Breaking Point (5 page)

Breath.

“Swear on Sid’s life.”

Breath.

“Not joking”

Breath.

“Tracey, no joke.”

Breath.

“Send the cops.”

Breath.

“Please.”

Breath.

“Tracey?”

I look down. The phone is dead, the light on the display gone. Dead battery. ‘Dimension’ finishes. ‘White Unicorn’ begins.

I’m out of time. I stare at my phone stupidly, wondering how much of what I said got through, how much she heard. Whether or not (oh please, fucking please) she got my location, worst of all, doesn’t think I was joking. My phone stares back at me, dormant, useless. My lifeline well and truly burned up. Just me and the madman now.

Yes, just you and him. And what do you suppose he’s going to do when he comes back in and sees that phone?

Fuck.

CHAPTER 9

I can’t get it back in my pocket; that’s the thing. It was one thing to push it until it fell out. It’s altogether another to pick the fucking thing up and push it back in. Even if I could somehow manage the pain -
you fucking couldn’t
- my goddamn beshitted winter gloves are just too thick for my fucking tight jean pockets. And that’s without fractures. I give some thought to removing my glove, but leaving aside similar pain threshold issues, that would create the additional problem of exposing my wedding band. This strikes me as a supremely bad idea. Fuck. FUCK!

Raw panic starts gnawing at my insides, like a vicious cornered rodent. What the fuck was I thinking? What the hell am I going to do? I can’t get out of this one. I’m going to fucking die. As soon as he sees the phone, he’s going to beat me to death. I see this with perfect, terrible clarity. He will see the phone. His eyes will widen. He’ll storm out and come back with the bat and just lay into me - body blow after body blow - until my ribs splinter and pierce my lungs and stomach, and he’ll watch me choke and drown in my own blood and shit. The image fills my imagination, blotting out everything else, and I’m shaking and crying again, but I’m only aware of it in an abstract way because the cavalry isn’t coming. If it does, it’ll be too late, and they’ll find me with my bugle sticking out of my ass and my scalp on the belt of this vicious, smiling fucker.

The phone splits in two, then fractures, then dissolves as the tears fill my eyes again. My fucking lifeline, my sure and certain doom. Fucking phone.

“Fuck you.”

It’s my wife’s voice, coming from the phone. The light hasn’t come back on. It’s still dead. But there you go. It’s definitely her.

“Fucking stop it. I heard you, okay? I’d already called the cops, and now they know where to look for you. Do you know how quickly they can get to you now? I heard it all, and the cops know you’re being held and they will be there. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe less. So get your fucking shit together, okay? Don’t fuck it up now. Hold on and get back to me, okay Frank? Just do that.”

I take a shuddering breath, blink hard, clear away the tears. And it’s obviously not her - it’s just my mind, trying to bail me out - but the shock and the pain and the misery and the adrenaline and the passing out have sufficiently baked my noggin that this is how my saner self decides to communicate with me. Through her. Which is utterly fitting.
Why don’t you let her save your life?

Why not, indeed? I flip the phone shut against the floor. I push back against the wall with my shoulders and slide my arse forward, creating a small gap between my lower back and the skirting board. Few breaths, then I flick the phone back there. I get it done in one motion, which is good, but dragging my fingers along the ground and utilizing my upper arm muscles in the process is not so good. The world turns grey, and I notice, in my new detached way, that my teeth are grinding together, and a sound is forcing itself out of my throat. I sound like a scared dog. Appropriately enough. I lean back against the wall, and I can feel the small rectangle of plastic and wires that will prove to be either my salvation or my damnation pressing into my left buttock. So be it. Either the cops get here quick, or he moves me and finds it and he kills me quick. That’s the choice I’ve made and the more I think about it (as the pain subsides some and colour fades back into the world) the more it feels like the right one. Either of those options seems preferable to the menu for the evening as presented.

