She heard the footsteps cross the room and the burning smell was stronger and she tensed herself knowing what was to come, that they were going to brand her like a cow, scar her, that she’d wear this awful thing the rest of her life, she’d have this to remember them by even once they were dead and buried, knowing too that it was useless to struggle, that it would only be worse for her later, god only knew how much worse and she damned them and damned her helplessness and steeled herself, telling herself not to move, it would hurt even more if she moved or if they had to do it over again god forbid so she pressed her body tight to the X-frame, the X-frame was suddenly her friend, it would help her not to move and when the burning began just to the left of the crack of her ass she screamed long and hard and high into the ball and gag and heard and smelled her own flesh burn, fine hair burning and meat.
Her body drenched itself with sudden sweat, her body wanted to put out the fire that was huge like a thousand pinpricks everywhere, not just her ass but everywhere and when it was done she slumped groaning in her manacles and hung limp against the X-frame and heard ice and water sloshing in a metal container and then he was pressing an ice cold cloth to the wound and some of the pain slid into the cloth and out of her, coming back fierce and hot again and again as the rag cooled until he immersed it again and pressed it to her and all the while they said nothing, silent as priests standing before an altar.
Kath double-checked her work on the bandage. There was just enough play in the square white gauze pad so that when Sara moved around inside the Long Box the tape wouldn’t pull it too tight and the wound would be able to breathe. Overnight the bacitracin would do its work but the V-shaped blister probably would still suppurate for a while. She’d have to watch that. Have a look at it first thing in the morning.
No infections.
The home-made branding iron, a two-pronged fondue fork with a tooled wooden handle, lay beside the cooling hotplate on the worktable. She needed to put that away. Sara was never supposed to see what he’d used to create “his symbol.” He was very good at coming up with imaginative uses for everyday household items. In his hands a meat skewer, a pizza cutter or even a dozen clothespins and some twine could transform themselves into instruments of exquisite torture, worse in a lot of ways than all the belts and whips. The fondue fork was a new one but then he was always coming up with new stuff. She’d see him sometimes just sitting in a chair staring off into space and know he was dreaming about all the possibilities. Trying them out in his mind.
Sometimes just watching him would make her shudder.
She took Sara by the shoulders and turned her toward the box and gently pushed her forward. She still wore the gag and blindfold. Her steps were small, tentative. Almost childlike.
“Okay. Stop here.”
The box was open but she still needed to slide out the runnered panel. Stephen had used three-in-one oil on the wheels and runners just this morning so it slid out easily.
“Guess what?” she said. “You get a treat tonight. Three treats actually. First, no gag. You saw last night — there’s nobody around anyway. Plus the walls are soundproofed.”
She untied it and lifted the rubber ball out of her mouth. She never liked this part. The ball was slimy. She didn’t even like the feel of it when she had to take it out of her own mouth. Much less somebody else’s.
“Second, you get this. Hold out your hand.”
She handed her a thin faded cotton nightgown. It used to be her mother’s. Her mother was dead three years now or would be in December and she’d ransacked the house for anything that might be of use to them before they sold the property. No sense wasting. Most of what she took turned out to be less useful than she’d thought. The nightgown, for instance, had sat in mothballs along with a bunch of other stuff in a box in the attic ever since. It was much too big for her. And much too big for Sara. But it would do. After a washing it still smelled faintly of mothballs but that hardly mattered.
Thanks, ma.
“You can put it on.”
She said nothing, not even a thank you, only found the neck of it and then the bottom and pulled it on over her head. Kath guessed she’d have to tell Stephen about her lack of gratitude.
“But the real treat, because of the mark and all, is you get to sleep on a mattress tonight. An air-mattress. Otherwise you’d never get any sleep, you know? Stephen pumped it up for you. See? Here, lean down and feel.”
She took her arm and guided her hand.
“Nice and soft, right? You need to use the toilet or anything?”
She shook her head no.
“Okay, move over here and lie down and I’ll scoot you in. Careful not to scrape the bandages or it’ll hurt like a bitch. Plus I’ll have to do you up all over again.”
She watched her ease herself down, favoring her right hip, then move her legs in along the mattress and lie slowly back, once again favoring her right side.
It still wasn’t going to be an easy night, she thought. Air mattress or no air mattress. Burns hurt. And what was it that they said? you bang your elbow once, you’ll probably bang it again. She’d roll over on the burn at some point for sure. None of that was her problem though and Stephen was waiting for her upstairs in the bedroom. She knew he’d want to fuck tonight. She didn’t know if she could handle it if he got as energetic as he had the night before. She’d be wearing the bruises from that little session for days.
They also said that killing makes you horny.
She supposed she had the proof of that one.
” ’Night,” she said and pushed the panel into the box and swung the headpiece shut and threw the lock. As she stood again she smelled her own perspiration wafting up at her.
If they were going to fuck she was definitely going to need a shower.
Sara felt it immediately down at the end of the box.
The cat lay curled at her feet.
She wondered when it had crept in and how it had avoided getting hurt by the sliding panel and thought that well, cats were very agile. She’d known that since she was a girl.
She’d learned the hard way.
Her cat Tiggy was then just a kitten. She was only five or six herself and loved him to distraction. She probably drove him crazy half the time, always wanting to pick him up and hold him, chasing him around the house trying to pet him. But he was patient with her in his catlike way and tolerated her hugs and kisses until his own enjoyment began to wear thin, at which point he’d signal that enough was enough with a little meow and more often than not she’d let him drop then and let him go his way.
Sometimes though she wouldn’t, not right away and the reason was his breath. His breath was one of her guilty pleasures. His fur smelled wonderful. But in some ways his breath smelled even better. It smelled to her like the seashore. It always did, whether it was fish or chicken or meat-flavored food he’d been eating and this she found amazing. It was warm and rich and its salty tang reminded her of summers by the shore. So sometimes she’d wouldn’t let him go at the first meow. Instead she’d hold onto him, nose up close to his mouth for a whiff of his breath on the second meow. She wouldn’t let him squirm away.
And just this one time he bit her.
They were out on the back lawn sitting in the grass and she was holding him, holding him too long and probably too tightly and instead of meowing the second time as he usually did he nipped her nose instead. Not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to hurt and make her angry, actually suddenly furious at him and when she thought about it later as an adult she realized she must have seen the bite as a kind of rejection. A rejection of her love just like her father’s rejection because she was a girl and not the boy he wanted. Like her mother’s merely qualified acceptance. Like other kids’ rejection because she was fat and not yet pretty.