Hollis
“Ta-da,”Bates said in an even tone as he set me down. I arched an eyebrow and looked up at him before he spun me on my heels and walked over to something he had suspended from the ceiling.
It was covered by a dirty white sheet, it moved slightly, and as one of his fists gripped the sheet, I braced myself for the worst.
I let out a gasp as my hands flew to my mouth when he made the big reveal.
Suspended from a fucking hook was the one that started it all that night. The one that fed me the strongest drink the bar had, the one that told his friends to follow us into the bathroom.
The one that exposed me to them.
The one that started the entire brutal assault.
Bates let the sheet drop from his hand as he made his way toward the bench behind him, and rolled his shoulders.
“I was saving him for our anniversary in a few days, but I figure what the hell? May as well get this over with so we can have a quiet night at home when the time comes.”
I was frozen in place reliving every fucking thing that was done to me that night. I could feel every punch, every strand of hair that was ripped out of my head, every cock thrust into me, but most of all I heard the laughter. The cruel way that they mocked me and the way he encouraged it. He told them that no one would believe me and that they may as well kill me, but I guess they got bored just before the final strike that would have more than likely ended me, because they decided to leave me lying on a dirty bathroom floor in shame instead.
“Do you know how hard it was for me not to tell you about this?” Bates asked in his even tone. “To let you know that I found this son of a bitch and kept him on ice for the past few weeks?”
Behind the hanging man was a blur of brand-new silver blades, sharp and unused, waiting for this exact moment.
But they weren’t what Bates settled on.
No, to begin this act of violence, he held a meat hook in each hand and made his way around him to stand between us.
“This is going to hurt. But you’ve earned every fucking ounce of this pain,” he told him as cracked his neck.
And before I had a chance to move, Bates lifted both arms above his head, and brought them crashing down into the man’s flesh with a furious cry that I had never witnessed from him before.
He was usually so quiet, so level-headed, and now… he was something else entirely.
With a grunt, he pushed the hooks deeper into him, then used so much force to yank them down his torso, that I could see every muscle in his arms strain from the effort.
I took a step backward as he left the hooks embedded into his body, then moved to the left side of the hanging man.
Giving me a malicious grin, Bates forced his hands into the fresh wound, dug his heels into the floor, and began to pull at the skin until the sick sound of sinew giving way—coupled by the splatter of blood that hit the ground—greeted me and he managed to tear him partially open.
Oh, but he was so weak. Too weak to make another sound other than the initial scream he let out when Bates embedded the hooks into his flesh. Too weak to open his eyes and look at me, to understand why he had become captive in a home he didn’t know. Too weak to understand why someone like him had to die in this manner.
Wringing my hands, I walked slowly, moving around them as Bates repositioned himself to the right side and plunged his fist in, pulling and yanking the torn flesh back.
I looked down at the bench behind where Bates had retrieved his tools from, letting my fingers gently touch each of the blades until I found one I liked best.
Picking it up, I walked back around them as Bates wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bloody arm, then gave me a curious, even glance.
“He needs to see,” I told him quietly.
Bates held his hand out for the knife, but I shook my head. With a nod, he picked me up and balanced me on his shoulder.
“If he tries to move, I’ll open him up some more, so do what you need to, pretty girl,” he stated.
Leaning forward, I placed a palm on his forehead, steadied my shaking hand, and put the tip of the blade just above his left eyelid.
“Look at me,” I hissed as I drew the blade along the soft flesh over and over until blood seeped from a new wound in his body. Until I was able to dig my fingernails in and peel it away from his goddamn face. His eye was rolled up into the back of his head, but it didn’t stop me from repeating the action on the right eyelid. If he was going to play dead, he was going to have to fucking see death first.
And in this instance, Death was more than a man.