Housebroken (28 page)

Pink wallpaper in bright spotted patterns sporting cherubs and clouds, flowers and hearts, swallowed the room, making it seem at once a vast hall and a shrinking cell. The ceiling had small circular mirrors spaced apart to give the appearance of stepping stones leading from one corner to the other. A large mural of an elegant woman with long, straight black hair running over her neck and covering one breast, her other exposed, was the only picture in the room. The woman’s cheek was bruised, her eye just beginning to show its shine. The rest of the wall was covered with more glass—circular mirrors, rectangular mirrors, mirrors with paintings of flowers along the edges or dancing across the bottom, some hand mirrors awkwardly hung, some in frames, some without. Lights spun as if a disco ball had been hung with all the reflections of pinks and reds.

In the center, taking up almost the entire bedroom, was a large heart-shaped bed, its headboard made of foam or cloth and forming lips in an upturned smirk. Candles and dried rose petals adorned the few shelves in the room, though covered in dust. A small glass statue of a naked woman arching her back, disproportionate breasts thrust into the air, the lone decoration atop the dresser in the back.

This wasn’t a room, it was a torture chamber.

“You know where we are? Whose house this is?” Drew asked.

Jenna shook her head, almost imperceptibly.

“The old owner of your house. Jerry Welchsetzer. Lucky for us this property was kept off the books. You know what line of business he was in?”

Jenna’s head continued to shake.

“Porn. Movies mainly, but the special ones were all shot here. The productions with a very limited release. Often filmed for a party of one.”

Jenna noticed the cameras for the first time, mounted in the corners of the room. How many were hidden in other objects—frames, mirrors, naked statues?

“No actors. Just a guy and a girl and only one leaves the room alive,” Drew said.

“How do you know all this?”

“I worked for him. Mr. Welchsetzer.” He said the name with contempt. “Always liked the movie industry, but Jerry, he made a mistake. Tried screwing over the wrong guy.”

Drew grabbed her head, her body tensing as he dropped down, whispering into her ear. “This is what George has planned for you, once he’s finished with Blake. He doesn’t know I brought you here, but I needed you to understand. What your options are. Do you? Understand?”

Jenna whimpered beneath his grasp.

“I can help you. Protect you. If you help me,” he said.

Her breaths came in gasps, her eyes no longer seeing.

“We can run away, you and I. From this. From George. But it’s your choice.”

Some choice
, Jenna thought.

“And Joje is not as gentle as I am,” Drew continued.

“He’ll come after you. After us,” she said. Let him think there was an
us.
If it kept her alive a little longer.

“Then I’ll kill him,” Drew’s lips whispered in her ear, his tongue brushing against it. She shuddered, unable to stop her body from reacting. “Come with me. Or I’ll kill you.”

Click.

The empty chamber resonated through Blake’s teeth, as quiet as a trickle of water, yet more forceful than a waterfall. He could have sworn he felt a recoil, though the gun had barely moved. Joje looked up at him with that smile, blood spouting from his nose.

“No,” Blake screamed, firing again and again.

Click, click, click, click.

He held his hands out in front of him, turning the gun so it faced down. He tossed it onto the piano, metal striking wood, making gouges that no longer mattered.

He was done. He had failed. Perhaps for the last time.

They won’t even know I tried
.

It was perhaps the worst thought. Adam and Jenna. There would be torture, agony, and in the end they would die believing Blake had been incapable of helping them, unwilling to even try.

Joje rose to his feet, pulling a mix of hanging snot and blood and flinging it to the carpet.

“I’ll get your son. And your wife, but you are staying here.”

“Your gun was loaded . . . before,” Blake said, mind still trying to make the leap that would catch up to the present. “In my office?”

“Blanks. Did you find a bullet hole in your wall?”

Blake felt the walls collapse in around him.

“Mine’s never been loaded. I told you from the beginning, I don’t like violence.” Joje walked past the dining room table into the kitchen. “Come.”

As Blake entered the kitchen, he found Joje standing next to the table, a large butcher knife in his hand.

“Don’t make me use this,” he said, then pointed to Conrad’s crate next to the wall. “Get in.”

Blake’s bare feet felt cold against the wooden floor. “You can’t be serious.”

