Bullet Through Your Face (improved format) (6 page)

It’s just used for
flavoring in pies!”
“Hull says the Indians et pumpkin all the tam—”
All the tam,
Gray thought, disgusted.
“—durin’ famines’n such when the pilgrims wanted ‘em ta starve.” Her eyes lit up, as if with enthusiasm. “But they
didn’t
starve,
see, ‘cos they et pumpkin.”
Gray just looked at her.
“It ain’t that bad,” she encouraged. “Er, at least, probably it ain’t.”
“Wonderful.” He pushed the steaming bucket away, no longer
even mindful of his shrunken penis and scrotum. “I can’t possibly
eat this.”
“Well-well,” she stammered. “Ya best eat it all, ‘cos Jory says
if ya don’t, they’ll come up here’n ruck ya about somethin’fierce.”
“Great.” That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Maximum
humiliation. Rape him, make him give blowjobs. Force him to eat
pumpkin.
And why?
For the hell of it,
Gray realized.
If I don’t eat it,
they’ll just kick my ass some more . . . and that’s not the only thing
they’ll do with my ass . . .
“‘Least it’ll be somethin’ in yer belly,” the girl suggested.
She’s right about that.
Gray decided to think with some
practicality. The pumpkin would provide some necessary nutrition,
some energy, and he’d need that to get out of here.
I’m about to eat hot
pumpkin, with my hands.
Or,
hand,
that is. The finger of one hand, of
course, had been up Hull’s ass, and he didn’t want to be eating with
that one. He reached in, pulled up a wedge. At least she’d seeded it.
He took a bite, his face squeezing up, eating it like a watermelon.
It did
not
taste like watermelon.
“Is it good?” the girl asked.
Gray just looked at her. It was not good. It was slimy, no
sweetness whatever, just a mushy texture. He tried to tell himself it
would taste like eggplant.
But it did not taste like eggplant.
“Bet it tastes like pumpkin pie, huh?”

“No,” he groaned. She’d pronounced “pie” as “pah.” There was
a pumpkin flavor, though, and at least he learned something.
Hot
pumpkin tastes like shit.
In a constant wince, he ate the pumpkin’s
whitish flesh off the orange skin, choking it down. It was awful.

The girl was on her knees, leaning over as she watched. He could
see her bare breasts inside the halter but just now even the most erotic
image caused no reaction. As he started in on the second wedge, she
kneed around behind him, rubbed his shoulders. “Anythin’ ya want
me ta do fer ya?” she offered. “You kin fuck me if ya wants.”

Gray smirked, cheeks stuffed with hot mush. “No, thanks.”
“Wanna blowjob?”
“No!” A chunk of pumpkin blew out of his mouth. “I’m not
exactly in the mood, you know? Those animal brothers of yours
raped me. And it’s
your
fault.”

“It’s not!” Suddenly she was sobbing. “Just ‘cos they’se bad
don’t mean I am!”
“You’re worse,” Gray blurted. “You set me up. You lured me
here—for them.”
“I ain’t had no choice!” she nearly shrieked. “If I don’t do whats
they say, they’se’ll kill me, and my baby!”
Now she was blubbering hysterically. Swallowing more mush,
Gray considered her words. She was just a stupid hill-girl, born into
poverty, abused and tormented and subjugated from day one. What
could Gray expect?
And don’t be an asshole,
he told himself.
You need this dumb
cracker bitch to get out of here.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, turning to
her. He hugged her, a phony gesture, yes, but how else could he gain
her confidence? “I didn’t mean to say that, and I know you’ve had it
rough, especially with brothers like that. It must be horrible to have
to live with such terror.”
“It is, it is,” she sobbed into his shoulder, hugging him back.
“They’se always beatin’me’n sayin’how they’ll kill me if I act up. If
that happened, it’d be the worse thing in the world, ‘cos who’d take
care’a my baby? Jory’n Hull hate my l’il girl anyways, an’ if I was
dead, they’d juss kill her. They’d put her in one’a the drums juss sure
as shit.”

“The drums?”
“That’s how they’se git rid’a folks.”
The drums,
Gray reflected.
Get rid of folks.
He didn’t know what the hell the drums were and he didn’t want to know. The crucial
information had already been relayed—something he could’ve
guessed all along.
They’re not just going to let me out of here after
they’ve had their fun. They’re going to kill me.

