Punctured

part ix:
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Jane slid from the bed to the floor. Time stood still. She couldn’t cry or scream. She could hardly breathe. The television she could no longer see carried down a voice to her, a voice she knew well in her dreams. To hear it for real, now, ascertained for Jane not only that she had killed the wrong man, but that he was very much alive. He even had a name now . . . Matthew.

The man was speaking but she couldn’t make out any of the words. His voice held her prisoner in that little bit of space where she sat, near an empty beer can -not hers- and a used condom peaking out from beneath the bed. But that wasn’t the space that Jane occupied either. . .

If you’re good . . . if you do as I say, I won’t have to hurt you, will I? Now stop your crying! But Susie couldn’t and the strap came down on her again.

Jane hanged by her wrists on a ceiling hook, perhaps three feet away from where her little sister hanged also. It was day eleven, she thought, but couldn’t be certain of anything anymore. She was hog-tied, gagged, and blind-folded, and the helplessness she felt at not being able to reach out to Susie when she cried, was more torture than Jane could endure.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to die. She wanted him dead. What she got, instead, on day eleven, was an end to Susie’s muffled cries . . .
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