Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (19 page)

Then the
urge to pee came back.

I sat up
and spent the next ten minutes trying to pull my hand out of the cuff. I had
some success, if you count chafing the skin and bruising the bone where my
thumb attaches to my hand.

As my hand
fell to my thigh, my eyes welled with tears. I fought them back, determined not
to cry, not to let the situation get the best of me. But just when I thought I
couldn’t be any more uncomfortable, my situation got a whole lot worse.

I felt it.
I held my breath and prayed that I was wrong, but a second later I was certain.
Sticky warmth spread between my legs. My tampon had failed me. It had done all
it could, but in the end, was unable to last until Ron decided to return. Damn
him for leaving me like this.

What felt
like at least an hour went by and the urge to pee was painful to say the
least.
I’d done all I knew to do to fight away the urge. And
when I lost the battle, as my bladder released itself onto the chair and
spilled onto the floor beneath me, I damned him for putting me in this
predicament.

I cried
now. I had no reason not to. My situation was hopeless and only getting worse.
I was covered in blood and piss and still handcuffed to the table. I couldn’t
get away from the smell or the man who caused this whole mess. I cried hard,
letting the sobs rock my body.

Exhausted,
I stopped crying.

Surely
he’d be back soon. He’d been gone a long time now. I had no way of knowing
exactly how long, but it had been a long, long time. The sun was low in the sky
now, casting a dark orange glow in the kitchen through the window over the
sink. I watched some dust speckles dancing in the glow of the fading sun and
wondered how much longer I’d have to sit here before Ron came back.

As it
turned out, I had to sit here until the sun was completely down and night had
fallen. The room was too dark to do any puzzles, so I just sat in the chair,
staring at nothing, listening to the hum of the refrigerator.

By the
time Ron flipped on the light, I’d fallen asleep with my head on the table.
When the light came on, I opened my eyes and sat up.

I looked
at Ron, who put a pizza on the counter and grabbed two plates from the cabinet.
He turned to face me, one plate in each hand, and stopped when he saw the mess.
After staring at the mess, then up at me, he brought my plate and set it on the
table in front of me. Though I wanted to stomp away in anger and demand he tell
me where he’d been and yell at him for leaving me sitting here like this for so
long, I was hungry. So I picked up the pizza.

“It’s
cold,” I complained as I took a bite.

Ron said
nothing. He looked at the mess again before taking his plate to the other side
of the table and sitting. I was surprised that he was sitting at the table with
me, but in my present mood, I didn’t give a damn.

“You’ve
made quite a mess,” he finally said between bites.

“I believe
you made this mess,” I snapped.

“I didn’t
urinate all over my kitchen floor.”

“No, but
you left me here for hours. What did you expect to happen?”

“I
expected you to exercise control over your bladder.”

“And I
expected you to exercise common sense. You should’ve known I couldn’t sit here
for that long without using the restroom.”

“You
should’ve waited.”

“You
should’ve hurried.”

He stopped
chewing and stared at me. That was bad. But when he nodded as if he was
agreeing with some inner voice (which he probably was, the crazy bastard), it
was worse.

Now I sat
there in my mess, eating cold pizza, wondering what he had in store for me and
hoping that I never found out.

Chapter
30

After Ron
allowed me to clean myself up, he cuffed me to the bed. I slept well, having exhausted
myself while sitting at the table earlier.

The next
morning, Ron led me to the bathroom, where my new clothes were waiting. I
suppose he didn’t want to clean the blood and urine from my panties and jeans,
so he’d gone out and bought me some. That was fine. My other ones were getting
worn pretty thin. Just like my nerves.
And my mental state.

I did
everything I had to do in the bathroom, including wondering if a string of
tampons tied together would be able to choke a man to death, and snapping a tooth
from the comb and sticking it in my left front pocket. Had I put it in my right
pocket, I’d never have been able to retrieve it. He always cuffed my right
hand, probably because it was so awkward to use my left. It was surely his way
of keeping down escape attempts. He was clever that way.

I stepped
out of the bathroom and faced Ron, who still hadn’t returned to his old self.
He was still cold and distant, but really, what else did I expect of a
psychopathic serial killer?

Ron
grabbed my arm, cuffed my wrist, and led me to the basement.

Trying to
sound as if I weren’t terrified, I asked, “Why are we going down here?”

“I think
you have lessons yet to learn, Nicole. Don’t you agree?”

“No, I’m
good. I’m pretty sure I’ve learned enough.” I tried to sound light, as if we
were just having an ordinary conversation. As if I wasn’t afraid to find out
what lessons he had in mind.

I’d
assumed he was going to put me back on the mattress. But he didn’t. Instead, he
sat me in the chair and handcuffed my arms behind me, around the beam. When he
moved away from me, I noticed Crystal. This was the first time I’d seen her in
a while, and she looked awful.
Beyond awful.
She
looked so terrible there wasn’t a word to describe it.

But there
was a word to describe her baby bump.
Larger.
Somehow,
the baby had managed to grow inside her. I didn’t imagine she was eating. She
certainly didn’t look like she’d been eating. She was stick-thin.

Ron walked
to the cabinet to retrieve whatever implements of torture he desired. While he
was across the room, I called to her quietly, but she didn’t hear me. I saw her
breathing. I knew she was alive, but she didn’t respond.

“Crystal,”
I whispered louder.

“She won’t
answer you,” Ron said, turning to face me.

I watched
as he walked over to her, cattle prod in his hand.

“Is she
okay?”

“Does she
look okay, Nicole? Really, you can be so ignorant at times. It’s disappointing
and unbecoming of you.”

