Page 56 of Baby Me

I struck out faster than even I anticipated and kept my word. A tooth came flying out of June’s mouth and thankfully shut her up momentarily. Well, kept her from talking, though she started to cry hysterically.

“Tripp, it’s me, June, the love of your life.”

“You are nothing to me. I don’t even know who the fuck you are. I once dated a girl named June in high school,” I mentioned to fuck with her. “She went to Europe on vacation and never came back.”

“Yes I did. I’m right here. You never stopped loving me.”

“I never loved June. She was just a teenage experiment gone wrong. I’ve loved two women in my life. One of them was Kim. The other is Davina. I’m not counting my daughters here, obviously since this is the romantic kind of love.”

“You don’t love those whores. None of them. YOU ARE MINE!” June screamed. I punched her in the mouth again, and true to my word, I knocked another one of her teeth out. She hadn’t exactly said my dead wife’s name, but she did call both of my old ladies (past and present) a whore.

“Tripp, sthop!” She lisped badly on the last word, and I pretended not to hear her anyway.

“I want to know where your buddy Ken is. If you have any hope of getting out of this basement with any of your teeth left, you need to start talking.”

“Ken?” June questioned.

“Kenneth Winslow, otherwise known as Anton Oslav.”

“Anton?” She asked, clearly not knowing that the bastard had been going by an alias the entire time she knew him.

“You knew he was into human trafficking, June. You tried to sell my daughter and her friend to him.”

She laughed then. “Too bad he never took them as payment. Then maybe your dumbass son wouldn’t have knocked that other whore up. Then again, he seems to only have a thing for whores. Like father, like son, Tripp.”

I punched her again. “That’s three, June. How quickly do you think you’ll run out of teeth? Better yet, what do you think I’ll start taking away once you run out?”

“You wouldn’t. You love me.”

I bent down and picked up one of the teeth. “Does this look like I love you?”

“You’re just angry. That bitch wife of yours had you brainwashed. We can fix you.”

I punched her again. That time, two teeth flew out. They must have all loosened up quite a bit with the previous blows.

“Twipp!” June cried as best she could as blood ran down her chin.

“Tell me where Ken is.”

She slumped forward for a minute to spit out more blood. “He’s headed to my family’s cabin near the Tallulah Gorge.”

“On it,” Scout called out.

“Keys’ people are closer. Want me to have Angel Girl go pick him up?”

“Sure thing. That way we don’t have to worry about him slipping through our hands. It’ll take too long for us to get there.”

I turned back to June. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked, though I didn’t really want an answer. I unsheathed the knife that hung from my belt and held it up in what dim light there was in the basement.

“I wonder how long it will take you to die of sepsis if I give you a bunch of cuts and just leave you to hang here?” I pretended to ponder that for a minute. “Do you think you’d die of dehydration or starvation first?”

“Twipp!” June pleaded.

“Nah, that wouldn’t work for me. There would always be a chance that you could escape, and we can’t have that.” I reached out and sliced one of her arms. I watched as the blood trickled slowly from the wound, down her arm, to the tip of her finger, and then dripped to the ground with the tiniest of noises.

“How are you enjoying your time at the clubhouse, June?” I taunted her. “Too bad you never did fit in there.”

“Twipp, no!” She moaned. I sliced her other arm. Before I knew what I was doing, there were superficial wounds up and down her legs and arms. Every inch of skin that was exposed had at least a nick, if not a cut. None of them would kill her, at least not right away. “Do you think my wife felt it when the fire started to consume her?”

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