ME!”
Those hopeless cries chill my marrow…but not as much as what happens next.
Robert picks up the gun, shoots her in the head—no hesitation. A trigger-happy ape-man, always eager to kill and destroy. Hairy finger wrapped around the hair trigger.
Chunks of Candy Cane’s brain and skull splatter the pillow beneath her, the headboard.
He puts her down like a rabid animal.
Robert
I can’t believe I just killed her but oh God her screams were so horrible probably the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. God, she was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot.
I slide the gun (a .38 Smith and Wesson) into the back of my pants, and move into the hall. Jennifer is on her knees, against the yellow wallpaper, shivering, crying—smiley faces and flowers all around her head. I try to hold her but she pulls away, dry heaving.
I want to pick her up off the floor and tell her we have to keep moving, but I myself am afraid to take another step into this mad house.
“Oh God…why did you do that? Oh God,” she tries to say through heavy tears.
Because it was logical , but instead, I say: “She was suffering.”
“ You fucker! ” More sobbing.
“I know,” I say, and that’s all I say. Nothing else to be said.
Jennifer kneels there for a long moment, shaking. I try to steady myself against the smiley face wall, but my heart won’t stop pounding. I can feel it in my fingertips, my eyes.
“Oh god oh god oh god,” Jennifer is praying?
Hot tears pour down my cheeks and I want to get down on my knees and beg god for mercy too, but it’s too late for me. There’s no going back. I’m in hell. Where I belong.
“Come on, Jenny…” I don’t know why I call her that. “Let’s go.”
I help her up and we move through the twisting halls, turning right, left, left, right, left, right, right…always on edge, afraid that the Bunny will appear again, pop out from behind any corner. There have to be more of them.
We heard screaming in the cell next to us…of course, that could have just been the same Bunny torturing another prisoner, but what about the mutilated bitch we found up here?
There have to be multiple sick fucks in masks.
There was last ti—
We stumble upon the living room (a wide-open space!):
Dusty floorboards, torn up couch (yellow foam spewing out the arms and seats), old TV with UHF dial (playing a popular conservative news channel, where the current topic is “HOW TO TELL IF YOUR MUSLIM NEIGHBOR IS A TERRORIST;” up next, “ARE TRANSSEXUALS TRYING TO RAPE YOUR KIDS IN PUBLIC RESTROOMS?” Muted), a deer head over the fireplace, and an aquarium full of dead fish (bobbing on their backs). The windows have black trash bags taped over them.
I punch the picture window and quickly draw back bloodied knuckles, gnashing my teeth. Behind the trash bags and glass: concrete and steel bars.
“Where the fuck are we?” Jennifer says.
“In hell.” A raspy voice from behind us.
Jennifer and I swivel around, toward the voice—as I do so, my hand is on the grip of the .38 S&W and I draw it, aiming it forward, at—
Alex Rodriguez. Half his wife-beater stained red. Bloodied bandage around his neck. Good for nothing white supremacist (the irony being that he’s a spic; a white spic, but a spic nonetheless), whose specialties include drug running, sex slavery, grand theft auto, murder, torture, and snuff films (the kinda shit you find on the deep web).
He doesn’t have any tear drop tattoos, because if he did, it’d look like he was wearing black face. Instead, he has a demon tat on his bicep (sharp pointy horns, big beady eyes, talons wrapped around the breast of a nubile, scantily clad woman who is clearly not consenting), and beneath the demon, in green letters: HELLBOUND .
On his forehead and right hand: 666 , the mark of the beast.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: Alex Rodriguez also has a pink Glock pointed at my face.
“Lower your gun,” I say.
“You
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