“Very,” Joje answered, his busted nose making him sound more nasally. Combined with his lisp, he could have been voicing a cartoon character on some Nickelodeon show.

“I won’t fit in there,” Blake said.

Joje brandished the knife. “Then I’ll make you fit. Fight me on this, and your wife and son will come home to your corpse.”

Conrad’s cage took on the role of a gaping mouth, its thin black bars sharpened teeth, preparing to swallow Blake whole. It was small, stretching about four feet in length, three feet wide, three—maybe three and a half—high. They had purchased it when Conrad had been a puppy. Blake really should have gotten a larger one when he had started using it here in their new home but had decided the cramped space would be part of the punishment.

“Go ahead. You can tie me up, gag me, throw me in a closet, a trunk. I don’t care! Just . . . I’ll be quiet.” Blake tossed his hands in the air and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What about your family?”

Blake shook his head, breathing heavily to keep from crying. “I sometimes meet with business owners looking to restructure, revive a business that’s already gone too far. Buried in debt, fighting markets that have passed them by. There are times when your only option is to fold.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“Just do it already!” Blake yelled. “End this. Kill me!”

A spike of pain flashed through Blake’s hand resting on the table, causing him to jump up. Joje pulled the butcher knife out of Blake’s hand with a quick tug.

“I don’t have time for you to feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “Now get in that cage, or I will cut you into a thousand little pieces and feed you to your son. As bad as things are, they can always get worse.”

Blake looked from the gash in the back of his already-burned hand to Joje’s face. “What did I ever do to you?”

Joje slammed the blade down again, and Blake pulled his hand back just in time to see the blade sink an inch into the table. “Two minutes,” Joje said. “Whatever’s not in that cage is coming off.”

Blake knelt in front of the crate, heart pulsing. The opening was the size of his laptop screen, maybe a little taller, but no wider. Probably smaller than his waist. The cage became a complex Rubik’s Cube puzzle, Blake envisioning one body part at a time moving into the tiny wired box, folding limbs back, rolling shoulders, stretching, cramming.

And failing to fit.

“A minute forty-two.”

“I can’t—” Blake said.

“Then prepare yourself for real pain.”

“Promise you won’t hurt my family,” Blake said.

“I only make promises I know I can keep. And I can promise you’ll see them again.”

Blake could feel his exhaustion—a living, breathing entity that had entered his body, demanding him to stop.

Stop trying, stop caring, stop fighting.

Stop.

Adrenaline long gone, he let out a long breath, then brought one arm into the cage. It felt like shoveling the first scoop of dirt onto his own grave. He lowered his head, turning onto his back and sliding farther in. With some contortions, and a slice through his shirt, he was able to pop the top half of his body through. His head hit the back of the cage, waist and legs still hanging out.

“One minute,” Joje said.

Blake tucked his head forward, scooting farther into the cage and raising his head up. It rattled against the top bars. He breathed out, already feeling a bout of claustrophobia gripping him. His waist was caught at the opening, the rounded edges of the thin bars surprisingly unsmooth, digging into his skin. He floundered to the side of the cage, seeing if it would open up more room to bring his knees up. It didn’t. He was still only halfway into the cage with no idea how to get the rest of him inside.

“We can do without your legs. I’m sure Jenna can empathize.”

“Wait, damnit!” Blake shouted.

He hunched up, ducking his head and bringing it forward to the center of the cage, his back arching. It enabled him to slide back another few inches, his waist falling through the opening, gashes scouring the small of his back and hips. Now his butt was against the floor of the cage, a hard plastic lining that ran from end to end. With the back of his neck craning against the top of the cage, Blake realized he had no leverage to move forward or backward. He tried to wriggle his body in farther, but there was nowhere to go.

“I’m stuck.”

“Thirty seconds,” Joje said.

“I’m serious, I can’t move!” Blake tried inching his head forward, but it was levered up at an angle that blocked him from any movement. He strained his neck to the other side, his head notching forward an inch, or at least a single square grid in the cage. His back was shaking, but he forced it flush against the end of the cage. Still his legs dangled out, nowhere near close enough to bring up his knees.“ There’s not enough room—this isn’t going to work!”

“Make it work!”

