Crash & Carnage by Emma Slate

Chapter 29

Dante’sbrown eyes raked over me, lingering on my face and then my arm with the bandage from my knife wound.

Without a word, he grabbed me by the hair and yanked me forward. I cried out in pain and reached up to try and pull his hands off, but it only made him tighten his grip as he hauled me down the road.

Even though tears leaked out the corners of my eyes, I was still able to look around and take in my surroundings. Faces peered through ratty curtains hanging on stained, dirty windows, but no one ventured outside. Their curiosity would not get in the way of their safety, and it became clear this was in fact still a ghost town.

People didn’t live here, they survived here.

I tripped and almost fell, but Dante reached down and grabbed my wrist, relentlessly holding on to me to prevent me from crashing into the dirt. His fingers clamped around my slender bones, and I bit my lip to stifle my cry of agony.

When we came to the outskirts of the town, he stopped. We stood outside an old, faded pink adobe structure with iron bars rooted in the cement of the windows. He dragged me toward it, opening the cracked wooden front door, and then shoved me into the building.

The town jail.

I nearly choked on the scent of death that lingered in the air in the small front room. Piles of old rodent droppings in the corners mingled with the reek of decaying flesh and blood emanated from the building.

Dante pulled me down the hallway, revealing four rusted old jail cells, two on each side, and then he removed an iron skeleton key from his pocket and jostled it into the iron lock of the first cell on the right. The iron gate groaned in protest as he jerked it open against its will. He pushed me inside and I fell to the ground. He closed it, locking me in. The sound resonated with finality.

“Enjoy your accommodations,” he said, smiling slightly before he padded back down the hallway, out of sight. A moment later, I heard the front door creak open and then shut again.

I was alone. Without food. Without water. Not that I had an appetite for anything.

Something furry scuttled across my feet. I cried out in surprise and backed up until I hit a stone wall. I curled my knees up to my chest, as if making myself into a small ball would somehow protect me.

I inhaled a deep breath, instantly gagging on the stench in the air. I stood up, suddenly aware of how filthy my surroundings were and not wanting to touch anything on the floor. The sound of buzzing flies caught my attention and drew my eyes to an old rickety bucket in the far corner. I walked to it to see what was inside. I peered into the bucket and almost lost the meager contents in my belly. The excrement of the person that had come before me was still there.

My eyes ping-ponged around the jail cell. I realized how dire my situation truly was. There were details I would never be able to unsee. Streaks of brown marred the walls near the bucket, clearly from someone defecating and having to use their hand to clean themself. The floor was made of crude stone but was stained with various brown splotches.

Dried blood.

Death thrived here. Misery flourished, and despair prospered.

Palacio de Sangre, indeed.

I wondered how I was going to die. Because there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to die. How long would he string this along? What violations would I endure before the pain and suffering ended?

I went to the iron gate of the jail cell. I gripped the bars and with my limited energy, gave them a hearty tug. They steadfastly refused to budge. I clawed at the pins in the hinges that connected the gate to the walls to remove them, but they were rusted through, and the task would be impossible without tools.

The walls were tall and smooth, and the only window in the room was above the reach of my hands. There was no way to climb up to it and look out. Even if I turned over the metal bucket and used it as a stepping block, I wouldn’t be able to see. No doubt the iron bars were secure there too.

I was trapped. And no one was going to save me.

It had been hours since I’d had anything to eat or drink. I was terrified, injured, and exhausted—but the idea of closing my eyes in this place meant that I’d wake up far too soon in another nightmare.

Reality.

The afternoon sun sank into oblivion and night came. I resisted sleep, but I was no match for fatigue and finally succumbed, staring at the meager moonlight shining through the jail cell window before drifting off.

When I awoke, it was still dark, and I had no idea the time. But my bladder was full, screaming to be emptied. I squirmed in discomfort that eventually turned to pain. There was still enough moonlight for me to be able to see the floor of the jail cell. Woozily, I stood, grasping for the wall to steady myself before hastily removing my hand, hoping I hadn’t touched anything disgusting. I padded over to the bucket, unbuttoned my pants, and crouched. It took a few moments for my body to let go, but when it did, I sighed in relief, even as the flies I had disturbed buzzed around me. I bounced a few times, drip drying, and then quickly pulled up my pants. As I plunked down onto the hard ground, I heard the scraping of tiny claws. I shivered, knowing I was sharing my cell with some hungry critter looking for its next meal.

My mind zinged with thoughts. The dull headache pounding at the lower base of my skull and dry mouth from lack of water were enough to make me check out again. I fell back asleep just as the pink rays of day came through the iron bars of the window.

