She crouched behind Matt’s chair and pulled at his ropes, freeing him much more quickly than she had herself. In less than a minute, they were both reaching behind their heads and undoing the buckles on the ball gags; when, at last, they were completely free of Mary’s little toys, Matt embraced his wife so tightly that it almost seemed as if her were attempting to somehow pull her into the safety of his own body.
Their lips parted and they kissed deeply, their tongues gliding over one another in passionate fury… but only for a moment. Then they pulled away from each other and glanced around the room like a pair of tigers who’d just realized the zoo keeper had left the door of the cage open.
“Oh shit, babe… your wrists.”
Matt practically ran to the desk and shuffled through the scrapbooking material that cluttered its top. At the same time, Mona stalked across the room and pulled back the curtains just enough so that she was able to peek out the window.
The morning sun had crested the horizon now and glistened on the snow as if the rolling dunes had been dusted with glitter. At the corner of the house, and almost entirely out of sight, she could just make out a car. It was a black and white sedan and a row of red and blue lights perched on its top. She turned her head toward Matt, who had found a scalpel-like Exacto knife and was busy cutting long strips of cloth from the hem of his shirt.
“Cops, Mattie… she’s talking to a cop.”
Matt, however, acted as if he hadn’t heard Mona’s report. He ripped free the last piece of cloth and hurried to Mona’s side, where he began wrapping them around her wrists so gently it almost seemed as if he were afraid the makeshift bandages would cause her arms to crumble.
“I’m pretty sure that cunt locked the door.” He said as he worked.
Mona nodded.
“Yeah, I heard it, too. Did you see the bow in the case in the hallway? What I wouldn’t do to get my hands on that.”
Matt tied the dressings carefully, trying to ensure that the pressure didn’t cause his wife any more pain that what she already had to be feeling.
“Think the cop is looking for us?”
Mona turned the question over in her mind for a moment before replying.
“Don’t see how… nobody knows we’re here. Has to be somethign else, I think.”
“Yeah. That’s about the way I have it figured, too. Here, you take this.”
Matt handed Mona the Exacto knife and she grinned despite the deep throbbing that ached in her bandaged wrists.
“Oh sweetie…” she said with a wink, “you shouldn’t have.”
“More practical than flowers and better than a card. Now… what do you say we get the hell out of here, princess?”
The couple crept across the room, their feet creaking so softly on the floorboards that it easily could have been mistaken for nothing more than the warmth of the rising sun expanding the old wood. Approaching the door on the opposite side of the room, Matt turned the knob so slowly that he almost seemed like a cat burglar trying to gain entrance. Pressing one hand against the door, he opened it carefully so that the creaking of hinges wouldn’t give them away.
The room on the other side was much darker and emptier than the one they’d been held captive in. Rather than smelling of lilacs and body powder, this one had an almost coppery, salty aroma in the air. Mixed with this was a stench that reminded Mona of the time their toilet had been clogged for nearly three days: something like shit and stale piss tainted the air and, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she noticed the sole piece of furniture in the room for the first time.
It was a large, butcher block table that looked as though its legs had been bolted to the floor by a series of metal fixtures. A naked woman leaned across the table with her hands stretched out in front of her and she seemed to be placing all of her body weight into her torso. Even so, her buckled knees trembled and Mona wondered for a moment why the woman simply didn’t sit down upon the floor. She looked pale and tired and the skin drooped from her frame as if she’d lost a lot of weight in a very short period of time. But there was something else… a series of dark lines marred her skin almost to the point that it looked as though her emaciated body had been used to draw clusters of tic-tac-toe boards onto her flesh.
“What the fuck is this?”
At the sound of Matt’s voice, the oily mass of tangles that was the woman’s hair turned slightly. She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes grew round as she saw the couple in the doorway. Tears streamed from the corner and she mumbled excitedly into the same sort of gag that Matt and Mona had come to know all too well.
Matt walked across the room as if the woman might leap toward him at any second. With steps as slow and deliberate as a big game hunter, he circled around the table while his eyes took in every detail.
“Oh shit, sweetie… her hands have been nailed to the table. She’s cut up bad, too.”
Mona stayed in the doorway and looked back into the room they’d came out, listening for the key to rattle in the door once again. The Exacto knife was leveled in front of her and, if her husband’s words had any impact on her at all, it was not betrayed by the hard expression that was chiseled onto her face.
“Looks like this bitch has been kept here a while.”
The woman probably thought she was thrashing about, but—in her weakened state—she looked more like a fish that had been thrown onto the bank for far too long and was in the final stages of its death throes. She continued babbling into the ball gag and her eyes almost seemed to plead with Matt, who squatted down next to her.
“Look, I’m going to take that gag out, okay? But you have to stay quiet. That old lady? She doesn’t know we’re free yet. And we want to keep it that way, okay? You understand?”
The woman nodded her head as tears glistened on her hollow cheeks.
“Okay… I’m taking the gag off, now.”
Standing, Matt slid the straps through the buckle on the back of the woman’s head and plopped the ball from her mouth. Almost immediately, loud sobs burst from her mouth like water from a crumbled damn. Matt slapped his hand over the woman’s lips so hard that her head snapped backward. Even then, her words kept bubbling up like the snot that was beginning to leak from her noise.
“Look,” he hissed, “I told you… stay quiet. I mean it, okay? I’m not fucking around here, you understand?”
The woman sniffled and nodded her head again as she tried to blink away her tears.
“You sure? Because I’m serious… you only get one more chance, honey.”
More nodding.
Matt eased his hand away from the woman’s mouth, ready to clamp it back down if he had to. But this time the lady with the nails in her hands stayed true to her word. Her voice was nothing more than a whimper that hitched and quivered with tears.
“Crazy, they’re all crazy, please get me out of here, please, please, please.”
“Shhhh… it’s okay… shhhh….”
From outside the house an engine rumbled, causing Mona to spin around as quickly as a ballerina. She now faced the locked door in the other room again as she held the Exacto knife in front of her like a swordsman preparing for battle.
“Cop’s leaving.” She whispered. “I figure that old hag will wait until he’s well out of sight before….”
“Cop? There’s a cop here? What’s wrong you with, you people? There’s a cop!”
Darlene’s eyes darted from Matt to Mona and then back to Matt again. Both of them stared at her silently, almost as if it had never crossed their minds that maybe, perhaps, they could simply yell for help. That all of this could be over, that they could go home, be free…