Working Title: "Now You Know" (Part One)

Working Title: "Now You Know"






1

Angie felt a single, silent buzzing against her thigh, went stiff in the shoulders, and groaned softly.

Great. Wonderful. Just what I goddamn need.

She had her phone pulled halfway out when the door behind her swung with a creak and clicked shut.

"Okay, Ange."

She returned the phone to her pocket, leaving the message unread.

There were soft footsteps on the carpet behind her. Carol Drake walked into her line of sight, holding a Styrofoam cup full of coffee in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. She went behind her office desk and set her items down, sat in her rolling desk-chair and leaned forward.

"So...I've heard Marcia's side of the story. Now I want you to tell me what happened. Your side of things."

Angie, arms folded and one leg crossed over the other, took a breath and kept her expression blank except for a slight raising of her eyebrow.

"My side is that I did my job. I've told Marcia repeatedly in the past she can't leave empty skids in the aisles. And yet, she keeps on doing it."

Carol nodded and rubbed one eye with her thumb.

"Okay, well, we're not talking about what Marcia did right now. What did you do?"

Angie shrugged. "I handled it."

"Handled it, how?"

"I went to the break room, got her and brought her back to the warehouse. I showed her the skid and told her to put it away."

Carol looked at the papers in front of her for a moment, moving her lips as she read.

"You mean you...walked into the break room and up to Marcia, told her to 'Get your ass up and come with me right now'. And when she didn't move, you kicked over the chair beside her and said--" Carol flipped to the next page. '''You want me to drag you with me by the hair?'"

"I wouldn't say--"

"And then, when you reached the aisle and showed her the skid, instead of letting her use the pallet jack, you
made her drag it with her bare hands over to the skid stack."

Carol leaned back and made a fish-tail motion with one hand.

"Does that sound about right?"

Angie sighed. "Look, bring her in here and I'll apologize, okay? I'm just, I'm having a really bad day and this is just one more thing I can't handle right now."

A second went by, and then Carol let out a harsh breath and leaned her head back with her eyes closed.

"Angie, you do know, don't you, that it's not just you whose ass is on the line? I recommended you for this job, which means if you get a reputation for bullying your team members, I don't look very good either."

"I wasn't bullying anyone."

"According to Marcia, you were. Do you know that she got a splinter while dragging that skid?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Angie hissed. "Look, you know just like I do that Maricia Cranmore is a lazy cunt who thinks she only has to do what she feels like and everybody else can handle the rest. Now, tell me where I'm in the wrong for doing something about it."

"Stop." Carol raised her eyebrows and pointed a finger at Angie. "You are way the hell out of line talking to me like that, and do not think I won't write you up."

"Well, take out your forms and write me the fuck up, then!" Angie unfolded her arms and leaned forward. "You know, I bust my ass for this place. I've been nothing but a hard worker from day one, so if you're gonna take Marcia's side, of all people, then I might as well not give a shit anymore."

It was on that last sentence that Angie heard her voice crack, and then felt the hot mist that had gathered in her eyes.

"Ange, are you okay?"

"Huh? Yeah."

She wiped the corner of her eye as discreetly as she could.

"Look, I'm, uh...I'm sorry, Carol. Like I said, it's been a bad day."

"I can see that. Well, you know, it hasn't exactly been peaches for me, either."

"I know. I'm--look, just do whatever you think is right. I know I was out of line. I've always hated when people take their shit out on the people under them. Thought I was better than that." She shrugged. "Maybe I'm not."

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the tapping of Carol's manicured nails on the desk surface.

"You know, if you were anyone else, I would have sent you home two minutes ago?"

Angie stifled an involuntary giggle.

"Well, that would be the perfect punishment, believe me."

A bitter smile settled on her face. She looked up. Carol was staring at her, but no longer with anger.

"Ange, is there something going on? Something you want to get off your chest?"

2

Angie, sitting on Carol's tan courdoroy couch, caught the apple-cinnamon smell of a Glade Plug-In, and beneath it a faraway scent of kitty litter. Getting bored, she leaned over, lifted a paperback from the coffee table and read the back cover.