The cage felt like it was shrinking, and though the gridded bars had no way of blocking the passage of air, Blake could feel the oxygen expiring. He had to get out.

With effort he managed to bring his body back into a lying position, then wriggle slowly back out. He knelt on the wooden floor, sucking in air like he had just come up from beneath a wave. He felt lightheaded. Had he been holding his breath in there? Maybe it had just been the contortions of his body preventing him from drawing in a normal breath.

“I . . . I can’t, I can’t,” Blake said. Blood trickled down from the palm of his right hand running the length of his arm.

“I ever tell you I’ve been here before?” Joje asked. “In this house? Your office was a wine room. That’s why it has its own temperature control.”

“Welchsetzer?” Blake asked.

Joje smiled. “How much do you know?”

“I don’t. The neighbor—the lawyer you murdered—he told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That Jerry went crazy. Murdered his family,” Blake said. “Wife, kids.”

“You believed him?”

“No. Yes, but no. I never found anything. But it was you, wasn’t it? You killed them?”

“They had a large oak table here, you know, thick legs . . . like Dwew’s?” He smiled before continuing. “China cabinet against the wall. Drapes—this awful pattern. And a signed Marilyn Monroe against that wall—the one where she’s laying backward on the couch, topless, not the typical skirt-flying-up-trying-to-hold-it-down pose. Always felt bad for those kids, their girls.”

He shook his head. “I took his wife right here, on the table, Jerry standing about where you are now, my head banging into the light fixture with every thrust, her ass slapping and sticking to the tabletop, and then when I had finished, I bent forward looking into her eyes—she had remarkable eyes. She was a dark woman, European I guess, but her eyes were this emerald green with specks of gray, just breathtaking. She was looking at me by then, and while we stared into each other’s souls, I put a knife just like this through her side. Punctured her liver. Then I went farther, deeper, driving the blade up, my hand thrust inside her, our eyes never leaving each other. The light in those beautiful eyes dripping away till they were nothing more than cheap marbles.”

Joje stepped back, taking a long breath. Blake leaned against the cage, crying, and yet, just like Jerry’s wife, unable to take his eyes off Joje. “I guess I’m telling you this so that you understand. I keep my promises, Bwake, but I also keep my threats. Now get in the cage.”

Blake bowed his head. He was ruined. Broken. Stripped of all he had been, all he had believed, his sense of the world, that if you did right and worked hard, good things would come and that when challenges appeared, there were always solutions. Always.

But not anymore.

As bad as things are, they can always get worse
.

“Why this house?” he asked, swallowing hard. “What, what is it you want?”

Joje looked like a patient parent determining how to answer a child’s silly question. “I don’t care about your house. I have everything I could ever want. Except what you took.”

The statement felt like hitting the ground after a fifty-foot fall. Blake’s mind began spinning.

“Try going in backward. Feet first.”

“What is it you think I took?” Blake asked, feeling an urgent need to understand why this was happening, that it wasn’t meaningless.

Joje spun the knife in his hand and started forward.

“No, no! I’m going!” Blake said. He turned around, still on his knees, but now facing away from the cage. The tears that dripped from his eyes were hot. He backed his legs into the cage, bringing his knees in, toes striking the back before he could think of ducking his waist in.

“Lower your legs like you’re kneeling but with your upper body slack against the floor.”

Blake did as he was told, crouching while flattening his chest to the floor.

“Scoot to the side, closer to me. Now rotate your knees down, lying sideways.”

The edges of the bars on the opening gouged into his side as he now lay vertically through the opening.

“Good,” Joje said. He was really getting into it now. “Can you—bring an arm in?”

“Not yet,” Blake said, keeping his tone blank of emotion.

“You’re gonna have to stretch your legs out above you lengthwise, fold in half like a sandwich. Here, I’ll help,” Joje said.

Eventually, that’s what worked, Joje pressing Blake’s legs back through the bars once he had them extended as far as he could. Blake’s glutes and hamstrings screamed at him as they moved an inch at a time until finally popping out above him, extending against the top of the cage. Blake’s back was spasming, the angle of his body compressing bones and nerves in a way never intended. With more assistance from Joje, he was able to squeeze his arms and shoulders through, hunching his head into the small cavity created between the top and bottom halves of his body in an upside down sandwich.