Chapter Three
Ricky
Throbbing headache, tongue that feels like it’s coated in rubber cement, and a slurry of chemicals burning their way through my veins — mostly cheap alcohol and whatever additives ol’ Granddad puts in his whiskey, but something different, too, whatever Adriana, if that is her name, dosed me with — it’s a night like any other since I got to…
fuck, I think I’m in Sacramento. She looks surprised that I’m lucid enough to talk with her.
Obviously, she doesn’t have much experience dealing with people who’ve had my past with addictions.
“The movie’s over,” I say.
“There’s still the credits.”
Her eyes are glued to the thing. She’s come all this way, worked so hard, and she’s hesitating just to watch a bunch of no-names, aside from Mr. Van Damme, scroll across the screen.
“You’re hesitating.”
“No, I’m not. I just learned that Forest Whitaker was in this movie. He played ‘Rawlins.’ Did you know that?”
“It sounds like you don’t really want to do this.”
“Why the fuck would you think that, you fucking asshole?”
“No one watches the movie credits willingly.”
“Well, I just did.”
I look at her, trying to drink her in with my foggy eyes.
What I see isn’t so bad to look at — those familiar features, only with harder edges, sharper eyes, and a downward curve to her lips, which is a look I rarely saw on Vanessa’s face.
She cried a lot, sure, because life was fucking tough, and I made it tougher, but she had a smile that lingered for days when it came out, like a sunset that just wouldn’t quit.
“No, you’re hesitating. Why? I thought you wanted this.”
“I do. And I’m not hesitating. I got you here, didn’t I? Went through all that fucking effort to kidnap you.”
“Just to bring me back to some seedy hotel? Shit, people do that with a swipe of their thumb on Tinder.”
“No, this took a lot more work. I had to find this hotel, deal with the creepy front desk guy who watches porn at full volume, and pay extra for the ‘no questions asked’ suite.”
I shift a little, which isn’t easy with the drugs in my system, the handcuffs around my wrists, and the bindings on my legs.
The room’s dark as hell, but even so, I make out things that lead me to believe this is no ordinary hotel room: metal hooks in the walls, a chain dangling from the ceiling, and peeling wallpaper decorated with a pattern that looks like it was made by a discount Georgia O’Keefe moonlighting for Playboy.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “You put in some effort.”
“The handcuffs and everything else came with the room, too. I have my own handcuffs, but why risk leaving behind evidence?”
“Good point.”
“If you look over there,” she points towards a corner, where in the shadows I see something boxy. “There’s a cooler. It was bloodstained inside when I got here, and there’s a hacksaw attached to it with some cabling.”
“Oh, fuck, this place is serious.”
She nods, smiles at me in a way that chills my blood and fills me with hope. “It is. It isn’t cheap, either.”
“You really put a lot of effort into this, huh?”
That smile twitches and grows just a little in a way that isn’t unattractive. Inside, it makes me shiver and wonder if I’m feeling attracted to her because she’s attractive, or if she just looks so similar to Vanessa. Or is it both?
Does it matter?
She’s going to be giving me what I want soon enough. At least, if she has the balls to actually do it instead of blabbing about how long she’s waited for this moment or how determined she is to do it, instead of actually doing the damn thing.
“I did. I loved Vanessa,” she says. “She was my little sister. And when she ran off to do all that fucking sick shit you pushed her into, all that shit that trapped and killed her, there was a part of me that already thought of her as dead, that I’d never see her again and just give up hope.
And then there was the part of me that remembered my little sister for who she was when we were younger, the trouble we used to get into together, how we’d braid each other’s hair, gossip about boys, and how she had a fantastic singing voice and spent a couple years in a row really dreaming about making it as a singer.
That part of me kept an eye out for her, would run her name through searches, would check obituaries and news articles, just hoping for a hint that maybe the logical part of me was wrong and the sister I grew up with was still out there, alive, and maybe, just maybe she’d want my help to get her life together. ”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck your sorry’s. You have no fucking right.”
Grunting, I nod. She’s right — I lost that right when I pulled her deeper into this shit. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to humanize yourself, Ricky. Like you think that maybe if you do that, I won’t kill you.”
“No fucking way. Do it. I want you to do it.”
“Are you trying to play chicken with me?” Adrianna gets up from the bed, goes to the cooler, and opens it.
Barehanded. She’s braver than I thought.
Then she roots around in the open cooler to pull out something that looks like a mad scientist’s creation — an amalgamation of chains, clamps, a long penis-shaped protrusion, and a red rubber ball attached to a leather strap that is either a fucking weird clown nose or a ball gag.