"Having fun, Snoopy?"

She jumped at the sudden presence at the arm of the couch.

"Sorry," she said, and hurriedly placed the book back on the table.

"Just messing with you. Have you ever watched the show 'Bones'?"

"I've seen it a few times."

Carol pointed at the book.

"The author who wrote that was the inspiration for the main character."

Angie nodded. "Cool."

Carol had changed out of her blouse and slacks, and it was a small shock to Angie to see her boss in faded jeans and a loose-fitting Rolling Stones T-Shirt. Her posture was also different from what it was at work, looser and more relaxed.

She was holding something in her hand, too: a rolled-up bundle tied in place by a frayed piece of white ribbon.

"What's that?"

Carol came through the space between the couch and the recliner that faced the coffee table lengthwise.

"This," she said, sitting down on the edge of the chair, "is the reason I asked you over."

She untied the ribbon and unrolled the bundle, unfolded it twice and held it up at two ends for Angie to see. It was a large, patchwork quilt that looked like it would easily cover a king-sized bed. The fabric was mainly cream-colored, but on each square was a multitude of single stitches done with a silky black thread which, at first glance, gave the impression of a thick swarm of flies.

"Have you ever seen one of these before?"

Angie furrowed her brow slightly. "A quilt? Um, yeah, I've seen them from time to time."

"Well, this quilt isn't just a quilt, Angie. This is one-hundred percent Amish stitchwork. I dare you to look at it and find a single thread out of place."

Angie took a closer look. Indeed, some serious craftsmanship had gone into it. There was something else, though. Looking closer, she saw that the black stitches weren't at all scattered randomly, but occured at the same points on each square. The longer she looked, the more it seemed that, together, they formed an image. A face.

"What's that picture on all the squares?"

Carol shook her head. "I have no earthly idea. Believe me, I've tried to figure that out for myself, but I always come up blank. All I know is that, from what you've told me, you could use some help getting to the truth. This quilt will get you there."

Angie looked up. "Huh?"

Carol lowered the quilt down so that it covered her lap.

"You know that I got divorced three years ago, right?

"Sure."

"Do you know anything more than that?"

Angie shook her head, not adding that it hadn't been for lack of speculation among the more gossipy members of the warehouse crew.

"Well," Carol said, "the time leading up to it was...a rough time for me, just like you're having now." She scoffed. "Maybe more so. Craig was a lot better about covering his tracks than your Ryan seems to be. He eventually got sloppy, though, and one night I came home from work earlier than usual, and walked in on him in bed, playing with himself in front of his laptop."

Angie cringed. "Whoa."

"Yes, it was disgusting. But, I suppose you have to expect something of that nature at some point after fifteen years. Men get bored easily, as we all know. And if it had stopped at him diddling to porn, I might have kicked him out of bed for the night, but I'd have let it go before long." Her eyes drifted downward. "Except, it didn't stop at that. Before I walked in, I heard him talking to someone, and then when I opened the door, the first thing he did was shove something under his pillow."

She paused. Angie gave her a knowing look.

"His phone."

Carol nodded. "It couldn't have been anything else. I didn't let on that I suspected anything, though. The next night, while Craig was asleep, I took his phone out of his pants pocket and looked through it. And...nothing. No unfamiliar numbers, no calls or texts other than what he'd made to me, work, friends, ecetera. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"And let me guess. That just made you more suspicious."

Carol's face scrunched up, creating wrinkles on her nose.

"Yep. So, the next thing I did was take his laptop into the kitchen and hack into his e-mail."

"You know how to hack a computer?"

"You can hack anyone who uses the same password for everything. I'm pretty sure that he expected it, though. Same story as his phone: no suspicious e-mails, no instant messages. But, oh lucky me, he hadn't thought to delete his site history. I brought it up and clicked on the last page he'd been to. All of a sudden I'm on a site called allbymyself.com and I'm looking at an image of some skinny naked college boy jerking off while sucking on a giant dildo."

"Holy shit."

There was now a bitter glare in Carol's eyes.

