Gun Shy(64)

“Now,” Ray says, scratching the stubble on his chin. “What are we going to do with you?”





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN





CASSIE





What are we going to do with you.

His grin tells me. He’s already decided what he’s going to do with me. He’s just waiting to see if I catch up.

“What happened to you to make you like this?” I whisper.

Ray stops for a moment, his grin shrinking. He pulls the same matchbox car out of his shirt pocket and tosses it at me. It lands on my chest, and if I crane my neck I can see all of the tiny bits of rust on its metal frame.

“What happened to me? What happened to me.” He takes a pair of paramedic shears from his jeans pocket and steps into the space in front of me, pressing his thumb and forefinger into my thigh until I yelp. I know they’re paramedic shears — metal scissors with the very end kicked out on an angle, to run along clothed skin without stabbing into somebody by accident — because I watched them cut my mother’s clothes from her in the hospital after her accident.

I crane my neck harder, watching as he reduces my jeans to ribbons of denim in seconds. “What are you doing?” I whimper.

“It’s not what I’m doing that you need to worry about, darlin’,” he says, finishing his handiwork. “It’s what I’m about to do.”

He chuckles.

I hyperventilate.

The air is cold, I am naked from the waist down, and he is right — It’s what he’s about to do that has me shaking. My whole body, trembling on the table like I’m having a seizure, the little matchbox car on my chest bouncing every time I drag in a shallow breath. Ray, having cut every strip of clothing from my body from the waist down, takes his beer and sips it casually, grinning as he glances down at me. As if we’re at a bar, on a date, and he isn’t about to rape and murder me.

I’m cold, and I’m half-naked, and this cannot be happening. I buck like a wild animal when Ray’s fingers find their way to my thighs and push them wider like it’s nothing, like I’m a piece of paper he’s tearing in half. I scream so loud, I’d put Jennifer’s death wails to shame.

“Don’t!” I scream. Fuck. I scream as loud as I can, blood-curdling and shrill, and even though I told Leo to never come near this house again, I hope he didn’t listen. “Please. Please. Don’t.”

I didn’t want to beg but I beg now. Please don’t. It doesn’t matter, though.

Amused Ray is suddenly furious, raging Ray. He smacks me across the face, hard enough that I see stars. Before I can lift my head again, he’s shoving a wadded-up bunch of denim into my mouth, a crude off-cut from what used to be my jeans. I gag, trying to dislodge the material with my tongue, but it won’t budge, conforming to the shape of my mouth and making me retch.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says angrily. “You think lover boy down there is gonna save you? Huh? You think my brother’s gonna bust through that door and stop me?” He drains the last of his beer and leans over me, spitting the liquid right into my face. I try to draw back but there’s nowhere to go, and all I manage to do is smack the back of my head against the table. Beer, warm from Ray’s mouth, dribbles into my eyes and nose and down the sides of my face, into my ears.

“Stay still,” he demands, spitting into his hand and slapping his palm against the spot where my panties should be. Where they would be, had I not lost them somewhere in Leo’s bed. “Stay still or you’ll get what you deserve, just like your mother got what she deserved.”

My mother? I don’t stay still. I struggle. I fight. Ray’s trying in vain to get himself inside me, but he can’t. It’s like trying to get that last scoop of ice cream from the bowl. It’s slippery and you chase it but you can’t quite get it on your spoon.

There is blood and beer and saliva and Ray can’t quite get the ice cream on his spoon, can’t quite get his dick wet. Not with me thrashing like a wild animal. He punches me, and I don’t stop struggling. He screams in my face, “Lie. Still,” and I don’t stop struggling.

Clearly agitated, he takes a kitchen towel and presses it over my face, not so bad. I can’t see, but it doesn’t hurt. Then he pours cold beer all over the cloth, making it stick to my mouth and nose so that when I try to take a breath, all I get is burning liquid. He grips my chin with one hand and pushes my face up so that the liquid easily flows into my nostrils. It’s waterboarding for rednecks. It’s like being plunged headfirst into Gun Creek in the middle of winter, and held there. But it’s worse. Because I can’t stop the beer flooding my nostrils, from pouring into my mouth through the cloth that vacuum-seals to my face the moment I try to take a breath.

I’m going to drown inside my house, without a single drop of water, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“I got no problem fucking you when you’re dead if that’s what it takes,” Ray says, pulling the wet cloth from my face as I retch. “Lie. Still.”

I lie still.

“Good girl. You’re learning.” Ray pushes into me, the awful sound of his teeth grinding matched only by my stifled sobs. It hurts. Ray grunts as he ruts himself into me, back and forth, like a blunt saw trying to fell a tree. Back and forth.