Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (44 page)

When the
shock wore off and the anger took hold, it didn’t take long for him to become
furious with the bitch upstairs.
The bitch who just so
happened to be the mother of his only child.

The mother of his child.

Such odd
words, words that he’d never before said or even considered. Now here he was,
bound in his own basement by the very woman that had bore him a son.
An heir.
A young mind to mold and to
teach.

He was
devastated that he had to learn of being a father under such awful
circumstances. He now wondered if he’d ever get to hold his son. Would he ever
be able to look into his eyes? Would he be able to teach him all the things
that a father should teach his son?
How to ride a bicycle.
The correct way to cast a fishing line.
The sure-fire way to woo a woman.
How to slice open her
throat deep enough that she can’t scream for help but not so deep that she dies
instantly.

It
certainly didn’t seem like it.

A long
time passed before Nicole came back downstairs. When she did, she carried a
tray in front of her.

Trying to
play his cards just right, Ron asked, “What’s that?”

“I felt
bad about earlier so I thought I’d bring you something to eat.”

“That’s
very nice of you.” He watched as she set the tray on the work table. “Who was
that at the door?”

“Oh it was
nobody.”

That was
probably the truth. For the first time in his life, Ron regretted that he never
had social callers. The only people that graced his doorstep were those in the
service industry, people delivering things to him like the mail if was too much
to fit in his box, take-out food that he’d ordered over the phone, and other
various deliveries. It was never a neighbor or a friend.

“I made
you some soup. I hope you’re hungry.”

That was a
stupid question. Of course he was hungry. He was starving.

“It’s
nothing fancy. Just something I whipped up for you to make amends. I hope you
like it.”

Nicole
turned and walked over to him, holding a steaming bowl of soup in her left
hand, the spoon in her right.

His
initial response was to panic. That soup was hot and that bitch was crazy. His
throbbing feet were testaments to that fact. He was afraid she intended to dump
the bowl on his face. That was probably what he would’ve done had their roles
been reversed.

Instead of
dowsing him with the scalding soup, she dipped the spoon in and fed it to him,
one bite at a time.

As he ate,
he wondered if perhaps she’d poisoned the soup. He didn’t detect anything
strange, but there were a great number of poisons that couldn’t be tasted by
the human tongue. Besides, poison didn’t seem like something she’d choose to
do. It was increasingly apparent that she wanted to see him suffer greatly.
Poisoning him wouldn’t bring her the kind of satisfaction she sought.

He wanted
to ask about Austin, but was afraid of setting her off again. Especially while
she was still holding the bowl of hot soup so close to his face.

Minutes
passed while she fed him what was undoubtedly the most delicious soup he’d ever
had. The fact that he hadn’t eaten in so long was probably a factor in that
assessment, but he didn’t care. It was good and it was hot. And it wasn’t
soaked with piss. At least he didn’t think it was.

When he
was nearly finished with the soup, Nicole began to talk in a soothing tone, the
way a mother might speak to her ill child.

“You
should’ve seen him, Ron. You really should’ve seen him. He had your eyes and
nose.
Your hair.
He favored you quite a bit. And he
smelled so refreshing, the way only babies can smell.”

He saw her
lips tremble, her chin quiver, and he couldn’t help but wonder what she’d done
with the boy. He hadn’t failed to notice that she spoke of Austin in the past
tense. This piqued his curiosity.

“Where is
he now? I want to see him. Will you bring him to me, Nicole? Even if you don’t
let me up from this table, would you please bring him here so I can see him?”

“He’s
already here.”

Confusion
washed over Ron’s face. “What do you mean? He’s here now? Where?
Upstairs?
Is that who was at the door? Did someone bring him
here?”

“No, silly.
Right here.”
She held up the bowl of soup.

It took a
few seconds for her words to register with Ron, for him to understand her
implications. He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat, a lump that
had risen with the soup that was threatening to spill out of him.

“What are
you saying?”

“I’m
saying your baby is right here.”

“You
mean…in the soup? You cooked the baby and made soup out of him? And then fed it
to me? Is that what you’re saying, Nicole? Is that what you’re saying?” His
voice rose as he spoke, and by the time he was finished, his throat throbbed
and his head pounded with each word, the veins popping out in his neck and
forehead.

“Settle
down. I didn’t cook the
whole
baby. I
saved some for tomorrow’s dinner.” She paused and tilted her head. “What did
you think you were eating?” She glanced into the bowl. “Oh. I bet you thought
you were eating bean and bacon soup. No. Sorry. That’s not bacon. That’s
Austin.”

The rage
that coursed through his veins at that moment was unbridled. He yelled,
screamed, cursed, and used every ounce of strength he had left to struggle
against the restraints. He wanted off the table. He wanted—no he
needed
—to kill that fucking cunt. He
would rip out her insides and feed them to her. He would then pull out her
tongue and flush it down the toilet like the piece of shit that it was. And he
wasn’t going to stop until he succeeded.

But he did
stop. Once his energy was gone and he had nothing left to contribute to the
cause, he relaxed, giving in to the sadness that overwhelmed him.

At first,
he tried to fight the tears, to hide them so she wouldn’t know that her words
had touched him on an emotional level. But the longer he thought about what
she’d done, the harder it was to keep it all inside. Before he knew it, he was
flat-out bawling. Just like the beautiful baby of which she spoke so highly had
surely done.

“Oh, Ron.
I
didn’t mean to make you cry.” She turned and put the half-empty bowl on the
work table. When she came back to him, she was holding a napkin in her hand. “
Here.
Let me wipe away your tears.”

