Chapter 4 #2
“Please! Just stop, please!” Scotty’s sobs are no longer muffled, and the note of hysteria in his voice is like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
Lack of a better option and morbid curiosity have me edging forward, slinking within the shadows on the floor and staying flat against larger objects at the edges of the space.
When the room opens up to what looks like a garage workshop, I see a tool bench and wall covered with more tools carefully tacked up places.
My eyes stick there, going over drills and saws and power tools, all stained rusty red and spattered with a near-black substance that’s dried and probably ruined some of the inner mechanisms.
Heavy footsteps sound in my ears and I shrink back into the deeper shadows of the workbench I’m under. From here, I can clearly see Scotty, and the moment my eyes land on him, my whole body threatens to revolt.
I’m going to puke.
Or run.
Or scream.
Or, more likely, all of the above.
At first, I think his arm must just be out of view. That for some reason, it’s the only part of him not strapped to the angled table he’s strapped onto. But then my brain, unfortunately, makes sense of what I’m seeing, and I realize that it isn’t hidden.
His arm is gone.
A bloody stump remains, with bright red liquid streaming down the table from the jagged remains. If I had to guess, and I really don’t want to, the man probably used a hacksaw on him, and not the chainsaw sitting unmanned on the table nearby.
The heavy steps sound again, and jean-clad legs, material stained beyond any kind of washing, enter my vision. His boots are just as stained, to the point where I couldn’t guess their original color if my life depended on it.
Scotty’s eyes widen as the man comes closer, and I see the ties of a dirty apron as the man leans over him to grab his face in one filthy hand, turning his jaw from one direction to the other like he’s inspecting him.
More pleas and whimpers fall from Scotty’s lips, and tears run down his face, though they barely make a dent in the blood and grime already there.
The man moves without speaking, and as his other hand comes up, my stomach clenches when I see the dull sheen of metal.
Just as I register that he’s holding a knife, his grip on Scotty’s jaw tightens.
He leans in again, the knife just barely touching Scotty’s cheekbone, and even though I can only see part of what’s happening, it’s enough.
It’s way more than enough.
With a surgeon’s precision, the man slips the knife into Scotty’s eye socket while he wails; the sounds becoming more animalistic than human in his desperation.
Scotty struggles against the straps holding him down, but there’s nothing he can do, nowhere he can go.
So he’s forced to lie there and take it and wait while the man carves out his eye with a rusty knife.
The way it pops out of the socket has me pressing my hand over my mouth hard to stop myself from puking, as my stomach roils, threatening immediate eviction of everything I’ve eaten or thought about eating in the past decade.
Scotty doesn’t stop screaming as blood pours from his eye socket, and with one last flick of the blade, the eye is severed, sitting in the man’s hand before he deposits it on a towel sitting on the workbench.
With my heartbeat in my ears, it takes me too long to realize I can hear something other than Scotty’s screams. It takes another few seconds for me to make out the man’s humming, and something about it sends a shudder through my body.
He doesn’t even care that he’s killing Scotty.
That he’s chopping apart a living human like butchering a fucking cow, not even giving him a glance as he cleans the knife.
My mind works frantically, looking for any escape, when he plucks a saw from the wall again, causing Scotty’s screams to become, if possible, that much more desperate.
When a phone rings, I jump and smack my head on the workbench above me, though luckily Scotty’s screaming covers any sound it might’ve made.
Still, my eyes water at the sudden, sharp pain in my skull, and I bite back a hiss as the man cleans off his fingers with a towel before palming the phone that had been sitting near the chainsaw.
“Yeah?” he grunts, cradling it against his shoulder.
Walking back over to Scotty, he suddenly backhands him across the face, causing him to go silent.
“I can hear ya now. Go on.” He grunts a few times as Scotty whimpers, unable to take in enough air to scream, and finally the man sighs.
“Right. I’ll do that.” Without another word, he ends the conversation, pockets the phone, and tosses the saw back onto the workbench.
As I watch, the man turns, nearly in my direction, and before I can even think of shrinking back or doing more than clenching my fingers more tightly on the screwdriver, he strolls out of the open workspace and slides open a heavy metal door to reveal concrete stairs leading upward.
