Burning Time

68

Emma lay there with the tape over her mouth. The door was closed. For a long time after the old woman stopped screaming it was profoundly quiet. Then she heard Troland go to the refrigerator and get something to drink. She could hear the pop of a can opening.

Troland. She could not visualize him as he must have been as a teenager, seeming normal enough to be in school, but doing things no one could even imagine. Her heart felt huge, big enough to burst.

She could hear him moving around out there. She tested the ropes. They were tied so tightly now there was no way to get out of them. She kept opening and closing her hand, trying to keep the circulation going.

Earlier, she had shivered uncontrollably for hours. All she wanted to do was warm up. Then he turned several lights on her so he could see better, and started working on her with the concentration of a surgeon. He shaved her, painted her body with Mennen Speed Stick, and stuck transfers all over it. It was then, before he even set up the table with the inks and the needles and the rubber gloves and the tattoo machine, that she knew what he was going to do. He was going to tattoo her. She knew how it was done. She knew about transfers.

She didn’t even realize she was screaming, totally out of control. She thought the sounds were in her head. He was going to mark her perfect body, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. He was crazy. Nothing would stop him. He’d seen the fake tattoo in her film, and now he was doing one for real. But this wasn’t just a little thing on the shoulder. This was her whole body. He was going to tattoo her whole body. Oh, no. No! Can’t take this. Emma couldn’t stop screaming.

He didn’t seem to hear it.

“No. No, no. No!”

Was this what her daddy described, what it felt like when bombs were falling everywhere, your buddies were dead all around you, your legs were blown off? You were bleeding to death in a muddy swamp, and still you didn’t give up.

“Nooooo.”

She could hear her daddy’s voice behind her, in her ear. Be a soldier, Emmie. Take what they dish out and be a man about it.

“No,” she screamed.

“Shut up, or I’ll tape your mouth,” he said finally. “That’s enough.”

She shut her mouth. And still the screams came out. She felt the ropes with her fingers. They were low on her wrists, too low for the game. Untie the knots with one hand, Emmie. Show me how good you are.

Not good enough.

The first time the needles touched her skin was like a jolt of lightning. She was dead. She knew she would not survive this. The sting and burn, coming both at the same time on the sensitive skin of her stomach, told her life was over. Yet it went on and on, and she was still alive.

Years ago, when she first came to New York, Emma had a long tussle with a young man at the end of a date that had seemed pedestrian and safe. He was a Wall Street lawyer, and he jumped on her in the middle of a conversation about depositions. He didn’t care that she was unwilling, and would only seem to stop for a minute or two to calm her down, before attacking her again. Her body was covered with black and blue marks by the time she finally got rid of him. And even at the door he tried tackling her one last time.

“Hope springs eternal,” he said when he called her two days later for another date.

“I don’t want to die,” Emma whispered now.

Now, instead of freezing to death, she was burning. Her stomach was on fire where he had tattooed it. She could feel the heat radiating outward. He was going to tattoo her whole body until she was burning all over, and still she didn’t want to die.

On the floor by the bed was a butane torch. She stretched out her fingers, wiggling them to see if she could reach it. It worked like a big lighter. Push the handle down, she knew, and a flame would shoot out. What was that for? I have to pee, she thought. He put packing tape on her mouth because she couldn’t keep from making noises. Now she could only make grunting sounds.

On the other side of the door she could hear him muttering to himself. Then she started hearing other noises, thumpings and scratchings. A car door opened and a few minutes later slammed shut. Later, he came back and started fiddling with something in the wall. At one point there was the sound of a hammer hitting metal. What metal? What was he doing?

Her terror was like a wild animal. Her pulse seemed to be everywhere, as loud as the hammer on the other side of the wall. What hammer? What metal?

Then silence, for a long, long time. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. She shifted her body, trying to get closer to the torch. Way above her hand, on the table, was the switchblade. She couldn’t reach that, either. She knew he had a gun somewhere, too, but she didn’t see it. She was sure the old woman was dead. Maybe someone would come looking for her. Emma started pushing at the tape with her tongue. She closed her eyes.