LIKED - A Dark Romance Novel (Story of Dangerous Obsession and Lust) (9 page)

What Did I Tell You?

Gia startled awake and the handcuff on her left wrist rattled against the
pipes of the old, dead radiator on the wall beside her. She stared at the
morning light from through the curtains across the room over the flat ceiling.
It was bright enough that she suspected it was late morning.

It was still several seconds before she could place where she was. Once
her brain put the pieces back together, she realized she was in the mystery
building with Jack, but wasn’t sure where that was on the Earth.

Oklahoma is halfway, Gia thought, but the phrase had no meaning in her
head and she wasn’t sure where it had come from.

She was wearing pink, fuzzy pajamas. She was barefoot. She lay on top of
a blue, nylon sleeping bag. Her hair was dry and brushed back by her fingers
yet flat from drying while she slept. The towel dry last night had not helped
her hair.

Jack had set up her sleeping area and handcuffed her in place before he
left the room with Susan. Gia probably should have tried to escape, but she had
dropped down into sleep fairly quickly. This had been the first time she had
stretched out on soft bedding for days and her body had demanded rest.

During the night, she had awoken in the darkness periodically to what she
thought was screaming. She did not know if it was her dreams or Jack hurting
Susan.

It is your fault we are here, Gia thought.

She wanted to call out, but she was afraid of being next.

She lifted her head, but did not sit up. The back of her head itched
through her hair. Gia saw broken toys piled along one wall under the window.
Some were the old, heavy plastic of toddler’s toys. Others were more detailed
trucks for older kids, but missing wheels. Five matching dressers were stacked
against one wall. Five matching bedside tables were stacked opposite the dressers.
Torn books and magazines were heaped in the center of the room.

Gia stared a moment longer and dropped her head back on the sleeping bag
staring at the ceiling.

The door to the room opened and Jack said, “Good morning.”

Gia felt her spirit drop.

Whatever this is, she thought, it is about to begin.

He knelt beside her head beside her sleeping bag. She looked away toward
the radiator.

Jack said, “I’m going to uncuff you, you will go to the bathroom, we will
sit down to eat breakfast, you will be recuffed at the table, and you will
cause no trouble because the human body can …”

“I know how long the human body can go without food and water. Just shut
up about it.”

“As long as you understand the rules, Gia, we will be fine.”

She did not answer.

He reached across and used the key to remove the handcuff from the
radiator and her wrist. Jack guided her up to her feet and kept his hand on her
shoulder as he walked her out of the room. The concrete floor was cold under
her bare feet.

***

The next room was broad and seemed as long as the building. Other rooms
opened off of it on both sides. There was a wooden front door. The walls were
painted with clowns holding bundles of balloons and distorted giraffes taking a
stroll with bug-eyed lions. A long section of carpet was rolled up thick and
pushed against the wall under the clowns and animals blocking the bottoms of
the darkened doorways. A couch sat diagonally in the middle of the room covered
in yellow, flowered bed sheets.

“What kind of nightmare house is this?” Gia asked.

“You have no idea,” Jack said. “Go take a piss.”

Gia wasn’t sure if he was referring to nightmares that happened before
they got there or ones that were going to happen now that they were here.

She smelled bacon. Her eyes watered and her stomach did flips inside her.

She stepped into the bathroom and pulled down her pajama bottoms before
sitting down on the toilet. The tile was still wet from the night before from
the showers.

“Are you going to sit there and watch me, you pathetic freak?” Gia asked.

“Shut up and finish, Gia. You’ll feel better after you eat.”

“Can I brush my teeth?”

“It will make the orange juice taste bad. You can brush your teeth
after.”

“There’s no toilet paper.”

“Did you take a shit?”

Gia narrowed her eyes. “No.”

“Then, you’ll be fine. I’ll get some later. Let’s go.”

Gia stood and pulled up the pajama bottoms with no panties. She flushed
and walked back out of the bathroom without washing her hands. The cuffs of her
pajamas were damp around her ankles from touching the tile.

He grabbed her shoulder. She started to recoil, but he gripped harder and
she relented.

Jack guided her around to the kitchen where Susan sat at table with four
chairs with puffy, red plastic seats. There were three settings with bacon, scrambled
eggs, buttered toast, and a small glass of orange juice.

