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“I knew you’d come back to me.” Newbie helped me over the threshold. The front door was shut and locked behind us.
Newbie handed me off to Joe, who guided me into my kitchen. He lowered me down onto a wooden chair. He sat opposite me, squeezing my knee with his meaty hands.
“Did you enjoy your time away?”
“No.”
“How could you without me by your side?” He smiled, baring sharp canines and two rows of glistening white teeth.
“I suppose.”
“Am I hearing you correctly? Are you saying you didn’t miss me?” He removed his hand. “How could you think it was better out there without me much less say such a lie to my face? Perhaps you need a refresher course on the lessons I’d taught you.” He leaned back in his chair, cold, black eyes studying mine, steepled fingers digging into his lips.
“What do you think, Doris?” he asked loud enough to draw her into the kitchen.
When Doris’s slow, unhurried steps brought her into the kitchen, I faced an unrecognizable woman. I stared, open-mouthed, at her eyes ringed with darkness and sunken in their sockets. Her short, dirty hair was lying flat on her head, and the dead ends were tickling the tops of her ears. She’d replaced dress pants, knee-length dresses, and skirts for navy blue track pants and a white sweatshirt. The pants, cuffed multiple times, kept her from tripping on the excess material. The sweatshirt, two sizes too big and too long, dwarfed her thin, frail body.
“Doris, honey,” Joe began in his poisonous, saccharine tone. “I’d like to remind Erin of our past lessons. Do you have any ideas which ones might prove the most prudent?” he asked as if he hadn’t made a decision already.
Doris’s eyes were unfocused. She didn’t acknowledge Joe’s question or my situation. There was no head shake or nod, no whispered response, no answer of any kind. She tried to leave. He grabbed her wrist, yanking her toward him so hard she fell onto the floor, landing on her back. She didn’t whimper, yell, or kick. She stood, straightened her clothes, then slumped her shoulders.
Joe spoke to her while focusing his eyes on me, almost as if making her an example of what could happen if I strayed off course again.
“You’ll have to forgive Doris. She’s been a little under the weather lately. You should sit down and relax, dear.” Her face morphed from confusion and trepidation to sheer panic and fear.
She didn’t want to sit down. Despite her effort, we were all together again. I wondered if she knew Newbie had helped facilitate this reunion.
“Go on, sit down.” Joe rushed her along. She sat on an empty chair beside him. “You seem so different around Erin now. Did something happen between you two that you want to get out in the open? Perhaps you have something you’d like to share?” He targeted his question to me. “Nothing?” he asked as silence lingered.
Were we to grovel at his feet, beg for mercy and forgiveness? Or was he waiting for us to convince him we’d learned the error in our ways, that we couldn’t live without him or his tutelage?
If not for Newbie, I’d be free. I hated him more than I hated Joe. Newbie had fooled me into caring for him, trusting him. He betrayed me on a level I’d never experienced nor knew existed before him. If there were any justice in the world, I never would again.
“Doris, what happened?” I braved the question, bracing myself for a slap for speaking without permission.
I waited for her to tell me what went wrong and if she knew Newbie was involved. Her lips quivered but didn’t open.
“Doris, come on. Please, talk to me.” Tears fell down her cheeks.
“You’ll have to forgive Doris. She hasn’t been talkative since you all left. It seems she missed you so much she went mute.” He spoke as if he had a salacious secret that he was no longer capable of keeping to himself.
My eyes widened. Fear that I was right and hope that I was wrong dueled inside me. “Doris, tell me it isn’t true.”
Her face fell. Her lips parted.
Fear won the battle.
Glistening thread bound off flesh where her tongue had once been just like it had Kris’s. She paid for her sins in the way he deemed suitable. Now I knew the reason why she hadn’t spoken to me and why she never would again.
“What the hell is wrong with you? What happened to you to make you such a sick bastard? I know you like the sound of your own voice, but is this really the best way to assure you’re the only one heard? I pray when you’re sentenced to an eternity in hell, your tongue is removed over and over again with Doris, Kris, and whoever else you tortured in this way as spectators.”
He grinned at me like the Devil grinned at Eve. “Such a shame.” He made a tsking noise with his mouth. “I see your time away has changed you back into that spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed harlot that you are.
“I don’t teach others for my satisfaction. They need to learn from their mistakes. The bigger those mistakes are, the bigger the punishment needs to be. I don’t know how hard that is to understand, yet it seems I am the only one that comprehends it. Until I find out otherwise, I will continue to teach my lessons to people like you.”
“Like you taught Kris?”
“Yes, and Doris and whoever comes next.”
“Where is Kris? Did you take her from the motel?”
“I did not, but I do know where she is. No need to worry, she’s fine, Mark is with her.”
If she was with Mark, fine wasn’t the word I’d use to describe her situation. He was the reason I was back in my house. I suspected he was also the reason Kris was here as well.
“Can I see them?”
“You’ll see them soon enough. Right now, I think we have more pressing issues to discuss. Thank you, Doris. You can go back to the living room now. I’ll summon you if I need you again.” He spoke to her without further acknowledgment.
She scurried off like a mouse with a crumb of cheese.
“Joe, you’re going to tell me what happened to Kris and Mark or, better yet, you’re going to take me to them. I won’t let you hurt Kris any longer. She’s done nothing to deserve your cruelty.” With brazen determination, my eyes locked with his.
He stared at me like he was a marksman, and I was a bird of prey.
I stood, proving to him I couldn’t be dismissed or discarded like his tongue-less wife.
My balance wasn’t steady as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth flat-handed slap stung my face, but never did I fall—I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. On the sixth, as his speed and force increased, my legs turned to jelly. I steadied myself with sheer willpower and stubbornness, denying him the domination over me that he sought.
His breathing became laborious with every blow. He couldn’t hear me chuckling over the sound of my face cracking under his force. His cheeks reddened from anger and exhaustion. I laughed despite the pain, which angered him more. He could drug and chop tongues out of mouths, but a little physical exertion was too strenuous.
I laughed harder.
With a swift kick to my right knee, he knocked me off my feet. My humor in his weakness gave strength and power to his booted foot. He wailed on my ribs, my abdomen, my chest. His assault didn’t stop when my body curled into a fetal position. Even when I spit a mouthful of blood onto his clean kitchen floors, his kicks kept coming.
“Stop it!” someone familiar cried. It didn’t sound like Newbie, but who else could it have been?
Blood pooled in my ears, running down into my swollen eyes. I wanted to see the stranger, thank him for saving me—though I could have stopped the assault by silencing my laughter—but every time I blinked, more blood clouded my vision.
I was picked up off the floor by a shadow. Every step the shadow took jerked me in its arms. My arm slid off my stomach, it hung free from his grip, swinging beneath me as he strode with purposeful steps. The musky smell of old papers and dank wood floors called for me to come home.
“You’ll be safe here for a while,” the strange yet familiar voice assured.
I rested my head on a stack of newspapers. My body laid flat and sprawled out in the place I’d once considered my freedom.
It was with that macabre awareness that I passed out, my freedom capturing me in the clutches of its confinement.