"So, that was one mystery solved. Next thing was, who did I hear him talking to?" She paused and took a breath. "I don't suppose I have to tell you, it would have done me no good to confront him. He would have just said that I was imagining things, that he got to that porn site by accident. So, there I am with my hands empty, and I don't know for sure what's going on and I need to spill it out to someone. Sound familiar?"

Angie raised an eyebrow and looked off to her side.

"So, that night, I drove up to Shaw Station, where my sister lives. We went out and got drunk and I told her everything. And I was nowhere near sober enough to care who else heard it. I get a tap on my shoulder and turn around, and there's a little old Amish lady standing there, vodka and cranberry in her hand, saying she couldn't help over-hearing. Saying said she wanted to help me."

"An Amish lady in a bar?"

"Sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn't it? She was off work for the day and waiting for her ride home to show up. It turned out that she owned Quilted Dreams on Main Street. All the quilts there, the candles, the handmade soap, Mary-Ann makes it all. That was her name, Mary-Ann Raber. Anyway, I asked her how in the hell could she help me? She tells me to give her my address and I'd find out. I was about six beers deep at that point and I figured, what's the harm? It wasn't like I was giving her my social security number, and I doubted she belonged to some Amish burglary ring. So I wrote it down on a napkin for her. A few days later, this shows up, Fed-Exed to my door. I open it up, unfold it, and out falls a note from Mary-Ann, telling me to put this on my bed and sleep under it with Craig. She said that the answers I wanted would 'come to me in my dreams'. I figured that it was just some Amish superstitious nonsense--you know, Braucha and all of that--but hey, she was nice enough to send me a free quilt, so why not humor her? Plus, it's a damn comfy quilt. So, I put it on the bed, and Craig and I slept under it that night."

"And what happened?"

There was a long moment of silence.

"I had a dream, that's what. Except that...I wasn't me in the dream. I was Craig. I was seeing everything through his eyes, hearing what he heard. I was in our bathroom, sitting on the toilet-seat lid. The shower was on, and I pulled my cell phone out of Craig's jeans. And I dialed a number. A man picked up and...and I started to talk to him. Craig did, I mean. He was whispering, saying how much he missed him, wanted to see him." She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. "Touch him. Craig asked him to send a picture. And he did, a selfie of himself laying shirtless on his bed. I saw his face. He was this, this scrawny little twenty-something kid. Long black hair halfway to his shoulders. And Craig started to--"

Carol stopped and shook her head.

"He said a name a couple of times. 'Ben'. Trying to keep his voice down the whole while. When he was...done, he told 'Ben' that he loved him and that he'd see him soon, but that he had to get back to that 'bitch' in the living room. They said their goodbyes and hung up, and Craig deleted the call from his phone."

Carol took a slow breath in and out, blinking the tears and darkness out of her eyes.

"And then I woke up. But I remembered everything. The phone number, the kid's face. And I remembered his name. I don't suppose I need to tell you that I didn't sleep the rest of the night. Then the next day, at work, I pulled out my own phone and called the number I'd seen in the dream. A man picked up. When I heard his voice my whole body went cold. It was him, the same voice I'd heard in the dream. I said 'Is this Ben?' It was quiet for a few seconds, and then he asked who was calling. And I hung up. I just sat there in my office, looking for any way to tell myself that this was all just a big misunderstanding, that Mary-Ann Raber was playing some sort of Amish witchcraft trick on me, that she'd put the dream there for some sick reason. I thought for a while, and realized there was one more thing I could do. I pulled my phone out and brought up my Facebook app, and I typed in the name 'Ben'. Of course, his face didn't pop right out at me. I had to scroll through a lot of 'Bens' until I found him. But I found him."

"You saw his face?"

"Not just his face. The little faggot had changed his profile picture to the same photo he'd sent to Craig."

Angie inwardly cringed at the gay slur, but understood where it was coming from.

"So what did you do then?"