But when?
“Look—what’s your name? Kelly Ann?”
“Kari Ann,” she sniffled.
“Your brothers. They’re going to get rid of me too, aren’t they?”
More sniffling as she nodded, gulped.
“How come they haven’t done that already?”
“Oh, they will, just as soon as they’re finished.”
“Finished with what?”
“Yer car.”
So that was it.
Probably stripping the car down, for parts,
Gray calculated. “How much time do I have?”
“‘Nuther day, probably. It don’t take ‘em long. Then they—they’se’ll git rid’a ya. But if yer lucky
...”
Gray’s eyes widened at the suggestion of hope. “What, Kari Ann? If I’m lucky,
what?
”
Her eyes were red from crying. She wiped her nose. “If yer lucky, they
won’t git rid’a ya right away. They’ll keep ya around until they git
another car.”
Gray thought he got it. Jory and Hull were forcing the girl to bring
victims back to the house. Then they’d chain the poor bastard
up here and use him for sexual relief for as long as it took them to strip the car down.
“If ya—you know,” she began. “If ya do ‘em good, then they
probably won’t kill ya right away.”

The realization, however grim, came as no surprise by now. It
made sense.
Homosexual sociopaths. I’m only worth keeping alive
for as long as I’m a good fuck and suck. . . .
The more effectively
Gray entertained them sexually, the better chance there’d be that they
wouldn’t kill him until the next abduction.

It looked like Gray would have to be a good bitch.
“Where am I, anyway?” he asked. “Some back room in the house?”
“The attic,” she said.
Gray looked at the room’s one window, then remembered the single window in the dormer-like room at the back of the house that
he’d noticed when they pulled up.
That window must be this window.
As he recalled, it overlooked an area of the backyard surrounded by
plank fencing.
I’m upstairs. So how do I get out?
Again, his only
hope was the girl.

“Jory and Hull—they’ve been abusing you, haven’t they?” he
started. “Incestuously, I mean.”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “Just blowjobs’n fuckin’ me in the ass.
Hull says that ain’t incest, on account of no come goes in my pussy.”
Oh, so that’s how it works.
“But after they started doin’ the car thing, they took ta fellas
more, so they’se don’t do stuff like that ta me anymore. They just
beat me a lot.”
“And the father of your daughter,” Gray went on. “Didn’t you
say—”
She looked down in shame. “Well, I’se lied ‘bout that. Just said
I got raped so’s you’d feel sorry for me. He was some fella I been
seein’, but when I gots knocked up, Jory’n Hull kilt him.” Then she
broke out into more tears and hugged him. “I’m so sorry. It’s juss that
I’m so scared all the time, I
have
ta do what they say. I cain’t let ‘em
kill my baby!”
“That’s all right,” Gray consoled. “I understand. You had no
choice. But maybe in some weird way, this is all a good thing—us being brought together.”
“What-what’cha mean?”
Make this good,
Gray warned himself. “I can tell you’re a special kind of girl. You’re the kind of girl I’ve been searching for for my
whole adult life.”
She looked up, teary eyed. “Yuh-yuh-ya really mean that?”
“Of course I do. And I can only imagine what kind of life you
have here . . . with your brothers.”
“It’s pretty bad,” she sniffled. “But I gots ta do what they say so’s
they don’t hurt my baby.”
Gray took her hand in a performance worthy of an Oscar. “I
understand all that, and it’s okay.
Any
woman would do the same
thing—they’d have no choice. But there’s something I’ve got to tell
you, Kari Ann, and I mean this. I think–I think I’m falling in love
with you.”
Her gazed groped for him, confusion merging with something
that had to be hope. “We should be together,” Gray continued. “I
make a lot of money, Kari Ann. I could take you away from all this.
But you have to help me.”
“I-I couldn’t—”
“”You have to unlock this chain from my ankle, and when you
go back downstairs, you have to leave the door unlocked. Then I’ll
get you and take you away from this place, you and your daughter.
Then you’ll have the kind of life you deserve.”
She started with her waterworks again. “My brothers’d whup
me! They probably kill me.”
Gray whispered soft. “But that won’t happen, Kari Ann. Because
they’ll never know. You won’t have to worry about your brothers
anymore. I’ll take care of you, and your baby. It’ll be wonderful.”
Her lower lip trembled. Tears welled freely in her caramel-brown
eyes. “I cain’t! I cain’t! I gotta go!”
Flustered, she grabbed the bucket full of pumpkin skins, then she
whisked away, closed the door and padded barefoot down the steps.

Gray slept horribly, wakening in the dark from horri
fic nightmares
only to find himself alive in a worse reality. When the moon was
high in the room’s only window, he rushed to the bucket, voiding his
bowels just in time. His pumpkin dinner soared through him; if felt
like he was shitting hot broth. The abrupt discharge splattered against
the bucket’s bottom, and splashed back up to dot his rump. Nothing
to wipe with, of course, so he dragged himself back across the wood
floor, back into sleep, wet-buttocks’d. Later he rose again, to urinate,
and—thanks to the single ceiling light that remained on through the
night—had no choice but to watch the hard stream of his pee churn
foam into the pale diarrhea. The smell of the room made him recall
the outhouse at summer camp when he was a boy.