[Ambrose]

Three | Puppet Show

She wanted to do more than gag. Her stomach had become a tsunami of discomfort and in short time a wave of soup and half-digested eggs met, one more time, with her lips. Surrendering herself to the urge, she bent over double as far as she could and ejected a steaming hot pile of Molly and the once-omelet into her lap. The taste of old food and bile was ripe in her mouth. It made her want to vomit again.

Cowboy gave a chuckle. “Damn girl, you’re gonna have to clean that up!”

Upon hearing this, she forgot her overwhelming sickness of the heart and stomach for the moment and focused her attention on the shark at the end of the table that had caused the wake in the first place. She wanted to harpoon cowboy through the chest. She wanted to do to him what he had done thus far to her ten-fold. The man was a blight on even the most dark and perverted ocean and she wouldn’t rest until he was gutted and hung out to dry.

“I want you to know something,” she said, wiping her face. “I’m going to kill you, or you’re going to kill me. But one of those things is most definitely going to happen. You get me, Paco? So you better get up out of that chair and kill me right now. Or I’m going to do things to you that would make your mother roll in her grave–if you even have one.”

Ten minutes ago, she wouldn’t have believed the words that were coming from her own mouth–was it even her mouth anymore?–or the anger that they the carried. But what ten-minute-ago Karen had failed to grasp was that all the good in the world had been squeezed out by the neck and that there was no place left for nice, socially abiding Karen. What had hatched from some dark corner of her subconscious and taken control of her mind and her mouth was as scary and as necessary as a piranha’s teeth.

Cowboy laughed. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time he’d been issued a death threat. Or perhaps, rather, it was that he was a few bolts short of a working engine, and death threats meant as much to him as a deluxe four-door coup means to a fox. Or perhaps, even, was that he enjoyed the threat in the way that a cutter enjoys the better-than-pins-and-needles sensation as they pave another road down their wrist. Whatever the reason behind that awful and already-too-familiar shark grin, she wished sorely to hammer a nail into his murky brain until he got the point, both literally and figuratively.

“Kill me now, or else, I swear to God and all present that I am going to kill you. Did you get any of that? I said ‘I’m going to fucking kill you’.”

Cowboy got up. Do I actually want him to kill me? She thought for a moment and decided that she didn’t care. What she had just uttered had been the absolute truth and it had felt too damn good to say. Across from her, Carolyn was coughing and crying at the same time. When she finally got the wishbone out of her throat, her frantic eyes pleaded where her stunned tongue could not for Karen to stop what she was saying, oh for the love of God, and see reason.

But God was on her side, Karen just knew it, and when Cowboy produced a large nail from his pocket (it looked to be at least several inches long and rusty) and proceeded to rest it atop her hand to await its good friend, the hammer, she didn’t so much as miss a breath. All she could think was that he’d stolen her idea but was about to botch it up by targeting her hand instead of her head. Now she was the one laughing, laughing so hard tears of utter glee were forming in her eyes. She said, “Do it, baby. Nail me.” And she threw her head back and laughed until she felt her middle would burst like a balloon.

Cowboy retrieved the hammer with his right hand from a box of silverware on the table that apparently contained hardware too while his left held the nail in place, all the while watching her carefully. She could have moved her hand, but, true to her word, she let the nail sit there, softly pressing down into her skin. The previous amusement on Cowboy’s face was gone. He raised the hammer and brought it down with what he must have hoped to be alarming quickness, at the last second pulling it out of the path of the nail and her hand and letting it hit the table with a loud thud. She didn’t so much as blink; her eyes were too busy burning a hole of hatred into Cowboy’s face. She’d called his bluff and he looked furious for it.

Without warning he removed the nail from her hand and placed it on Carolyn’s. Unlike Karen, her unfortunate friend did everything but yell bloody murder to get her hand out of the way of the nail. She screamed and spit and struggled in her bindings and did not stop until Cowboy replaced the nail an inch from her eyeball. Realizing the alternative, she let the nail be placed on her now white and trembling hand while her eyes wept like desolate widows. Meanwhile Karen watched, uncomprehending, as though she were in a trance. She watched Carolyn’s mouth flinch, watched the nail sink into her hand with a gunshot bang and watched as blood the shade of blossoming roses came pouring out. Then she stopped watching because Carolyn’s scream, which reverberated in the pit of her stomach, had blinded all of her senses.

