Hellbox

23

KERRY

She lay marinating in heat and the stench from her soiled body. Drifting in and out of consciousness now, a floating limbo. Wrapped in tape from neck to feet this time, a gray mummy stretched out on its back on the dirty floor, unable to move even a little because more tape held her immobile against one of the bench stanchions. For a long time, there had been agony-cramped muscles, sensations of suffocation, shoots of pain in her jaw where Balfour had hit her after she missed stabbing his eye with the tack weapon. Fear and hate, too, rising like tides, receding, rising again, receding again. Then resignation had set in, followed by a return of the apathy, followed by a numbness both physical and mental.

Now, she felt as if her mind had become detached from her body, her spirit already hovering just outside her body. The spirit withering, losing sentience, drifting for long periods in a trancelike state where nonfrightening images swam and darted like creatures beneath the surface of a calm sea. Then it would stir back to life, send out little pulses of awareness-heat, pain, thirst, hunger, the death odors as if her body had already begun to decay. And the fear and the hate would come again, but only briefly and with less and less intensity. Even the desperate will to live had become muted, begun to give way to a desire for the peace that lay beyond the floating limbo.

Adrift again.

Aware again.

Sounds. The dog barking, always barking. Damn the dog.

Something else then, a roaring noise. Car engine. Outside, close.

Door slamming. Balfour, coming back.

She didn’t care anymore. Let him come.

She tried to will the hovering spirit to take her back into the nowhere place. But awareness remained. Spasms of pain, thirst, hunger, fear, hate. Fragments of thought. And more sounds. Key scraping in the door lock. The truck engine, louder, throbbing. Heavy steps moving toward her.

His voice: “Didn’t get loose this time, did you?”

Words came to her, bright and clear, as if they were being held up on a sign: Fuck you. But she couldn’t say them. Her throat was closed tight, her vocal chords shriveled and frozen.

Bending over her, putting a hand on her.

Don’t touch me!

Snick. Knife, he had a knife in the other hand.

No, don’t. Go ahead, get it over with. No, please don’t!

He didn’t. Ripping sounds… he was using the knife to saw at the tape that held her against the bench support.

Another snick and the knife disappeared. His hands on her again then, pulling her away from the bench, turning her onto her back. A gurgling whimper came out of the hollowness inside as he bent over her, worked his hands under her and lifted her up tight against his body.

“Jesus, lady. You stink.”

His breath was no better. The sour spew of it in her face jerked her head aside.

Grunting, he carried her out through the open door. The glare of sunlight was like needles poked into her eyes; she squeezed them shut. The dog was close by, its barks and growls loud.

“Shut up, Bruno. Shut up!”

The animal noises stopped and Kerry could hear the engine rumble again. She opened her eyes to slits. Blurred images settled into focus.

Pickup with a camper top, the camper’s rear door open. He brought her up to it, lifted her inside, shoved her roughly across a hard floor. The back of her head thudded into something, her arm scraped against something else-cuts of pain that she barely felt. Things were piled up all around her… tools, camping equipment. And guns, big guns, rifles, automatic weapons, shoved into a space beneath a side-wall bench.

Balfour crawled in, up over her body, until he was kneeling astride her. He put his ugly face close to hers again, a white-and-black smear of beard-stubbled skin.

“Now you listen to me, lady. We’re going for a ride. Gonna be a long one, maybe, depends on you. We stop anywhere and you thrash around back here, make noise, I’ll kill you dead on the spot. You understand?”

She tried to tell him yes with her eyes. He didn’t get the message. Slapped her, hard-more pain that she barely felt.

“Understand?”

The gurgling whimper.

“Okay. You do what I say, maybe I’ll let you go later. Drop you off in the woods some place.”

Liar. You’re going to kill me.

He took something from his pocket, a roll of duct tape. Tore off a piece with his teeth and stretched it tight across her mouth.

Why don’t you just get it over with? Why torture me like this?

Another piece of tape torn from the roll, larger than the first. This one, he stuck down over her eyes.

Blind, now. Mute and blind.

Another slap, not as hard, and he slid back off her.

Sounds: Him dropping out of the camper. The hinged door slamming shut. The pit bull barking again. The cab door opening, banging shut. The engine revving up, gears meshing.

And they were moving, jolting over uneven ground. Then stopping again. Then moving. Then stopping. Then moving, winding left and right over a smoother surface. The constant shifting motion bounced her up and down, but the tight-packed space held her where she lay.

Gray-wrapped, living mummy trapped in a moving sarcophagus driven by a madman.

Hot, hotter than the shed. Exhaust fumes choking the air, making breathing difficult through congested nostrils. Dulled hurt in her head, all through her body every time the wheels passed over a bump.

Bill, she thought once. And imagined his face, his hand reaching out to her. Then he was gone, swallowed by darkness.

Body and spirit seemed to separate again. The spirit once more withering, losing awareness, until she drifted into the floating limbo state-deep into it, to a place where there was no pain, no fear, only mercy.