"My head hurts."
"I have no doubt. I hit you with this." I hold up a baseball bat. "And I have never played a single game of baseball in my whole life."
His eyes roll around, then focus on me, on my eyes. I put down the baseball bat on the concrete floor. I lean over him and wipe blood off his forehead with a paper towel. His eyes follow me. I smile.
"Where am I?"
I smile again. "Where would you like to be?"
"My head is killing me. Where am I? Who are you? What is this?"
"So many questions." I am in control. I want to rush in, to start and finish in one breath, but I know I will be happier and more satisfied if I take my time. I rub my hands, impatient.
"I can hardly see. What is happening to me? I am so cold, where am I?" He is trying to move, but the straps hold him tight. The garage is cool, but I do not notice because at least I am wearing clothes. I have on a black sweater and black tights. My hair is tied back in a bun so it will not get in my way. I have a pair of old runners on my feet. My sleeves are rolled up. I feel like working.
"I am Sarah. I am here to Cleanse you."
His eyes are rolling around again, trying to lock onto something familiar. His lips are moving but very little sound comes out.
"You are Steve. Can you hear me? Talk to me, Steve." I am leaning over him again, my face inches from his. The torture board is long, almost ten feet, and strapped onto a wall of bricks I have built in my garage. The board is about three feet high, about at my waist. I have finished the board with great care, rubbing varnish onto it with a clean rag. The board is almost a foot thick. The bricks below it are cemented together, holding up the board. The whole wall is twelve feet long and three feet wide. I built it myself. It makes me proud.
He is muttering now. I think maybe I hit him too hard and he is going into shock. I tilt my head to the side. I have only one light on in my garage, a halogen lamp at the end of the wall, behind his head. It makes the blood glisten.
He is looking at me again. There is suddenly great concentration in his face. His eyebrows push down on his eyes, and create worry lines all over his face. "What am I doing here?"
"I am here to Cleanse you," I announce proudly.
He tries to shake his head. He raises his voice. "Help me! Please help me! Oh God, why am I here! Help me!" He tries to roll, get up, twist, move. He cannot.
"Shut your lying hole, Steve." I get right into his face. I can smell sweat and metal. I can taste metal in my mouth. The fear is oozing out of him now. He is suddenly quiet, and looking so deeply into my eyes.
"I am Steven Kay. I am not a bad person, I have a family, a wife and a little girl, and I know you are a good person too and I know you know I am scared and all I want and ...." He stops to take a breath but begins to sob. His chest heaves and hitches, rises and falls erratically. "Oh please don't hurt me. I have a family. I want to watch my little girl grow up, I want to go home, I want to see my wife and..."
"Shut up."
He looks at me. His eyes are red. "I won't tell anybody if you let me go. Please."
"I know where your family lives. You live on the other side of Sooke, right on the water." Steve's eyes scrunch up. "Don't hurt my family, please."
"Oh, I don't want your family. I want you. All I want is you, my Steve."
I turn around and grab a fleece blanket from the floor. I lay it on his naked body. He is shaking. The straps hold him down securely, but he shivers under them and makes them vibrate. I tuck the blanket under his feet and around his body as best I can. His eyes follow me, tired but fearful and curious. It is creepy. I pat his head gently, taking care not to touch where I have hit him with the baseball bat. I squat down next to him. He is breathing too fast.
"I will give you some water. You must be thirsty." I reach behind me to a small wooden table and pick up a glass of cloudy water. I shake it a little. I bring it to his mouth.
"Open your mouth and I will pour some water down your throat. Careful not to let it go down the wrong tube, okay?"
He closes his eyes and opens his mouth. He tries to tilt his head forward so he will not choke. I pour water into his mouth. Some of it goes down, some of it pours around his lips, and some of it he coughs and sputters out. He hacks for a moment. His eyes are soft and anxious.
"Don't worry, I won't hurt you," I whisper. He seems to settle a little. Or maybe it is just my imagination. I keep my mouth close to him, behind his head, next to the dried blood.
"I am only going to keep you here for a while, and then I will let you go. I don't want to hurt you. I am sorry I had to hit you over the head before. I am very sorry. I promise I won't hurt you, I promise." I stand up, over him.