"What did I do? I locked my office door, grabbed my coat and bunched it up, and screamed into it as loud as I could, then I cried for about two hours. After that, this...it was weird, this coldness came over me. Or maybe relief. Shit, I don't know. But, I wiped away the tears, went to the bathroom and washed my face off, and I went back to work. I worked my ass off that day. Actually, I think I might have gotten a little abrupt with you once or twice."

Angie didn't remember, and told her so. Carol cracked a little smile.

"I guess it couldn't have been that bad, then. But, after a while, the work day was over and it was time to go home. And, oh boy, the coldness wore off then. I pulled into the garage, and I was more scared of walking into my own house than I've ever been of anything. I must have sat in the car for a half-hour. But I made myself get out and go inside. I walked into the kitchen, and there was Craig, microwaving a TV dinner. He said he thought I must have been working late and forgot to call. I didn't say anything, just walked up to him and held up my phone screen for him to look at."

Angie smiled.

"You had the guy's picture up on your screen, didn't you?'

"Smart girl, Ange. And, sure enough, there was that look in his eye. I don't know how long it was, but we just stood there. Not saying anything. Then he said 'Just let me grab some things to take with me tonight, and I'll get the rest later'."

Carol locked eyes with Angie and shrugged.

"And that is the story of my divorce."

Angie didn't speak. She started to several times, but couldn't find what she wanted to ask or say.

"The worst part is the not knowing, isn't it, Ange? Not knowing if you can trust him, trust your own instincts? Not knowing if anything is real between the two of you, or if it ever has been?"

Angie's lips parted, then closed. She nodded.

Carol lifted the quilt again, with one hand this time.

"As Mick and Keith might say, this might not give you the answers you want, but you might just find the ones that you need."

Angie's eyes moved from Carol's face down to the cream-colored quilt, and she reached out with one hand and let her fingers touch the soft fabric.

3

Ryan surprised Angie by being awake and on the couch when she got home, and then again by smiling at her as she stood in the doorway. He closed the new issue of Blood Binge Magazine he'd been reading and set it on the arm of the couch, then swung his legs off the cushions and sat up straight.

"Hey, stranger."

"Hey," Angie replied, making no attempt at warmth.

Ryan awkwardly rubbed his hands. "What'cha got there?" He nodded at the quilt, which Angie held under her
right arm, rolled up and tied with the white ribbon.

Angie herself had been wondering that same thing. Driving home, she'd realized just how nuts Carol's story
actually sounded, and wondered if her boss had perhaps been hitting the sauce a little hard recently. After all, the things she'd told her, magic quilts and dreams where you saw through someone else's eyes? That shit didn't happen, at least not outside of bad fantasy stories.

"Gift from Carol."

"Ah. Looks comfy."

"Mm."

Ryan patted the couch cushion his feet had just been on.

"Why don't you toss that on the bed and come back in here and we'll have a little talk-time? Haven't done that in a while."

Angie took a long breath, blinked a few times, and turned back into the hallway. She hurled the quilt underhand through the bedroom door, landing it on the floor next to her side of the bed, then went back in the living room.

She hesistated when she got to the couch. Ryan, who'd switched positions again and was now sitting cross-legged, looked up at Angie with upward-curved eyebrows.

"Please?"

For a moment, there was a trembling in Angie's chest as she looked down at him. In that moment, she didn't see Ryan the liar or Ryan the possible cheat. She saw the gawky, nerdy Ryan Berg she was sure he was until recently--her Ryan.

Stay cold, Ange.

She sat down at the other end of the couch with her foot tucked under her leg, and looked at him with what she hoped was an indifferent stare.

"So?"

Ryan opened his palms outward. "So...did you read any of the messages I sent you?"

"I was working."

Ryan nodded and looked down for a second, seeming to catch on that he was going to have his work cut out for him.

Good.

"Well, I'm sorry about last night, that's what I said in them. And, that's what I want to say to you now."

"That's all you want to say? You're sorry?"

"I shouldn't have blown up like that. I won't try to make excuses for it, except to say I was only about half-
awake when I saw you."

"Yeah? You sure seemed wide awake when you jumped up and snatched your phone out of my hand."

"I thought you were snooping, and I just kind of lost it, I guess."