So, I rest my head back against the wall, and I just let my breathing slow and the sweat flow. I try hard to send ‘take a long shower’ thoughts to my would-be killer.
Take all the time in the world. Have a shower. Hell, have a wank, have a pizza, take a long time getting your tools in order, and enjoy the thought of me stewing down here, shitting myself.

This in turn leads me to another decision: when he does come back in here, I’m going to beg. I’m going to act as out of my mind with fear as I can and I’m going to beg as long as he lets me. Every second he’s not damaging me counts now. Brings salvation closer.
Hurry up, you fuckers.

CHAPTER 10

‘White Unicorn’ (five minutes? Surely four and a half) becomes ‘Woman.’ ‘Woman’ (four minutes, tops) becomes ‘Where Eagles Have Been.’ Nothing happens. No cops. No killer. I start to get antsy then decide not to. I decide that I’m going to play this, from now on, as though the cops are going to rescue me and then just do what I need to do to make that happen. Fuck doubts. Fuck what ifs. Fuck the dodgy battery and spotty connection: she heard me, and they will come. It’s interesting to realise that I can make this decision, that the choice is mine. I decide I’m going to tell people about this when I make it out.

When I make it out.

I close my eyes and listen to the song, really listen, the way music is best heard, and it’s beautiful, soaring stuff. The singer is singing about reality, about never going back.

I can relate.

The door opens. He’s back, dragging a huge plastic storage container, apparently too heavy for him to lift. It’s wide enough that it scrapes the doorframe on its way in. He’s changed his shirt to a plain white T without vomit on, but otherwise is dressed the same as before. In a truly surreal moment, I catch a whiff of Lynx Africa - could be deodorant, but my money is on shower gel. Jeezus, please us.

The box is blue plastic, and there’s a blue tarp on the top of it so I can’t immediately see the contents.

He drags the box to the centre of the room, then removes the tarp and unfolds it on the floor in front of me. He lifts my boots up to slide one edge under them, but he does so without making eye contact. His face is alert, focused, but somehow distant. I realise again that I’m a meat puppet in an over-rehearsed play. This is his show.  All of a sudden, the begging seems like a bad idea. I don’t know why, exactly, but it’s a very strong intuition and I decide to obey it.

He wasn’t kidding about tools. There’s a large hacksaw first. He lays this down carefully on the tarp. Displaying it. Next a circular saw, cordless. Not exactly subtle. Now a scalpel. A paint stripper. A sander. Fucking hell. A bottle of vinegar. Pliers. A chisel. A Zippo lighter. A hammer. A nail gun. He’s laying each of these items out on the tarp in turn. It has a feeling of ritual about it. I guess that he’s done this many times on his own, in rehearsal for tonight.

A bottle of turps (he turns this so I can read the label). Some rags. A box of light bulbs. Wolfmother play throughout. ‘Where Eagles Have Been’ becomes ‘Apple Tree’, and still the delights come. A set of sewing needles.  One of those adjustable spanners. A cordless drill. He revs this once, staring at the rotating bit, then places it down. Finally, the baseball bat.

He looks up at me. “Any questions?”

“Please.” Completely involuntary. Utterly sincere.

“Yeah. Where to start?”

He picks up the hammer thoughtfully.

“This was going to be my kickoff, you know. Thought I’d use it on your fingers. Short sharp shock sort of thing. Get you in the game.” His eyes mist over thoughtfully, then refocus. “But we’ve gotten there with the broken arms, right? Yeah. Shame.”

He seems genuinely regretful as he puts down the hammer, and I think part of him is, but oh, those dancing eyes.

He picks up the sander.

“Let’s start with something a little more gentle, shall we?”

He walks over and squats in front of me. I guess the cavalry isn’t getting here just yet. Fuck it. I grit my teeth, and he must see the tension in my jaw because he laughs as he pushes my chin, turning my head sideways.

“Try not to squirm too much. I don’t want you to lose an eye.” The 'yet' is silent.