But the
bitch didn’t wipe away his tears. She cupped the napkin over his nose and mouth
and clamped it down firmly. He shook his head violently, rolling it from side
to side, but her hand was always there, never breaking contact with him.

Half a
minute, maybe forty-five seconds was all he could hold his breath. If he’d had
any kind of warning, he could’ve taken in a big gulp of air and held it longer,
but this came without warning and while he was sobbing.

He was
screwed.

Unable to
fight it any longer, he finally inhaled, sucking in a soggy lungful of
Chloroform-laced air. Seconds later, he was out.

24

I
held the napkin to Ron’s mouth for nearly a
full minute after his eyes closed, and then I went to work.

There
wasn’t a lot of time left and frankly, I was glad. I was ready to be done with
this whole mess, ready to be rid of Ron and have the entire nightmare behind
me. It wasn’t just thinking about Wade and Mason and Austin that had done it.
It was the doorbell. The postman, delivering a letter to Ron, a letter that
announced a meeting tomorrow which Ron was scheduled to attend.
A meeting that, if Ron didn’t attend, would bring about a phone
call.
When the call went unanswered, it would raise suspicions. Then the
police would come.

It was
funny. Not laugh-out-loud-that’s-so-hilarious-I’m-about-to-pee-my-pants funny,
but unfair funny. When I’d tried to get the police to look for Ron, they hadn’t
given it their all. But if Ron’s agent called them up and told them that Ron
had missed a meeting and wasn’t answering his phone, they’d be right here
banging on the door within the hour.

But it
didn’t matter. It was all about to come to an end.

From his
office, I carried armload after armload of books down to the basement and
arranged them the way they needed to be. These weren’t just any books. They
were Ron’s books, copies of every novel he’d written and published, including
Held
. They were every bit as disgusting
as their creator and they deserved to be destroyed just as much as he did.

When I’d
finished carrying down the books, Ron was still unconscious. I used the spare
time to go back upstairs and gather my things, putting everything I’d brought
with me back in the duffle bag and setting it by the patio doors.

Then I
used one of the kitchen towels to scrub down every surface I might’ve touched
during my time in the house.
Every glass, every doorknob,
every light switch, every key on Ron’s laptop, every drawer handle, and every
faucet.
I left nothing to chance.

Satisfied
that I’d erased my presence from Ron’s home, I returned to the basement and
waited for him to come around.

When he
did, he was pissed.

“What the
fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that? I knew you were crazy, but
goddamn, Nicole. Goddamn! You fed me my son.”

“Jesus.
Would you shut up already? That really was bean and bacon soup, dumbass. Do you
really think I’m as fucked up as you are? Do you honestly believe I’d kill and
cook my own baby?”

He didn’t
say anything and he didn’t have to. The look on his face said it all.

“Oh my
god,” I said. “You do. You really think I would do something like. And you
think it because that’s exactly something that you would do.”

I don’t
know what I was expecting from him.
Certainly not an apology,
but perhaps a look of shame or remorse.
He gave me nothing but a cold,
dead stare.

A minute
later, he changed the subject by asking, “Where the hell did you even get
Chloroform?”

“You’d be
amazed at the things you can buy on the Internet.”

“Why don’t
you just let me up right now so I can kill you and be done with this whole
mess?”

“Because I don’t want to die.
For a while, after I escaped your house last time, I did. In fact, I
thought of many ways to do it. I put a knife to my wrist a few times, emptied a
bottle of pills into my hand and wondered if I could get them all down in a
single swallow. But I didn’t do it, and not because I’m a coward. I think the
fact that I’m here with you proves my courage. No, I didn’t kill myself because
I didn’t want to die. I have a family who loves me, and a job to do. That job,
by the way, is to kill you. And you’ll be happy to know that I’m about to do
it. So you will be done with this whole mess as you say, but it won’t be the
way you want.”

“Where’s
our son?”

My lip
quivered though I tried to fight it.

“What? Why
do you look like that? What happened to him, Nicole?”

“He’s in a
safe place.” My voice cracked as I spoke.

“Where is
he?” he shouted.

“It’s
because of you,” I screamed, pointing my finger at him. “He looked just like
you.”

“What did
you do?” His voice was low and even, the tone of a man trying to control his
anger.

Tears
flowed from my eyes as I had to admit what I’d done.

“I didn’t
trust myself around him. I was afraid I’d hurt him. I told myself that even
though he was a part of you, he was also a part of me. I tried to ignore all of
his traits that reminded me of you, tried to only see me when I looked into his
eyes, but…it was just too much.”

I looked
away from Ron, ashamed of what I had to say next. I shouldn’t be ashamed in
front of him, and I don’t really suppose that I was. I was ashamed of myself.
It pained me to say it because it was hard to accept that I’d done such a
horrible thing to my own flesh and blood.

“What,
Nicole? What the fuck did you do?” he screamed, his face turning red.

“I dropped
him off at a fire station. They have that policy about babies, you know. I just
dropped him off and drove straight to Alpine Grove. I almost did it that night.
I almost killed myself. But I didn’t.”

“Well you
should’ve. You fucking bitch. How dare you? How fucking dare you? He’s my son,”
he shouted. The veins in his neck bulged and his eyes opened wider than I’d
ever seen them before. “I want him back. I want our son back now. I don’t care
what you’ve got to do, Nicole, but you damn well better do it.”

As I wiped
the tears from my eyes and stopped crying, I found my courage once again and
said, “Let me explain something to you. He’s not
our
son. He’s
my
son. You
may have provided the sperm, but in no way is he a part of you.” I hadn’t
realized that I’d changed the way I felt until I spoke the words. But I meant
what I said. “He’s nothing like you. I
will
get him back, no matter what, but you won’t be there to see it.”