Held (20 page)

Crystal’s scream cut off and became a muffled moan as Ron held her mouth closed. She struggled as much as she could, but it was no use. Ron wasn’t letting go. He held her mouth shut tightly with one hand and held her head steady with the other.
With his face only inches from hers, he stared into her eyes as he spoke to her.

“Eat it. You wanted it on your
body; you wanted it to be a part of you forever, so eat it. Make it a part of you forever. Swallow it down. It’s part of you, Crystal. Just eat it! Swallow it.” Screaming at her wasn’t going to make her swallow it.

My stomach rolled and twisted in my belly as I watched her wrestle with him, a piece of her own flesh in her mouth.

Several minutes went by with Ron holding her in this position. Finally, he let go of her jaw and slowly pulled away his hands from her face.

I watched her carefully, so when she spat out the tattooed meat, I saw it shoot up out of her mouth and fall to the floor next to her. Quickly, I looked to Ron. His face turned red, his eyes narrowed, and I saw his jaw clench.

“You filthy whore,” he said as he slapped her across the face.

I watched as he picked up the meat and once again shoved it into her mouth. She resisted, keeping her mouth shut tightly as long as possible. It wasn’t until Ron stuck his finger into the hole in her chest where the meat had been just minutes earlier that she opened her mouth. It was to scream, but it was open nonetheless and Ron used the opportunity to shove in the flesh.

This time, he held her mouth closed for at least ten minutes. I started out counting, but after counting to sixty three times, I started thinking maybe it had been four times, and while trying to sort it out in my head, I lost track. But my best guess was at least ten minutes.

Finally, he sat up. She didn’t spit it out this time, and Ron smiled.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.

She answered his question by once again spitting the grotesque wad of meat out and onto the floor, this time, above her head.

I was afraid he was going to punch her, kick her, slap her, or choke her. In fact, judging by the look on his face, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him beat her to death.

But he didn’t. When he got done with her, she’d wish he had beat
en her to death, but that’s not what he did.

With his left hand, he grabbed the nipple of her left breast. He pulled it, stretching it upward until her breast became elongated.

As I tried to determine what sort of punishment this was, I found out.

Quick as a flash, Ron brought up the knife and slashed it through the air. It took a second for me to realize that he had not only sliced the air, he’d sliced through her breast, taking off the nipple and a good portion of the rest of it. When I noticed a third of her breast dangling by the nipple from between his fingertips, I looked down at what was left of her breast.
It looked like an erupted volcano, blood oozing out of the opening and running down the sides like lava.

Her screams burst forth, filling the room and bouncing off the concrete walls.

Ron smiled.

He tossed her ruined breast to the floor and grabbed the nipple of
the remaining breast. He stretched it upward, just as he had the other one. He again slashed the knife through her skin. This time, however, he didn’t make a clean slice. He only made it halfway through.

I watched as he began to
slowly saw back and forth with the knife through the rest of her breast, making jagged cut marks.

When I noticed the silence, I looked at Crystal and saw that she’d passed out. I was surprised she’d made it as long as she had without succumbing to the darkness.

When Ron finished cutting off her breast, he brought it to his face. I was sure he was going to take a bite out of it, or maybe drink some of the blood from it. My mouth began to fill with saliva in preparation of the vomit that was sure to come.

He brought it to his nose, inhaled deeply, and smiled. What a sick bastard.

He looked at Crystal, prepared to speak, but saw she was unconscious. Slamming the ruined tip of her breast down, he stood abruptly and stormed across the room to the cabinet.

I looked back at Crystal. Her breast had landed on her abdomen, making for a spectacle that seemed to have originated in a science fiction
horror movie. Her breasts were chopped and bleeding, and on top of her swollen abdomen rose what looked to be a third breast, nipple reaching for the ceiling.

I felt horrible for her.
All this because of me. No. It wasn’t because of me. It was because of Ron, but he wanted me to think it was because of me. Even though it wasn’t because of me, I was crying. I felt responsible. I should’ve done something to protect her.

When Ron came back from the cabinet, I begged, I pleaded, I cried openly, but it was no use.

Suddenly, things got a whole lot worse.

Ron dropped to his knees beside Crystal and set the tools of torture beside him.

“Wake up, Crystal.” There was a threatening tone to his voice.
It was as if he were saying ‘wake up now and prevent what’s about to happen’.

When she didn’t stir, he nodded and began what can only be described as the most
horrific thing I’ve ever seen.

As he removed the lid from a bottle with a label I recognized to be
rubbing alcohol, I looked at the steady stream of blood that still made its way from Crystal to the drain. Only now, it wasn’t just a stream. It was more like a small river. It was getting worse, and fast.

I looked back at Ron just as
he poured a hearty amount of alcohol into the crater that was formerly Crystal’s left breast. This brought her around in a hurry, which was obviously what he wanted. He wanted to torture her and inflict as much pain as possible on the poor girl, but he wanted her to be awake while he did it.

Her screams and wails were loud, but her voice was failing her. She’d done more screaming than any actress in a bad horror movie had ever thought of doing. It was wearing on her.

I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes and hoped Ron didn’t notice. If he realized I wasn’t watching, it would get worse for her.

I listened to her screams as her voice cracked and broke, and then fell silent. Hoping for her sake that she’d passed out again, I opened my eyes and checked on her. She was wide awake, still thrashing against her restraints, and screaming though no sound escaped her. Her voice had finally gone.

