Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men (4 page)

I didn’t want to think about the muck that was collecting on my shoes.

I reached the end of the paddock, only a few feet from the trees.

And then I saw the real fence.

It was at least ten feet tall, and it bent inward at the top like the ones you’d see on National Geographic prison shows. I didn’t have to figure out a way of squatting sideways and peeing on it to know that it was electrified.

That’s why Cadance had no reason to hurry.

“There’s nowhere to go,” she said to me once she caught up. “You’re locked in, Amanda.”

“Where am I?”

“
Gawd
. You’re in Vermont. What are you, like mentally challenged?”

I basically growled at her. “I might not be able to escape... but there’s nothing stopping me from kicking your ass, princess.”

“I have a cattle prod, too,” she said.

I looked her over. “Where?”

“Dammit. The tack room...”

I’m not proud of it, but it did feel good.

I gave Cadance Snobbybritches probably the worst beating of her life. Like almost to a needing stitches level.

Well, okay... it was more like two punches to the mouth. But I’ve never hit anyone before. Usually a glare and some kind of huff is enough to send the right message.

I left her hunched up on the paddock fence and I made my way back towards the stables. There were six buildings in a row, with gray brick walls and a general look of despair. It was like some kind of horsey Auschwitz; I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to board their horse in a place like that. I picked a different stable building to check, using my nose to find the semi-sweet smell of manure. Just hay and water, as my aunt used to say.

As I neared I could hear the snorts and hooves. There was something calming about the sounds.

There was a large ‘D’ painted on the door with blood red paint.

I opened the sliding door slowly, hoping that whoever was inside wouldn’t notice. Of course, that’s near impossible in real life, and it squeaked like a field mouse on a hard diet of performance enhancing drugs. I stopped opening it about halfway, which was probably a useless gesture.

There were at least a half dozen men inside. But not one was looking over to me.

They were mucking the stalls, slowly and methodically and in complete silence, all dressed in old t-shirts and ratty blue jeans with holes in all the wrong places.

I don’t know how to put this, but a couple of them looked like they could work in a barn, like illegals maybe, like the Fitzsimmons’ have working for them at their barn up by Pine Plains. The rest didn’t seem to fit in, two black guys, two whites and a very large man who was probably Chinese.

Most of the grooms my aunt had hired were teenage girls who couldn’t quite afford the boarding fees. Working in a stable is like gymnastics with horse poop, whatever the opposite of a sausage fest happens to be. Some kind of party with hot dog buns...

I watched them work for a minute as I stood half in the door; they were acting like robots, picking up the manure and the soiled shavings and throwing them in the long wooden cart, without so much as a grunt. It’s unnerving to see mucking without the chatter; I don’t know what guys talk about when they work together, but I figured they’d talk about something.

I didn’t feel frightened by the men... I felt more unnerved. I slowly walked towards the first stall being mucked, by one of the black guys. He was wearing a Florida Marlins t-shirt and jeans with an unexpected flare at the bottom.

He didn’t seem to notice me standing beside him.

“Excuse me... sir,” I said, trying not to sound condescending to the man with a shovel-load of horse shit.

No response. I figured he was just waiting for me to just get on with it.

“I need some help,” I said. “I’ve gotten myself a little turned around in here.”

He didn’t even look at me.

I turned to look at the others. No one was bothering to acknowledge that I exist. I’m an eighteen year old girl; I’m not used to older men ignoring me outside of church.

“Hello? Are any of you guys going to talk to me?”

Nope.

I walked on past him, toward the other end of the stable.

Usually a girl in basketball shorts gets some kind of notice, like a guy or two checking out her ass, at the very least. I’m not a volleyball player, but still.

For a moment I almost thought I saw the Chinese guy glancing at the back of me as I walked by, but when I turned to look he was still scooping horse poop like before.

At about four guys deep, the other door opened and another woman stepped in, maybe around twenty or so. She was dressed in breeches and boots.

“What are you doing in here, missus?” she asked, looking at me. “You shouldn’t be in here alone. And why are you dressed like a rugger?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hold on a tick... who are you?”

I didn’t know what to say. About who I was, or why she was speaking like she was British with a New England accent.

“Uh... who do you think I am?” I asked.

“You’re not a boarder. Why the devil are you here?”

“I was just leaving.”

She started walking toward me. I wondered if I was going to have another mouth to punch.

“Don’t be daft,” she said with a smile. “I’ve gotten all to cock in here sometimes. I’ll help you find your way back.”

“Uh... thanks.”

We walked together down the aisle, the men still paying no attention to me. They didn’t seem to notice her, either.

“These blokes are on work release,” she said. “Minimum security and all that, but it’s still not a terribly smart idea to be in here by yourself.”

“You were about to come in here by yourself.”

“Oh, I can handle these lags. I know the tricks.”

“Where are you from, anyway?”

She smiled. “From right here. I’m trying to sound posh... you know?”

“I guess.”

She glared at me. “Well I didn’t ask for your opinion, did I?”

“Sorry.”

She opened the sliding door and led me into another well-lit hallway, but one without any horse stalls. The one wall was lined with a row of metal doors like self-storage units.

We turned right and kept walking.

“Are you a friend of Cadance’s?” the girl asked. She seemed friendly again.

“Acquaintances,” I said.

“I could see that.”

We came to a final metal door that looked just like the others, except that it seemed like a push instead of a pull. The girl took out a key card out of her pocket and held it up to a small reader box. The door beeped and she pushed it open, and then we stepped out to a well-kept yardsite. There was a large two-story house that looked just like what you’d expect to see in the Vermont countryside, painted shutters on the windows and a perfectly arranged ring of red and blue flowers in painted white beds.

