I DIDN’T WANT IT TO END THIS WAY.”
Jeannie was huddled on the concrete floor of the basement, the blanket still wrapped tight around her. Livermore stood at the workbench, with a single light casting a pale glow that barely reached to the dark corners of the room. He had a box of shells on the bench, and as he talked to her he refilled the magazine of his semiautomatic.
“I gave you a chance,” Livermore said. “You didn’t take it. That was a big mistake.”
Jeannie stared at the concrete floor. She had given up trying to play along.
She had given up on everything.
“This may surprise you,” he said, “but I’ve made mistakes, too. I’ve let other women get close to me. Women I never should have trusted. If you think about it, it all goes back to you.”
She didn’t respond. The words were just a buzzing in her ears now.
“You were the prototype for me, Jeannie. You were the alpha. I should have known there could never be a beta.”
The floor was cold against her skin. No matter how hard she clutched at the blanket, she could not stop shivering. Livermore slid the magazine back into his gun and slipped it into his belt. She heard him moving behind her, rummaging through the plastic storage boxes that were stacked against the wall. Then sliding one of the boxes across the floor.
“The first was Arlene,” he said, looking back toward the other boxes against the wall. “Then Theresa.”
The words started to break through. What is he saying?
“Then Claire, from Utah. Then Sandra, who I met in Las Vegas.”
He took off the lid from the plastic box next to her. A box that anyone else in the world would use to keep Christmas decorations in.
“And this is Liana.”
She still couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing, because even after everything that had happened to her, there was only so much madness she could take in at once. But as he lifted the lid from the box and the smell came washing out over her like the hot breath from an animal, breaking right through her terror and her shock, it all came together in that single moment and turned this thing in front of her into a reality.
This is real.
It’s a dead body.
She couldn’t even scream at that point, not that anyone would have heard her, anyway. She slid away from the box, from the man who had killed this woman and had put her here. Had kept her in this box.
“She’s the most recent,” he said. As he tilted the box toward her, she saw an arm. Flesh still on the bone. A purplish liquid oozing from it. A black swarm, moving.
Insects.
It was all pure animal reaction now, as she tried to scream, her voice so hoarse she could barely make a sound.
“This is the price they paid,” he said. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I didn’t want you to have to do the same.”
Before she could stop herself, she looked down one more time and saw the whole woman’s body, the liquefied organs at the bottom of the box, with clumps of hair and the flesh that still clung to the bones. What was left of the woman’s face, her mouth wide open as if still screaming.
He stood up and pushed the box back toward the wall. Jeannie stopped trying to make any noise. Stopped trying to think. There was no strength left in her body. If he had pushed her over, she would have stayed there and never moved again.
“Stand up,” he told her.
She stayed still.
“I said, stand up.”
The words didn’t register. She felt the cold concrete against her hands and knees, the blanket on her back. The rest of her mind was white noise.
“You’re making me angry again, Jeannie.”
More words that meant nothing to her. Until she felt the smooth fibers of a rope against her neck. She reached for it, pure instinct as it tightened against her windpipe. She clawed at the rope with her fingers, but it was pulled tighter and tighter until she finally felt herself being lifted from the floor. She struggled to her knees, then to her feet, feeling the rope go slack for just an instant. But before she could slip it from her throat, her right wrist was caught in another loop of rope. Then her left. Both hands were pulled away from her body, like the wings of a bird, or of an angel, and as she looked around her she saw both ropes leading to one of the exposed ceiling joists above her head, along with the third rope still wrapped tight around her neck. All three coming together in the hands of the man standing in front of her.
He moved behind her with the ropes, and she felt the tension increase on all three at once, drawing her up onto the balls of her feet, which she could still barely feel against the cold concrete floor.
He came around to face her again, the ropes all apparently tied to something behind her now. Keeping her suspended in this position she would not be able to hold on for long. The tears started to run down her cheeks again, but she didn’t say a word.
He kept watching her, his face unreadable in the dim light coming from the desk lamp behind him. She felt herself weakening, felt herself leaning back against the ropes holding her upright, felt the center rope tightening against her throat with every slightest movement.
She wanted to say something now. One more utterance while she still could. Her last words on earth. But before she could make a sound, the lights went out, and they were both left in utter darkness.