There were thirteen of them. That surprised me; usually I find them in smaller groups, two or three at a time, maybe. This was a whole herd.
Twelve stood together in one spot. Girls who’d been in the game too long, dead eyes, blank faces wearing that I could give a shit look. I thought for a second how sweet it’d be to carve that look off their faces one by one, then make them eat what I’d cut away.
The other one stood by herself on the far side of the parking lot. The girls in the big group were all staring at her, throwing her dirty looks. That kinda got me. I grew up fat, I knew how that felt.
She was thin, willowy, my daddy might have said, didn’t even look up at me, just hung her head, like maybe she was ashamed, or afraid. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was pretty.
I usually don’t go for the thin ones. I like them with a little meat on their bones. Sturdy. The sturdy ones live longer.
Something about this gal was different, though. I set the brake, left the engine idling, swung down from the cab and walked toward her.
I’d driven down by the river, and it was foggy as hell. Sheets of mist blew past even though there wasn’t much wind to speak of. Lights around the parking lot lit the fog all orange, like fire. You couldn’t see much: the girls, my rig, the shadows of a few buildings. Like our own little world.
I stepped up to the thin girl. She lifted her head to look at me. I was wrong. She wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful. Her skin was pale, almost like she half wasn’t there. Her hair was black as I’d ever seen. Like you could fall into it and get lost forever.
She didn’t have the hard, used look of the others, either. She looked fresh, innocent.
I knew she was the one.
“How’d you like to come back to my hotel room with me?” I asked.
She didn’t say nothing, just nodded.
The other girls watched as we walked to my rig. I caught one of them smiling at me. I glared back, but she wouldn’t drop her eyes. Screw it. I got in the truck. The girl climbed up into the passenger seat.
I pulled out of the parking lot, broke through a thicker band of fog and onto the service road.
The girl didn’t say nothing. Just sat there, hands folded in her lap, shivering. Like this baby bird I’d found in the backyard when I was a kid. It’d fallen from the nest, I suppose. I picked it up. It just lay there in my palm, shivering, until I crushed it in my fist.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Angela,” she whispered.
“Where you from?”
“Nowhere.”
“You gonna come back to my place, we’re gonna have some fun.”
“I just want to please you,” she said. That was weird. None of them ever said nothing like that before. But I liked it. It stoked the fire in my belly.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like a plan.”
I leaned over and belted her in the mouth. She didn’t scream, didn’t cry out, just took it, like she’d known it was coming. I hit her again, then once more. She fell against the door, went quiet.
I pulled to the shoulder, my heart beating fast, my breath hot. I got the duct tape, strapped her up quick and shoved her in the berth.
Then I drove. It was six hours back home. I drove it straight, without stopping once, not even to piss.
* * * * *
I dragged Angela down to the basement through the storm door, ripped the duct tape off her, threw her on the workbench, tied her down, then cut the clothes off her.
She didn’t struggle, didn’t scream, didn’t plead, didn’t threaten, didn’t try to seduce me like all the others had done. She just lay there, shivering.
When I got her naked, I stepped back, letting my eyes have the fun. She was beautiful. Thin, sure, but her body was smooth and round. Her skin was so pale it practically glowed.
She was trying not to show it, but she was scared as hell. That only made her prettier.
I stripped down, fetched my tool box from the shelf, slammed it on the workbench next to her. She flinched. I ran my fingers through her hair. It was fine and soft. “You sure are pretty,” I said.
“I can do things for you,” she said. “You don’t have to...”
I yanked hard, ripped out a clump of hair. She gasped in pain, screwed her eyes up, tears leaking out.
“Please,” she whispered. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
I slapped her. “Shut up.” I said. “Or I’ll sew your fucking mouth shut.”
She nodded, didn’t say no more.
I rummaged in my box, found the pruning shears. I held her hand tight, set the first joint of her pinky between the jaws, watched her face as I squeezed.
I got what I wanted. Her scream. It was high and shrill, but real sad, too. I’d never heard a scream like that before. Screams are usually full of pain, fear, hate and anger, but not sadness. It sent a shiver through me like I’d never felt.
I got to work. Her screams cut right into me, put a charge into my heart, my balls, my brain. I’d done drugs, all us truckers have, coke, speed, even smoked crack once or twice. No drugs shit could touch this. Wringing those screams from her, I’ve never felt so alive.
Time just sort of slipped by. When I’d gotten home with her, it’d been just before dawn. The basement windows were covered in heavy plastic, but part of me noticed them getting bright with sun, then slowly going dark as day turned into night again.
