I struggle against the restraints, trying to escape—trying to warn them through my gag that things are going to end badly… for them.
Two-Face raises the knife above my chest. My heart races, and sweat beads down my face. My body is heating up. Adrenaline is pumping.
“Muerte Santisima…” he says.
Not this shit again. The secondary alarm goes off. I’m in fight-or-flight mode now.
The room starts to shake. Two-Face wavers, looking at what is happening around us. It’s like an earthquake in here. Bottles and lamps crash to the floor. A shelf tips over and spills glass jars everywhere. A wind blows through the house.
The praying stops as the air pressure increases. My ears pop. Two-Face turns his attention down to me. I look him dead in the eyes. The last thing I remember is the horrified expression on his face when my binds snap apart like Silly String.
* * *
It’s sticky. That’s the first thing I realize when I wake up. I open my eyes but see nothing. Am I blindfolded? No, it’s still night out, and there are no lights on inside. I struggle to stand and realize I’m no longer bound. My hands and arms are covered in some weird viscous glaze.
I feel my way to the door and find a switch. Reluctantly, I turn the light on.
There’s so much blood. It’s everywhere—on the floor, splattered across the walls, covering me. Most of my clothes are torn, and I’m not sure by whom. I walk around the space, careful not to step on the many shards of glass, and examine what I did. Or rather, what Dudley did.
I find the first body. He lies on the floor, his chest ripped open. It looks like someone tore him open like a bag of potato chips.
The next body is nearly decapitated, except his lower jaw remains attached to his neck. I find the rest of his skull slammed against the wall and lying on the floor.
The third body I find is impaled against the floor with chair legs. It looks like he’s been stabbed many times. He never stood a chance.
I finally locate Two-Face. He got the worst of it. As best as I can tell, he was trying to run away, perhaps trying to hide in the bathroom. His body has been folded in half backwards. The back of his head lies on his ass. This contortion resulted in breaking open his abdominal lining, spilling his guts onto the floor.
Unable to control myself, I vomit where I stand. Not that it makes much of a difference in this mess. I know I should hurry up and leave, and I know I need to hide my tracks. I can’t. I collapse to the floor and cry.
I knew Dudley would come out again someday. Part of me always felt safe because he was inside me, ready to take over as a survival mechanism. But I didn’t anticipate this.