“This thing is called the ‘Extreme Enforcer Humbler Mark II.’ It came with the room, too. I’m not sure about everything about it; there isn’t a fucking manual, but on some clamps it says ‘Attach to penis here’ and I’m pretty sure this dick-looking thing is meant to be stuck in you somewhere.
Now, I was planning on just killing you the old-fashioned way, though a little slow, but if you keep pissing me off, maybe I’ll try to figure out how this thing works. Would you like that?”
I shift again, and my eyes go to the door. “Listen, I’ve been trying to make it happen for a while. Ever since I got here to… fuck, am I really in Sacramento?”
“You don’t know where you are?”
“Do you have any idea how drunk and fucked-up I’ve been?”
“You are in Sacramento. I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.” I clear my throat, feeling thirsty and woozy. “You got any more beer?”
“Let me get this straight: I drug you, bring you here to a murder suite equipped with a dick torture device, and you think you can get some free beer off of me?”
I shrug. “I’m dying anyway, so what the fuck does it hurt to ask?”
Adriana sighs and rolls her eyes. If she weren’t still holding onto the device meant to turn my penis into a mangled lump of flesh, she’d be attractive.
Cute, even. In some ways, she’s so like her sister, but in others — the hard edge, the proclivity to murder, the suggestions of deviant sexual torture — she’s so different. “Fine.”
She grabs a can from the mini-fridge, pops the top, and hands it over.
“Thanks,” I say and then take a long drink, feeling the mild alcohol take the edge off the drugs in my system and the hangover that was threatening to creep in.
“I needed that. What you’re going to do, I’ve been trying to do to myself for however long I’ve been here in Sacramento.
But I haven’t had the guts to do it right.
That’s always been one of my problems — finding the strength to just do what needs to be done.
So I’m glad that you’ve found me. I’m glad that you’re going to get revenge for Vanessa.
She deserves it. I deserve this.” I take another long drink of beer, letting the mild, malty, slightly bitter flavor soothe my pounding skull.
“But I will make one thing perfectly clear: if you try to use that ball clamp thing on me, I will fight back. I’ve got my fucking limits. ”
Adriana blinks, looks at the dick torture device, then arches an eyebrow at me. “You’ll let me kill you, but I can’t crush your dick and balls?”
I shake my head. How the fuck is this even a question for her?
Sighing, she tosses the device into the corner. “If that’s what it takes. We’ll just do this the normal way. I’m going to drag you into the bathroom now and put you in the bathtub. It makes it easier for housekeeping, according to the guy at the front desk.”
“Real fine place, this hotel.”
Adriana grabs hold of my hair and begins dragging me, while I do my best to shuffle along and help, because being pulled by my hair is not the experience I’m after.
“Let’s go,” she says, and when she gets me into the bathroom, she unceremoniously shoves me into the bathtub. “Get in. Stay still. And shut your mouth.”
“You want me to scream in pain? Beg for mercy? Will it help you feel better?”
She snorts and takes a knife with a curved and serrated blade out of the back pocket of her jeans. “You’ll be doing those things all on your own.”
I raise the beer to my lips and take a deep drink as she brings the knife blade closer to my leg.
From the way she’s holding it and the focused look on her face, she’ll be slitting the tendons in my leg any second now so I can’t run away.
As if I’d run away from this; I’ve been running toward this moment for weeks.
The blade slices through the denim of my jeans, and she works carefully, cutting and peeling away the fabric until the backs of both my legs are bare. Her hand hardly shakes. She really has prepared for this. Good for her. I’m glad she can finally get closure.
The blade touches my skin at the back of my knee.
It’s cold.
I shiver, then take another sip of beer.
My eyes settle on her face, and I watch as hesitation, fear, rage, grief, all swirl within the steely confines of her brown eyes.
“She’s dead because of me,” I say. “Vanessa died, pumped full of heroin, because of me. If your sister and I never met, she’d still be smiling, singing, sharing a life with you.”
The blade presses against my skin, drawing a little blood, while she presses her tongue against the inside of her cheek. It doesn’t hurt as the blade bites me, and I wonder how much of what is coming actually will. Will I suffer enough for what I did to Vanessa?
Just as the blade is about to cut deeper and turn the few drops of blood welling from my broken skin into something much greater, she stops. Adriana cocks her head, listening.
“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind…”
“Shut the fuck up,” she says. “I hear voices at the door.”
“You think the murder suite’s been double-booked?”
Adriana doesn’t have a chance to respond before the muffled voices turn into rough shouts and the sharp sound of splintering wood as someone shoots a hole in the front door.