Genesis (39 page)

Will rolled onto his back. Angie's hair was tangled around her
face. Her makeup was smeared. She was breathing as hard as he was.

"Jesus Christ," she mumbled. "Jesus Christ." She tried to reach
out and touch his face, but he slapped her hand away.

They lay there like that, both panting on the floor, for what
seemed like hours. Will tried to feel remorse, or anger, but all he felt
was exhaustion. He was so sick of this, so sick of the way Angie
drove him to extremes. He thought again about what Sara had said:
Learn from your mistakes.

Angie Polaski was looking like the biggest mistake Will had ever
made in his miserable life.

"Christ." She was still breathing hard. She rolled over on her side,
slid her hand up under his shirt. Her hands were hot, sweaty against
his skin. Angie said, "Whoever she is, tell her I said thanks."

He stared up at the ceiling, not trusting himself to look at her.

"I've been screwing you for twenty-three years, baby, and you've
never fucked me like that before." Her fingers found the ridge at the
bottom of his rib, the place where the skin puckered from a cigarette
burn. "What's her name?"

Will still didn't answer.

Angie whispered, "Tell me her name."

Will's throat hurt when he tried to swallow. "Nobody."

She gave a deep, knowing laugh. "Is she a nurse or a cop?" She
laughed again. "Hooker?"

Will didn't say anything. He tried to block Sara out of his mind,
didn't want her in his thoughts right now because he knew what was
coming. Will had scored one point, so Angie had to score ten.

He flinched as Angie found a sensitive nerve on his damaged skin.

She asked, "Is she normal?"

Normal.
They had used that word in the children's home to describe
people not like them—people with families, people with lives,
people whose parents didn't beat them or pimp them out or treat
them like trash.

Angie kept tracing the tip of her finger around the burn. "She
know about your problem?"

Will tried to swallow again. His throat scratched. He felt sick.

"She know you're stupid?"

He felt trapped under her finger, the way it was pressing into the
round scar where the burning cigarette had melted his flesh. Just
when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, she stopped, putting
her mouth close to his ear, sliding her fingers up the sleeve of his
shirt. She found the long scar running up his arm where the razor
had opened his flesh.

"I remember the blood," she said. "The way your hand shook, the
way the razor blade opened up your skin. Do you remember that?"

He closed his eyes, tears leaking out. Of course he remembered. If
he thought about it hard enough, he could still feel the tip of the
sharp metal scraping across his bone because he had known that he
should send the razor deep—deep enough to open the vein, deep
enough to make sure it was done right.

"Remember how I held you?" she asked, and he could feel her
arms around him even though she wasn't holding him now. The way
she had wrapped her whole body around him like a blanket. "There
was so much blood."

It had dripped down her own arms, onto her legs, her feet.

She had held on to him so tight that he couldn't breathe, and he
had loved her so much, because he knew she understood why he was
doing it, why he had to stop the madness that was going on around
him. Every scar on his body, every burn, every break—Angie knew
about it the same way she knew everything about herself. Every secret Will
had, Angie held somewhere deep inside her. She held on to
it with her life.

She
was
his life.

He gulped, his mouth still spitless. "How long?"

She rested her hand on his stomach. She knew she had him back,
knew it was just a matter of snapping her fingers. "How long what,
baby?"

"How long do you want me to love you?"

She didn't answer him immediately, and he was about to ask the
question again when she said, "Isn't that a country music song?"

He turned to look at her, searching her eyes for some sign of
kindness that he had never seen before. "Just tell me how long so I
can count the days, so I know when this is finally going to be over."

Angie traced her hand down the side of his face.

"Five years? Ten years?" His throat was closing, like someone had
fed him glass. "Just tell me, Angie. How long until I can stop loving
you?"

She leaned in, put her mouth to his ear again. "Never."

She pushed herself up from the floor, smoothing down her skirt,
finding her shoes and underwear. Will lay there as she opened the
door, then left without bothering to look back. He didn't blame her.
Angie never looked back. She knew what was behind her, just like
she always knew what was ahead.

