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Thursday, July 9, 2015

39 Born to Make the Kill

“He’s going to bleed to death, bitch, and it’s your fault!” Tony shouted, his nasal Jersey accent like a sidewalk pretzel vendor hocking his wares.

The sudden penetration of the silence came with such force Natalie jumped involuntarily. She felt her heart rate’s sudden increase and had to lay quiet for a moment to gain composure. She tempered her voice so it didn’t sound panicked. “What do you want me to say, Tony, ’I’m sorry?’ You started this, I didn’t.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Look,” she said, “you guys raped me and threw me in the trunk of a car for a day. You tried to kill me in there with nothing to eat or drink. You’ve threatened me again and again with that gun and I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I’m the one who has been assaulted.”

“I said ‘shut up!’”

Natalie felt her rage build. She believed she had a small advantage. When Rudy led her to the room, she had noticed only one other car in the parking lot and now with the sounds coming through the wall, she reasoned that the man who had called out to Tony was in the next room. She had heard him ask Tony about the gunshot. He seemed satisfied with Tony’s lie about the car backfiring. She hoped his curiosity had gotten the best of him, but if it hadn’t, she needed to help it along.

“Hank wouldn’t be in this condition if you had just left me alone. You think your job is to inflict as much pain and shame as you can on me. My job is to try to escape.”

“Shut the hell up, you whore,” he shouted, “or I’ll drag you next door. Then you can watch me kill that overweight son-of-a-bitch, before I kill you.”

She had done it, she had caused an outburst. She hoped the man next door heard what Tony said. If he did, maybe he would call the police. She decided to give it a rest, for now. After a moment, she said in a soft, calm voice. “I don’t want anyone else hurt. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Too late for pity!” he barked.

“How about if I freshen up some of those towels?”

He looked at her for a moment and then nodded. She rolled away from him to put her feet on the floor, and then stood up.

“Whoa,” She acted as if she was dizzy and sat down hard on the side of the bed near the nightstand. “I think I got up too fast.”

With her back to Tony, she didn’t know if he had turned toward her, but she took the risk. She leaned to the left to block Tony’s line of sight to her hand, placed her hand on the table and pretended to use it for support as she stood. As she came to her feet, she swept the pen and paper onto the floor next to the bed.

She walked around to the space between the two beds and picked up some of the towels from the floor. In the bathroom, she rinsed them with warm water and wrung them out tight. She carried them back to Tony, laid them on the bed next to Hank, and sat down on edge of the bed where she had been lying. Faced away from the two men, she laid her torso on the bed and left her feet on the floor. Her right arm dangled over the edge of the bed and she gathered the writing instruments from the floor. On her left side, she tucked them under her body and lay still.

Another twenty minutes passed before Rudy returned. Natalie used the distraction he caused when he entered to lift the front of her short black skirt, and slip the pad of paper and the pen under the waistband of her panties. She felt like the first part of her plan had begun to take shape. She rolled to her back and made eye contact with Rudy. He seemed relieved she was still alive.

“I take it you found the keys, “Tony said to Rudy.

“They were in the trunk lid and no, I didn’t call the police or tell anyone about this.”

“What’d you find?”

“They didn’t have any gauze or Band-Aids large enough.” He held out a shopping bag. “I picked up these disposable diapers, some masking tape and pair of scissors.”

“That may work,” he said to Rudy, and then shot a glance toward Natalie. “Hey Whore, wash out the towels again.”

“My name isn’t Whore. My name is Natalie. My friends sometimes call me ‘Nat.’” She turned her eyes to Rudy. She hadn’t planned this. It just seemed to flow out of her mouth. In truth no one ever called her Nat and she didn’t think of herself as Nat. Gnats were pests that festered in swarms on the farm, certainly not a thing of desire. But for Rudy, perhaps it was a lifeline, “You can call me Nat.”

Rudy started to smile but stopped when Tony exploded. “I told you before, shut the hell up. If you want to live to see the sunrise, you’ll do what I say, Whore!”

Without acknowledging Tony with even a glare, she stood up, walked around the bed and as before, picked up the bloody towels from the floor. “Yes, Tony,” she said and caught his eye. Then with a glance to Rudy, she winked.

He returned a smile, and she stepped toward the bathroom.

Can men really be that stupid? she thought. Are they all suckers for a short skirt?

When she returned with the blood stained towels, she saw that Tony had removed the diapers and tape from the shopping bag. The package of diapers had been ripped open and rested on the bed. She laid the towels next to Hank and sat across from the two men on the edge of the other bed. Tony had already cut a diaper in half through the crotch and now cleaned blood from around the wound with a warm towel. The bleeding had subsided but hadn’t stopped. The wound still oozed, and looked swollen, angry and black. Tony placed half of the diaper over the bullet hole and used the one inch masking tape to fix it to Hank’s chest.
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