“Is your car over there?” the girl asked.

“Maybe...”

“You’re good to go?”

“I think so. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.”

“No worries. I know what it’s like to be new around here.”

I nodded as I kept moving toward the gravel parking lot.

The girl smiled and turned back toward the stables.

“What are you doing, Tiara?” a voice called out. The man with the duffel bag.

“What’s wrong?” the girl said.

“That girl there... she’s one of the new hires.”

“New hires?” She looked back over to me. “Blimey. So that’s why she was in the back.”

“My god you’re an idiot.”

“Bugger off,” she said. And then she started running after me.

I started to run, too; I was relieved to see that I was able to move quite a bit faster. I was out of the lot and up the road before she’d even cleared the parked cars.

“You’ve got the controller, Gary,” she yelled. “Close the bloody gate!”

I saw the gate as I rounded a bend in the road. And true to my luck, it was closing.

I didn’t bother trying to speed up. It was closed long before I could have reached it, and the fence it sealed off was almost as high as the one in the back paddocks.

I sat down on the grass and waited.

Tiara and the man with the duffel bag arrived soon enough.

“This is one of the new hires?” she asked.

“Obviously.”

“We’re using girls now? And why the hell isn’t she drugged?”

“I already told Cadance. She’s immune.”

“Bullocks."

“Please stop saying that.”

She jabbed a finger into his shoulder. “Don’t push me, Gary. I’m pretty sure you work for me.”

“I work for your father, who works for Ms. Shannard.”

“And she isn’t here... so I’m it.”

“You don’t want to cross her, darling.”

“I’m not scared of Kathleen Shannard,” Tiara said.

“You should be.”

She laughed. “Oooo... I think I just pissed myself.”

The man sighed and looked at me. I didn’t feel that much sympathy for the man who’d shot an electrical current into my boobs.

“You can’t keep me here,” I said.

“We can’t let you go,” Gary said. “So what are the alternatives?”

“As long as she digs her own fecking grave,” Tiara said.

“What are you actually expecting from me?” I asked. “Am I supposed to live in a horse stall and shovel muck all day?”

“Among other things,” Gary said. “That was the main point of bringing you here, yes.”

“And drugging the seven shades of shit out of her,” Tiara said. “But you couldn’t get that part right, Gary.”

“Do you understand the concept of immunity?”

Tiara knelt down and grabbed me by my chin. She stared into my eyes for a moment. “Take her back to the table,” she said. “Drug her again.”

“I’m not doing that. She’s immune.”

“You’d better be sure of that,” Tiara said. “What if you’re wrong? What will Ms. Shannard say then?”

“I’m not wrong,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Well... it might kill her.”

“I hope it does,” someone else said. Cadance knelt down beside me, her mouth cut and still bleeding. “Do you see what this bitch did to me?”

“She kicked your ass,” Gary said.

“Shut up. And pick her up.”

“She’s gotta weigh one-forty.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“If she dies on the table,” Tiara said. “Well... problem solved, I guess.”

“I suppose,” Gary said.

He lifted me up and threw me over his shoulder.

I decided not to bother kicking my legs like an idiot. I knew I had no way to escape. They’d drug me again, whatever that meant. And I wasn’t sure whether it would be a good thing for those drugs not to work.

So far the other options didn’t sound too good.

They took me back into the long building that connected the stables, Gary carrying me past over a dozen doors before they found the right one, completely identical to the others.

Tiara unlocked it and Gary brought me to what I’m pretty sure was an operating table for horses, with a motorized crane hanging overtop and a bench with more padding than you’d expect.

My wrists and ankles were bound to the four poles at each corner of the table, with my head hanging ever so slightly off the edge. I’d expected them to strip me down, probably from seeing too many bad cartoons of alien probing, but that didn’t happen. That’s a good thing, what with my Hello Kitty underwear; it always looks a lot cooler in the store.

“I’m not dealing with the mess if she dies,” Gary said as he put on a pair of latex gloves.

“Don’t worry,” Cadance said, “we’ll feed her to the pigs.”

“Again, Cadance... that was a joke. You’d better not poison my pigs with all the crap I’m about to shoot into this girl.”

“You’re not making me feel good about this,” I said.

“It could be worse,” Tiara said.

“It will be worse,” Cadance said. “I’ll make sure of that.”

“Hold her by the neck,” Gary said. “You, Cadance. And Tiara... try to pin her elbows. She needs to be still.”

The girls held me down and it hurt like hell.

I didn’t fight it. I’ve given enough blood to know that there’s no upside to making someone miss your vein.

Gary took out a syringe and injected a light green fluid into my arm.

I laid on the table and waited, not that I had any other choice.

He watched me. I wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see.

He licked his lips again.

Cadance kept her grip on my neck, pressing harder than she needed to but apparently a tiny bit less than it’d take to kill me.

“Now what?” I gasped.

“Nothing,” Gary said.

No one did anything for almost a full minute, aside from Cadance’s continuing squeeze on my airway.

“Yup,” Gary said. “Nothing. I told you, Tiara. This girl’s immune to the toxin. Just like Ms. --”

“How can you be so sure?” Tiara asked. “I mean, honestly...”

“Well, she’s still awake... she hasn’t vomited... she hasn’t soiled herself...”

“Can I go now?” I asked as Cadance loosened her grip on my throat.

“You’re not winning us over,” she said.

“We can’t let her go,” Gary said. “Ms. Shannard’s told me what to do.”

“We’re supposed to kill her?”

“I won’t tell anybody,” I said. “Just let me go and I’ll forget all about it.”