Astrid woke strapped to a chair. Some tiny malevolent creature was stamping on her face while her stomach rippled with bruises. Sitting across from her was Jimmy Sawyer. The two cowboys leant on their baseball bats in obvious pain. To their side was a table covered with hammers, knives and other tools. She recognised a makeshift torture kit when she saw one.
Sawyer rubbed at the silver skulls adorning his hand.
‘Before the government sent Pop to Vietnam, he spent some time in England. It was well before he met our mom, and he had a fling with some British whore.’ He leered at her. ‘I think that’s why he’s taking a fancy to you, girl. Or perhaps it’s her he likes.’
He took a phone from his pocket and stuck it in her face. His aftershave made her gag, but it wasn’t that which caught the bile in her throat. The image on the screen was a photo of Olivia. Not recent, maybe something off her sister’s ridiculous Facebook page.
Astrid bit into her bottom lip and tasted blood. A mixture of fire and ice raced through her veins.
‘Where did you get that?’
Sawyer pulled the phone close to him and ran a finger over it.
‘I think Pop wants to bring her here, rescue the kid from the squalor you Brits live in.’ His smirk threatened to consume Astrid. ‘She’s a pretty chatty girl, though. She’ll do well in the mansion.’
A creeping horror engulfed every inch of her.
‘You’ve been sending Olivia messages online?’
Is this what Courtney contacted me about?
He wriggled the phone in front of her bulging eyes. ‘Don’t they teach kids to be careful online in your shithole of a country?’ The dumb brothers cackled behind him. ‘How old is she, six or seven? We can get her ready for me in a few years.’ He turned from her to look at the two goons. ‘What do you think, boys? We could get ourselves a Jerry Lee Lewis thing going on.’ He twisted his arms and shoulders in a macabre impersonation of dancing.
Astrid chewed on her tongue, using the movement to explore the delicate parts of her mouth; it was pretty uncomfortable.
‘He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?’
He flashed those perfect white teeth at her. ‘Of course he does, girl; Pop plans ahead for everything. He sent me here to check what happened to you in that geek’s flat. I know he didn’t want the cops to find you there. It was to stall you while he did what needs doing in town. We won’t kill you, Snow. The old man wants you to come back and see him, but we’ll have some fun with you first, won’t we, boys?’
Sawyer kept the phone in his hand, moving it as he twisted his hips and legs. His body moved with a perverse purpose, like an eel squirming in jelly. He jerked around in front of her, performing an unnerving dance straight from a manic marionette’s dancefloor. If that wasn’t bad enough, what came next was even worse. He opened his mouth as wide as it would go and attempted something he must have believed was singing, but sounded as if a dozen cats were screaming their last. He continued dancing and placed his cell near the collection of torture tools, flicking through the screen.
Black Hat clapped his hands and spoke to his leader.
‘Play some Rascal Flatts.’
She didn’t know who that was, but guessed it wouldn’t be palatable to her ears. Sawyer took the request and found the music. A weepy generic country ballad squirmed out of his phone and assaulted her body even more than Sawyer had done when he attacked her from behind. White Hat couldn’t laugh through his broken jaw, but twisted perversion glistened in his eyes. Black Hat hobbled on one leg and pulled at the belt around his trousers. She observed them like an anthropological study.
‘What’s happening in Bakerstown while you’re wasting time here?’
Jimmy Sawyer flexed his fingers in front of her, and she realised the rings he wore weren’t all adorned with skulls. Only one set was; the others had small crosses on them. He held both hands out to her.
‘God’s love is being dispensed in town, girl. You’ll get to feel it soon enough.’ He pushed the skulls so close to her face, she smelt the dried blood on them. ‘Hate and love, two sides to the story of the world. Sometimes we have to use hate to punish those who offend love, and your friend Campbell has sorely offended in the eyes of the Lord.’
Astrid strained against her bonds, hearing the sound of the wood creaking.
‘What’s your father doing to Officer Campbell?’
Sawyer grinned. ‘God will punish the sinner for her many crimes.’