A blast of cold water hit me in the face, causing me to choke and gasp for breath. In a panic, my eyes whipped open. Dante was standing outside my cell, holding a green garden hose with a high-pressure nozzle. A nasty smirk spread across his face. “Good morning, Princess. Sleep well?”

Today, he wore a pair of black trousers and a white silk button-down shirt. He looked freshly shaved, relaxed, like he’d had a good night’s rest.

Dante blasted the hose again, blurring my vision, and ability to reply. Not that I would have. I scrambled back into the corner of the room, attempting to get away from the powerful stream of water. My back met stone as I hit the corner of the jail cell and dried feces that had been sprayed loose, rubbed off on my clothes.

Dante tossed the hose aside and came forward, reaching into his pocket for the skeleton key. The squeaking of the lock was like the ringing of a gong, symbolizing the beginning of my worst nightmare.

“Bruno! Juan! I’m ready,” Dante called.

A moment later, two burly men with dark hair and hands that looked like they could rip grown men into pieces appeared behind Dante. One of them carried a small, wooden folding table. The other an old wooden chair. Dante stepped aside so Bruno and Juan could enter the cell.

Without a look in my direction, the men set the table up. It had two iron cuffs drilled into the top side at one end. A brute stayed, and the other left for a quick minute, only to return carrying a rusted metal toolbox.

Dante chuckled.

He was amused, eager. He gestured with his chin in my direction. A beefy cronie came to me, reached down, and grasped my arm to haul me up. He thrust me toward the chair and forced me to sit. Before I could get my bearings, he was encasing my wrists in the iron shackles, which forced my hands to lay flat against the table.

Like a presentation.

An offering.

“You look tired, Princess,” Dante teased. “Didn’t you sleep well?” He looked around the room like he was seriously studying it. “Did you know this jail has been around since 1862? Oh, if these walls could talk about what they’ve seen over the years.”

He flashed a grin, like we were at a party, and he’d told a humorous joke.

“The rats are fond of this cell in particular. It doesn’t flood like the others when it rains, and sometimes I leave treats for them…”

Bruno and Juan moved to stand behind their boss, their eyes staring straight ahead. They didn’t look directly at me, either because they didn’t want to or because they chose to. Whatever I was to them didn’t matter—I knew they would enforce Dante’s will.

Dante began to whistle a happy sounding tune as he pulled the metal box toward him. He opened the top, but my view was marred, and I couldn’t see what was inside.

And then he slowly began to remove tools from the box and set them down on the table.

A screwdriver, a hammer, a mallet, a hand saw.

I whimpered.

Dante looked up, a feral light entering his dark eyes. This man enjoyed the pain of others. He feasted on their terror.

He looked down, and with one finger, he traced the fingers of my right hand, skimming his thumb across my knuckles.

I curled my hand into a fist, which only made him laugh.

“Such lovely hands,” he murmured. “You’re a doctor, yes?”

My heart became a band of galloping broncos racing across the desert. My pulse drummed like hoofbeats on sand and stone.

“Bruno,” he snapped.

Bruno moved from his spot by the cell gate and came to the table. With thick, sausage like fingers, he pried my fist open, so my palm lay flat against the table.

Naked, unprotected.

Dante picked up a wooden mallet and stroked it lovingly, like a musician would caress a cherished instrument.

“Lovely tools,” he explained as he looked me directly in the eyes.

And then he slammed the mallet down onto my middle three fingers, crushing the bones in an instant.

Pain, unlike anything I’d ever known before in my entire life assaulted me. It was so fast, so effectual, all I could do was inhale a sharp breath.

But before I could even muster a cry, I passed out.

* * *

I came to.

Red-hot pain in my right hand blew through me like a tsunami over land, obliterating everything in its path.

I turned my head and vomited.

The sour stench of fear and bile wafted to my nose. After a few more dry heaves, my insides stopped lurching. There was nothing left to purge.

I slowly swiveled my head. Dante sat across from me in another chair that Bruno or Juan must have brought for him while I was passed out. He looked bored and unhappy.

“I'm not a fan of your reaction.” He sighed like a schoolteacher disappointed in one of his students.

I looked down at my hand. The bones of my right fingers were shattered and swollen. Constant pain throbbed through the nerves and shot up my entire arm. Tears welled from deep within me. They came of their own volition, and I could do nothing to stop them.

The irony of a surgeon’s hand, a tool used to help heal other people being so badly broken wasn’t lost on me. The fingers looked mangled, nothing more than bone and fleshy pulp, now devoid of structure and beauty. Even if I lived, even if I had surgery, I doubted it would be reparable beyond being usable for routine, daily tasks.