"The battery on my phone died while I was paying the internet bill. I was just going to use yours to get back with them. I wasn't snooping."

"I know. I know that now."

"Besides, why would you get so upset about me looking at your phone? Was there something on there you
didn't want me to see?"

He looked her, dead-serious, in the eyes. "No. Nothing."

The screen saver flashed through Angie's mind.

"Look." He pulled his phone from the pocket of his pajama pants and held it up in front of Angie. "Here. If you want, you can go through it right now. Look at everything you want. There's nothing on there I'm trying to keep from you."

Angie looked at the phone.

("And, nothing. No unfamiliar numbers...Nothing out of the ordinary.")

"No, I'm good. So, then, why did you freak out?"

Ryan sighed, put the phone back in his pocket.

"Just that I don't like people sneaking through my stuff. My mom used to do it to me all the time, go through my closet and shit. It's a sore spot with me, that's all."

Angie looked for any trace of deceit in his face, any flick of his eyes away from her. Nothing, that she could see. She leaned her elbow against the back of the couch and tilted her head sideways, resting it in the palm of her hand.

"What about the past few weeks, Ryan? What's up with that? It used to be I would get home from work and you'd be wide awake, all rested up. Now, I get home and you're in the bedroom, still asleep. You don't wake up until it's almost time for you to go to the hospital. Would you maybe care to explain that?"

Ryan looked down at the hardwood floor, shook his head and shrugged.

"I wish I could. I mean, you've worked thirds before. You know how it is, you get home and can't get to sleep one morning, and that ends up being how the whole week or month goes. Trust me, if it were up to me I'd be up and waiting for you every day and I'd sit here with my arms around you all evening--"

"Stop trying to butter me up, Ryan."

"Okay, fair enough. Point is, you take somebody's brain and make them readjust to all sorts of weird hours, the pattern gets messed up and sleep just comes when it wants to."

"Uh-huh."

Angie wanted to believe him. But, still, there was the screen saver. She'd only seen it a second before Ryan had snatched the phone out of her hand, but the image was still branded onto her mind. The girl couldn't have been more than twenty. She had long, dark brown hair and features that made her look vaguely feline. There had been a blank and wide-eyed expression on her face, as though whoever took the picture had yelled "Hey! Over here!" and caught her completely off guard.

The girl in the picture was the one loose end. Like Carol Drake before her, she'd scrolled through all three-hundred and change of her husband's Facebook friends, looking for a face that even sort-of resembled the girl, but had come up dry.

Was it possible that her mind had simply played a trick on her? That, somewhere down the line, her brain took a snapshot of a girl at Wal-Mart or in a passing car, stored it in the very back and, last night, pasted it on Ryan's phone screen just to play on fears she didn't even know she had?

("...you could use some help getting to the truth. This quilt will get you there...")

Fuck it. What could it hurt?

"Okay, then. I forgive you."

A smile spread across Ryan's face.

"On one condition."

"Anything."

Angie slid herself closer to Ryan, took his hand in hers and squeezed it tight.

"You still have some emergency vacation days left, right?"

Ryan shrugged.

"A few. Remember, you wanted me to save them for the winter when the roads got bad?"

"Well, screw that. I want you to take tonight off and spend it with me."

She paid attention to his face, looked for any hesitation. Instead, there seemed to be relief. She hoped it was because She-Forgives-Me, not because She-Believes-Me.

"I do that, and we'll be cool?"

Angie raised an eyebrow.

"You make it sound like a chore."

Ryan shook his head.

"Never a chore to start the weekend early, especially if I get to spend it with you. Tell you what, I'll call the hospital and tell them I got a cold. Not allowed to work if you got something contagious."

"Are they going to be mad?"

"Hey, push comes to shove, the nurses can empty their own fucking wastebaskets."

Angie smiled and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. The familiarity of his weak grip made Angie's heart stir a little. She hoped that, after tonight, she'd have her skinny little nerd back.

They spent the evening on the couch, eating Chinese food that Ryan had picked up. They caught up on the last few episodes of Bates Motel, then streamed a couple of cheesy horror movies on Netflix.

