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Thursday
Mia wrestled with the legs of the table until she felt faint from hunger and thirst. Although she couldn’t see what she was doing in the darkness, she could feel how wobbly the table leg was, that it was barely screwed on, but the last inch of screw refused to separate from the table top. She’d saved the fruit pie for hours, but finally had to eat it, dry-swallowing it in tiny pieces, making it last. Maybe she’d just go crazy in here, trapped without light, without food or water. Insanity would be better than being so lost in her own head.
She couldn’t stop thinking about her parents. After her sibs died, her mother and father had been ghosts, drifting around the house, forgetting to make dinner or even breakfast, forgetting that there was no milk in the fridge, forgetting that Mia was still there. She’d once overheard her mother say to her Aunt Jo that she didn’t see much point in living anymore. Mia could understand that attitude now.
“But what about Miracle?” Jo had asked.
Then, as if they’d suddenly come to a joint decision, her parents glommed onto her like gum sticking to the bottom of a shoe. You’re our precious jewel, Miracle girl. You’re all we think about. You have all our hopes and dreams. You’re all we live for. You’re the only one left.
What would Mom and Dad do when she was gone? They couldn’t even tell good stories about her. Her sibs were heroes. She was an idiot. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she was too dehydrated to cry.
The room stank. She stank. The sheets on the bed had stiff patches of dried semen and blood; she couldn’t stand to lie on them. The bucket was half full, and she couldn’t take hovering over it any more. Last time she peed in the far corner, where a whisper of air came through the crack in the wall.
Think, Mia, think. She had to come up with a plan, something between simply giving up and dying and getting that damn table leg off and killing Dusty with it. There had to be a Plan B. Or was it Plan C, if dying was first?
The door rattled. Mia leapt from the bed, righted the table. It sagged now, its wobbly leg splayed out to the side. She nudged the leg back into vertical with her toe, but the table still looked pretty bad. She set the empty Coke can on top and was still standing next to the table when the door opened and Dusty blinded her with the flashlight beam.
“There you are, darlin’,” he said, as if pleased to discover her here.
“As if I could be anywhere else, honey,” she sneered.
“Don’t be that way, Mia.” He set the flashlight on end on the ground. He was dressed, as usual, in khaki pants and a blue shirt, a tidily combed vision of an upright working citizen. He pulled the stun gun from his pocket. In the other hand, he clutched two sacks this time, one from Burger Hut, and the other a pretty pink bag. When he set the burger bag down on the table, she held her breath, praying it wouldn’t collapse.
“Whew!” He wrinkled his nose. “It really stinks in here.”
“No shit,” she snarled. “Or actually, a whole lot of shit. What did you expect, Dusty? A girl’s gotta go, you know.”
He frowned.
“But you’re right, it stinks in here. I stink in here. If I were you, I’d just leave.”
“That’s not gonna happen.” But then he turned and went out the door, locking it behind him.
Mia focused on the door for a few seconds, confused. But he’d left the food bag. Halleluiah! She fell on it, gulping down Coke from the cup inside and ripping off huge mouthfuls of cheeseburger.
Then the door opened again, and he stood there, framed by the darkness of the building beyond. She had a huge mouthful of burger and was frantically chewing before he could take it away. The stun gun was in his pocket. Could she rush him in time to get past him?
Then he raised his right hand, and she could see he held a water hose, his thumb on the sprayer. He let loose a jet that hit her smack in the middle of her left breast, as if he were aiming for her heart. The water was cold, the jet was a painful needle of force, stabbing her chest. She turned sideways, gasping, and tried to hunch over but kept cramming the food and drink into her mouth, even as the jet bruised her shoulders.
Dusty laughed. “We’ve got to get that stink off you.” The stream hit her in the back of the head. It felt like she’d been whacked with a two-by-four, and she began to choke on the burger. “Turn around,” he ordered.
She glanced over her shoulder, and the spray hit her forehead. She quickly turned back around and ducked.
“I said, turn around!” he shouted. “Do it now, unless you want this.”
She glanced back again, and sure enough, he was holding out the stun gun. She wondered briefly if he’d get electrocuted if he used it with all this water around, but she wasn’t ready to die, with or without him, so she turned. He hit her in the face with the jet and then worked his way down to her toes. She closed her eyes and tried to stay standing directly in front of the food sack to preserve whatever was left to eat. God, that jet hurt. She’d be covered in bruises.
Finally the cold spray mercifully stopped. “Take your clothes off.”
“No.”
He stepped forward, the stun gun held out.
“Okay, okay. I’m doing it.” Blinking streams of water out of her eyes, she pulled off her top, then sat down on the soaked bed to unzip her dripping jeans. He waited until she had them bunched around her ankles, then he stepped forward and snagged the reeking toilet bucket and slung it outside the door, quickly closing it behind him. She balled up her wet clothes, tossed them between the mattress and the wall, and stood up.
“Bra and panties, too.”
Ashamed of her cowardice, she shucked them off.
“Now, that’s not so bad, is it, darlin’?” he crooned. “Everything smells a lot better now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” He was right about that.
“I got something for you.” He bent at the knees to grab the pink sack, which he had set down just inside the door.
She took advantage of his motion to grab another bite of burger. The paper wrapping was soaked, and the bun came apart in her fingers, but it still tasted good.
He tossed the pink sack. She made no move to catch it. The bag landed on the mattress, and she picked it up. Inside was a rose-colored negligee.
“Put it on.” He gestured with the stun gun toward her. “And don’t get hamburger grease all over it.”
Hell, at least the negligee was mostly dry. She shimmied into it. It was way too long, and pooled in the dirt around her feet. “I need petite,” she said.
Then he was on her, his hands clutching her shoulders. “You should be grateful! Why aren’t you grateful?”
“What for?” she asked.
He zapped her with the stun gun. “Because you’re alive,” he snarled, his face close to hers.
She was incapable of saying anything more as he tossed her onto the wet bed and raped her again. Every time she felt movement returning to her limbs, he jolted her.
She had her answer about whether the stun gun would electrocute him in the wet room.