Angela kept screaming and screaming, loud at first, then quieter, until there was nothing left for her to do but die. She gave one last whimper and went still.
She was gone. It was over. It’d taken more than the day, but she was dead, just laying there, cold and still.
I dropped the drill I’d been working on her with. All the good I’d been feeling, all the juice that’d been flowing through me, drained off. I felt empty and cold, as if a chunk of me had died with her.
I stood there for a long time, staring at her. My brain kind of switched off. I limped to the downstairs shower and washed her blood off. I almost fell asleep, standing there under the water. I was exhausted, maybe more tired than I’ve even been.
I left the mess, dragged myself upstairs, crawled into bed and fell asleep. She was waiting in my dreams. Back on the workbench. Screaming and screaming. Screaming forever.
* * * * *
Something clattering downstairs woke me. I snapped awake. First I felt bad, the way you do when you come up from a really beautiful dream and see it’s not true. All you want to do is go back to sleep and find it again.
Then I got a little scared. It was early morning. There was someone downstairs. I could hear steps shuffling around the kitchen, hear plates and dishes clattering.
I got out of bed fast and quiet, grabbed the shotgun I keep in the closet. I still wasn’t wearing nothing, but I went downstairs anyway, slow and silent.
I got to the bottom of the stairs when I noticed something else – the smell of bacon and eggs frying, the sound of fat popping in the pan. I thought of daddy, who’d been gone these past nine years, and how he used to cook me a big breakfast Sunday mornings before church.
I stopped dead. All of a sudden I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. The smell of bacon and toast, there was something wrong about it. All wrong. No one else was in the house. So who was cooking breakfast?
For a second I didn’t want to find out, I just wanted to go back to bed, crawl under the covers and hide.
But I didn’t. Instead, I got my blood up and swung around the doorway into the kitchen, shotgun raised.
It was Angela. She stood naked at the stove, frying bacon in one pan, scrambling eggs in another. She turned and smiled at me. A worried kind of smile, like she was hoping she wasn’t gonna get in no trouble for what she’d done.
“What the fuck?” I said. The only thing I could think of.
“I thought you might be hungry,” she said in that quiet voice. “I hope you don’t...”
I shot her. There was nothing else I could do. My brain didn’t know what the hell to make of anything, but my gut knew. My hands found the aim, my fingers found the trigger, and I shot her. The blast took her head off, blew the kitchen cabinet behind her apart, shattered a shitload of old dishes.
She crumpled, blood and brains all over the place.
I couldn’t move for a second, my thoughts spinning round and round. I mean, what the hell, right? I’d killed her. Down in the workroom, I’d killed her and left her dead and cold. How in hell had she ended up back in my kitchen?
Had she really not died that first time? Maybe I only thought I’d killed her? I’d been pretty tired, pretty worked up, it could have happened. But even if she was alive, even if she’d managed to claw her way up out of the basement, what was she doing cooking breakfast instead of running for the cops? And why was she all back together after I’d spent so much time ripping her apart?
It didn’t matter. She was dead now, that much was for sure. I got a set of coveralls on, dragged her body to the yard and dug her a grave. She wasn’t alone out there, she was number twenty-three.
The day was getting on. It was hot as hell, and I was sweating my ass off. I filled in the hole, then leaned on the shovel a second to catch my breath. I still had the mess in the kitchen to clean up, not to mention the basement. I cursed the trouble she’d brought me and banged back into the house through the kitchen door.
I froze. It took me a few seconds to figure what I was seeing.
Angela was back. She was naked, down on her hands and knees, with a bucket and scrub brush, cleaning up the mess her corpse had left on the floor. She’d already gotten to the walls and kitchen counter. They were spotless.
I just stared at her as she scrubbed up her own blood and brains. She sensed me, looked up, that scared little smile on her face.
I lost it. I dove on her, pinned her to the floor and grabbed her throat.
I strangled her, didn’t let go until her feet had stopped drumming on the floor, until her hands had stopped waving, and her face had turned bruise purple.
I didn’t stop to think this time, I was past thinking. I just dragged her into the yard again, piled wood for a bonfire, threw her atop, soaked the whole mess with gasoline and set it off.
I watched until the fire burned down to embers, and the embers cooled to ash. I picked another spot in the yard, dug down five feet until I hit hard Arkansas clay, sweating, cursing, my hands raw. I raked the ashes and what was left of her bones into the hole, filled it and ran inside.
The kitchen was empty. Thank God.
I went upstairs, took a quick shower, then crawled back into bed.