Angie laid on the couch with her head on Ryan's chest, wearing pajama pants and a tank top with no bra underneath. There were even a few times she considered grabbing his hand and placing it on her breast, letting him massage it the way he did when he wanted to let her know he was horny. But, with him rubbing his eyes and yawning constantly, it was clear there'd be no fireworks tonight.

They went in the bedroom around nine and slid under the quilt, which Angie had replaced the plush comforter with while Ryan was picking up dinner.

"This is a lot more comfy than it looks," Ryan yawned and pulled the quilt up to his chin.

"One-hundred percent Amish stitchwork."

Angie lay on her side, facing Ryan. He turned his head toward her.

"I'm happy things are okay with us, now."

"Me, too."

"And I swear, I'm not going to be asleep anymore when you get home, okay? I don't want us to be that couple that drifts away from each other, ends up living together like a couple of strangers."

Angie threw her arm over his shoulders.

"Me neither. But I know it sucks working thirds, too, so maybe I'll cut you some slack if you need to sleep in sometimes."

"Deal."

She leaned over and kissed him, let it last a long time and, just this once, gave him a break and used her tongue. Afterwards, she laid her head on her pillow but kept her hand on his chest until he passed out a few minutes later.

She turned the light out on her side of the bed. Closing her eyes, she was certain that the picture on his phone had been some kind of misunderstanding. That Ryan was still her Ryan. And she knew that she wouldn't be seeing any other woman in her dreams tonight.

And if she did, the slut would be dead before the dream was over.

4

Dry grass crunches beneath his footsteps. Through the glare of the morning sun, the crumbling stable barn
seems to drift toward him like an iceberg. The backpack hanging from his right shoulder is heavy and keeps sliding
down so that he constantly has to halt and re-adjust it.

There is a distant noise behind him. He turns and looks at the country road beyond the dilapidated house, the back of which his car is parked close against, hiding it from passersby. He is prepared to rush and duck behind the nearby rusted tractor when, across the road, he sees a lone deer running through the cut-down cornfield. He listens carefully, hears no cars coming, turns back and continues toward the barn.

He swings the door open slowly, one creak at a time, the reek of old shit and dry-rot escaping from inside. He steps in and swings the door shut, makes it bang. He stands near the door a moment, a still presence in the near-blackness of the room.

Muffled whimpers and dry sniffles emanate from the far corner of the barn. Hearing them, he moves his fingers to his crotch and strokes the head of his penis gently through his pants, then drops his hand to the side and walks toward the noise.

He passes empty stables, comes to the last one which has been boarded up into a room of its own. The muffled noises are closer now. The door to the room is a large piece of plywood with a rope-handle midway up. He pulls the door open, walks into the pitch blackness.

There are moans and pleading as he kneels down and sets the backpack on the floor. He unzips it and fishes out a halogen lantern, sets it beside the backpack and flips it on.

In the harsh glow of the lamp, he sees her lying there. She is face-down on a ratty torn mattress, covered by a navy-blue blanket. Her long dark hair is dirty and greasy, held together by two long strips of gray electrical tape wrapped several times around her head at eye and mouth-level.

He grabs one corner of the blanket and slowly tugs it away, exposing her bare shoulder blades, then her arms which are zip-tied behind her. There are two zip-ties on each wrist, and one holding them together. Her panties are bunched into the crack of her ass and stained with dirt and dried urine, the smell of which hangs heavy in the room.

He retrieves a long leather belt from the same compartment of the backpack as the lamp, and from a smaller compartment pulls out a plastic container that makes a rattling sound as he shoves it in his pocket.

He stands back up with the lamp in one hand and the belt in the other, holds the lantern out in front of him and walks to the side of the mattress until the light shines down on the girl. He moves the light over her, examining the welts and bruises. They are scattered all over her back, but her buttocks and thighs have gotten the worst of it. The older welts are overlapped by newer ones, some of which rise up from the skin as thick as a finger. A few of them are red and yellow with infection.