Jack pulled the chair across from Susan out sideways and sat Gia down in
it. Susan wore blue pajamas and stared blankly down at the plate in front of
her. Gia wanted to ask if she was okay or what had happened to her the previous
night, but the truth was that Gia didn’t want to know.

The cuff locked over Gia’s wrist and Jack pulled her arm out straight. He
closed the other end of the handcuff around the tube of the kitchen radiator.
The house was chilly in the kitchen, but not cold. The radiators were not
functioning. Gia could see pine trees swaying outside the windows.

Gia couldn’t tell where Susan was cuffed on her side of the table. Her
hands were below the table out of Gia’s sight.

There was an old, green phone on the counter behind Susan and to her left.
It was the old fashioned kind with a spiraled cord and the receiver on the
cradle above a clear plastic rotary dial. It had been so long since Gia had
seen a phone like that that it looked like a prop. The entire house was like a
set – a set for a torture porn.

A silver toaster sat on a corner of the counter near a double sink where
it was plugged in. If there was toast on the plates, it must be working.

A refrigerator with multi-colored ABC magnets sat by the wall down from
the radiator where Gia was cuffed behind where she was facing. She couldn’t see
well over her shoulder, but it looked unplugged and she didn’t hear it running.
She wondered where the butter for the toast had come from. When had Jack had
the time to go pick it all up, if it wasn’t already here?

A ceramic clown cookie jar stared at Gia with black, triangular eyes and
she shivered. That was the cookie jar a sick murderer would keep around.

Jack walked around the table behind Susan and sat down in the chair that
Gia was facing the way she was cuffed. He picked up his bacon and took a
crunchy bite. As he chewed, he said, “Eat up.”

Susan lifted toast to her mouth with her right hand and took a bite
without looking up. Her left hand stayed below the table.

Gia stared at Jack a moment and said, “I don’t have silverware.”

“You’re damn right you don’t,” Jack said. “Just eat.”

Gia lifted egg with her fingers and dropped the bits on the corner of her
toast. She picked up a piece of bacon and put it on top of that. Gia lifted it
to her mouth and took a bite. The salt in it stung her tongue, but her hunger
became more pronounced as she swallowed the first bite. She took three more
bites rapidly before setting the food back down.

Gia dry swallowed and then lifted the orange juice. She could see the
pulp floating in it which she did not normally like. She took a swallow anyway
and felt the acids find sores inside her mouth she was not aware were forming.
The juice was lukewarm. She wondered if the spots in her mouth had anything to
do with ordeal or dehydration. She swallowed the pulpy juice and took another
mouthful before setting the glass down.

“That’s an interesting way to eat eggs,” Jack said.

Gia piled her eggs and bacon on her toast again without looking up at him
or answering him and took another bite.

“Have you always eaten them that way?”

“No, Jack, usually I have a fucking fork and I’m not chained to a
goddamned radiator, so, no, this is not normally how I eat my fucking eggs. I
don’t want to talk to you about how I eat my eggs. I want to leave.”

She took another sip of orange juice.

Jack looked at Susan and back at Gia.

“You had no choice when your father abused you,” Jack said and Gia looked
up staring at him as she set her glass back down. “You let Don go on hitting
you. We are going to break you of this cycle and set you free of this.”

Gia shook her head. “What the hell are you talking about? Don didn’t hit
me. My father yelled and he left, but he never abused me. You’re the only one
abusing me, Jack.”

He stared at Susan again before looking back at Gia.

“He has you brainwashed,” Jack said. “He is out of your life now and we
will get him out of your head before this is all over.”

He reached out to touch her and Gia backed her chair away. The cuff
pulled out painfully taut on her wrist stressing her elbow joint. She bumped
the leg of the table shifting it and spilling her juice glass over its surface.

Susan backed up her chair and stood up.

“Damn it, Gia.” Jack stood up over her and Gia stared up at him unable to
look away. This seemed to be the moment the happy breakfast would be over and
the real business would begin. He stared down at her with his fists clenched.
“Don can’t hurt you anymore.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” Gia said. “He was a little bit of an inattentive ass
and he didn’t pay his bills on time, but you don’t kill someone for that. You
are crazy, Jack. You couldn’t have me anymore, so you killed him and kidnapped
me to make me yours. You’re the abuser, Jack. You are.”

Jack swallowed and shook his head as he stood over her. “No, he attacked
her and she defended herself. She was standing up for you and Don tried to do
to her what he did to you. We had to get away and you did too to free your head
from what he had done to you. His violence and manipulation of you are over.”