I draw breath to speak, but he’s too quick and the sander is pressed into my cheek and I feel a click and then my whole head is suddenly vibrating, like when you rest your cheek against a car window during a long journey, only the vibration is rattling my teeth together, viciously, and the skin on my cheek feels as though it’s burning, and the breath I drew comes out all at once in a scream. He holds it there for what feels like forever, and I’ve run out of breath to scream, but I’m still trying to exhale, incapable of drawing fresh breath. I feel my blood starting to run down my chin, and it seems like I can feel my brain being rattled in my skull, right along with my teeth, and just as I’m sure I’m going to upchuck again, the hellish buzzing stops.

He looks into my eyes, my right filled with water above my ruined cheek. He dips his index finger in my blood and holds it up for me to see. Whatever reaction I give, he nods. He replaces the sander on the tarp, picks up the bottle of meths. Soaks one of the rags. Aww, fuck it.

“Looks like you need a clean up there.” Smiling.

He comes back over to me, squats, turns my cheek as before and wipes the rag into the raw skin. The fire reignites, sweat pops all over my face, tears in both eyes this time, a grunt of pain that turns into a panting whimper as I draw quicker and quicker breaths, terrified of reigniting my ribs, incapable of preventing the involuntary vowel sounds that accompany each exhalation. The rag is pretty bloody when he holds it up again.

“Well. Shall we turn the other cheek?” His face is solemn. But his eyes are laughing.

“Please. No.”

Breath.

“Please.”

He nods, slowly. “All right, all right. Something else, yeah? Here, stand up, will you?  I want you on your feet for this one.”

I think about begging off, but, if he needs me on my feet, he’ll get me there, and the thought of what his manhandling could do to my arms… does not appeal.

“Besides,” says Tracey, “Your legs are currently the only unfucked parts of you. And you’re wearing those steel toe caps I bought you, right? Your left hook may have seen better days, sweetheart, but I bet you could do some damage with those cyclist legs if you get the right shot.”

Fuck yeah.

So I use my legs for leverage and slide up from a sitting to standing position, back to the wall. I make an even bigger meal out of it than it is (though it’s no cakewalk without arms in the equation) to try and make sure my phone stays behind my leg the whole time.

It doesn’t work. I have to put all my weight on my lower back and ass to get the leverage to slide up the wall, and the fucking phone is wedged between my ass and the wall, so as I slide up, the fucker slides up with me, trapped between the wall and my left butt cheek. So, by the time I’m upright, I’m as sweaty and panicked as I guess I should be, and he smiles.

“Good. Well done.”

He’s holding a light bulb in his left hand, next to his temple, bulb facing me, turning it in his fingers. For the first time since this started, I’m on my feet
,
and I realise that, though he’s clearly a lot stronger, he’s not a huge amount taller than me. My eyes track between him and the light bulb, wearily. The bulb is small, round, twenty five watts maybe, the kind that fits in overhead chandelier-style lights, in clusters. My pulse, my heartbeat, thuds and each thud sends waves of pain through my chest and my arms and, alongside them, waves of fatigue. I’m exhausted - dead on my feet, haha - and the terror is still there, but it’s a dull, uninterested terror. All right, what is this shit?

He walks up to me until we’re one step away from being nose to nose, and holds up the bulb in front of my face.

“Open your mouth.”

I’m really not feeling this. He notices my hesitation. In one fluid movement, he smashes the bulb against the wall, then thrusts the jagged end at my right eye, grabbing my ruined cheek with the other hand to stop me moving. His fingers sink into the raw, bloody flesh. It feels like grit in the wound. My jaw clenches, I close my eyes involuntarily and strain to turn away. I feel jagged glass pierce the skin of my eyelid.

“Do you want to lose your fucking eye?” Calm. Conversational. Only not really. The fire is back, a white hot force that will never burn out.

“No. Please.”

For a short eternity, we don’t move. We breathe, and I await with total terror the increase in pressure that will lead to my eyeball being cut.

Then he steps back. For another long second, I can’t quite bring myself to open my eyes, convinced it’s a trick, that, as soon as I do - surprise! - he’s gonna jam that fucking thing into my socket.