He is so scared, looking at me with wide, watery eyes. He is like a deer in the headlights. He is trying to believe me, trying so hard.
"I promise that when I am finished, I will let you go." I clasp my hands together, in front of me. I tilt my head to the side and smile a small smile.
He has fear in his eyes, but the eyelids are fluttering. He is tired.
"Are you warm now?"
He mumbles a little. Affirmative.
"You have lost some blood. Sleep and get better. Go to sleep." I run my fingers over his soft eyes and close his eyelids. "Sleep now, sleep. I will be back."
I am pretty sure he is out cold now. I put a lot of sleeping pills into the water. I can't believe he would take any water. Apparently he had enough drugs to knock him out cold. He won't die from an overdose, but I don't expect him to wake up soon, either. Sleeping pills. So simple. Drugs are such wonderful things. Especially the ones I can buy down the street at the drugstore. Wonderful places for wonderful things.
I roll my little metal table over to him.
My table has a cloth over it, but I know what is underneath. Nothing fancy. I place my hand over his forehead. Warm, not cold. His pulse on his neck is fast, but steady. He did not lose too much blood. I stand back and survey my new man. I smile.
Steve wakes up with a rag in his mouth.
I have already stuffed it in completely by the time he awakens. He breathes rapidly and loudly through his nose. The rag smells of paint thinner. He tries to talk, to reason, to let me know he is a family man, a good man, a man who deserves to live. Really, who deserves to live? You? Me?
His eyes are fluttering. Inhaling paint thinner cannot be healthy, I think. I am wearing a disposable white surgeon's mask over my mouth and nose. No sense getting giddy and dizzy off the fumes. I am wearing an apron, one that covers me neck to knee, one of those aprons that fathers use for family barbeques. It says 'D'ya want it burnt or extra burnt?' It shows a fat man at a barbeque flipping hamburgers. I don't know where I got it.
Steve is almost out cold. He is trying to mumble, and is only succeeding in inhaling more fumes. I have surgical gloves on, the cheap ones, yellowish. I have retied my hair so the bun will not loosen. I gently pull the cloth off of my metal table. On the top tray are knives. I have been doing a lot of reading, and now I will do some hands-on lab work. I am excited and a little scared. I don't want to fuck up too badly. I give my head a shake and get to work.
An hour later.
Steve has long since stopped trying to scream. He is still breathing, but the breathing is shallow and fast. He has been unconscious for almost the whole hour. Pity, really. Next time I will have to keep the man conscious. I have to do some sound tests to make sure no one walking their dog past my house can hear noises from my garage. At least there is a brick wall where the garage door should be. That should help.
I am totally covered in blood. I am sure I even have blood in my hair. My metal tray that holds my tools is swimming with blood. I am actually surprised Steve is still alive. He has misplaced a lot of fluid. 'Misplaced'. As if he might find it again. The thought makes me smile. I have been smiling a lot today. This is a good thing. It is a great day to be alive.
Another hour.
Steve has stopped breathing a while ago. Shame, really. He would have made a nice friend. Polite, friendly, intelligent. Too bad he missed his bus this morning. He was at the bus stop when I drove by, in the driving rain. He was somewhat soaked by the downpour. I guess people think that accepting a ride from a lone woman is safe. I guess he will never be able to say otherwise.
I have separated Steve. Our Mr. Kay is in a few pieces.
I take his feet and hands and place them in a plastic bucket. I haven't decided what to do with them yet. I am sure it will come to me.
I have another bucket on my other side. In this bucket are his intestines and liver, heart, and other organs. His lungs are still in his body.
I have cut into his leg muscles, to the bone. I have cut off fillets from the flesh of his legs. I have cut off his penis and tossed it into a bucket. I have cut away the small amount of flesh from his chest to expose his ribcage, manubrium and sternum. I am looking at a picture of a skeleton, and one of a human made of nothing but muscle, both taped to the wall. The pictures are spotted with blood. Crappy.
The last thing I do is cut off his head. I hold it by its hair, place it in a smaller bucket, and place it in the freezer in the far end of the garage, with the others. It is only noon. I go upstairs for a nap. It is a great day to be alive.