Will didn't get up when he heard her shoes on the porch stairs or
her car starting up in the driveway. He didn't get up when he heard
Betty scratching at the dog door, which he'd forgotten to open for
her. Will did not move for anything. He lay on the floor all night, until
the sun coming in through the windows told him it was time to go
back to work.

P
AULINE WAS HUNGRY, BUT SHE COULD HANDLE THAT. SHE
understood the pains in her stomach and lower intestines, the way
the spasms reverberated through her gut as they grasped for any type
of nourishment. She knew it well, and she could handle it. The thirst
was different, though. There was no way around the thirst. She had
never gone without water for this long before. She was desperate,
willing to do anything. She'd even peed on the floor and tried to
drink it, but it just made her thirst even wilder so that she'd ended up
sitting on her knees, baying like a wolf.

No more. She couldn't be in that dark place for long. She couldn't
let it get to her again, envelope her so that all she wanted to do was
curl into a ball and pine for Felix.

Felix. He was the only reason to get out of here, to fight, to stop
the fuckers from taking Pauline away from her baby boy.

She lay on her side, arms pinned to her waist, feet sticking straight
out, and lifted her upper body, straining her neck so that she could
line herself up right. She held herself like that, muscles tight, sweating,
the blindfold rubbing her skin, as she took aim. The chains
around her wrists rattled from exertion, and before she could stop
herself, she reared back her head and pounded it into the wall.

Pain streaked through her neck. She saw stars—literal stars—
swimming through her vision. She fell onto her back, panting, trying
not to hyperventilate, willing herself not to pass out.

"What are you doing?" the other woman asked.

The bitch had been lying on her back like a corpse for the last
twelve hours, unresponsive, uncaring, and now she was asking questions?

"Shut up," Pauline snarled. She didn't have time for this shit. She
rolled over onto her side again, lining up her body to the wall, moving
down a few more inches. She held her breath, squeezed her eyes
shut, and pounded her head into the wall again.

"Fuck!" she screamed, her head exploding with pain. She fell
onto her back again. There was blood on her forehead, sliding underneath
the blindfold, getting into her eyes. She couldn't blink it away,
couldn't wipe it. She felt like a spider was crawling across her eyelids,
seeping into her eyeballs.

"No," Pauline said, and she found herself wrapped in a full-on
hallucination, spiders crawling across her face, digging into her skin,
laying eggs in her eyes. "No!"

She jerked up to sitting, head spinning from the sudden motion.
She was panting again, and she bent her head to her knees, touched
her chest to her thighs. She had to get hold of herself. She couldn't
give in to the thirst. She couldn't let the dementia settle into her brain
again so that she lost where she was.

"What are you doing?" the stranger whispered, terrified.

"Leave me alone."

"He'll hear you. He'll come down."

"He's not coming down," Pauline snapped. Then, to prove it, she
screamed, "Come down here, you motherfucker!" Her throat was so
raw that she started coughing from the exertion, but she still
screamed, "I'm trying to escape! Come stop me, you limp-dicked
motherfucker!"

They waited and waited. Pauline ticked off the seconds. There
were no footsteps on the stairs. No lights turned on. No doors
opened.

"How do you know?" the stranger said. "How do you know
what he's doing?"

"He's waiting for one of us to break," Pauline told her. "And it's
not going to be me."

The woman asked another question, but Pauline ignored her, lining
herself up to the wall again. She braced herself to pound into the
wall again, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't hurt herself again.
Not right now. Later. She would rest a few minutes and then do it
later.

She rolled onto her back, tears streaming down her face. She
didn't open her mouth, because she didn't want the woman to know
she was crying. The stranger had heard the sobbing, heard Pauline
sliding around in her own piss. That show was over. No more tickets
would be sold.

"What's your name?" the stranger asked.

"None of your goddamn business," Pauline barked. She didn't
want to make friends. She wanted to get out of here any way she
could, and if that meant walking over the stranger's dead body to
freedom, Pauline would do it. "Just shut up."

"Tell me what you're doing and maybe I can help you."