Dante had broken more than my fingers.

He’d destroyed my ability to perform surgery in one fell swoop. He’d taken a vital piece of who I was and flushed a dozen years of schooling down the toilet in an instant.

Dante picked up a screwdriver that sat on the table and lightly dragged it across the knuckles on my shattered hand, causing me to whimper.

“No,” I begged. “Please. God, no.”

“I’m not God.” Dante’s voice was cold. “I’m the devil, and I’m going to make you pay for what your boyfriend has done.”

He raised the screwdriver, and with a maniacal look, he rammed the screwdriver into the top part of my hand, sending it deep into my flesh.

I screamed.

And then he took the hammer and slammed it down onto the handle of the screwdriver, driving the metal deeper, straight through to the table.

My bloodcurdling shriek echoed off the stone walls.

“She pissed herself,” Juan commented.

“Excellent,” Dante said. “Unlock her shackles. Let her lie in it.”

* * *

I passed out again, and the next time I awoke someone was holding a cup of water to my lips and cradling my head. The liquid was lukewarm and tasted brackish, but my lips were cracked, and I was dying for it. I tried to gulp it down greedily, but whoever held me wouldn’t let me. “Easy,” he said quietly in heavily accented English.

My eyes were caked with dried tears and dust from the floor, but I managed to flip them open. I stared into the face of a man with battered skin and grooves around his mouth that reminded me of dried riverbeds.

I glanced down. The fingers of my right hand were splinted, and gauze was wrapped around the palm to stop the bleeding. I couldn’t feel anything. I frowned up at him wanting to ask questions.

“I’ve given you enough morphine to dull the pain,” he explained, as if sensing my unasked query. “I’m a doctor.”

“Why?” I croaked.

“Because Dante wants you awake and alert.”

My eyes quickly scanned the area. It was just the two of us. Dante wasn’t here. But I felt him. Like a malevolent ooze that stifled the air, threatening to appear at any moment.

“He wants me awake and alert…for what comes next?”

The man nodded, his brown eyes somber.

“Help me,” I whispered.

He shook his head.

“He’ll break me. Until there’s nothing left. And then he’ll kill me,” I said.

“There are some things worse than death, no?”

Like your last moments on this earth, filled with agony and torture.

I’d diagnosed several patients whose last few months were nothing but pain. Death had been a relief, a blessing for them.

I closed my eyes briefly. This would eventually end for me. He’d take my life, and I’d be released.

The faint buzzing sound of a machine turned my attention. I heard the wooden door of the building slam open and then a moment later the noise grew louder. Dante loomed in the doorway of the jail cell holding an idling chainsaw that dripped blood onto the stone floor.

I gulped.

The doctor removed the cup from my lips and slowly released me. He stood up and hastened to the corner behind Dante.

This was it. The moment I was going to die.

Sawn in half like a magician’s assistant, only there would be no magic to put me back together. My organs ripped through with metal teeth. Jagged suffering as my bones cracked and my muscles tore. My insides sprayed on the walls, so the next victim to come after me could wonder about her own fate.

“Bruno angered me,” Dante explained with a casual grin. He turned off the chainsaw and set it on the floor. “You didn’t think I was really going to use it on you, did you, Princess? No. That would have ended our fun far too soon.”

He turned his head to address the doctor. “Well? How is she?”

The doctor’s face was ashen. “I’ve tended to her wounds as best I can. And she’s heavily medicated as well as sedated.”

I looked at the sunlight coming in through the iron bars of the window. I had no idea how long I’d been passed out.

I briefly closed my eyes, willing myself to endure, willing myself to hold on to whatever remained of my sanity by the time this was over.

When I died, I still wanted there to be something of myself that Dante never managed to break.

“Help her up,” Dante commanded.

When the doctor was sure I could stand on my own, he released me.

“You can go now,” Dante told him. “Wait outside. I’ll call you again when I need you.”

The doctor didn’t even look at me as he left.

At some point while I had been passed out, the table and chair had been removed from the jail cell. Placed up against the wall was a six-foot-tall St. Andrew’s cross. Four leather cuffs were nailed to the wooden planks.

Dante approached me, and I shrank in fear. He took my elbow and walked me to the cross. I tried to fight, to resist, but my limbs refused to obey my edicts.

The sedative.

He cinched the leather pieces around my wrists and ankles.

I was tied to a massive wooden torture device.