She was gone now, dead, burned and buried, gone forever.
I didn’t know what to think or feel. I was scared. Weird shit was happening, and it freaked me out. But part of me was also sad. She was gone again, and maybe some part of me didn’t want her gone.
I fell asleep and dreamed about Angela again — the feel of her thin neck under my hands. Her high, sad screams.
* * * * *
I woke with strange hands on my body. I didn’t jerk, didn’t cry out, just sort of rose out of sleep, like a man shoving himself off the couch.
Angela was in the bed, pushed up against me. Her hands were on me. Her body was warm and smooth. I was excited, scared, but excited. I didn’t say nothing for a long time.
“What do you want?” I finally asked.
“I just want to please you,” she whispered.
I thought back, to our first night downstairs together, how good that felt, then how empty I’d felt when I finished. Now I had another chance.
“You know what I want,” I said.
She stiffened. “There are other things...” Her hands drifted lower.
I pushed myself away from her, got out of bed, reached down, took her hand, yanked her up next to me.
“Downstairs,” I said.
“I can make you happy,” she said in that tiny voice. “I’ll do anything you want.”
I hung there a second, seeing it could go two ways. I saw her in the kitchen, cooking me breakfast, being ready with dinner when I came back from a run, in bed with me, doing stuff. I knew if I said so, it would happen. I wondered if that wouldn’t be so bad.
Then I saw her on the worktable. I heard her screaming.
“Downstairs.” I said.
She nodded, led the way. There was this sound in my head, like the surf, maybe, something pounding and crashing.
We got to the basement. The tarps were still down from before, crusty with her blood. She climbed onto the workbench. I tied her down.
“Please,” she begged in that soft little voice. “Anything you want. I’ll do anything.”
I punched her hard enough to make her lips bleed. I grabbed the toolbox, got out my utility knife, extended the blade.
“Please,” she whispered again.
I cut her ear off.
Angela screamed. That was all it took. One scream and I was off. I knew it was the right thing I’d done, knew I’d never be happy if I’d done anything else.
I took it slow, worked my way through the entire toolbox, until the floor was puddled with blood, until skin hung off her in long strips.
It took twenty hours to finish it. When she was finally gone, I went to the shower and cleaned up. I told myself I felt good now that I’d had a second chance at her. That was bullshit. She was gone again. I was exhausted, spent, but she was gone, gone for good this time, I figured. I missed her already.
I heard a noise from the workroom. I went inside.
Angela was back.
Naked on the worktable, her skin pure and untouched, her eyes wide and alive. She looked at me, terrified. “Please,” she begged. “Anything. I’ll do anything for you. Just don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”
I grinned. I didn’t know what was happening, only that there’d been some kind of miracle. She’d been given to me, would be given to me over and over again as long as I wanted her. That was enough to wash away my exhaustion. The fire bloomed up in me, and I went for my tools.
Angela screamed before I even touched her.
* * * * *
I never saw her come back. Long as I was looking, she stayed dead. If I left the room to take a piss, get a drink, grab a snack, she’d be back when I returned. But if I stayed there watching her, nothing.
She stopped begging me after awhile, started counting instead. I’d be on her, and she’d pant out a number. “Eight, eight, eight...” Like a woman having a baby. She was chanting the number of times I’d killed her. I didn’t get that until later. If I’d been thinking, if I hadn’t been so caught up in it, I might have figured it earlier, it might have worried me.
Not that it would’ve mattered. I couldn’t stop. Even when the house ran out of food, I couldn’t stop. I just kept at her hour after hour, day after day. Her screams got quieter as time wore on. It took longer and longer to kill her. I started to tire, but I couldn’t stop. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I had to destroy her.
* * * * *
By the twelfth go round, I almost couldn’t see straight. She hung from meat hooks chained to the ceiling beam. I’d left her face alone this time, but what hung below was a bloody mess. She met my eyes. “Finish it,” she whispered.
I had the fire axe in hand, had been planning on taking one of her feet off. “Not ready to,” I said. I could barely manage a whisper.
“Finish it,” she said, louder now. “Finish it, you piece of shit redneck.”
I stepped back, kinda surprised. She hadn’t said nothing like this before.
“Maybe I don’t want to,” I said. And for a second, maybe I didn’t.
“Come on, you fat fuck.” She could barely talk, blood spraying from her mouth with every word. “See if you got the balls to do it.”
“Shut up,” I said.
Her voice rose higher. “See if you got the balls, you fat freak. You smelly fat fucking loser freak.”
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