For Ronnie, it was different.
After the incident with Sir Walsh, he must have gone back to his sick pervert club and spread the word because all of a sudden, there was more call for his services. At some points, Nick the skinhead was dragging Ronnie from the dark, grimy cell more than he was dragging Minnie.
It wasn’t always just sex, either.
Each time, he’d either be force-fed drugs and alcohol and then escorted off in a car to someplace or either pulled back upstairs to the same awful bedroom. It was along the landing from where Minnie was being held, so Ronnie always tried his best to be quiet so that she would not hear his suffering.
The room was painted a sickly orange colour; its ceiling stained a grim, brownish-yellow with cigarette smoke. No carpet covered the dusty floorboards, and cracks in the skirting boards meant that the ground was always dusty, covered in plaster debris. In the room, the air was stagnant; it smelled of something old and rotting. One corner held a cheap pine dresser filled with nothing but wire coat hangers, and another had a large bed frame, a stained mattress on top of it. Thick, heavy crimson curtains always hung over the single window, and Ronnie had never had the opportunity to go over to it and look out.
Some men, who paid Steve for an hour or two with Ronnie, would beat him. Sometimes, there was nothing sexual about the exchange. They just wanted a punching bag to kick around.
One of the worst times was an occasion where Ronnie had been taken away to someplace. He’d been too drunk to even notice where he was, the drug-infused fug in his head too heavy for him to even open his eyelids.
When he’d finally been conscious enough to realise what was happening, he had been awoken to a circle of men around him, each wielding various instruments of torture. They’d hit him, over and over, until blood poured from his mouth and his eyelids were so swollen that he could no longer see.
It was, Ronnie thought, a good job that the room where Steve kept him with Minnie was so dark. He knew how frightening he must have been to look at.
But still, they adapted. Minnie and Ronnie clung desperately to the moments between appointments, where it was just the two of them huddled in one dark, filthy corner. Sometimes they’d talk. Other times they’d just lay there in silence, daydreaming about how perfect things used to be. And, as time wore on, and as hard as the two teenagers tried to keep on brave faces, there was no denying the silent, troubling presence that lingered over them.
Neither wanted to say the words; in case somehow this would make it more real. As if their quietness would keep the inevitable looming tragedy at bay.
What would happen when the baby was born?
Chapter Forty
2019
A crimson red film of anger tinted Zach’s vision as he marched about the clearing in the woods; a menacing grin spread across his face; his brows furrowed deeply as he glared back at the terrified, wide eyes looking back at him.
Their stupid, pathetic faces were everywhere. It was amazing, Zach thought, the power that holding a firearm could give you. No more shots had even been fired; all he, his brother, and father had had to do was shout a bit, wave the gun around threateningly, and the job was a done deal.
They’d successfully coerced every ugly, weak fucker into a bind. Some were lying with their hands tied behind their backs on the floor, glistening, tear-stained faces peering up from the ground. Every so often, Lloyd, who was guarding them, would tread hard on their backs, cracking their spines, reminding them the deepness of the shit they were in.
Some had been tied to tree trunks. There simply hadn’t been enough rope for all of them, and so quite a few had just had their throats cut and were leaking black-red blood out onto the mud.
Despite her injuries (which had been so catastrophically awful that Zach had barely even been able to look at her), Stella had taken great delight in pointing out the ring leader.
Neil.
Zach and Ronnie had worked quickly to roughly replace him so that he was suspended from the branch where Stella had previously been dangling. The stupid bastard was quivering and crying, his pitiful whines echoing through the wood. Every so often, Flo would poke his exposed, fatty flesh with the point of a bread knife, reminding him that he was required to shut the fuck up.
His naked, fat rolls of flab were disgusting to look at. Just the sight of him made Zach’s stomach churn. But Ronnie had insisted that he be treated exactly the same as Stella. He needed to get exactly what was coming to him.
Watery-eyed, Minnie was squatting in the corner by a tree, dressing some of the gnarlier wounds that streaked poor Stella’s flesh. She was dressed now, but there was no concealing the stripped vulnerability reflected in the teenager’s eyes. Her slender body sat upright, the pit bull, Thumper, sitting calmly at her side. With all things considered, the dog had an extremely good temperament and hadn’t even batted an eyelid when his owner had had his face caved in.
“Let’s get you back to the RV,” Minnie was saying softly, as Stella winced at the pressure being applied to one of the burns. Immediately, she shook her head with such vigour that it made Minnie flinch.
“And miss this?” Stella asked, nodding her head towards Neil’s grotesque figure dangling like the corpse of a dead pig. “Fuck no.” Her eyes were dark and gleaming with venom and hatred. Minnie didn’t know whether to be proud of her daughter’s strength or devastated that she’d ever had to know such pain.
Neil choked back another wail and shouted across the clearing at Ronnie, who was standing alone for a moment, puffing thoughtfully on a cigarette that he’d stolen from