"You can't help me. You got that?" Pauline twisted to face the
stranger, even though they were in total darkness. "Listen up, bitch.
Only one person is going to make it out of here alive and it's not going
to be you. You understand me? Shit rolls down hill, and I'm not
going to be the one smelling like a sewer when this is over with. All
right?"

The stranger was silent. Pauline fell onto her back, looking up at
darkness, trying to brace herself for the wall again.

The woman's voice was barely a whisper. "You're Atlanta Thin,
aren't you?"

Pauline's throat tightened like a noose had been put around it.
"What?"

"'Shit rolls down hill, and I'm not going to be the one smelling
like a sewer,'" she repeated. "You say that a lot."

Pauline chewed her lip.

"I'm Mia-Three."

Mia
—slang for 'bulimia.' Pauline recognized the screen name,
but still insisted, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Mia asked, "Did you show them that email at work?"

Pauline opened her mouth, just tried to breathe a while. She tried
to think of the other things she had told the pro-anna Internet
group, the desperate thoughts that raced through her mind and
somehow ended up being typed onto the keyboard. It was almost
like purging, but instead of emptying your stomach, you were emptying
your brain. Telling somebody those awful thoughts you had,
knowing they had them, too, somehow made it easier to get up every
morning.

And now the stranger wasn't a stranger anymore.

Mia repeated, "Did you show them the email?"

Pauline swallowed, even though there was only dust in her throat.
She couldn't believe she was tied up like a fucking hog and this
woman wanted to talk about work. Work didn't matter anymore.
Nothing mattered anymore. The email was from another life, a life
where Pauline had a job she wanted to keep, a mortgage, a car payment.
They were waiting down here to be raped, tortured, murdered,
and this woman was worried about a fucking email?

Mia said, "I didn't get to call Michael, my brother. Maybe he's
looking for me."

"He won't find you," Pauline told her. "Not out here."

"Where are we?"

"I don't know," she answered—the truth. "I woke up in the
trunk of a car. I was chained. I'm not sure how long I was in there.
The trunk opened. I started to scream, then he Tased me again." She
closed her eyes. "Then I woke up here."

"I was in my backyard," Mia told her. "I heard something. I
thought maybe a cat . . ." She let her words trail off. "I was in a trunk
when I came to. I'm not sure how long he kept me in there. It felt like
days. I tried to count away the hours, but . . ." She went into a long silence
that Pauline didn't know how to interpret. Finally, she said,
"Do you think that's how he found us—on the chat board?"

"Probably," she lied. Pauline knew how he had found them, and
it wasn't that damn chat room. It was Pauline who had led them
here—Pauline's big mouth that had gotten them into trouble. She
wasn't going to tell Mia what she knew. There would be more questions,
and with the questions would come accusations that Pauline
knew she wouldn't be able to handle.

Not now. Not when her brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton
and the blood dripping down her eyes felt like the tiny, hairy legs of
a million spiders.

Pauline gasped for breath, trying to keep herself from freaking
out again. She thought about Felix and the way he smelled when she
bathed him with the new soap she picked up at Colony Square during
her lunch break.

Mia asked, "It's still in the safe, right? They'll find the email in the
safe and they'll know you told the upholsterer to measure the elevator."

"Bitch, what does it matter? Do you not understand where we
are, what's going to happen to us? So what if they find the email?
Some fucking consolation. 'She's dead, but she was right all along.'"

"More than you got in life."

They shared a moment of commiseration. Pauline tried to remember
what little she knew about Mia. The woman didn't post
much on the board, but when she did, she was pretty on point. Like
Pauline and a few other posters, Mia didn't like whiners and she
didn't take much bullshit.

"They can't starve us," Mia said. "I can go nineteen days before I
start to shut down."

Pauline was impressed. "I can go about the same," she lied. Her
max had been twelve, and then they'd put her in the hospital and
plumped her up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Mia said, "Water is the issue."

"Yeah," Pauline agreed. "How long can you—"

"I've never tried to go without water," Mia interrupted, finishing
the sentence. "It doesn't have any calories."

"Four days," Pauline told her. "I read somewhere that you can
only last about four days."

"We can last longer." It wasn't wishful thinking. If Mia could last
nineteen days without eating, she sure as hell could last longer than
Pauline without water.

