Page 22 of Dancing With Redemption

11

Roxie

“Please stop,” Roxie gasped, her eyes too blurry to see out of, pain a constant piercing ache throughout her body. Blood, sweat, and tears stung at her eyes when she leaned her head to one side or the other, though she wasn’t exactly sure which wound the blood was coming from. There were…so many.

In the last couple of hours, the woman had gone silent, but that silence was terrifying. She didn’t say a word when she took out what must have been the oldest hair clippers known to man. There wasn’t even a cord, so maybe they were meant to be used on animals? Roxie had been terrified when the woman brought the clippers over and held them close to Roxie’s lips. The woman had spoken two words then, two words that nearly made Roxie faint.

“Don’t move.”

She’d then begun to clip away Roxie’s hair with the hand-operated clippers, one chunk at a time. Roxie had cried, from fear and from pain. The clippers pulled out more hair than they cut, and the blades had dug into her scalp more than once. There’d been no questions, no demands from the woman, just silent glee that made her appear insane whenever she’d move to look Roxie in the eye.

Roxie had expected some kind of questions, demands for answers, but this was even worse. It was torture for the sake of torture. There were no answers needed, just twisted victory with each clip of those awful metal blades. A thousand possibilities flitted through Roxie’s mind, with the main trauma-inducing image being the one where she didn’t stop at Roxie’s hair. Hair could be regrown, she’d buy a fucking wig if she had to, but what if those blades moved lower?

Roxie wanted to break the cuffs, to find some way out of this, but there was no escape so she tried to stay as still as she could, even when relief flooded through her. That relief didn’t last long, though. Major Crazy Bitch just moved on to new and even more delightful torture techniques that did make Roxie pass out once she was done with Roxie’s hair.

Roxie didn’t move her hands now, not to appease the woman, but because Major Crazy Bitch had pulled all of her fingernails out. Roxie had managed to stay in the real world as the first five were pulled out. It was the other hand that caused her to lose all consciousness. She’d woken up when the woman tried to pull out her toenails, but stopped there for some reason. Roxie tried to breathe through the pain, tried to catch a moment of relief, but the moment didn’t last.

She had screamed her throat raw when the first needle was shoved silently under the toenail on her right foot. She wasn’t sure, but she thought there were two needles in each of her toes. There’d been no seconds of oblivion with that session, Roxie had endured every moment of it. The woman cackled with joy every time Roxie screamed, as if it were music to her ears. Roxie tried to hold the screams back, wanted to deny the mad woman any kind of pleasure, but she couldn’t help it.

Her heart pounded painfully from the pain of the torture, and her pulse raced along in time with her heart. The pounding in her skull was not nearly as painful as the other wounds she now bore, but it didn’t help. Roxie writhed from the complete agony she was in, until she accidentally brushed a finger against her head. She went still then, wanting nothing more than a few IVs of morphine and oblivion. She wanted to escape this pain.

But she didn’t wish for death. She hadn’t wanted to contemplate that being a possibility earlier, but now? Now, she was fairly certain death would be the only out she’d get from this insane woman’s torture. Roxie didn’t want it to be true, but she had to face facts. This woman was not going to let her go.

It was only when the woman came back into the room that Roxie realized she’d been gone. “I bet all of those little injuries are really starting to throb now, aren’t they?”

Roxie didn’t respond, she was too afraid to say anything. What if speaking made the woman cut her tongue out? Roxie tried not to roll her eyes in fear, but she allowed the lids to close.

“No, open your eyes, my little beauty. I want you to see what’s coming next,” the woman said as she grabbed Roxie’s chin, making her open her eyes.

Roxie saw a rubber mallet, not a big one, but big enough to cause pain. It seemed the woman’s silent period was over as she became a regular chatterbox, spewing a stream of bullshit that Roxie couldn’t exactly interpret. “Your father set up Ruby, you know? Yes, the little slut who stole my husband was your dad’s cousin and he helped to get her on her feet when she came up here looking to be a star. He introduced her to my husband, MY husband.”

The woman struck Roxie with the mallet as she screamed that last part, hitting her so hard in the hip Roxie was certain the bone had shattered. Roxie jerked on the table, pulling at each of her painful digits, causing pain to explode throughout her body. Roxie screamed again and again, letting the pain wash over her rather than asking the woman to stop again. That had proven pointless anyway.

She’d spent a lot of time in her life treading the line between pleasure and pain, but that had all been voluntary. It had gotten her through the first few nails being pulled out with pliers, but this was prolonged, sustained, unasked for torture. There was no pleasure, there was no satisfaction for her, of any kind. Only the certainty that the woman would not stop until she killed her.

“Now, I could have forgiven your father that part, but he hid her from me after my husband was killed. He took her back down to Louisiana and he hid that swamp trash from me.” The woman shrieked every word, and the mallet came down again, aimed right at the lowest part of Roxie’s abdomen. It went slightly to the left, almost hitting Roxie’s other hip, but it landed all the same.

Roxie began to feel something hot and wet between her legs, but she didn’t know if it was blood or urine. It could be either at this point.

“Oh, look. I think you might be losing that monster you’re germinating inside of you.” The woman dipped her hand between Roxie’s legs and pulled her fingers up, covered in blood.

Roxie’s blood went cold, but her brain was already taking her away from all of it. She was already a step or two out of the world, barely in it, but unable to let go completely. The pain kept her awake. But her brain was pulling her away.

Don’t think about it, Rox. Just focus on breathing, girl. Nothing else, just breathing.

“Oh no, my girl. You aren’t going to wander off into some kind of trance on me and escape this little scene. Not going to happen.” The woman moved away from the table and came back with a bucket.

“No,” but that was all Roxie had time to shout as a bucket of water poured over her head and torso. The woman had left all of Roxie’s clothes on, thankfully, but now the clothes held the water against Roxie, freezing her skin in the low temperature.

“Good, I see you’re wide awake again. Now, where was I?” The woman picked up the mallet again and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh yes, Ruby and her brat. Because, of course, the stupid slut was pregnant with a baby that should have been mine!”

The woman pouted, her eyes mean and hard, making the pout something nasty.

“I was going to just let it go after that, focus on making a life for myself without my husband. But the woman’s brat turned out to be beautiful, and well, I decided I wasn’t done with my revenge. You managed to get away from me the night your parents died, and it just seemed like fate wanted me to get rid of that bastard child. So I sent Matteo down there to do the job. He was supposed to destroy the slut and her daughter, but instead, the daughter proved to be just like her mother. I’d raised Matteo from a young boy, you see? He was my son. And Ruby’s slut of a daughter took him from me. Ruby steals, her daughter steals. Ruby stole my husband, Ruby’s daughter stole my boy. I couldn’t let that go. But even she keeps escaping me. So I had to focus on you again. And luckily, you made yourself a present to me, didn’t you?” The pleased smile was just as blood-chilling as the pout had been, a grimace that Roxie couldn’t look away from.

“I have no idea who or what you’re talking about,” Roxie said when an answer seemed to be needed. “I don’t know any of those people.”

“No, of course you don’t. Your father tried to hide his mother’s past. His father made all of his money in oil and left it to him. When my husband was killed your father tried to hide every connection he had to that family, to Ruby, but I knew about them already. Yes, I just tripped right on down memory lane before he managed to erase it all. That’s how I found him, found your family. I sent my guys around to teach him some manners when he refused to meet with me, but they botched that, thinking I’d sent them around for money. Then they burned the house down without making sure all of you were in it. So stupid.” The woman’s words trailed off, but Roxie wasn’t really sure any of it made sense anyway.