Black River

EIGHTY-TWO

It was the feel of something across her mouth that awakened Kim. Something wet, cold and rough. She slowly opened her eyes. Her right eye was swollen, hard to open. The image fuzzy through the eye. She blinked. Hoping to blink away a nightmare before her. She was in a dimly lit room, candles on a dresser. An oil lamp on an end table. It was still dark outside, moonlight coming through the one window.

Silas Jackson sat on the side of a bed using a washcloth to dab her face. Used it to wash away the dried blood. The crusty congealed blood around Kim’s mouth and severely swollen eye. She used her tongue to feel for the tooth. Gone. A fleshy hole left behind. She wanted to push him away. Kim couldn’t move her arms. She looked to her right and then left. Metal bands clamped on her wrists. The wrist bands secured to chains, the chains locked on the bedposts. He’s done the same with her legs. Pulled them apart, wide, held in place by short chains secured to posts at the foot of the bed.

Kim realized she was nude. She was naked under a sheet turned a pale yellow from oily hair, engine grease, dried sweat and grime. She shuddered. Opened her good eye and said, “Why are you doing this?”

Jackson stopped cleaning her, his dark bloodshot eyes cutting up to her face. “I told you why. I have no choice. You don’t either. The rest weren’t the woman we’ve been looking for — you’re the one to birth a new leader to take back the county.”

“The rest? You’re crazy! Let me go, and I promise you no one will ever know.”

“I told you I got no say in the matter.” He stood, stepped to the window and looked out at the moon over the palms and cypress trees. Then he turned back to her, running the tip of his index finger slowly down her chained right arm. “Miss, Kim, this goes all the way back to Confederate General Albert Pike. He was the visionary. Wise beyond his time. He predicted three world wars. He was a thirty-third degree Freemason who spoke a dozen languages. Harvard educated. He wore Lucifer’s bracelet. General Pike was the architect of prophecy, a new order of the way society would be governed. You can fulfill General Pike’s foretelling.”

“They’ll lock you up and throw away the damn keys.”

“I ‘spect they’ll be coming for me soon. My death will be the sacrifice I’m willing to take. I’m bettin’ the seed will take, and you, a fine Catholic girl, will let it be.”

“Oh my God…you’ve raped me. You filthy bastard!”

“No! I wouldn’t rape you. No need. I got you hogtied to the bedposts. I can take my time. You won’t be able to get up and use gravity to dislodge the sperm on its predestined journey to plant the seed of a new order.”

Kim closed her good eye, made a silent prayer, and fought the bile rising in her throat.