‘What crimes are those, Jimmy?’
He stopped his manic dance and slid towards her.
‘She sinned with you and others.’
He reached out to her, running his fingers across her cheek and down to her lips. She knew he wanted her to flinch, recognised this was him desperate for a reaction from her. Astrid didn’t move, more offended by the terrible music than his touch.
‘There’s no bigger sin than that shit coming from your phone, Jimmy. Have you got any John Grant?’
He pulled his hand away before bringing it back with a hard slap, cutting across her face.
‘Her sin is yours, English. Like with you, hers will be cut from her as she recants and begs for forgiveness. There’s nothing to stop that. All we have to decide now is how to correct you of your evil ways, sinner.’ Sawyer pushed the crosses up to her eyes. ‘We’ll have to force God’s love into you from our bodies.’
She leant forward and ran her tongue across the silver of the rings, the taste of cold metal sparking her synapses.
‘Caitlin told me you have a small dick.’
He flinched back and into the bench containing the torture weapons. Sawyer reached out, and his hand clattered into a large screwdriver.
‘What did you say?’
‘She kissed me in that bar. When she jumped from you and bumped into me, do you remember that?’
His eyes glared red like an atomic bomb.
‘I saw the two of you, squeezed together and planning your sinful ways.’
She watched the control slipping from him as she flexed her body against the restraints.
‘Caitlin begged me to take her away from you, said she wanted to know what it was like to experience pleasure, because you’re so small she couldn’t feel anything.’
The two goons hooted behind him as his face turned a delicate shade of purple.
‘You’re a lying bitch, and I’m going to gut you.’ He squeezed the screwdriver in his fingers.
‘Your sister told me the same thing about your dick, said she thought you were another girl the first time she saw you naked. Rosie told me all your father’s men call you Tiny behind your back.’
Steam rose from his nose and ears, his skin turning redder than orange. He was about to pop, and she had to get the timing right.
‘A world of hurt is coming for you, girl.’ His hands shook, and she prepared for him to lunge at her. He took a step forward and she ran through the escape map in her head. But then he stopped and pointed the screwdriver towards her. ‘Cat didn’t say any of that to you, and my sister is a lying cow. Now you’ll suffer for all your lies.’
‘I’m already paying for it, Sawyer, having your stink in my face all this time. I mean, if you’re going to do it, get on with it so these two cowboys can see what you haven’t got between your legs.’
He growled as he thrust towards her, the screwdriver coming straight for her head. She assumed any thought of keeping her alive for his father had vanished in his rage.
She gripped on to the chair and leapt, twisting her hips, so the back of it caught the full force of his swing. It splintered against his arm, throwing her into the cowboy struggling on one leg while Sawyer continued with his forward motion and into the wall. She rolled over the bloke as he lay concussed on the ground and jumped up as Sawyer howled. The chair was off her back, but her arms were still tied to it. But at least she could move them freely.
White Hat’s jaw was already on the floor, but she kicked him in the balls to make sure he wouldn’t be a problem. He crumpled like a sack of potatoes. She stamped on his ankle for good measure, the crack of the bone making a pleasing sound in her ears. Now it was only her and Sawyer, him with his screwdriver and those stupid rings.
He swung at her again. She ducked, grabbed a broken piece of wood dangling from her arm and jabbed it into his thigh. He dropped the screwdriver and screamed. The fight was already over, but he didn’t know it.
Astrid moved to the table and picked up a claw hammer. That would do. She used it to hit him in the nape of his neck. He fell on to the torture table and scattered the tools over the floor. She stepped over him and went to the cowering cowboys. They pissed themselves in stereo, two long streaks of yellow washing out of them, and she inched away from the stink.
‘That’s nice, boys.’ She patted the hammer into her palm. ‘Is my car outside?’ They groaned and nodded together. ‘Good. So which of you has the keys?’
Black Hat pushed through his pain and into his pocket. He fished out the keys and tossed them at her feet. She scooped them up and returned to Sawyer. She had one last thing to do before heading back to Bakerstown.