“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck your sorry’s. You have no fucking right.”
Grunting, I nod. She’s right — I lost that right when I pulled her deeper into this shit. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to humanize yourself, Ricky. Like you think that maybe if you do that, I won’t kill you.”
“No fucking way. Do it. I want you to do it.”
“Are you trying to play chicken with me?” Adrianna gets up from the bed, goes to the cooler, and opens it. Barehanded. She’s braver than I thought. Then she roots around in the open cooler to pull out something that looks like a mad scientist’s creation — an amalgamation of chains, clamps, a long penis-shaped protrusion, and a red rubber ball attached to a leather strap that is either a fucking weird clown nose or a ball gag. “This thing is called the ‘Extreme Enforcer Humbler Mark II.’ It came with the room, too. I’m not sure about everything about it; there isn’t a fucking manual, but on some clamps it says ‘Attach to penis here’ and I’m pretty sure this dick-looking thing is meant to be stuck in you somewhere. Now, I was planning on just killing you the old-fashioned way, though a little slow, but if you keep pissing me off, maybe I’ll try to figure out how this thing works. Would you like that?”
I shift again, and my eyes go to the door. “Listen, I’ve been trying to make it happen for a while. Ever since I got here to… fuck, am I really in Sacramento?”
“You don’t know where you are?”
“Do you have any idea how drunk and fucked-up I’ve been?”
“You are in Sacramento. I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.” I clear my throat, feeling thirsty and woozy. “You got any more beer?”
“Let me get this straight: I drug you, bring you here to a murder suite equipped with a dick torture device, and you think you can get some free beer off of me?”
I shrug. “I’m dying anyway, so what the fuck does it hurt to ask?”
Adriana sighs and rolls her eyes. If she weren’t still holding onto the device meant to turn my penis into a mangled lump of flesh, she’d be attractive. Cute, even. In some ways, she’s so like her sister, but in others — the hard edge, the proclivity tomurder, the suggestions of deviant sexual torture — she’s so different. “Fine.”
She grabs a can from the mini-fridge, pops the top, and hands it over.
“Thanks,” I say and then take a long drink, feeling the mild alcohol take the edge off the drugs in my system and the hangover that was threatening to creep in. “I needed that. What you’re going to do, I’ve been trying to do to myself for however long I’ve been here in Sacramento. But I haven’t had the guts to do it right. That’s always been one of my problems — finding the strength to just do what needs to be done. So I’m glad that you’ve found me. I’m glad that you’re going to get revenge for Vanessa. She deserves it. I deserve this.” I take another long drink of beer, letting the mild, malty, slightly bitter flavor soothe my pounding skull. “But I will make one thing perfectly clear: if you try to use that ball clamp thing on me, I will fight back. I’ve got my fucking limits.”
Adriana blinks, looks at the dick torture device, then arches an eyebrow at me. “You’ll let me kill you, but I can’t crush your dick and balls?”
I shake my head. How the fuck is this even a question for her?
Sighing, she tosses the device into the corner. “If that’s what it takes. We’ll just do this the normal way. I’m going to drag you into the bathroom now and put you in the bathtub. It makes it easier for housekeeping, according to the guy at the front desk.”
“Real fine place, this hotel.”
Adriana grabs hold of my hair and begins dragging me, while I do my best to shuffle along and help, because being pulled by my hair is not the experience I’m after.
“Let’s go,” she says, and when she gets me into the bathroom, she unceremoniously shoves me into the bathtub. “Get in. Stay still. And shut your mouth.”
“You want me to scream in pain? Beg for mercy? Will it help you feel better?”
She snorts and takes a knife with a curved and serrated blade out of the back pocket of her jeans. “You’ll be doing those things all on your own.”
I raise the beer to my lips and take a deep drink as she brings the knife blade closer to my leg. From the way she’s holding it and the focused look on her face, she’ll be slitting the tendons in my leg any second now so I can’t run away. As if I’d run away from this; I’ve been running toward this moment for weeks.
The blade slices through the denim of my jeans, and she works carefully, cutting and peeling away the fabric until the backs of both my legs are bare. Her hand hardly shakes. She really has prepared for this. Good for her. I’m glad she can finally get closure.
The blade touches my skin at the back of my knee.
It’s cold.
I shiver, then take another sip of beer.
My eyes settle on her face, and I watch as hesitation, fear, rage, grief, all swirl within the steely confines of her brown eyes.
