Sweat prickled his back.
Then, movement.
A painful groan as the table legs buckled against the kitchen floor.
Beneath him, a blur of a shape was shoved roughly into his eye line.
A tight gasp of shock spilled from his lips; with it, a gloop of saliva trickling from his mouth and spattering on the cold, pasty face that he now registered staring up at him.
It was Norah, staring blindly up at him; the tiny segment of life that was once there, burning like a candle in her eyes, had been extinguished.
And the more he looked, the more he stared at her shape beneath him, the worse the scene got.
There was blood.
Norm hadn’t seen so much blood since that night in the wood. The night that had served him the horrific burns and scars that remained permanently etched into his flesh, branding him the monster that he truly was. It had been like a dark burgundy river, gushing in a frightening current from an old friend’s gut. Spraying everything in a ten metre radius, sticking to his skin, seeping into his bones.
From her neck down, Norah was saturated in blood, a growing halo of it seeping from underneath her body. Her lips were blue, slightly agape as if she were about to say something.
“Norah…” he croaked, heart thudding, its rapid beat growing faster and faster as he panted and the terrible realisation finally dawned on him.
His sister was dead.
And not just dead.
Murdered.
“I…” his frail body could not summon the energy to scream or say anything. Instead, he just groaned, his pulse hammering incessantly in his skull as he found himself unable to tear his pupils away from her cold, dead corpse.
“Hi, Norm.”
A woman’s voice. Young.
Norman yelped involuntarily then, like a frightened little dog about to be hit by a car. He writhed in his restraints, twisting and jerking his neck to try to catch a glimpse of the person who had presumably killed his sister and tied him up like a dead hog.
“Is he awake?” a man’s voice this time, deep and rough around the edges. Someone who sounded hard. Toughened by pain and trauma.
The woman squatted down beside Norah’s corpse and looked up into Norman’s sweat-covered face, a nasty smile unfurling on her strikingly beautiful lips. Her eyes were intense in their blueness, hypnotizing almost.
The kind of eyes you never forget.
“My God…” he gasped. “It’s… you…”
“Right you are,” she whispered with an affirmatory nod, her palms stretched out on her spindly knees. “Do you even know my name, Norm?”
He swallowed.
She threw back her head and laughed, its shrill ring sharp and grating in the still atmosphere. “Thought as much. Amazing, isn’t it? How you can turn an entire person’s life upside down and not even know their fucking name?”
There was a loud bang and a surge of pain in the back of Norm’s left knee cap. The entire table groaned again and rattled, masking his low winces of agony.
“Do you remember much of that night, Norm?” the girl whispered. He could see, even through the pain that started to blur his vision, that she was young. Early twenties at the very oldest. Before he could reply, she was continuing, her words ejecting in drawn-out sounds that reminded Norm of every heartbreak he’d ever endured. “I’m sure you must do. After all, every time you look in the mirror, it must be like reliving the whole thing.”
Norm felt his scars burn.
“You wanted to fuck me, didn’t you?” she asked her smile widening, eyes shining as tears began to well up inside them.
BANG.
The sound was followed by an ear-splitting crack as another jolt of pain hit Norm, this time on his right leg. He cried out like a dying animal, the fractured bone screaming in its agony.
“ANSWER ME!” yelled the girl, pushing her face up closer to the deformed, contorted mess on top of his shoulders. “Is that what it was all about, Norm? Assaulting an innocent sixteen-year-old with her entire life ahead of her?”
Snot dribbled from his nose and formed a vile paste with his saliva and tears. At the same time, the girl sniffed and furiously wiped her face with the back of her sleeve.
“I’m sorry…”
“What?”
“I’m sorry!” he yelled, his face reddening as he glared up at her. “Look at my face! You think I haven’t suffered enough for my crimes?”
The faceless man behind him brought the blunt object down again, this time at the base of Norm’s spine, another ear-splitting crack immediately filling the air.
“HELP!” he shrieked, though it was a feeble, crackly call. His male attacker smirked, eyes narrowing as he watched the pathetic waste of shit that squirmed underneath him on the kitchen table.
“Sure not as tough now, are you Norm?” he hissed.
Through her tears, the girl shook her head and laughed, returning her attention to her prisoner. “What? Oh no, Norm. You’ve got me all wrong. I don’t want you to suffer. After all, we should be thanking you. Repaying you.”
Norman inhaled and lowered his head, angling it downwards so that he was forced to stare into the deadened, glassy gaze of his sister’s corpse. It was better than facing the girl.
Both women had been his victims, but at least Norah was silenced by her demise.
It was then that the man slowly walked around the table and roughly grabbed Norm’s forehead, jerking his entire skull upwards in one swift movement so that he was forced to meet his eye.
“That’s right, Norm,” he said in his husky voice. “If it wasn’t for you, Minnie and I wouldn’t be anywhere near as happy as we are right now. As happy as you showed us, we could be.”
The girl, Minnie, nodded.
“That’s absolutely right, Norm,” she spoke icily. “You changed our whole lives. At first, we were angry because we thought you’d ruined it. You know, separating us from our family and friends, making us have to go on the