“Stop!” Karen found herself screaming at the top of her lungs. The other hard and emotionally callous part of her had gone as quick as it had come and she was again a mother looking out for her baby girl. And her baby girl was in pain. Carolyn’s eyes had transformed into flashlights again, flashlights that were now furiously disbelieving what they’d revealed in the gloom. Her hand was a crimson mess, like some form of grotesque modern art. In her mind’s rapid attempt to make sense of it, Karen kept seeing both a construction accident and a skin colored sundae smothered in cherry syrup. But in either case, it looked terribly, terribly wrong.

Carolyn was wailing like a stuck pig, her entire body shivering up and down in what could have only been spasms of severe pain. Her hand had become a leaky faucet and the pool now forming under it was getting bigger and bigger. Cowboy watched with a look full of lust and masculine cruelty. His eyes brightened and grew larger with every agonizing scream, like a man who in approaching orgasm has quickened his thrusts and sunk his fingernails into his lover’s back, or in this case, her hand. There was no doubt in Karen’s mind that he was getting sexual satisfaction from all this.

“Stop,” Karen repeated, now in a voice that seemed to absorb all of the pain in the room. “Please, oh please, just stop. Can’t you see you’re hurting her?”

Of course, Other Karen knew he could see this, knew in fact that he lived for it. But Other Karen was gone and Mother Karen had taken her place and was trying against all measure of common sense to save her baby any further harm.

But her plea fell on deaf ears, for Cowboy raised the hammer for another strike.

It was as though they were conversing in some unspoken language and Karen knew what she had to say next to stop the hammer from coming down and adding a little more cherry syrup to the sundae. She said, “What do you want me to do?” And that was the ticket, it seemed, because Cowboy dropped the hammer next to a sobbing and trembling Carolyn, whose hand had swelled and turned an ugly shade of purple around the nail, and looked Karen hard in the face.

“You know what I want, Stacey Baby.” He said in his raw, squeaky Mickey Mouse voice. Having said that, he came around to her side of the table and with the same hand that swung the hammer, unzipped the fly of his overalls. What Cowboy pulled out and gripped between his stubby fingers and stuck in front of her face was both frighteningly large and bad smelling.

Cowboy had succeeded in pulling the right strings and Karen was, she realized, like it or not, going to do exactly what he wanted. Cautiously, for fear that it might try and slide its way down her throat like some savage parasite, she put the thing in her mouth. It tasted God-awful; like nightmares and rancid milk. Accidentally getting baby poop on her finger, and later into her mouth, from a mismanaged diaper change was pebbles compared to this. It felt as though a giant jungle worm had crawled its way up her cheek and decided to rest its warm, slimy body on her tongue. And worst of all, it was growing. She would have eaten the rest of her soup in an instant just to get this thing out.

There were several times in Karen’s life where she had done something and not remembered how later. Giving birth to her first child and bungee jumping off of Cape Perpetua came to mind. This, she knew, was going to be another one of those times and when Cowboy’s snake finally spat its venom into her mouth, and every sense she had told her that she would throw up, she knew, just the same, that she wouldn’t. And sure enough, the deed was done, and it was over. When Cowboy zipped up, he shot her a devious smile, not quite that of a shark but more that of a boy who has just extorted candy from the babysitter. He smiled some more, and ran his tongue over his crooked teeth.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” he said, looking away now, which made Other Karen flare up inside her for a moment and it took every ounce of strength to keep from reaching back into his overalls and biting the giant worm in half.

Cowboy ducked out of the room and when he returned, Karen was untied and led at gun point outside, around the back of the village. The desert heat hit her again like a slap in the face, and she became aware of her intense thirst. He led her past a large white propane tank and a pyramid of dusty tires, to a prison cell that came in the form of a cattle trailer. It was sweltering hot inside the trailer, and when Cowboy disappeared inside and didn’t return with Carolyn, she thrashed against the sides and yelled at the top of her lungs. As she did so, she felt more and more like the animal that the cage was designed for. But no amount of thrashing, she knew, could turn her into the animal that he was. After several hours which felt like days, she fell over from heat exhaustion, blinked her eyes a few times, and passed out.

[Jimbalaya]

You've done well with this villan, Ambrose. Well with all of the characters, actually. They jump from the page and the story is fast paced and well written, and a bit stomach turning in parts.

Another excellent chapter!

['Ginnis]

I think the best part of this was the hammer and nail. You were able to use that as an excellent tool between the duality of normal Karen and other Karen. The harshness that was painted in her earlier, her selfish thoughts and cynicism are coming through well here. They make her situation and the way she behaves in it very believable.

[Vorcla]

This is developing nicely. I don't think too many people realize just how hard it is to write a continuing fiction series - much less write it well. That alone is enough to earn you a salute, but then on top of that you're doing so well with the characterizations. Nice job; look forward to more.