“Yes,” I whisper, feeling like I have no other choice. “I want to know.” The words are stiff and awkward as they come out of my mouth, and I shift to the balls of my feet, trying to relieve some of the stress and anxious energy in my legs. It doesn’t work, though, predictably.
“It’s not that much of a mystery,” Dale snaps. His eyes dart around the basement, like there’s some escape route he hasn’t seen yet. “I thought you were into me. I thought we were going back to my place to fuck.” He sneers the last word, disgusting teeth bared for a moment before he shrinks back. “What the hell is wrong with that, huh?”
Larkin hums, his arms still not releasing me. “Nothing at all,” he replies almost cheerfully. “If that’s all you wanted.”
Dale looks down quickly. “You don’t know me,” he breathes. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I don’t know you.” Larkin’s words turn a little cruel. “I only know what you were saying to your friend at the bar when you were getting yourself a refill. Come on,” he cajoles. “Tell us what you told him. Tell us what you said about Tova. It’s not a secret, right, if you were laughing about it like that?”
Dale’s face pales. He glances between me and the chain on his leg, and I wonder if he’s considering if he can just yank himself free even if that means his foot doesn’t come with him.
His eyes turn pleading when he looks at me again. “It was just guy talk,” he tells me in a whisper. But if I can hear him, Larkin can too. He must know that, though it doesn’t seem like it.
“Then tell me,” Larkin coerces. “I’m just a guy. Sotalk.”There’s a warning in his words that makes my skin prickle, and his grip on me feels a little less safe. A little moredangerous.
Dale finally looks away, and his shoulders sag in defeat. He takes a step back, then another, until his knees hit the clawfoot tub he’s chained to. He nearly stumbles and has to catch himself on the lip of it with a small gasp.
“I said—I said I wanted to make you cry,” he admits. “Just a little. That I wanted to hurt you. That you’d probably let me. I told Eddie that I wanted to fuck your holes and hear you scream in pain. I said…” he trails off, glaring down at the floor. “I said I wanted to make you bleed.”
I barely feel Larkin’s hands sliding free from my shoulders. I feel the press of his mouth to my cheek, though, like a searing brand on my skin. A shudder goes through me as he steps away, and instead of responding to Dale, I turn to look at him, surprised to see that he’s headed for the stairs.
“You’re leaving?” I ask, puzzled. But Larkin doesn’t stop until he’s halfway up the stairs, his face barely visible.
“Yeah,” he tells me. “Because if I’m here, you can blame me later. You can say I made you do it. Or that I influenced you. But that’s not how this is going to work, my little monster.” His grin is wolfish, his gaze direct.
“Any choice you make here is on you. Not me.” He tilts his head, watching me shrewdly, studying my face like he can tell what decision I’m going to make. “I’ll see you upstairs,” Larkin states, instead of making it a question. Then, with a few more steps and the click of the basement door, he’s gone.
Alone in the basement with Dale, I don’t immediately look at him. I toy with the box cutter in my pocket, my brain listening to the sound of electricity in the light above us.
“It was just guy talk,” Dale says, his confidence coming back now that Larkin is gone. “Look, unchain me, and we’ll get outtogether. Do you have a weapon? Umm…” He searches his memory, then shrugs. “What did he say your name was?”
The fact he still doesn’t know it feels like an insult to injury, and I snort, rolling my eyes up at him. “You think I’m trapped here?” I ask, pulling the box cutter from my pocket slowly to hold it at my side. His arms jerk in the cuffs, and Dale’s eyes fall on the blade.
“What are you doin’ with that?” he demands. “Did he give you that? Is he threatening you, too?”
“No.” My words remain pensive, and I look up at him finally, taking a step closer that makes him jerk back. “Actually, I already decided I wanted to kill you tonight. I don’t know if I would’ve gone through with it. Sorry, Dale.” I give him an apologetic smile and a little sigh. “I don’t know if I would’ve felt bad enough not to. You haven’t technically done anything to me. I?—”
“You stupid bitch,” Dale snarls, his demeanor flipping instantly, becoming darker and full of rage. His cheeks go red, and he jerks so hard on the cuffs I worry he’s going to dislocate his shoulders. “You planned this? You know that sick fuck upstairs?”
“Not very well.”
“This is ridiculous!” His voice becomes a bellow, and he jerks on his chains again. The leather cuff around his ankle seems to strain, and without warning, Dale breaks free, lunging toward me across the floor.
It isn’t even on purpose.
Not exactly.
When his hands rise to find my throat, his momentum throws his body against me. Dale gasps as the blade of the box cutter sinks into his stomach, and I’m thrown backward, back hitting the wall as I yelp in surprise.
“You stupid, uglybitch,”he snarls, spittle hitting my face. I tear the blade upwards as his hands tighten, unable to move independently but still able to choke the shit out of me. Gasping, I rip one of my hands free and grab him by the hair, wrench one leg between us, and shove him backward hard enough that he hits the floor on his side.
My neck screams and I drag in breath after breath, heart pounding from fear, pain, and exertion. “Fuck,” I whisper, hoarse and barely able to speak. “Fuck you. Fuckyou,”I whisper for Dale’s benefit. “You’re ruining everything!”
Coldness like ice replaces the fear within me, and my hands shake from rage, instead of nervousness, as I crawl across the floor with the box cutter in my hand. “This was supposed to be mine! Mychoice!”My hands shake as I lift up the box cutter, then plunge it downward once, twice, then three times into Dale’s face.
Every time he screams, trying to sit up, trying to do anything to save himself. The fourth stab catches his eye, skids off his orbital bone, and sinks into the socket to pop the eye like a grape.
His scream echoes in my ears, but pity isn’t on the menu for tonight. “Youruined it!”I scream again with my hands shaking. The blade comes out with a jerk of my hand, and I stab him again and again, the blade never going deep enough to end this quickly for him.
