Page 94 of Fracture

“Please don’t kill me. Please. Please. Please.” He starts to retch, as though he’s going to throw up or fucking give up and die on us, so I move the gun away from him and take a step back.

“Names. Now.” I tell him.

Iverson shakes his head desperately. “No, I don’t know.”

“Then what good are you?” Dylan points the taser at him, and Iverson shrieks.

“Gloria, she can tell you!”

Dylan’s head snaps to look over at me, and suddenly my mask is suffocating me.

“What name did you just say?” I ask slowly, feeling the floor beneath my feet shift and tilt.

“Gloria,” he says again.

“Gloria who?” Dylan asks slowly, and Iverson whimpers.

“Glor-Gloria Fenton,” he murmurs, his head rocking back and forth against his shoulder. “She knew about everything, she planned it for god’s sake. Had a goddamn red ledger, called it her date book. She and Valerie, they’d write all the dates down when they were planned.” He blubbers and sobs, drool running down his chest and mingling with sweat. “We were promised that Stella wouldn’t remember a thing. She was meant to be drugged, so she’d never know. Like she’d just gone to sleep, like it was nothing.”

Nothing. Like it was nothing.

Dylan sucks in a sharp breath, practically glowing with rage. I can’t breathe at all. My chest is heaving, almost as much as Iverson’s is.

Like it was nothing.

I remember holding Stella on the floor of her shower as she screamed, as she cried and told me she couldn’t tell me what had happened. I remember Dylan’s face when he came to me and told me what Harold had been doing, everything Stella had been subjected to.

Like it was nothing.

I tear my mask off, suddenly caged in and suffocating, unable to stand it any more. I cast it to the ground, running a hand over my sweaty face. The second Iverson’s eyes land on me, they light up with recognition.

“I know you! I know you!” Buoyed by hope, he tries to shuffle the chair towards me. “Please, don’t kill me. I won’t tell anyone, I’ll just go home, and it’ll be over.”

“Gloria planned these dates?” I ask, disbelief pooling in my stomach, so heavy I’m sure I’m going to be sick.

Iverson nods enthusiastically. “It was her idea. She told Harold that pictures weren’t good enough anymore. That we all wanted the real thing.”

Dylan lunges at the man and smashes his fist into his cheek. Iverson topples over with a cry, landing flat on his back in the dirt. “You disgust me.”

“I’m sorry,” Iverson says. “I’m only a man, you know? A pretty girl like that-”

Dylan kicks him in the side before hauling him upright again. Blood trickles from Iverson’s temple, and he starts to cry loudly again, as though all hope has left him now.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” His shoulders shake, tears running down his face, running tracks through the blood and dirt on his cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

“No you’re not.” Dylan looks over at me. “I think we give this fucker a taste of his own medicine.” He lifts the mask to reveal his face, and he looks like Dylan, but not at the same time, his features twisted with cool and detached vengeance.

“Wh-what do you mean?” Iverson looks up at Dylan, fear etched into every line on his face. “What are you going to do to me?”

Dylan leans down and leers at him menacingly. “Stella told me what you did. Everything you did to her. You ever had someone fuck you in the ass when you didn’t want it?”

Iverson writhes and cries. “You sick bastard, don’t you touch me!”

“Oh not me, you sack of lard.” Dylan traces the knife along Iverson’s belly, and the man’s eyes bug out. “I had something a little sharper in mind for you.”

I’m still frozen with shock as Dylan kicks the chair to splinters, and kneels on Iverson’s back. Iverson only screams until the knife is lodged between the pock-marked cheeks of his ass. Once the blade is firmly pushed inside him, he goes limp, cheek pressed to the ground, eyes wide. The little puffs of dust his breath kicks up tell me he’s still alive. But just barely.

His body is shutting down. Dylan pulls the knife out, and plunges it in again. A weak sound comes from Iverson’s throat, high-pitched and grating.

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