“What are you talking about, Jack? Who are you talking about?” Gia shook
her head. “None of that ever happened. He never laid a hand on me. None of what
you are saying is real. Your head is all messed up.”

Tears welled up and Jack’s eyes and he whispered. “All lies.”

The bottom of the green phone slammed into the side of his head rocking
his jaw and temple. The phone gave a strangled ring from the mechanisms inside
with the impact and his face changed shape with all the loose flesh rolling
from his left to his right like a shock wave. His eyes lost focus and went
glassy as he toppled sideways. The wind of his fall flopped his hair from one
side of his head to the other before he hit the floor and slid. He did not have
the same amount of product in his hair as usual and the unexpected fall
revealed that.

Susan pushed Jack’s chair back and stalked up to stand over him holding
the body of the phone. “What did I tell you I was going to do to you, you
idiot?”

She lifted the phone above her head as Jack lumbered up to his hands and
knees. “What the hell, Susan?”

“Don’t let him get up,” Gia shouted.

Susan brought the phone down on the back of Jack’s head with another
unintended ring from the body of the phone. He collapsed to his face. Susan
lifted the phone and struck him three more times. The third hit in the series,
the fifth hit overall, resulted in Susan losing her grip on the phone. It
tumbled away from her out of the kitchen into the main room. The receiver fell
off the cradle and slid out the length of its spiraled cord to stop behind the
covered couch. The clear wire that would attach to the phone jack was wrapped
up underneath the overturned body of the phone.

Jack wasn’t unconscious, but he was curled up in a ball with his hands
over his head crying. Susan stepped over Jack and grabbed him by his right
wrist. She pulled his arm out straight and dragged him across the floor in two,
short bursts.

Susan locked a handcuff over his wrist and then locked him around the
other side of the radiator. She lifted her heel and stomped down on his chest
twice. Gia saw Susan was wearing her sneakers with her pajamas. Jack let out
sharp barks of pain. Susan stepped over him and kicked him across the mouth as
she passed. Jack spit blood out onto the floor.

Gia pointed with her free hand. “He has the handcuff key in his pocket.
Get it. Quick.”

Susan turned and knelt down beside him. “Oh, right, thanks.”

She fished through the pocket of his dark jeans and lifted out the tiny
key before she stood again.

Jack moaned. “You lied to me.”

Susan drew back her foot and kicked him twice in the ribs and once in the
side of his head. He rolled up into a ball again at the end of the handcuff.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gia said scooting her chair back to give slack
to her cuff.

Susan yelled. “Shit!”

She kicked the leg of the table turning it hard. The other two juices
spilled and ran out dribbling off the edge onto the concrete floor.

Susan turned Jack’s chair around and straddled it. She set the handcuff
key on the counter behind her near the toaster. Susan reached out to the
cock-eyed table and picked up a half-eaten piece of Jack’s bacon from his
plate. She took a bite and folded her arms over the back of the chair as she
faced Gia and Jack.

“What are you doing?” Gia asked. “Get me out of here and let’s go.”

Jack growled from the floor. “Susan, you said he was abusing Gia and you
confronted him. You said he attacked you and you had to kill him. You said Gia
was damaged by him and this was the only way to save her. None of that was
true, was it?”

“You do what I tell you to do, Justin,” Susan said. “You do what I tell
you and you could have had her for yourself. We could have had her and lived happily
together.”

Gia looked at Jack on the floor and back up at Susan. “What’s going on?
Who is Justin?”

Susan rolled her eyes and threw the rest of the piece of bacon at Jack.
He swiped it aside. “Stop it, Susan. Let me up.”

“No,” she said. “You both need to get your heads right now. I should have
done this myself all along.”

“Let us go,” Jack said. “This has gone too far, Susan.”

“What are you doing?” Gia yelled.

“Justin and Gina, shut up,” Susan yelled back. “Both of you. Shut up.
Right now.”

“What is happening here?” Gia screamed.

Susan jumped to her feet knocking the chair over. Gia scooted her chair
back almost to the wall beside the radiator. Jack sat up on the other side and
scooted to the wall too.”

“What did I tell you?” Susan said with clenched fists.

Gia’s lips twitched and she whispered. “Jack, what’s going on?”

He said back, “I’m sorry, Gia. I’m sorry about all of this.”

***