“Mount Airy wasn’t a bad neighborhood. Not like this warzone. It was middle-class, decent. My father worked as a security guard at night and went to school during the day, trying to get his license to practice medicine. I went to see him on holidays and during the summer. He used to talk about my mother a lot, talk about winning her back and us being a family again. Then he started dating this Black social worker named Lisa who lived down the street and it was like he forgot all about my mother.”
“Just let me go and I won’t say nothing. You don’t have to kill me. Just let me go. Please, let me go.” The tape had fallen away from Rachael’s mouth.
Natsinet squatted down next to Rachael and tapped her on the head lightly with the butt of the pistol. “You asked me a question. I suggest you let me finish my answer. Because when I’m done talking, I’m probably going to kill you. At least as long as I’m talking, you’re still breathing.” She smoothed the tape back over Rachael’s mouth.
Rachael began to weep. She looked around the room just as Adelle had been doing for the past two weeks, looking for anything that she might use to save her life, and just as Adelle had before, she came up empty. She turned back to look at Natsinet who was still kneeling beside her with the gun. Natsinet’s eyes were no longer hard and cold; now they looked wild as emotions from her childhood flooded back in like reopened wounds bleeding once again. Rachael sobbed louder, realizing that she was at the mercy of a madwoman, a madwoman with a gun.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah…Lisa had two daughters about my age. They hated me because I was half-White and I spoke with an accent. They teased me constantly. They’d even beat me up when no one was looking and threatened to beat me up worse if I told anyone. I never understood why they hated me so much. My father kept going to medical school and was just about to graduate when he was murdered. I kept thinking that momma would take him back once he was a doctor again and he’d leave that Black bitch and her little hellions and we’d be a family again. Then Lisa’s drug-dealin’ ex-boyfriend got out of prison and started coming around. He would come by to see his daughters and then he’d try to talk Lisa into leavin’ my daddy and coming back to live with him. One day he was in the house when my father got home from school. He’d beaten up Lisa and was trying to take the kids. Daddy confronted him, told him to get out, and that bastard shot him. He shot my father right in the chest, killed him instantly.”
Natsinet stood up and walked over to Adelle’s bed. She checked Adelle’s pulse to make sure the old woman was still alive and then removed a syringe from her pocket and shot her up with Demerol to make sure she’d stay unconscious. Then she walked into the next room to get a pillow for the gun. Rachael’s eyes followed her as she came back with the pillow and then walked over and closed the curtains. Rachael began to thrash and scream until the tape came off her mouth again.
“Heeeelp! Heeeelp!”
Natsinet was looking out the window again at the big Black thug across the street when Rachael started screaming. His head snapped back up to the window and he started walking across the street. Natsinet quickly leaned down and smacked the woman with the gun much harder than she’d hit Adelle. The woman stopped screaming. Natsinet struck her again anyway, then again and again and again. Each impact harder than the last. Rachael’s head began to crack and bleed as Natsinet bludgeoned her skull into a misshapen blob. The dull crack of the gun impacting with Rachael’s skull was soon replaced by a sound like a meat tenderizer striking raw steak. Blood splattered the walls and floor as the butt of the pistol continued to rise and fall, occasionally getting stuck as it lodged in Rachael’s ruptured skull, requiring Natsinet to muscle it free so that she could bring it down again. Perspiration beaded on Natsinet’s brow as she put all her weight behind each blow.
Rachael’s ragged breathing continued even after bits of skull and brain matter began to mingle with the blood splattering the walls. Natsinet hammered the woman’s brain into a bloody pudding until Rachael’s lungs finally ceased their wheezing inhalations and her body’s corybantic convulsions came to an end. Rachael let out one last long ragged breath before falling silent forever.
Then the doorbell rang.
Natsinet was covered in Rachael’s blood. Sweat was pouring down her face and she was breathing hard from the exertion. There was no way she was going to answer the door looking like that. She ripped off her shirt and wrapped Rachael’s pulverized skull in it to absorb some of the blood. There were bits of blood and brain matter on her skirt as well. She removed that too.
The doorbell rang again.
Natsinet ran to the bathroom and washed the blood from her hands, arms, and face. She was shrugging into a new skirt when someone began pounding on the door. Natsinet grabbed her shirt and hurried to the door. When she looked out the peephole she saw the big drug dealer from across the street standing outside the door. He was enormous. His body completely filled the doorframe and the peephole only came to his shoulders. He had to bend down so she could see his face.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Mike. I’m here to check on Mrs. Smith. She awight? I heard someone scream in there.”
“She’s fine. She just has nightmares because of the medication.”
“Then let me come in to check on her.”
“I can’t let you in. I don’t know you and Mrs. Smith’s daughter left me strict instructions not to open the door for anyone.”
“Tonya knows me. She told me to keep an eye on the place. It’s okay if I come in.”
“I’ll have to check.”
“Fuck that! Let me the fuck in! Something’s wrong with Mrs. Smith.”
He began pounding on the door again.
“She’s fine and I’m not letting you in, now go away before I call the police!”
Mike hesitated.
“All right, but I’ll be back. And nothing had better be wrong with Mrs. Smith.”
Natsinet continued looking out the peephole as Big Mike turned and walked away. There was no way she could leave the apartment now to get a hacksaw. She was sure that big Black guy and his crew would break into the house while she was gone and find Adelle doped up and Rachael beaten to death on the floor. Then they’d call the police and she’d wind up in the gas chamber. She couldn’t let that happen.
Removing her clothes once again so as not to get them dirty as well, Natsinet went into the kitchen to look for a knife. She walked back into the living room carrying a butcher knife, a serrated carving knife, and a cleaver. Between the three implements she was fairly confident she could chop Rachael up into small enough pieces to dispose of easily. She rounded up some heavy duty trashbags and some duct tape and began dragging Rachael’s lifeless body over to the bathtub, leaving long streaks of blood on the carpet.
“Those are going to be a bitch to clean. I didn’t sign up to be a cleaning lady.”
She looked over at Adelle. She didn’t know why she hated the woman so much. Rachael had been right about one thing, neither of them was directly responsible for her father’s death, or her getting beaten up as a kid, or her mother’s family rejecting her father, or the kids at school calling her a nigger, or her own family treating her differently than they treated all the other grandkids who weren’t half-Black. Now she’d tortured an innocent woman and committed murder, and for what? She didn’t know. All she knew was that the more pain she caused this woman, the better she felt about herself and her family. The more days had gone by, the more she’d wanted to hurt the old lady. It had become like an obsession. Now she had to find a way to end it.