“Oh, I’m
sorry,” I said as sarcastically as possible. “Did I make you think less of me?
You, the psychopath.
Thinking less of me,
the victim.
Bizarre, isn’t it?”

“Is that
how you see yourself?
As a victim?”

“It’s what
I am.”

“We are
all defined by the way we see ourselves, Nicole.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Well I see myself at home, snuggled up with
my husband and son.” I looked around, eyes wide with feigned shock. “That’s
weird,” I said. “I saw myself one way, but that’s not the way I am at all.
So odd.”

“There you
go again, Nicole.”

“There I
go again what? Showing you how stupid your way of thinking is?”

“No, there
you go again, proving up your ignorance. There’s no need to continue proving
yourself, Nicole.”

“Are you
calling me ignorant?”

“If the shoe fits.”
Before I could call him all the bad names I had in mind, he spoke again, this
time turning the conversation towards Crystal. “Crystal, wake up.” When she
didn’t respond, he nudged her in the side with the toe of his shoe. When she
didn’t respond the second time, he kicked her in the ribs.

She
moaned.

He smiled.
“There you go. Wake up and say hello to Nicole. She hasn’t seen you in a while.
But today, your special day, she came. We both agreed that she should be here,
and we knew you’d want her to be here as well. Isn’t that right, Crystal?”

She didn’t
respond.

He stuck
the cattle prod to her and shocked her to screams. It may have not been so bad
if he’d put it to her belly or leg, or anywhere other than where he did. But he
put it on the worst spot possible. Where there had once been a tattoo. A tattoo
that he’d carved away, filling the remaining hole with salt.

From my
position, I could see the hole, swollen and an angry shade of red. It was
obviously infected, and the shock that he sent through it had to hurt like
hell. Only a monster would do something like that. I looked at him as he
shocked her wound and knew I was right. Only a monster would do something like
that. And his name was Ron.

Chapter
31

When Ron
had finished torturing Crystal by shocking her infected wound, he turned to me.

“Do you
see, Nicole? Do you see what’s going on here?”

“If you’re
talking about the psycho with the shock wand inflicting damage on an innocent
pregnant woman who can’t defend herself, then yes. I do.”

I saw the
anger wash over him. Then, I watched as he stomped over to me and stuck it to
my chest, between my breasts.

My heart
was racing. I held my breath, unsure of what to expect. I clenched my teeth and
stared into his eyes, waiting for the pain to come, but it didn’t.

“I’d be
sure I was prepared to reap before I started sowing, if I were you, Nicole.”

After
staring me down for a minute with the cattle prod pressing against my
breastbone, he walked away. He went back to Crystal.

“I don’t
think you understand me fully, Nicole. I think you believe you can toy with me
and nothing will happen as a result. It’s painfully obvious that your parents
never taught you that for every action is an equal and opposite reaction.”

He
squatted down between Crystal’s spread legs.

My heart
pounded harder. My palms grew sweaty behind me. I felt nauseous.

In his
right hand, Ron held the cattle prod. As he aimed at Crystal’s private area, I
was afraid he was going to shock her there. That would be bad for the baby. It
had to be.

“What are
you doing?” I nervously asked, trying to either buy time to think of something
else or make him forget about her. “How is that an equal and opposite reaction
to anything that I’ve done? And by the way, what is that I’ve done?”

He threw
me a hateful look and said in an even more hateful tone, “You bled on my chair.
I had to clean that up. Do you know how horrible that was?”

“Are you
serious? Do you know how horrible it was to bleed on your chair?
And then to sit in it for hours?
It’s your fault. Besides,
I’ve seen you clean up some pretty nasty stuff down here. I would’ve thought
you were used to it.”

“Used to
it doesn’t mean I like it.” He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He
looked back at Crystal. “But since you bled on my chair, I’m going to make her
bleed.”

“Wait,” I
said quickly. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say, but I had to say it.
“Why make her bleed? I bled on you chair. Make me bleed.”

“No.”

“Why not?
That’s
the only fair way to do it.”

“Damn it,
Nicole. Would you shut up? I don’t want to make you bleed. I want you to feel
bad because she’s bleeding because of you. That’s the punishment. Making you
bleed would only hurt you for a little while. Making her bleed because of you
will make you hurt forever.”

And with
that, he plunged the cattle prod into Crystal’s vagina.

I screamed
no, but he couldn’t hear me over her. Once he turned it on, her body jerked and
spasmed as she yelled and gurgled. I thought he’d pull it out and stop, but he
didn’t. He kept it in her, kept shocking her.

“Stop,” I
screamed.

If he
heard me, he gave no indication.

As her
body stiffened and shook, her heels and elbows scraped across the concrete,
leaving red stains on the floor. Her right breast rolled out of the way at one
point and I had a clear shot of her infected wound. It was worse than I’d
thought earlier. There was a large area that was dark red, but worse than that,
there were areas that were black. I could even see the pus from this distance.
I was sure it was worse than just an infection. If she survived the basement,
she would surely lose a large amount of flesh.

Finally,
Crystal stopped jerking around, but the yelling didn’t stop. Ron yanked the
cattle prod from her vagina and cursed as the blood dripped from the tip of the
prod, falling to the concrete with a splat.

“Damn
batteries,” he said. He jumped up and ran over to the cabinet in a frantic
search for more batteries.

“Crystal,
are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Nothing came
from her except yells and moans. When the yelling began to taper off, I was
relieved that her pain was coming to an end. Little did I know that her pain
was only
beginning.