“I will. But I need your help. I can’t open the bear trap. I’m just a small, weak woman. I need a strong man. I need my prince. Will you be my prince?”
Sebastian walked around Brian, sidestepping in the opposite direction. He wasn’t as gullible as his friend. But he wasn’t selfish, either. He couldn’t just abandon him.
“Help!” Brian yelled at the sky. “It–It hurts!”
“I don’t know what to do!” Sebastian cried out. “Brian! What do I do?!”
Miki said, “Come here. Help me help him.”
She stopped circling Brian and walked straight towards Sebastian.
Sebastian yelled, “Stop! Stop it!”
“Help me…”
“I–I’ll call the police!”
“Help him.”
Miki lunged at Sebastian, arms outstretched in front of her with her fingers splayed out as if she were about to strangle him. Sebastian screamed and ran backwards. He lost his footing and tumbled to the ground. Before Miki could grab him, he kicked her chest and pushed her back. Miki lunged at him again. He threw a fistful of dirt and leaves and pebbles at her face.
“Kuso,” Miki hissed in Japanese.
‘Shit.’
The dirt stung her eyes, but she kept moving towards the boy, so Sebastian punched her. The mask came off her face, swinging from one of her ears.
Sebastian hesitated upon noticing her scars. Then he threw another fistful of dirt at her face and kicked her chest. Miki fell back and landed on her ass beside Brian.
Sebastian scrambled to his feet. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. There was no signal in the woods. He looked back at Brian while stumbling away. Miki was right next to his friend—just a foot away. He could put up a fight, but he knew he couldn’t beat Miki and save Brian on his own. He was only a kid.
“I’ll get help! I’m gonna get help!” Sebastian yelled as he ran away.
Miki sighed as she stood up, patting the dirt off her coat. She put her mask on and watched Sebastian as he sprinted through the woods. He vanished behind some trees, but she could still hear him yelling for help. His voice faded after about a minute. She only heard Brian’s whimpers next to her. She examined the boy.
He appeared to be blushing, but his cheeks were purple because of the pallor of his face. It was a chilly evening but sweat glistened on his forehead and neck. Saliva frothed at the corners of his mouth and mucus bubbled out of his nostrils. He was out of breath, so he couldn’t scream anymore. Only smothered gasps and whimpers came out of his throat.
His legs swung violently from side to side, causing his knees to clap. He stopped wrestling with the bear trap, realizing he couldn’t break free using brute force. The pain and loss of blood left him anemic.
Miki caressed his cheek and said, “It’s too bad about your friend. You would have lived longer if he didn’t run.” Brian panted and whined. Miki sniggered, then she said, “You’re so scared. Poor baby, you wet yourself. What’s your mom going to think? And all I wanted to do was ask you a simple question. Well, maybe we can still work something out. Can I ask you something? Is that okay, honey?”
Brian stammered, “I–I–I don’t wa–wanna die. Don–Don’t kill me.”
Ignoring his pleas, Miki asked, “Am I beautiful?”
“It–It hurts. Pa–Pa–Please don’t… kill me… Please…”
“Am I beautiful?” Miki repeated in a stern voice, as if the boy hadn’t said a word.
Brian understood her question, but he didn’t understand her intent. It was an odd question to ask a severely injured person. The pain from his broken, maimed leg scrambled his thoughts. Although parts of his legs turned numb, an unusual heat surged from the wound and swept across his body. His chest and head were especially hot. He nodded at Miki, flinging drops of sweat from his brow at her with each bob of his head.
Miki removed her mask and asked, “How about now?”
Brian’s vision was blurred by his tears, so he couldn’t see her scars. His expression of pain looked like one of revulsion, though. He whimpered and nodded at her again, as if to say: ‘Sure, whatever, I don’t care, just help me already!’ Miki stared at him with a deadpan expression, eyes so cold that they looked glassed over with ice.
Miki smiled and said, “Thank you.” The boy continued whining. Miki looked at his leg and said, “Let’s get you out of that thing.”
“P–P–Please, I–I wanna…”
His voice petered out as Miki drew a pair of shears from her coat pocket. His eyes went back and forth between the large scissors and the woman’s scarred face.
Brian cried, “I–I don’t wanna—”
Miki thrust the shears at his mangled leg. The blades entered a wound above one of the bear trap’s teeth, screeching against the steel before clanging against his broken bone.
Brian uttered a thunderous, wounded bellow of pain. Flocks of birds burst out of the trees and flew skyward. Startled hikers and critters looked in every direction, searching for the source of the scream.
Miki opened the shears inside of his leg to stretch the wound out, then she closed them to bury the blades deeper in his shin. She snipped away at his stringy muscles and durable tendons. She giggled as she dodged the drops of blood leaping out of the wide, crooked gash. He slapped her shoulder and the back of her head while screaming, but he couldn’t harm her.
Brian let out another frightening shriek. About half a mile away, Sebastian stopped while scrambling up a hill, cheeks caked with mud. He looked back and listened to his friend’s echoing cry. He checked his phone—no signal. He crawled up to the top of the hill, then he continued running and screaming for help.
Brian screamed until he was out of breath. His eyelids twitched and his eyes rolled up. Stiff, he fell back and plummeted to the ground. The back of his head bounced off a stone under some leaves.
Thud!
His pants ripped, his leg bones cracked, and the surrounding muscles tore with a wet shredding sound. His lower leg was snapped in half, barely attached to his body by his butchered calf muscle. Through the hole on his pants leg, Miki could see the broken bones and pulsing muscle. Strips of skin and purple veins hung from the stump at the bottom of his leg.
The bottom half of his lower leg stood upright, still caught in the bear trap’s jaws, while Brian was sprawled across the ground behind it.
Towering over him, Miki said, “Looks like you’re not going anywhere.”
Saliva foamed out of Brian’s mouth as he spasmed. Only the whites of his eyes could be seen through the slits of his eyelids.
Miki opened the shears and slid one of the blades into his mouth. She cut his left cheek open—snip, snip. Then she forced a blade into the opposite side of his mouth and cut his other cheek. The cuts extended from the corners of his mouth to his ears—a Glasgow smile. Blood fused with the foamy saliva, frothing like Big Red soda.
Brian lost control of his body during the torture, but he was still alive. He felt like he was floating above the woods, watching as a sadistic woman mutilated his face. He was hopeless and helpless, pushed into the void between life and death.
Miki stroked his wispy hair and said, “You’re like me now. We’re both beautiful, aren’t we? Oh, I wish we could spend more time together, but I have to go. I have a prince to catch.”
Brian kept convulsing, head shaking on a pile of leaves and dirt. Goops of thick saliva and blood rolled down his jaw. Miki closed the shears, holding the handles in both hands. She held the shears up to her chest, blades pointing away from her, then she fell on top of Brian. The blades shattered his sternum and pierced his heart, killing him instantly. One last breath blew out of him, bloody spittle hitting Miki’s face.