'Where am I?' she repeated.
'This is my school,' he told her, still invisible, but no more than a foot away. 'It's where people come to learn the sad truth about life.'
A light flashed in her eyes, blinding her. She squinted and closed her eyes, seeing hot orange circles in her brain. The brightness dimmed. When she opened her eyes again, the flashlight was pointed at the ceiling. She could see bits and pieces of the room around her. It was some kind of ruin, littered with rusted machinery and debris. Gaping, crumbling holes were punched in the walls. Water fell everywhere, as if the ceiling was a sieve.
'What the hell kind of place is this?'
'A long time ago, it was a classroom. You see what happens when nature and vandals have a few decades to reclaim a building.'
Kasey tried to look up, but the rope around her neck constrained her. She couldn't see her hands. Below her, she was barely able to see her feet, which were tied with gray tape. He had taken off her shoes and socks. She stood precariously on a five-foot circular table, and her bare, cold t — s poked over the round edge of the surface.
He waited as she assessed her condition. He stood on top of a long oak desk, pacing slowly from one end to the other and avoiding the holes where the wood had rotted away. She tried to quash the terror in her face and focus on him with anger and contempt. When he stopped in front of her and leaned close to her face, she sucked in her breath and spat at him.
'You're a sick fuck.' Her voice was raspy. The rope squeezing her throat made it difficult to talk.
He wiped his cheek. 'You could teach other women something about courage, Kasey. That's why I put you behind the teacher's desk, so your students can look up to you.' With a flick of his wrist, he turned the flashlight behind him and toward the floor.
Kasey moaned. The beam of light illuminated four bodies — three women, one man — tied into schoolroom chairs. The women were naked. They had been dead for days, and the remnants of skin had caved in on their skeletons, leaving them sunken and hideously white. Their eyes were open, staring with empty horror. Two dozen black rats, caught as they gnawed on protruding bone and decomposed flesh, scattered in fear as the light struck them.
Kasey squirmed instinctively to escape. The table swayed underneath her.
'That's not a good idea, Kasey.'
He came up to her and stroked her face with the back of his hand. She cringed and tried to pull away.
'You're handcuffed to one of the old water pipes,' he told her. 'It's corroded. Not very sturdy.' He fingered the rope on her neck. 'The noose, though, that's tied to one of the joists in the ceiling.'
'You bastard. What do you want?'
'I told you I have special plans for you.'
'What plans?'
'This is school, Kasey,' he said. 'You have to pass a test.'
'Let me go. Don't do this to me. Don't kill me.'
He fingered the buttons on her shirt and idly popped the first three and spread the fabric apart. His hand pressed on her chest and felt it rise and fall. 'Maybe I won't need to kill you. Maybe we can leave together. Both of us. Would you go with me?'
She grimaced. 'Go where?'
'Away.'
'What if I did?'
'Are you saying you'd stay with me?'
'To save my life?' she stammered. 'Yes.'
Slowly, he undid the rest of her shirt and let it hang open. 'You forget, you can't lie to me. I'm just like you.'
'Why ask if you won't believe me?'
'Because I like to hear you say yes. I like it when you're scheming and ruthless. What would you do if we went away? Would you plot to kill me? Would you spend every minute looking for your chance?'
'You know I would,' she snapped. There was no point in a charade. She wasn't going to change the outcome.
'You may be the most exciting woman I've ever met,' he said with admiration.
He laid the flashlight at his feet. From inside his pocket, he pulled out Kasey's knife. She sucked in her breath. He extended the thin strip of elastic at the base of her bra. Dragging the rusted point of the knife against her skin, he sliced through the elastic and nudged the cups of the bra apart, baring her breasts. In the cold, her rose nipples puckered into rocks. He bent down and covered each nipple with his mouth in turn and sucked on it. She felt her breasts releasing milk.
He licked his lips, tasting her. 'I hear breast-feeding gets a woman horny. Is that true?' He straightened up, stroking the globes of her breasts with his hands.
'Don't touch me.'
'I can't stop,' he said.
He reached down to the button at the waist of her jeans and undid it. Her jaw hardened with fury as he slid the zipper down. She shunted her knees tightly together and made it hard for him to strip her. He paid attention to her clothes, not to her, and when she saw her chance, she took it. She jacked her knees into the air, dangling from the pipe above her, which groaned and sank two inches, pulling slack from the noose and nearly strangling her. Her knees caught her tormentor solidly under the jaw and snapped him backward, where he tumbled off the long desk and landed in a crash on the floor. The flashlight rolled away and went black. She hunted for the swaying table with her feet and caught it before it wobbled out of her reach. With a gasp, she eased on to the table and let go of the pipe. The rope remained taut, and she struggled to inhale.
Below her, she heard him moving slowly and painfully. Getting up. Limping. Hunting through debris for the light.
'That was a mistake, Kasey,' he growled from the darkness. The teasing in his voice was gone. Only the cruelty remained. She didn't care.
The light went on again, but it was dimmer. He climbed back on to the desk, and she could see his face. Blood trickled from his mouth. His eyes had narrowed into dots of fury and coldness. He reared back and drove his right fist underhanded into her abdomen. Her body doubled over with pain, and the rope grew more constricted, and air flooded from her lungs. Each breath felt labored as she tried to suck in oxygen. She thought she would gag and choke on her vomit.
'I was going to leave you like this to wait for me,' he told her. 'But not now. The test just got much harder.'
He drew out a key from his pocket and reached up and undid the handcuffs from each of her wrists and let them clang to the floor. Kasey dropped her arms back down to her sides. She didn't know what he was doing. Why he was freeing her.
Then he got down from the desk and dragged it away from her, and she understood his plan. She stood on the table with only its shaky base propping her up. The noose dragged on her neck, pushing her head forward. If the table fell, she would hang herself.
He breathed heavily and tended to the blood on his face. 'How long can you hold on to the pipe, Kasey? Five minutes? Fifteen?'
She didn't talk.
'I have to leave, but I'll be back soon. Can you hang on until then? Or will you just give up and die? I'm giving you a choice, Kasey, but remember, if you fail the test, your family dies. It's not pretty, but those are the stakes. Understand?'
She didn't say anything.
'Do you understand?' he repeated.
'Yes,' she gasped.
'Good. That's good. Now hold on tight.'
Kasey knew what was coming. She watched him closely, but she didn't put her hands up immediately. She wanted blood flowing into her arms as long as possible to give her strength. Only when she saw him moving closer, his face dark and menacing, did she finally reach up and take hold of the pipe again. The freezing metal was like a flame. Touching it burned her, and she could barely hold on. But she had to hold on.
He swept the table from under her feet. Her legs dangled in midair. Only her grip on the pipe kept her suspended.
'If you survive the next few minutes, the rest will be easy for you,' he said, stroking the bare skin of her stomach as she twitched over the floor. 'I want you to prepare yourself while I'm gone, because your family is counting on you. You see, I'm going to bring someone here for you, Kasey. A new student for our classroom. And all you have to do to pass the test… is kill them for me.'