Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (21 page)

“I’m
afraid Crystal is killing herself.”

“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.

Chapter
35

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.

I stuck
the tooth of the comb into the key hole on the handcuff. I wiggled it around,
poking here and there. I had no idea what I was doing. I’d never picked a lock
before. I didn’t even know anyone who had picked a lock. I just assumed it would
be as easy as it was in the movies where you could just stick something in the
hole
, jiggle it a little, and voila, it would open. But that
wasn’t the case. Or maybe I just did it wrong. Whatever the case, the cuff wasn’t
opening.

And then
the tooth snapped in half.

Shit.

I looked
at the short piece of plastic, grasped desperately between my thumb and
forefinger. Had I really thought this would work? I put what was left of the
tooth back in my pocket and sighed.

That had
been my only plan. Now what was I going to do? Well, the only thing I could do
at the moment was more crosswords. So I did.

I was
still doing them when Ron came in to make us lunch. He stood at the counter and
made sandwiches as I finished up a puzzle. As I put the crayon in the book and
closed it, it hit me.

Where was
the other piece of the tooth? What if Ron stuck the key in, realized something
was wrong, and found the rest of the comb tooth? I think it would be safe to
say that what had happened to Crystal was nothing compared to what he would do
to me.

I made
sure Ron’s back was turned and looked into the hole on the cuff. It was hard to
see. I had to bend down and get closer, turn my wrist so more light could get
into the key
hole,
and squint to look into the small
dark space. I saw nothing. Looking up at Ron to make sure he still wasn’t
looking, I shook my wrist, thinking maybe if I shook the cuff, the tooth would
fall out. It didn’t. I looked around on the floor but saw nothing.

Ron brought
my sandwich and I ate, but all I could think of was the tooth. Where was it? If
I couldn’t see it on the floor, it had to still be in the hole. That meant the
next time he unlocked the cuff, I was screwed.

Chapter
36

When Ron
had returned to his room to write the great American novel, I shook the cuff,
trying to free the piece of plastic from the keyhole with no success. Frustrated,
I finally decided to ignore it. I didn’t see it anywhere, and worrying myself
to death over it was doing me no good. I put it out of my mind and tried to
finish the crossword puzzle. Unable to concentrate, I switched to word
searches.

We ate
dinner that evening in silence. That was fine with me. I had images in my head
that took all my strength to push away, and the broken comb tooth kept popping
into my mind. There was quite a wrestling match going on in my head, and that
left little room for forming sentences and holding a conversation.

As Ron
washed our dinner dishes, I asked about Crystal.

“You want
to know how she
is?
Let’s go find out.”

He released
the cuff from the table and I breathed a sigh of relief that the tooth wasn’t
in the keyhole. He led me down the hallway, down the stairs, and into the
basement where he sat me in the chair and cuffed my hands around me behind the
beam.

I couldn’t
take my eyes off Crystal. She looked bad. And that was an understatement.

As I
assessed the damage Ron had done to her, he walked over to her and nudged her
with the toe of his shoe. She didn’t move. While my eyes travelled down to the
mess between her legs, Ron kicked her in the ribs. She still didn’t move. As I noticed
the amount of blood that had came from her and found its way across the floor
to the drain, now mostly dry, Ron drew back his lower leg and kicked her with
all his strength. She still didn’t move.

While Ron
stood over her, head tilted in confusion, I held my breath and stared intently
at her chest, looking for the signs of life that I prayed were there.

I saw
nothing. Her chest wasn’t rising and falling as it should’ve been. She was
dead.

Ron
squatted beside her and felt her neck for a pulse. Apparently feeling nothing,
he stood and placed his hands on his hips.

“Damn,” he
said.

“What?” I
asked, as if I didn’t know.

“She’s
dead.” He sighed.

I looked
at Crystal. It was probably better for her that she wasn’t still alive. The
psychological trauma of her situation would’ve been hard enough to live with,
but even if she could’ve gotten past that, the physical damage would’ve been a
painful reminder of what she’d lived through. Yes, death was a kind escape for
Crystal.

But it
didn’t mean that I didn’t cry for her. Two young lives lost, one before it even
started. It was sad.

I hid my
tears from Ron. I didn’t think it would be good for me if he knew that her
death had
effected
me in any
way. So I sat there in the chair, hands cuffed behind me, and watched as he
chopped her up just a couple feet away.

I jumped
every time the axe found its way through her body and connected with the
concrete floor beneath her. The sound of the metal hitting the cold, hard floor
would be one that would haunt me for the rest of my days.
And
nights.

As Ron
removed Crystal’s arms and legs and put them in trash bags, I knew I had to get
out of here. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t watch him hack up another
body and keep my sanity. I couldn’t watch him torture another woman. I just
couldn’t.

After Ron
hauled Crystal’s body up the stairs two bags at a time, he led me up the
stairs.

He led me
to the bathroom door and removed the cuff from my wrist.

I thought
of running, barging past him and out the door. After all, he was probably tired
from all the hacking and hauling of the body, and I just might be able to get
away. But when I glanced at him, I knew that wouldn’t happen. It would,
however, cause him more hacking and hauling because I had no doubt that he’d
kill me.

I turned
and went into the bathroom.

I peed. I
flushed. I washed my hands, scrubbing all the way to the elbow until my skin was
red. I splashed cold water on my face. I looked at my reflection in the mirror above
the sink, but I didn’t see me. Instead I saw Crystal’s lifeless, mangled body
lying in the basement.

I rushed
over to the toilet and threw up my dinner. After emptying the contents of my
stomach, I flushed, stood, and went through the routine again of washing my
hands, splashing my face with cold water, and brushing my teeth.

Having
done all that, I opened the door and faced Ron, who filled the doorway.

He quickly
slapped the cuff around my right wrist and led me to the bedroom. He undressed
me, pushed me onto the bed, and cuffed me to the headboard as always.

When Ron
left to dispose of Crystal’s body, I cried.

Chapter
37

The next
morning, I woke to the sound of a slamming door. I opened my eyes and focused
them just in time to see Ron barging into my room.

He stood
in the doorway, chest heaving with angry breaths, eyes wide, hair disheveled. The
sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to the elbow which meant he’d been
cleaning. I couldn’t imagine what could’ve angered him while he was going
through his cleaning routine, but he was obviously furious. Suddenly, I was
very awake.