The Finishing School

38

CARMEN SAT at a perfectly ordinary kitchen table, slurping chicken noodle soup ravenously from a green plastic bowl. He sat next to her, guarding her as she ate. Normally she would’ve been too self-conscious to eat this way in front of anybody. But she was too hungry to care. She remembered something she’d read in English class last semester. A story about Jews getting shipped off to concentration camps, how the Nazis purposely fed them salty soup right before packing them into sweltering cattle cars with no water. She looked up at her captor, into his cold gray eyes, and understood that the Jews would’ve drunk the soup even if they’d known about the Nazis’ diabolical plan. Hunger made you do things. So did fear.

He reached into his pocket unexpectedly, and Carmen dropped her spoon, cowering.

“Relax,” he said with a chuckle. “You think I’m gonna shoot you now? How stupid would that be? I have something I need to show you, that’s all.”

He tossed a necklace onto the table with a clatter. A silver peace sign on a tan cowhide string. Carmen recognized it immediately and started to whimper.

“Calm down, for Chrissakes, or I’m putting you back in the cage,” he said, irritated.

“You killed my sister!” Carmen shouted as her shoulders shook with small, coughing sobs.

“No, but I could have. You need to understand that. And I could kill you, too, if you make problems. But I’m sure you already know that.”

Carmen’s sobs grew to a keening wail.

“Shut up! You saw what happened to Whitney. You wanna be next?”

But that reminder only served to push her over the edge, and she began shrieking wildly. He leaned forward and clamped his hand over her mouth. Carmen bit hard, her teeth sinking into the soft flesh of his palm.

“Aagh! You little twat!” He stared at the blood seeping into the ugly red wells made by her teeth. Seeing the rage on his face, she drew a breath and started screaming again, hysterically, at the top of her lungs. He raised his fist and punched her in the face. He was stronger than he looked. The blow sent her crashing over backward. Carmen’s head hit the sharp edge of the granite countertop with a sickening thud, and she collapsed motionless to the floor.

“I feed you, and this is how you fucking repay me?” he spit at her inert form. “You go and fuck everything up? What am I supposed to do on Friday if you’re dead?”