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When I look at it, I see she didn’t finish whatever call she was trying to make. Good. That means I don’t have to hurry.
“You son of a bitch! You weak little bastard!” she yells at me, shaking like a leaf in a violent storm. Then she looks at me with pure spite. “What does it mean that your family was so willing to believe you’d killed those rats? It means they already knew you were a sick son of a bitch. That’s what it means!” She screams, kicking out at me. I grab her by the collar of her pajamas and drag her out of bed, dropping her on the floor.
Yes, she’s good at pushing my buttons, so now I’m going to push back.
I’ve managed to hack into some of the records from when she saw a therapist in her early twenties. I know she’s claustrophobic and terrified of closets, so I drag her over to the bedroom closet, which is thankfully very small, and throw her in.
She goes crazy when she sees where I’m taking her, spasming, howling.
“Where are the recordings, Camille?”
I sit down, my back against the door, listening to her scream and pound. I close my eyes and drink in her terror.
“Let me out! Please! Oh God, I can’t take it in here, I can’t, I can’t! Please!”
“Where are they, Camille?” I say in a bored voice.
She howls like an animal caught in a trap. “No, no, no!” She hardly sounds human anymore.
“Where, Camille?”
“No, no, no!” She’s mindless with terror. I may have to drag her out and let her regain her senses, and then stuff her back in. I’ll keep doing it until she tells me what I need to know.
Then, abruptly, she stops screaming. I sit for a minute waiting to see what happens. When only silence greets me, I pull the door open, suspecting a trick. I find her slumped over.
She’s vomited, choked on it, and lost consciousness. Her face is reddish-purple, her head lolling.
Panicked anger flares inside me, and I grab her under the armpits and haul her out of the closet. Oh no, she doesn’t get to die. She doesn’t get away that easily.
I begin the Heimlich on her, and after several painfully long seconds, she throws up on the floor. Her body sags against my chest, and relief sweeps through me for a moment.
Anger is right on its heels, wiping away the worry. I drag her weakly flailing body to the bathroom, dump her in the tub, still in her pajamas, and hold her head under a stream of cold water.
She thrashes, but she’s so exhausted it’s hardly stopping my attack. The bath fills with cold water, so I hold her head under to stop her poor attempt to halt my abuse.
The water level rises, and I release her, then shove her under again. I do this a few times, and when I let her up, she gasps for air, her eyes huge and panicked.
“I told you that you messed with the wrong guy, Camille. Where are the recordings?”
“Fuck you!” she screams, her voice raw and raspy. I hold her head under again, longer this time. Bubbles leak from her nose as she goes limp. When I pull her up, her eyes are rolling in her head. I slap both cheeks to bring her back to consciousness.
“Still love me, Camille?” I taunt as she gasps and wheezes.
Her pajamas are see-through now, her nipples are hard from the cold, and she’s shivering violently.
“Camille? Sorry, I fell asleep! Are you all right?” a male’s voice rings out.
Damn. She’s probably paying someone to keep an eye on the house, and I must have tripped some kind of alarm that I didn’t notice. She’s more resourceful than I thought. I go to dunk her head again, but she manages to let out one strangled squawk, loud enough to be heard, and the voice yells, “I’m calling the police!”
I hear panicked footsteps thudding down the front steps, but I don’t give two fucks.
I let go of her hair and stand up. She’s sloshing around in the tub, eyes dazed, gulping like a fish, and her lips are blue with cold. Her fingers are bleeding from clawing at the closet door.
“You won’t be lucky forever,” I say coldly, grabbing my bag. I run out the back door, putting as much distance between me and whoever is currently calling the police. Her words echo in my head.What does it mean that your parents were so quick to believe you killed those rats?
Because it’s true.
Camille will surely pay for her sins, but she’s not the only one who deserves my anger. My parents instantly swallowed her lies—because they had that darkness in themselves, and they knew they’d passed it on to me. Given what I now know about my family's genetics, if my father was suspected in various people’s disappearances, he was probably guilty.