Tired of pouring alcohol into her open wound, Ron set down the bottle and picked up an ice pick.

“What’s that, Crystal? I can’t hear you?” he said.

He used his left hand to grab her right breast at the base. He squeezed it, making the bleeding mound of flesh rise farther away from her chest and jabbed in the ice pick. He jabbed it quickly up and down, as if he really was chipping away ice. Blood spattered across her chest and belly, along with pieces of breast meat.

My stomach rolled and a mouthful of sour spit overwhelmed me.
Unable to take it any longer, I leaned forward, spread my legs, and vomited on the floor between my feet. I was aware that my mess-making was the cause of her agony, but there was nothing I could do about this one. I’d held it back as long as I could.

Ron must’ve realized that I wasn’t looking.

“Nicole, are you watching? Are you making another mess?”

“I’ll cle
an it,” I said between retches.

“You need to watch this, Nicole. These are valuable lessons I’m teaching you.”

“I can’t. I can’t watch anymore. Please stop. You’re killing her.”

“I’m afraid Crystal is killing hersel
f.”

“No, you are,” I spat at him.

“I may be the tool, but she’s the one behind it, instructing me.”

“How can she instruct you to do anything? You’ve made her scream so much, she can’t even talk now.” I wanted to add asshole to end of that, but thought better of it.

“Her actions have spoken louder than any words she could’ve said.”

I didn’t know what actions he was talking about and I didn’t feel like finding out. Though I’d thrown up, my stomach was still uneasy. I was trembling. My nerves were frayed. And the guilt was unbearable.

Tired of torturing a woman who couldn’t give him pleasure by screaming, Ron stood.

“I think that’s enough for the day, don’t you?”

“Would you please take her to the hospital? You’re going to kill her. She’s dying right now. Please,” I begged.

“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? You know very well I can’t let her go. I can’t let any of them go. To let them live is to bring about my death.”

We stared at each other for a minute, neither speaking. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was hating every fiber of his being. I hated even the thought of his existence. All the ways I could kill him flashed through my mind as I looked into his empty eyes.

“Let’s go eat breakfast, shall we? I’m famished.”

As Ron unlocked the cuffs and dragged me up the stairs and into the kitchen, I wondered how the hell he could possibly be hungry after doing what he did. I’d seen it, and I didn’t know if I could ever again eat a bite without seeing blood and pieces of meat behind my eyelids.

I sat cuffed to the table as Ron scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and poured two glasses of milk. When he set mine in front of me, I pushed the plate away and sipped the milk. My stomach was uneasy to say the least. There was no way I could eat. But he ate as if it were his last meal. Oh, how I wished it was.

Halfway through his plate of food, he realized I wasn’t eating.

“Eat,” he said around a mouthful of egg.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Sure you are. Go ahead. Eat.”

“How can you eat after seeing that down there?”

“Easy. Just don’t think about it.”

“How can you not think about it?”

“I just don’t think about it. That was a few minutes ago. It’s over. Besides, it was just blood. You of all people should understand that blood is natural.”

“Why me of all people? What does that mean?”

“It means you weren’t too disgusted to eat last night while you were sitting in a large puddle of blood, which by the way, I had to smell while I ate.”

Weakly, I replied, “That was different.”

“Not to me. Blood is blood.”

Was that true? It couldn’t be. It had been disgusting sitting in my blood last night. It was horrible and vile, and the only reason I’d eaten was I was starving.

As I rolled this around in my mind, I realized what the difference was. It wasn’t the blood. If I would’ve just seen a bunch of blood, it would’ve been a different story. I would’ve still been able to eat if I was hungry. The sight of blood wasn’t what made me lose my appetite. It was the cause of the blood. It was seeing Ron torture Crystal. It was watching him cut her and cause her to bleed that had made my appetite flee.

I continued to sip my milk. I was afraid Ron would get mad and cram the eggs down my throat. That reminded me of him trying to force Crystal to eat her own flesh. I shuddered and quickly thought of something else.

“What are you going to do after breakfast?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

After washing his food down with a long drink of milk, he said, “Write. That was some good stuff down there and I need to write it before I forget it.”

“You could forget that?”

“No, but I want to write it while it’s fresh. While all the details are still vivid. I will never forget it,” he said as he smiled.

I wasn’t going to forget it either, and I sure as hell wasn’t smiling about it. I knew there would be many sleepless nights ahead of me, as well as many nights where I woke up screaming from a nightmare that was actually a memory.

And that’s if I lived through this.

“You won’t have another chance to eat until lunch. You sure you’re not hungry?”

I shook my head.

“Mind if I eat it?”

I pushed the plate toward him. He pulled it the rest of the way to him and gobbled it down.

He washed the plates and glasses and walked down the hall to his room to write the atrocity that was his novel, leaving me cuffed to the table.

I did my exercises quietly, more to keep my mind off Crystal than anything. When I’d gone through my routine, I began doing crossword puzzles. I’d completed two puzzles and was halfway through the third when I remembered the tooth of the comb in my pocket.

My heart raced. I put down the crayon and looked over my shoulder to make sure Ron wasn’t standing behind me or coming up the hallway. Seeing no one, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tooth.

I dropped it. Then I picked it up. My nervousness was making me clumsy. I was excited with the prospect of being free. I closed my eyes and calmed down. A few deep breaths later, I was fine.
Okay, so I wasn’t fine, but I was calm enough to use the tooth without dropping it.