Griffin was wrapping duct tape around Mom’s head. Apparently he’d torn it off so she could scream.
“Damn, Griffin, it looks like you’ve already gotten started.”
Griffin smiled and shrugged. “Took you a while to get here.”
“Oh, yeah. It went to complete shit. I can’t go back to my house ever again.”
“Well, you’re welcome here as long as you want.”
“Thanks.”
“And you were looking to get out anyway.”
“Yeah, but still.” Mr. Martin pointed at Tina. “Hey, lock her up for me, will you?”
“We only have two beds.”
“So handcuff her to the radiator.”
“All right.” Griffin picked up a gun. “Hey, girlie, come on over here.”
Tina didn’t move.
“Can I shoot her if she disobeys a direct order?” Griffin asked.
“Sure,” said Mr. Martin.
“Hey, girlie, come on over here before I shoot you in the stomach.”
Tina glanced over at me. What was I supposed to tell her? Not to do what he said? It was killing me to feel this helpless, but there had to be a solution. There had to be a way to convince Mr. Martin that he could let us all go and we’d stay silent about it forever.
I gave Tina a small nod.
She walked over to Griffin. He searched around for a moment, found a pair of handcuffs on a shelf, and snapped one of the bracelets around her wrist.
She lashed at him with her free hand, as if trying to rake her fingernails across his eyes.
Griffin punched her in the face. Blood sprayed from Tina’s nose as she dropped to the floor.
“Wow, she’s a vicious one,” said Griffin. He laughed.
Mr. Martin didn’t laugh. “Can you just lock her up, please?”
“Sure, sure.” Griffin dragged Tina, who wasn’t unconscious but was barely moving, over to the radiator. He snapped the free bracelet around the metal. “Why are you such a sourpuss?” he asked Mr. Martin. “Maybe you should sit by the fireplace for a few minutes and warm yourself up.”
“Nah, I’m fine.” Mr. Martin looked over at me. “So, Curtis, are you starting to realize just how badly you messed up?”
“Yeah,” I said. There had to be a way out of this. Sure, my parents were chained to beds, my girlfriend was handcuffed to a radiator, I had no weapons, and I was up against a pair of adult psychopaths, but I could save the day, right? No problem. Barely a challenge.
“How do you want to do this?” Mr. Martin asked. “Do you want to choose which one of your parents dies first? Do you want us to pin your eyes open so you have to watch every cut? Do you want to sacrifice yourself for them?”
“Let me do it,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Let me do it. They didn’t believe me when I told them about you. When I got arrested, they left me in jail overnight to teach me a lesson.”
“Oh, that’s cold,” said Griffin. “Sounds like my mom and dad.”
“They were going to send me away to boarding school. So why should I care if you kill them? If you let me do it, I can’t go to the police. I’m just as guilty as you are. I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again.”
“What about your girlfriend?” Mr. Martin asked.
“You have to let her go, too.”
“Why wouldn’t she go to the police?”
“I’d make sure she didn’t.”
“You have that much control over her, huh?”
“I guarantee she won’t say anything.”
“What about your friends?”
“What about them?”
“You think they won’t squeal?”
“I wasn’t saying that you could return to your normal life,” I explained. “I’m saying that since you’d already planned to leave town, if you let me kill my mom and dad, we could go our separate ways.”
“That’s an interesting plan,” said Mr. Martin. “If I thought I could trust you, I’d consider it. But you haven’t proven yourself to be very trustworthy, have you? Anyway, Griffin was looking forward to torturing and killing your parents. I wouldn’t want to rob him of that experience.”
“I wouldn’t mind watching the kid have a go at it,” said Griffin.
“Seriously?” Mr. Martin asked.
“Sure, why not? There’s an axe on the shelf. Let him chop off an arm. I’ll shoot him if he gets out of line.”
“Is that what you want?” Mr. Martin asked me. “Do you want to chop off your mother’s arm?”
“I’d rather shatter my dad’s kneecap,” I said. “He broke his knee before and said it was the worst pain he’d ever felt in his entire life.”
This was a lie. My dad, to the best of my knowledge, had never had a serious knee injury. But I hoped it sounded credible. I didn’t want them to give me an axe. I was eyeing something else.
“Damn, this kid’s a little sociopath,” said Griffin.
“Maybe.”
“Let him try. See if he’ll actually splinter his dad’s knee.”
I purposely didn’t look at Mom or Dad’s faces. I didn’t want to be permanently haunted by their reactions.
“All right,” said Mr. Martin. “Do you have a hammer?”
“On the shelf.”
“What about the fireplace poker?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Griffin. “You can break some bones with that. Or you could hold it in the flames for a few minutes. Press it against their bare skin.”
“I don’t want to brand him. I want to break his knee.”
Griffin walked over to the fireplace and picked up the poker. “Remember that I’ve got a gun,” he said. “You try anything funny, and I’ll shoot your tiny dick off.”
“I understand.”
He handed me the poker, then walked over to Dad’s bed, standing near his head.
I walked over to the bed as well. I tapped the poker into my palm a few times, as if testing the weight.
I couldn’t fake the hit. I had to hit him as hard as I could. This was going to be awful.
I hoisted the fireplace poker over my head, then slammed it down on Dad’s upper left leg. His
