“You’ll make it worth our while?” asked The Shiny Bald One, repeating it back to her in a mocking, girly voice, even batting his eyes as if he was some sort of six foot tall doll in a pink dress. His lips pulled back to reveal a perfect set of teeth, radiating in the fire light.
Any minute now, she was sure that The Shiny Bald One would howl.
The Midget Man was breathing heavily against the back of her neck. His aftershave violated her nostrils as he started to rub up against her, getting bolder with each thrust. It made the hairs on her arms stand up on their ends. “You fellas mind if she makes it worth my while first?”
The Yeti and The Chuckle Machine remained silent, looking over at their leader for approval, but The Shiny Bald One gave the verbal go-ahead, finally confirming himself to Annie as their true figurehead. “Have fun, but clean her up when you’re done. Don’t leave it messy for the rest of us.”
So the three monsters watched Annie and The Midget Man. Their bulbous eyes were the most horrible part of all; vapid stares and licking lips, sipping on booze and smoking unfiltered cigarettes while The Midget Man went to the moon and back again.
Chapter Ten
Pain.
The uneasy terror of an all-encompassing pain that would not go away surged through Annie, sending shudders up her spine and into her neck. She could barely remember what happened to her, but her body was well aware. Throbs and yelps from every muscle, from every cell in her body. She felt ruined, left out on the floor’s slab like a hunter’s slain conquest.
Through a swollen eye, she craned her neck up at the roaring fire. The Shiny Bald One kept The Yeti on fire patrol, commanding him to stoke and feed the fire regularly with a seemingly endless supply of wood. It licked at the edges of the hearth and something deep inside of Annie wished those flames would reach out and swallow her whole. She wished it would burn her until the pain went away. She didn’t want to know the feeling of being alive anymore.
Her body was no longer her own.
It belonged to them.
All her life, she was told by her hippie-lovin’ liberal parents that her body was a temple, never to be sacrificed to any whim or bad judgment. It was to be honored and kept well if she were to avoid the rigors of aging. Her parents voices’ felt like they were screaming in pain now, drifting through her memories in a more vivid light than she could remember the past hour, though she was glad she couldn’t remember any of it.
The smell of urine kept wafting in and out of her busted nose. One of them, presumably the monstrous Yeti, had finished his rendezvous by pissing all over her backside. The smell of his bitter urine now mixed with the salty, coppery smell of blood that was clotting around her face. She wished she had the strength to cry out to them, to beg that they at least let her put her underwear back on, to give her back an ounce of dignity before they fully destroyed her.
She could hear them speaking at the other side of the room. It sounded like they were relaxed, most likely sitting at one of The Purple Cat’s many varnished wood dining tables. Their garbled voices indicated that they were eating, chewing on something tough like a raw, bloody steak. Cavemen to the bone—gnashing their teeth and grunting joyously.
Nothing gets a man hungry like a good old-fashioned gang rape.
That hideous word (raperaperapeyougotfuckingrapedAnnieyougotfuckingraped) gnarled her senses, once again forcing her to beg the God of Fire to consume her broken vessel and send her to that faraway place that everybody must know sooner or later.
No.
No, that wouldn’t do. Stop being weak, Annie. They’ll smell it on you and this whole thing will only end one way.
It was Paulie. It had always been Paulie. The reason for everything, the answer to every question: Paulie. She needed to get back to him even if it killed her. He was safe at home, but he wouldn’t survive without his Mommy, not without her to guide him into manhood. For that single thought, Annie summoned the strength to roll over on to her side, with new darts of pain activating inside of her, reminding her how badly they’d fucked her up. She could feel the intrusion all the way into the lower regions of her stomach, simmering butterfly wings flapping at the bottom of her womb.
A voice came drifting through the wooden rafters, bouncing and reverberating, “Fine night for a fire, isn’t it?” The voice sounded like The Shiny Bald One, but she couldn’t be sure. The Yeti and The Chuckle Machine had hardly spoken at all. The Midget Man’s voice was something of a Munchkinland reject, so the voice she heard now had to be their ringleader.
She listened intently to the sounds: more chewing and slurping on some beverage, certainly alcoholic, and then a raging fit of laughter. The Chuckle Machine found the entire evening to be beyond delight.
“When the sun comes up, we’ll head to ol’ Sanford Pepper’s house. Heard from a guy down at the grange that he was decked out with all kinds of heavy artillery, some real World War Three shit.” The Shiny Bald One planned aloud, adding, “Our only problem may be Pepper himself, but that’s why we roll in there with gifts in hand. Some steaks, some booze, and some firewood. Of course, once we makum’ peace pipeum’, then we’ll take care of that old coot properly.”
The Chuckle Machine erupted, apparently playing the part of mischievous super-villain in this vicious squad, as the Midget Man asked, “He’ll have his guns blazing if we roll up on him. My aunt Betty went out with him way back in high school and my pop said she was always comin’ home with black eyes.” There was a kind of ironic pity in the little shit’s voice, as though his aunt’s physical abuse was far removed from the treatment he and his trio of monster pals had just dealt out to Annie. The hypocrite couldn’t see what he’d been a party to. Maybe Annie was just a piece of meat to them, just like the wild animals that they’d soon be hunting when the Purple Cat’s food stash ran out.
“He won’t be a problem,” their leader replied, sounding resolute enough that Annie quite believed him. The Shiny Bald One was the type that always had a plan in motion. Tony had been like that, before they’d stomped the life out of him.
They kept on chewing, occasionally releasing a hearty burp to attest their pleasure.
“Stop hoggin’ that hooch, Dan. And stop getting your shit-lips all over it,” a new voice called out. Annie assumed it was The Yeti. He spoke like a high-pitched galoot, just like he looked. Annie couldn’t help but think of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. She wondered if The Yeti would start petting her after his next go-‘round her vagina, maybe break her neck by accident.
“Don’t use my name, Mikey!” The Midget Man shouted back at him.
Annie reached down around her ankles; though it felt like the lower half of her body was no longer attached to the rest of her. Her fingers touched a soft but muddy mess that felt very much like they were once her panties. With a lurch in her spine, biting her tongue so hard that she felt she might bite it right off, she pulled them up her shins and up around her waist. Her arms slumped to the floor again, fingernails digging into the wooden planks from the pain she could not escape.
“Use names if you want to,” said The Shiny Bald One, chirping giddily to himself. “She won’t know our names long enough to tell anybody… won’t know anything about anything longer than tomorrow. Our fun won’t hold out; maybe three or four more whirls and then we’ll have to throw her out with the rest of the trash. She’ll start stinking up the joint, like that other one.”