He holds the belt out, lets the strap dangle down and lowers the tip of it onto the small of her back, drags it slowly and gently across her welted flesh. The girl is hyperventilating and sobbing, crying out through the strip of tape, not yelling but merely pleading with what strength she has.

Though her words are muffled, their meaning is clear--"Please, no more."

He is breathing hard now, as well. His cock throbs and strains against the inside of his pants. Abruptly, he lifts the belt off of her and steps away, sets the lantern down on the floor, the beam forming monstrous shadows on the walls. He wraps the leather strap around his hand until it is rolled up all the way and returns it to the backpack, then kneels beside the girl and brushes her shoulder with his fingertips. She recoils at his touch.

"Hey," he says in a gentle voice. "Hey, it's okay. There won't be any of that today."

She trembles and sucks snot back into her nose.

"It's okay to cry. I know this is hard for you. If you're hungry, I got some peanut butter crackers I brought with me. Do you want some?"

It takes the girl a moment, but she shakes her head no.

"Okay, well, you should really eat something soon. And, next time I come here, I'll see about bringing some water and shampoo and all that, and we'll get you cleaned up. How does that sound?"

No response.

"All right. Well, like I said, no belt today."

As he says this he is reaching one hand over her waist. Cautiously, nurse-like, he rolls her over.

Her tears have made the tape start to come loose from her eyes.

"Here. There's no point in having this on."

He peels the rest of the tape from her eyes and pulls the wrapped-around strip off of her head. She winces as he rips it away from her hair, dark strands coming away with it. He wads up the tape and tosses it aside.

"Now, listen. There is something I do have to do today."

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the plastic container. He looks down at her smallish breasts, takes one of her soft nipples between his thumb and forefinger, pinches and tugs lightly until the nipple begins to harden and stick out. He looks up and into her puffy red eyes. Squinting against the light, she returns his gaze. Her eyes are dazed and half-dead, but possess the slightest glimmer of something still alive deep down.

He pops the top off the container and pulls out one of the safety-pins.

"I just want you to know that this is nothing to do with you. You haven't done anything wrong, okay?"

The girl's eyes meet the pin and her body quakes as though in seizure. Her face tightens into a ball, turning her eyelids into narrow slits as she shakes her head wildly and pleads through the tape.

He pulls a lighter from the same pocket he pulled the container from and unfastens the safety pin, strikes the lighter. A long flame pops up. He holds the pin still in the air, lifts the flame up to the needle-point and slides the tip of it up and down the thin metal.

"See, I've thought of everything. The heat will keep the bleeding down. It'll be just like getting your ears pierced."

The girl's harsh, dry screams are taking their toll on her throat. She stops once in a while, coughing and wheezing through her nostrils, then screams some more, her voice tearing itself apart, sounding now like the rough-throated cry of a feral cat being skinned alive. He listens to this as he heats the needle, and with the head of his cock feels his boxers getting wet with pre-cum. He releases his thumb from the lighter and the flame disappears and he sets the lighter on the ground..

"Okay, I need you to be real still for me okay. I don't want to scratch you up or tear you."

He pinches her nipple, which has lost some of it's hardness, plays with it until it is fully erect again, then pulls it upward, stretching out the top layer of flesh. The girl's cries have died down to sporadic squeaks.

"Okay," he says in a barely audible whisper. "Okay."

He pushes the needle quickly through the flesh beneath the nipple, in one side and out the other. The girl's body spasms and arches up. A shrill screeching escapes her and she goes limp and drops back onto the mattress, her breathing weak and uneven. He fastens the saftey pin, which is still hot and burns his index fingertip. He pulls his hand away and sucks on his finger.

Though the girl's chest is still rising and falling, all traces of life have vanished from her eyes, which are pointed toward the ceiling but don't seem to see anything. She blinks once in awhile, but it is mechanical, thoughtless.

"You did real good," he says, stroking her forehead. "First one's always the hardest. We're going to take a break now, let you rest up."

With his other hand, he taps the outside of his pocket where he's put the plastic container. The saftey pins rattle inside.

"I promise the rest will be easier."