Page 151 of Patching Over

“You’re all a bunch of assholes,” Scythe rumbles out. “I’m never speaking to any of you again.”

“Gonna be hard when your VP asks you a direct question,” Banshee states.

“Fuck off,” Scythe retorts.

I hear a faint click and realize the chickenshit has turned his mic off. “I think it’s safe to finish now, Selah. Pussy boy cut off his mic.”

“Well, that’s just the thing,” Selah says. “When they got inside, the door magically repaired itself, the blinds all shut themselves and they ended up trapped.”

“What about the doll?” I question. “What the fuck happened to that demonic doll?”

“Nobody knows,” she replies, her voice dropping to a whisper. “So, if you see a China doll, make sure you lock it away because otherwise, you might wake up hearing, ‘Chop chop, China doll’ before you end up dead.”

Fuck. Me.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Moira

My head is pounding from being tossed to and fro in the back of the van, so when it suddenly brakes to a stop and I smash into the metal side of the vehicle, I’m momentarily dazed. When the side door slides open, I realize that while I don’t know the names of the two foreboding men who are standing there, hovering over me and leering at me, they’re the same type of sick, twisted individuals that had me and Belle formally in captivity. I know I’m going to be in a world of pain soon, based on the look on the taller man’s sinister face.

I know that someone named Angel healed my injuries from my time in Hell, but my body still bears the scars from my father’s so-called ‘love’, and it scares me that I’ll be adding more. That’s if I even survive their tender care this time around.

I shouldn’t have left, I think to myself.

The taller of the two men reaches in and grabs me by my bicep, none too kindly, yanking me from the van like a rag doll. Pain radiates throughout my body, and I stumble slightly,causing him to jerk me upright then slap me across the face with the palm of his hand.

“Bitch, you only thought you escaped from us, but we’ve known where you were all along,” he sneers, causing me to tremble.

How is that possible?I muse. I haven’t used my credit or debit card, either bartering for what I need or using what cash I still have in my possession.

“Yeah, we knew that biker gang rescued you and that other bitch, and took Alvin and Bert as well,” the short guy adds through his gritted teeth.

It’s not a gang, it’s a club, my mind whispers. I sure heard that often enough from Belle whenever someone at college would try to put her down for her association with her brother.

But Belle will always be proud of Sleeper, or, as she calls him, Tony. He’s her big brother, and he stepped in and helped raise her when their piece-of-shit father fell down on the job. She told me how livid he was when he found out that the money he was giving to their dad for her care went into his body in the form of drugs and alcohol.

Belle has no idea, none at all, that she saved me. Because of her, I learned the ways of the real world, not the fantasyland that my father believed in. I know how to manage my money, how to ‘dress for success’ as Belle says, and can even do basic maintenance on my vehicle. Although, that last part was courtesy of Tony because he said all women need to know that kind of thing.

And while I have dealt with physical and verbal abuse my whole life, mostly from my father, what I went through the first time still has me locked away in my head. I can even visualize how I look; curled in a corner, a gag in my mouth, my hands and feet bound. The problem is even though I know how to handle extreme pain, it’s not something you can really teach someoneelse. So, in that respect, I let my best friend down. She was unprepared for the treatment we received, because while her father was a jerk, he wasn’t physically abusive. Just mentally absent and neglectful, which stopped when Tony stepped into her life more fully.

It’s another reason I won’t speak; the guilt that consumes me over what I led her into keeps me from saying a word. If I had heeded her gut feeling, we would’ve never been taken. Her sense of self-preservation is obviously stronger than mine, and I wish I had thought about letting her brother’s club check further into the summer camp program. Because on the surface, what I was able to see? It looked legit, but there’s no way based on how we were treated that there wouldn’t have beensomethingto find, and she’s always bragged that her brother’s brother has computer skills that are beyond the norm.

Tall Guy grabs me by my ponytail and yanks me toward a small, somewhat unassuming house. It’s not in a neighborhood, more out of the way, which is what these jerks do so they can beat on women and screw them in an effort to ‘expand the family’. If what happened before is behind that door, there’ll be women and also children, along with more men who will use the women how they see fit.

One lone tear rolls down my face as they push and shove me toward the front door, but I don’t utter a sound. I might not be able to keep from crying, but I willnevergive them the satisfaction of making a peep. I just don’t know if I can handle it again. Will this be the straw that completely breaks the camel’s back?

I stumble over the entryway because they’re moving so fast, earning a fist to the middle of my back, which causes me to fall to my knees where I eventually land on my face, my torn shirt sliding down off my shoulders.

“Looks like we need to redo her brand,” Tall Guy says as he pulls me up off the floor and tosses me onto the couch.

Brand? What brand?I don’t remember having a brand on my body. Wouldn’t I remember something like that?

“Well, let’s get that taken care of then,” Short Guy replies, enjoying my upcoming torture a little too much.

I watch as he goes to a hall closet and opens the door, coming out with a cattle prod that has a weird symbol soldered on the end. It looks a lot like the birthmark on my shoulder which frightens me, because I never thought it was anything but something I was born with, not a damn brand!

---