If I’m breathing, I’m not aware of it. I’m not moving, not even shaking with fear. I’m scared frozen.
Go get the knives.
My catatonic moment lasts a year, or maybe five seconds. All I know is when my brain snaps back into a functioning mode, my only thought is:
Not like this. It can’t end like this.
It’s easy to think of bravery in theory. But when you’re strapped in a chair and the man who’s been stalking you for fourteen years tells his partner in crime to go get the knives, any sense of bravery evaporates. Raindrops on sizzling desert asphalt.
I can’t help it. My bladder just releases, and the hot urine filling the seat of my jeans is almost a welcome relief. Maybe if I can let go of my bladder, I can let go of my mind. Maybe death will feel as strangely relieving as soiling myself.
“Stay with me, Alice,” Jack says.
It’s just him and me. Brenda has left the room.
“I don’t deserve this,” I say.
“We are all dying, Alice. Just at different rates.”
The internet connection stammers, and Jack’s face blinks into a digital void for a second, then reappears.
Tears well in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.
“Are you really my father?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Then how can you let this happen?”
Before he can answer, Brenda reappears. She carries a soft piece of rolled velvet, which she places on the top of the drawing table. When she unrolls it, three pieces of metal catch the light of the lamp. A cutter’s tool kit.
“No,” I say.
I don’t add please. I’m not going to beg. I’m covered in my own puke and piss, but I’m not going to fucking beg for my life.
I struggle against the tape and realize there’s no way I can get my hands free in time. The binds dig into my wrist, and I almost relish the pain.
“If you kill me,” I say to Brenda, “then what? You’ll have nothing left. You’ll be all alone. No purpose.”
Brenda removes and holds up a blade. A scalpel. An instrument meant for cutting, not stabbing. For carving.
I gag, but there’s nothing left to come up.
Then I scream. I scream as loudly and as frantically as I can. Maybe if someone is outside, they’ll hear me. I’m hysterical, my voice screeching until it hurts my ears.
Brenda slashes my forearm with the scalpel, and the skin immediately opens. I stare down at the wound in horror, and Brenda has succeeded in silencing me. As I watch, I think for a moment that it’s not too deep. There’s no blood.
And then there is.
It pours from my forearm, slicking my skin. More blood than seems possible from the little cut. I can’t look any more.
“I know how to cut without pain,” Brenda says. “I’ve done it for years. Stop screaming, and I’ll make this as painless as I can. Or, I can put tape over your mouth, and take out pieces of you one by one. Then you can scream all you want.”
Close your eyes, Alice. Go to another place. A soft, warm place. A place where you can’t feel.
As I close my eyes, I’m aware of the word that escapes my lips.
“Daddy.”
Then, Jack’s voice.
“I’m right here, Alice.”
“You’re not my daddy,” I whisper. Over and over. I say it until I have a thought. Maybe my daddy is out there telling me what to do.
I thrash in the chair enough that I ultimately tip over onto my left side, pounding my shoulder into the floor. Brenda immediately kicks me in the ribs. Pain roils me, but I can take a million kicks. Anything but the blade.
“Goddamn it,” she says. I catch a glimpse of her looking at the screen.
“Now what?”
“Get her upright, and then continue,” he answers.
I don’t have any expectation of escaping just by falling to the floor. But I rock myself enough to direct the flow of blood from my forearm down toward my right hand. It works. Hot, sticky liquid oozes around my wrist, making it slippery. I yank my lubricated right hand, and a bit more of it slides out from the tape. I’m close. There’s a chance.
Brenda stops my rocking and yanks up on the chair, but she isn’t strong enough to lift me.
“Okay then,” she says, releasing the chair so I’m back on my left side. “I guess we’ll have to do this on the floor.”
“No,” I hear Jack saying. “I need to watch. It’s very important.”
She doesn’t seem to hear him. Brenda is in her own world, the world of a cutter making the intoxicating leap from the canvas of one’s own skin to that of another.
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” she says. “And now I get to have you.”
She’s sideways on the floor now, wedged in front of me in the clutter and filth of this tiny, dingy room. Her nose is close to mine, and when she breathes, it fills me. Now she wears the Brenda look, the one that makes you feel like you’re the only thing in the world that matters. For years, I’ve wondered if this look was sincere, and in this moment, I know it is. I am her focus. Her reason.
I pull and twist my right hand. Pull and twist. It’s looser within the tape. Just another few minutes. That’s all I need.
This can’t happen. Not like this. Keep them talking.
I twist my head toward the laptop screen, hoping I can get Jack to tell her to stop. I can only make out the top half of the screen from the floor, but one thing is very clear.
Jack is no longer there.
Back to Brenda, who now holds the blade up to my face. Very slowly, she places the tip on my nose, and I go cross-eyed looking at it.
“I could start here,” she says. “Work my way up to your scalp, or down to your lips. Do you want to choose, Alice?”
This is it. Fourteen years ago, I didn’t see it coming. Now, with the blade hovering in front of me, I have a chance to control the moment. Control my mind. Steel it against the pain. If I can just shut my mind down for a bit, it’ll all be over.
I just need to make it to the other side.
One last yank of my wrist. It’s not enough. I can’t get my hand free.
I close my eyes. As I do, I decide not to scream.
“Daddy,” I whisper. I don’t ask him to save me. I think I’m telling him I’ll see him soon.
That will be wonderful.
There’s the slightest pressure on the tip of my nose.