And the place stinks, man. Good, god, it smelled horrible. I could see all this food spread out across the kitchen table, could hear the flies just buzzin’ around it, lovin’ the way it’s just been left out to spoil and rot.
I go ahead and put that little dust mask over my face and adjust the elastic band so it’s nice and tight like. I’d brought the damn thing along to make sure I didn’t get any of that bitch’s infectious blood in my mouth, ya know? Now it also helped with the smell of all that rancid food, so I was feelin’ pretty smug about my foresight and all as I slipped the goggles over my eyes.
This is the point where I finally put the hood on and cinched the little drawstrings around my chin real nice and tight. With the full suit encasing my body, the heat built up real quick. It was like I’d just surrounded myself with a greenhouse or some shit. That Tyvek stuff, it really doesn’t breathe at all, ya know? That was good, that meant nothing could soak through my clothes, nothing could taint me with its evil little mutagens.
Finally, I was ready. I slipped the gun outta the duffel, made sure my workbench silencer was still nice and tight on the barrel, and stood there listening to my own heart while I whispered a little oath to Ocean.
Shit, man, I don’t remember what I fuckin’ said. I had more pressing things on my mind than recording each and every thought that went through my head for posterity. All I knew was that my long hours of waiting and watching, of observing and stalking, had finally come to a climax. I’d been mentally preparing myself as well, there was no way I was gonna allow myself to feel sorry for her again, to walk a fuckin’ mile in her shoes and all that happy horse shit.
No, I’d learned my lesson that night at the mall and had spent hours visualizing this very moment so I could like, desensitize myself, ya know? Picturing all the different scenarios with that clarity of imagination you can only get from a really nice sack of chronic, and now, it was all about to pay off. It was time for Ms. Clarice fuckin’ Hudson to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The woman waddled toward the door, her arms cradled beneath a stomach so round it pulled the hem of her stained, tattered smock almost entirely up to her mustn’t touch. Her face was round as well, however her skin had a tint almost as yellow as the crumpled papers that made up her bedding. She looked old, tired, with dark bags hanging beneath eyes that held only the faintest shine. Her sickly pallor was thrown into even sharper focus by the strands of greasy, dark hair that clung to her cheeks and neck.
“You’ve got to help me… please. You were here last night, right? I saw you leaving as I was waking up.”
For a moment, Ocean could only stand there with her jaw gaping open. Questions flew through her head like a pack of startled flies, but somehow the words seemed to get lost somewhere between thought and expression.
“Who…” she finally stammered. “Who are you?”
“They call me Vessel.” The woman spoke in a rapid whisper, craning her neck, trying to peer around the barred window.
Being that close to the door, Ocean could smell the sour stench of unwashed flesh and the slightly musty odor of clothes whose fibers had begun the slow march toward decay.
“There’s no time, he’ll come. He’ll kill me. You’ve got to let me out. Please, let me go. Let us go.”
The woman glanced down at her belly to accent her use of the plural and Ocean could see that she was visibly shaking now, her faded, dull eyes brimmed with tears. The woman named Vessel looked as if she were only moments away from collapsing to the floor.
“I… I don’t understand. Who’ll kill you? Why are you here? You’re pregnant? You’re going to have a baby?”
Now that the initial shock had faded, questions spilled from her mind almost more quickly than she could ask them. Her eyes darted about the interior of the cell as if she could somehow find the answers scrawled across the dingy walls.
“Just let me out, girl, for the love of God, let me go. I swear, I won’t tell anyone it was you. You’ll never see me again. I just want to have my baby.” Tears streamed down Vessel’s face. “Understand? I just want to have my baby. I don’t care that it’s his anymore. I just want to hold her. I just want to see her grow up. I just want her to live.”
Ocean steadied herself against the door as the room swam in and out of focus, struggling to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, to arrange them into a pattern that made sense. Who did this scared, pregnant lady keep referring to? She said he and him… did she mean Gauge? No, she couldn’t mean Gauge. Could she?
“There used to be more. So many more but now there’s just
poor Vessel. Poor Vessel and her baby, see? Poor Vessel and her rapist’s bastard. But I don’t care, I don’t. I just want my baby.”
Corduroy. She had to be talking about Corduroy—it was all beginning to come together now. The way the sick bastard was always watching her, always leering from across the room. Why he hadn’t told Gauge when he’d had every opportunity to do so. He must have locked this woman in here, forced himself on her—
“Just open the door, girl. Okay? Open the door for poor Vessel?”
“I…”
Ocean glanced at the wooden plank barring the way. “I… I don’t know… I don’t—”
“Please, girl, please, please, please!”
Hiding her face in her hands, Ocean inhaled through her mouth as if she’d just run from the end of the north tunnel all the way to the south. She slumped against the wooden door. “Gauge,” she said finally. “I’ll go get Gauge. He’ll know what to—”
“No!” The woman grasped the metal bars so suddenly and tightly that it seemed she was trying to force her face through them. Her eyes and pupils were perfectly round now, and Ocean could see a vein in her neck throb with her racing pulse.
“No, didn’t you hear me? He’ll kill us. Like he did the others. When they got too old to… “
Ocean wanted to press her fingers into her ears, to shout until the sound of her own voice drowned out the woman’s frightened babble. She’s crazy. She’s locked up because she went crazy, that was it. Just some crazy woman who would probably kill them all in their sleep if she had half a chance.
“He… he wouldn’t. Gauge is nice, Gauge is good—”
“Gauge is a manipulative, psycho son of a bitch and the quicker you accept that, the better off you’ll be. Now please, open the door. Okay? Just open the door.”
Why the hell did everything have to be so damn difficult? So confusing? It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair that her mama had attacked her for nothing more than a bite of rat, that she’d been forced to murder her own mother and leave the only home she’d ever known. And then to find this place… to have found Gauge, to have known what it meant to be happy and content and loved. Why won’t anyone just let me be fucking happy? Was that so wrong? To want to feel as safe and secure as she once had in her father’s arms? Why was someone always trying to take that from her.
“You’re lying. You’re crazy and you’re lying. He saved me. He fed me and—”
“He used you, girl. Just like he used me. Just like he used the others.”
“Shut up!” Ocean had her face pressed right up to the bars now, so close that she could feel the warmth of Vessel’s breath on her nose. Her voice was shrill and piercing, and she could feel her nostrils flared with each forced breath. “Shut your lying mouth, you bitch!”