Light streams down, but before I can do more than look, the door slides closed with a heavy clang behind him.
Leaving me in what’s apparently a basement with only Scotty’s whimpers for company.
I wait for a minute.
Then two minutes. But without a better plan, I tell myself I have to move, to try to find another way out. My body disagrees, and the part of my brain that wants this all to be a nightmare says to stay in the shadows.
Surely someone, somewhere, will come save us, right?
Not if no one knows you’re missing, my brain whispers unhelpfully. But it’s an unfortunately good point. Everyone thinks we’re on a fucking road trip to a concert, and we aren’t scheduled to be back in Nashville for another eight days.
Eight. Fucking. Days.
There’s quite literally no way I can survive hiding in the shadows for eight days. I’ll be found, for one. My hiding place isn’t that good, and eventually, the man who was cutting up Scotty will realize I’ve escaped.
“Fuck this,” I murmur, and surge out from under the workbench, forcing my shaky legs to take me across the open space to Scotty.
“Scotty?” I gasp, hands raised like I could possibly help him. As if I’m going to somehow reattach his arm and eye, wave my magic screwdriver, and get us out of here.
And from the way his remaining eye snaps open for him to look at me, he expects it too. The desperation on his face is replaced with hope and relief, but that only makes the guilt in my stomach feed into my nausea faster.
“S-Sadie…” he whimpers. “What’s going on?
” His eye is glazed over with shock, though tears continue to roll down his chubby, round cheeks.
“Why is this happening?” He tries to move his remaining arm, only to make a sound of confusion when the other just…
isn’t there. “H-he took my arm…” the man whimpers.
“He took my arm after he took Tyler’s leg. Sadie I…I don’t know…”
He trails off, but it’s probably for the best. My fingers work at the straps holding him to the table, looking for a way to undo them, only to find that every single one is snapped in place by a lock that requires a combination.
“Scotty! Hey!” I snap my fingers in front of his face, though I have to do it twice for the sound to actually make his eye open again. “Scotty, I-I need a combination for these locks.”
He just stares at me like I’ve asked him to recite the first forty digits of pi.
“Scotty, I can’t help you if you don’t—”
“N-no. No!” He thrashes suddenly, his remaining eye shining with terror. “No! Sadie, you have to get me out! Get me out!” His screaming gets louder, more shrill, until I’m looking in panic at the closed door leading to the stairs.
“I will, okay?!” I gasp finally, and as a last resort, I press my hand to his mouth, fingers trembling against his bloody face.
I cannot let myself look at the sawed-off stump of his arm, or the empty socket where his eye used to be.
Both wounds still bleed sluggishly, and some distant part of me wonders just how much blood he can lose before he passes out.
Or dies.
“I need you to be quiet,” I whisper slowly, making eye contact—well, as much as I can— as I say it. “I’m going to try to find the others, okay?”
Scotty doesn’t nod. But when I feel his mouth working against my hand, I cautiously let go of his mouth.
“Tyler is—I saw him…” He tries to turn his head, can’t, and gasps in a shaky breath. “The room to my right. O-on the far wall, I heard him screaming af-after—”
“Okay.” His earlier sentiment about Tyler getting his leg getting chopped off plays in my head, and I hope to God that was just a fever dream. Tyler’s muscle could be useful, and more than anything…I just don’t want to be alone.
“I’ll come back for you.”
The words have him nearly hysterical again, but I can’t stop to do anything. Part of me, the guilty part, wants to make an attempt to give him some kind of medical care, but frankly, I wouldn’t know where to start.
So I have to leave him.
I have no choice.
I pause to swap out my screwdriver for one of the wicked looking, serrated knives on the workbench that’s still coated in blood, and I do my best to ignore the way it feels slippery against my fingers.
With the screwdriver shoved in my back pocket, I walk quickly to the side of the large space that Scotty tried to gesture to.
At least, I hope this is the right way.
Three doors are lined up on the wall, all just as rusted and disgusting as the one I came out of. It hits me that the rooms are basically used as holding cells, and the thought does nothing to help my nausea or my panic.
But I really don’t want to be alone.
With careful movements and gritted teeth I pull open the first door just enough that the light from the main space illuminates the cell as I peer inside.
Empty.