As Michael approached, Izzy shuffled back until she was up against the hard tiles. Michael squatted before her.
‘So,’ he said. ‘The game is Simon Says. You know that one, don’t you?’
She nodded.
‘Good. To make it interesting, you’ll pay a forfeit every time you get it wrong.’
‘W-what type of forfeit?’
‘We’ll make it up as we go along. Sometimes it’s nice to be impulsive, don’t you think?’
He held a hand out to his side. ‘The knife, Kenneth.’
She watched as Kenneth slowly neared and slapped the craft knife onto Michael’s outstretched palm.
‘Thanks, bro. You can step back again now. Give me room to work.’
Kenneth did as he was told, and then Michael said, ‘Flip over on to your stomach, Izzy.’
She stared back at him. ‘No.’
‘No? You don’t get a choice in this. Lie on your fucking stomach!’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
He moved his face closer, until she could feel his hot breath and his spittle and his hatred landing on her. ‘NO? NO? WHY THE FUCK NOT, IZZY?’302
‘You … you didn’t say Simon says.’
Michael glared. Then he smiled. Then he laughed.
‘You’re good. Very good. I can see why you outwitted my brother here. Not that it’s much of a compliment to outwit an imbecile like him. Eh, Kenneth?’
Kenneth didn’t answer.
‘Okay, we’ll try again. Simon says lie on your stomach.’
She still didn’t want to obey. Turning her back on a lunatic with a knife in his hand did not feel like the wisest of moves. But what choice did she have?
She slipped down the wall and rolled over. Waited for pain.
Michael cut through the tape around her wrists and ankles. She could move again.
‘Simon says get up.’
She pushed herself off the floor. Got to her feet. Michael was facing her, Kenneth behind and off to one side.
Something caught her eye. The knife. Michael had left it on the pool floor. She had to force herself not to stare at it.
Michael said, ‘I think we’ll start with the usual. Swimming. Can you swim, Izzy?’
‘A little. Not very well.’
‘That’s okay. The water’s pretty shallow today.’ His smile was reptilian. ‘Come on, then. Show us what you can do.’
‘You … you want me to swim? On the floor?’
‘Well, unless you know how to hover, that’s exactly what I mean.’
So this is how he gets his kicks, she thought. By degrading his victims. Humiliating them. Making them less than human.
She got down on the floor again. Began to simulate a breast stroke. She had never felt so small, so alone, so worthless.
The kick connected hard with her ribs. She screamed, then clutched at her chest as she rolled around on the floor.303
‘YOU’VE FORGOTTEN ALREADY, IZZY! WHAT IS THIS GAME CALLED?’
‘S-Simon … Simon Says.’
‘Exactly. And did you hear the magic words?’
‘N-no.’
‘No. You didn’t. So let’s try again, shall we?’
She blinked. The shapes above her were blurry and indistinct, but still she could detect Kenneth’s extreme discomfort, his fervent desire to be anywhere but here.
‘Simon says swim!’ Michael commanded.
Izzy resumed her position and repeated her movements. Her ribs were on fire, and she wondered again if they were broken.
‘Look at that, Kenneth,’ Michael said. ‘Poetry in motion. Actually, it’s probably a bit more like a frog. Wait a sec … Simon says go ribbit.’
Izzy made the noise, her voice breaking. Above her, Michael laughed crazily, and she felt herself slipping further and further down in his estimation, so that she would soon become nothing to him, a bug worthy only of squashing.
‘Okay,’ Michael said. ‘I think we’ve had enough of the amphibian impressions. Simon says stand up.’
She got to her feet.
‘It’s cold in here,’ Michael said. ‘I think you need a bit more warming up. Maybe a bit of dancing. You don’t look much of a dancer, but I’m sure you could manage the twist. You could do that, couldn’t you?’
Izzy said nothing.
‘Simon says do the twist.’
She started moving, but tentatively, the pain in her ribs intensifying.
‘That’s shit. Simon says put your back into it. Come on!’ Michael began snapping his fingers and singing ‘Let’s Twist Again’.304
Izzy grimaced but did her best to comply. Tears streamed down her face, but Michael seemed to care nothing for her distress. He was relishing it. Behind him, Kenneth had lowered his eyes in shame.
‘It’s better, but something’s missing.’ He paused. ‘I know! The fingers across the face, like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. Anyone ever tell you that you look a bit like her? Simon says do that.’
She performed the moves. Michael continued to sing out of tune. He started to do his own dance. He began to turn away from her, lost in his insanity.
She pounced.
The knife was right there on the floor, her only chance, the only thing that could give her an edge. She went straight for it, fully intending to use it without hesitation, to maim, to kill, to strike at the monster again and again and again.
The whirl from Michael was almost balletic. It put power behind an outstretched palm that slapped into her face with a whipcrack noise, sending her reeling backwards and then falling and smacking onto the unrelenting tiles.
‘NO!’ Michael yelled. ‘Did Simon say go for the knife? No, he did not. Bad girl. Bad fucking girl.’
Izzy’s ears were ringing, her whole face on fire. She shook her head to clear it. Michael had closed in on her again. He sat on his haunches in front of her.
‘Bad girl,’ he whispered.
And then he reached out and grabbed hold of the duct tape that was still attached to her hair, and he yanked on it as hard as he could, and she felt the hair and the skin being ripped from her skull, and she let out a long scream that reached nobody beyond these four walls, and she knew that she had been set up, that the knife was bait and Michael had expected her to go for it, and now all was lost, all was lost.305
Michael stood up and examined the tape in the candlelight. ‘You could make a wig out of this, Kenneth,’ he laughed. ‘Here!’ He tossed it to Kenneth, and then he reached down for the knife and threw that to him too, and Kenneth almost caught it before realising that the blade had not been retracted, and he did this odd little dance as he tried to avoid its path.
‘Haha! Pick it up, you big girl. Jesus, you’re lighter on your feet than Izzy is.’
Then Michael turned back to Izzy.
‘All right, so you remember what we said about forfeits, yes? Well, now things start to get more interesting.’