Studying the two women beside me again, I noted how drastically different they looked. The one on the very end had purple hair and was heavyset. The one next to me had brown hair and was almost as thin as I normally was, aside from the protrusion in her midsection.
I wondered how long it would take me to look like they did, and why I hadn’t been hung the same way.
My throat was parched, my body ached, and my stomach churned with another bout of sickening nausea, but I held it together.
I was so damn tired of ending up in situations I had no control over.
Lifting the rusted-orange chains up so I could examine them, I couldn’t see a way to get them off. I was stuck. Fighting was always my number one option, but I had no idea what I’d be up against—or who—and I wasn’t exactly in the best physical condition.
I knew I had to consider a few added limitations. I wasn’t an idiot. But the position I’d found myself in didn’t make me a delicate wallflower, either. I wasn’t the first woman in the Badlands to end up this way. Hell, some women popped kids out like they were pinball machines. I couldn’t even be that far yet.
Regardless, if it really was set in motion and meant to be, I could handle it.
What I couldn’t do was magically escape a set of chains. There was only one person I could think of who could get me out of this, and he was nowhere near the facility.
Groaning, I leaned my head back and shut my eyes. I just needed him to save me one last time.
I was almost entirely out of it when I felt the rim of a plastic water bottle at my lips. Slowly peeling my eyes open, I saw a woman in front of me, encouraging me to drink.
“Come on,” she whispered encouragingly when I coughed the first bit of water right back out. Her next attempt paid off. I guzzled down the soothing liquid like a newborn calf whose life depended on it.
All too soon, she was pulling away with whispered words that sounded an awful lot like“He’s coming for you,”Then, she was gone, disappearing around the corner so fast I wasn’t able to get a clear look at her face.
If it wasn’t for the slight relief, I felt I would have chalked it up to me hallucinating.
Elation was the first emotion that rushed through my veins when her words repeated in my head. I naively thought she meant Romero.
That idea was wiped out when a guy came strolling around the corner of the building with a thick garden hose clenched in one of his hands, and pushing a bright red wheelbarrow.
Suddenly alert, I scanned the contents of it and a small trickle of worry ciphered into my conscious—not for me, but for the woman right beside me.
Shifting slightly, I found my eyes traveling up the body of a man who was the same size as me, all the way up to his mohawk and then back down to his honey brown eyes.
“Sorry blondie, I’m not allowed to play with you. Boss’ orders.” He winked, completely misinterpreting why I was looking him over. The little smile accompanying his statement had a brittle laugh slipping out of my mouth.
“You should probably move as far right as you can.” He flashed another smile, gently setting the wheelbarrow down.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m prepping them.”. He turned the hose nozzle and then proceeded to spray down the two women. Neither of them reacted beyond quiet whimpers.
They must have really been out of it because the water was scalding, hot enough that steam visibly lifted from their flesh and burst some of their heat blisters, leaving milky pus to run free.
I scooted as far away as I could, just like he’d advised, sucking in a sharp breath when a few drops of water landed on my knee.
I wasn’t expecting what came next but I wasn’t all that surprised, either. It made Tito’s grumbled phrase make a helluva lot more sense. The stick figure of a man put earphones in, pulled a pair of leather gloves on, grabbed a thin knife, and walked towards us.
He continued to pay me no mind, getting straight to work. He started with the woman farthest away, the one with purple hair.
With an incredibly steady hand, he began carefully cutting and peeling the skin away on her face, starting at the center of her chin.
His blade cut clean through, as if it were garnering softened butter. I watched him, torn between feeling sickening awe and repulsion.
With the bloody knife handle clenched between his teeth, he used two hands to lift off almost the entire surface of the woman’s face.
It was gently tossed it into the plastic covered wheelbarrow where it landed with a wet splat. His facial expression was set in a glare of concentration, the woman’s blood not bothering him at all. There was so much. It hung from her barren face like thin strings of long ribbon.
He continued. Every cut he made was specific and calculated. From what I could see, they weren’t incredibly deep, but they were enough to separate the skin from muscle.