He reached into his trouser pocket to remove a butterfly knife. His white silk shirt was stained with gore. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or the recently deceased Bruno. The coppery tang of blood stung my nose and the back of my throat. It was a familiar scent from the operating room.

This was different.

Dante took the knife and slit my shirt, cutting it off me completely. My breasts were bare to him, but he didn’t even spare them a glance. With a few flicks of his wrist, he then sliced off my jeans, leaving me in my underwear and boots.

“You’re not just a smart doctor, are you?” Dante asked, grinning. “I know what he feels when he looks at you…”

His finger danced across my collar bone before sliding down my sternum.

“I’m a collector,” he said. “A collector of hearts. I enjoy looking at the physical organs of people I’ve tortured. It’s such a lovely reminder of the fact that no matter how much they want to die, their hearts betray them and beat on, pumping life through their veins against their will in the worst moments of their existence. Is there anything more beautiful than betrayal? I don’t think so. I have several hearts in jars on my mantle. But your heart…is better left inside your chest.”

I was nearly naked, strapped to a torture device incapable of escape. I’d been vulnerable before with my wrists strapped to a table, but this was different.

This would be another violation. A different sort of sick pleasure he was about to partake in.

I wasn’t strong enough to look him in the eyes while he raped me.

I closed my eyes and waited for the sound of his zipper.

It never came.

When I heard his footsteps retreat, I cracked my eye lids open. He’d walked to the iron gate and was holding out his hand.

Someone handed him a branding iron, the end it of it angry and red, sizzling and popping as dust from the air lit on fire upon meeting the metal.

Dante turned to look at me.

His steps were slow, like the steady beat of a war drum.

“I’m not going to kill you, Princess,” he said softly. “Alejandro doesn’t want that. No. I’m going to send you back to your boyfriend broken and branded. Tell them, Princess. Tell them all that you’re only the beginning if they ever cross Alejandro Garcia again.”

He pressed the branding iron to the skin above my left hipbone.

I smelled my own burning flesh.

My screams mingled with his laughter.

In the distance, I heard the caw of a crow.

I wasn’t dead.

I just wished I was.

* * *

Time ceased to have all meaning.

The burning of my flesh accomplished what the breaking of my hands hadn’t. It fractured a piece inside my mind. It split my psyche apart, searing Dante’s image within me forever.

Dante had infected my mind. He’d taken up residence there. The smell of sandalwood cologne on his skin mixed with the scent of my charred flesh would stay with me.

I screamed until my throat was raw.

I hung on the massive wooden frame like a scarecrow in a cornfield.

My lips were cracked and dry. The corners oozed blood.

Sometimes, I’d open my eyes and see the doctor. He would slather salve onto my wounds, patch me up, and give me just enough morphine to dull my pain. He mended me so Dante could torture me again and again.

Dante chopped my hair with pruning shears. My wheat blonde locks fell to the floor in a rippling cascade of beauty and femininity.

And when I soiled myself because Dante wouldn’t untie me, he sprayed me down with the hose again like a rabid animal.

My head hung with exhaustion. My soul wept. My eyes were devoid of tears. I had nothing left inside of me to give.

Only then did Dante command the doctor to untie me. I fell to the floor as my weak muscles quivered.

“Women,” Dante spat. “Useless. You almost take the fun out of breaking you. Almost.”

I opened my eyelids. Night had fallen while I’d been tied to the wooden beams.

The doctor cradled me in his arms.

Dante crouched down on the ground next to the metal toolbox and extracted a scalpel.

Like the ones I used during surgery.

“You want her alive, don’t you?” the doctor asked Dante in Spanish.

I feigned ignorance about my understanding of the language, hoping one of them would say something of true value. I remained limp, inactive.

“Si,” Dante snapped. “I want her alive.”

“If you want her to make it back to Waco, then forget the knife play. You’ve heard of the saying don’t kill the messenger, right? You’ve had your fun. Send her on her way.”

“Fine,” Dante snapped, throwing the scalpel back into the metal toolbox and shutting the lid. He rose from his crouched position on the ground and pulled out his cell phone. “Bandage her up as best you can. I’m calling Juan to come with the van.”

Dante stalked from the jail cell and a moment later, I heard the creak of the rickety wooden door, followed by a loud bang as it slammed shut.

The doctor looked down at me, his brown eyes softening. “Valley of Hearts,” he whispered in English. “That’s where we are.”

I moved my lips, but no sound came out. Why? I mouthed.

“You remind me of my daughter,” he replied. “The one Dante took from me.”

He lowered me to the soiled ground, but only so that he could administer a syringe into the meaty part of my thigh.

“You’ll sleep the whole way home. Good luck to you.”