That was the problem. She could outlast Pauline. No one had
outlasted Pauline before.

Mia asked the obvious question. "Why hasn't he fucked us?"

Pauline pressed her head to the cool concrete floor, tried to keep
the panic from building up inside of her. The fucking wasn't the
problem. It was the other stuff—the games, the taunting, the tricks . . .
the trash bags.

"He wants us weak," Mia guessed. "He wants to make sure we
can't fight back." Mia's chains rattled as she moved. Her voice
sounded closer, and Pauline guessed she'd turned onto her side.
"What were you doing? Before, I mean. Why were you hitting the
wall with your head?"

"If I can punch through the sheetrock, maybe I can get out. It's
standard building code that the two-by-fours have to be sixteen
inches apart."

Mia's tone filled with awe. "You have a sixteen inch waist?"

"No, you dumbass. I can turn sideways and slide out."

Mia laughed at her own stupidity, but then she pointed out something
that made Pauline feel equally as idiotic. "Why aren't you using
your feet?"

They were both quiet, but Pauline felt something welling up inside
her. Her stomach twinged, and she heard laughter in her ears,
honest-to-God, all-out laughter as she thought about how fucking
stupid she was.

"Oh, God," Mia sighed. She was laughing, too. "You are such an
idiot."

Pauline twisted her body around, trying to spin on her shoulder.
She lined up her feet, bracing them together so that the chains
wouldn't throw her off, and kicked. The sheetrock caved on the first
try.

"Dumbass," she muttered, this time at herself. She slid back
around to face the opening, using her teeth to bite off the broken
chunks of sheetrock. There was poison in the dust, but she didn't
care. She would rather die with her head poking six inches out of this
room than be trapped here while she waited for that fucker to come
for her.

"Did you get it?" Mia asked. "Did you break—"

"Shut up," Pauline told her, biting into foam padding. He had
soundproofed the walls. That was to be expected. No big deal. She
just grabbed it with her teeth, taking chunk after chunk out, aching
for the feel of fresh air on her face.

"Fuck!" Pauline screamed. She inched around so that her waist
was lined up to the hole. She reached out with her fingers, which
barely went past the broken sheetrock. She tore out the foam, then
her fingers brushed something that felt like a screen. She arched her
back, reaching her hands out as far as they would go. Her fingers
traced along crisscrossed wire. "Goddamm it!"

"What is it?"

"Chicken wire." He had lined the walls with chicken wire so they
couldn't break out.

Pauline angled herself around again and jammed her feet against
the wire. The soles of her shoes met solid resistance. Instead of the
screen giving, the counterforce moved her several inches across the
floor. She inched back to try again, rolling over onto her stomach and
placing her sweaty palms to the cement. Pauline reared her feet back
and kicked with all her strength. Again, she met solid resistance, her
body sliding away from the wall.

"Oh, Jesus," she gasped, falling onto her back. The tears came, the
tiny spider legs encroaching on her vision. "What am I going to do?"

"Can your hands reach?"

"No," Pauline cried. Hope drained out of her with every breath.
Her hands were too tight to the belt. The chicken wire was attached
to the back of the two-by-four. There was no way she could reach it.

Pauline's body shook with sobs. She had not seen him in years,
but she still knew how his mind worked. The basement was his staging
ground, a carefully prepared prison where he would starve them
into submission. But, this was not the worst of it. There would be a
cave somewhere, a dark place in the earth that he had lovingly dug
out by hand. The basement would break them. The cave would destroy
them. The bastard had thought of everything.

Again.

Mia had managed to inch her way over. Her voice was close, almost
on top of Pauline. "Shut up," Mia ordered, pushing Pauline out
of the way. "We'll use our mouths."

"What?"

"It's thin metal, right? Chicken wire?"

"Yeah, but—"

"You bend it back and forth and it breaks."

Pauline shook her head. This was crazy.

"All we need is for one piece to give," Mia said, as if the logic was
clear. "Just grab it in your mouth and pull back and forth, back and
forth. It'll break eventually, then we can kick it. Or we can just break
every single piece off with our mouths."