Page 81 of The Cut
‘Annie, it’s OK, you’re safe, I’m not going to hurt you.’ Ben turns but Annie is already halfway up the wheel, climbing for her life.
*
‘I saw you.’ Max had begun to climb backwards up the rotten slats to the top of the wheel, just as she had done. ‘I saw what happened, I watched you do it.’
Karine pressed herself against the stone wall, trying to keep both of them in the shot. She needed Ben’s face in focus. It wouldn’t work if she filmed the back of his head; they would think it had been faked. She started to clamber backwards alongside Max, up316the wheel, keeping one foot on the stone wall for balance. Their combined weight caused the ancient structure to groan and rasp. As if in a trance, Ben began to follow on his hands and knees.
‘That’s right, Ben, imagine I’m her.’ Somewhere in Max’s subconscious, he had been her, he had felt Annie’s pain, he’d been on the receiving end of Benjamin Knot’s brutality, every single day of his childhood.
The wheel creaked under their weight, the scaffolding buckled and very slowly began to detach itself from the wall.
‘Max, I can’t keep him in frame.’ Karine hoisted herself up with one hand and sat on the high stone window ledge, her feet scraping the wall, trying to anchor herself. Max held out his hand to her, keeping his eyes on Ben. She passed the lens to him, cables trailing to the main body of the Rialto strapped to her back.
Max pointed it in his face. ‘COME ON, BEN … I’m the one calling the shots now, I’m the one in control.’
Max stared at him as he moved towards him. The rage in his face was psychotic. Max fumbled behind him and grabbed a steel bar from the scaffold wedged into the wall. He wrenched it out of the crumbling mortar and wielded it like a baseball bat, trying to keep the lens steady.
‘Come on, you piece of shit. Show me what you did to her.’
Ben pounced, grabbing at Max, clawing his way up his body and locking his hands tight around his throat.
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He’s on top of her now. Her body pinned down to the wheel.
‘Please stop. Let me go.’ Annie desperately grips hold of the wooden slats as the rain pelts harder and heavier. He can’t let her go, she’s the only thing he has left. She’s everything to him, his solace, his first love, the only person who cares. No … he’ll never let her go. Ben leans in close to her face, then suddenly buries his head into her neck, clinging on to her. He is sobbing hard now. Squeezing her so tight, pressing his body into hers so hard, as if he wants to climb inside her. Annie tries to cry out, but he is wringing the life out of her.
‘I’ll never let you go.’ Ben’s voice is muffled as his lips brush her shoulder. He squeezes her even tighter.
‘Ben?’ Patel is lying on the ground, holding his head as blood pours down his face.
Ben tries to lift his head, but the rubber mask rips away from his cheek. He’s stuck fast to Annie’s neck. He tries to separate himself, but they seem to be glued together. As Ben tears himself away, that’s when the blood begins to flow. One of the rusty nails from his Pinhead mask is sticking out of her neck, buried deep. Her mouth is open, and her eyes fixed in the distance. Her breath is short; a gurgle sounds in her throat. Ben pulls the nail slowly out of her neck. Annie’s body flinches with pain. ‘I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.’
As the blood begins to spurt from her neck, Ben’s hands shoot out, grabbing at the puncture wound to try and stop the flow. He squeezes tighter.318
‘Ben, you’re strangling her.’ Patel is on his feet now.
His head snaps around to Patel’s pitiful voice, the torn mask flapping in the wind. He can’t see what’s happening. Then another voice calls out in the distance.
‘HEY … STOP!’
Ben’s frantic eyes scan the wall, but there’s nobody there.
‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’ Ben’s head shoots up to the voice directly above him at the top of the tower and he stares into the lens of the camera that is pointing down in his direction, filming every second of this moment.
‘Help me.’ Ben’s hands are wet with blood. It’s everywhere now, pumping hard from her neck through his fingers. He stares down into her face. ‘Help. Please.’ Ben tears at the chiffon of her train, wrapping a strip around her neck, and pulls it tight, trying to stop the bleeding. The wheel creaks, slowly turning. Trying to keep the pressure on her neck, he shifts his weight to counter hers. On the edge of the moving wheel, they balance precariously over the drop, about ten feet from the surface of the water.
Ben returns his focus up towards the boy with the camera in the Crow’s Nest, but he’s gone. Then everything happens at once. Ben takes his hands from her throat and makes a break for it, leaping from the wheel back on to the stone ledge. With a rasp of metal, the scaffold slowly dislodges itself from the wall. The sheer volume of water surging out through the tail race drives the wheel faster in a cascade of turbulence. Patel’s dirt bike, still hissing and steaming on the surface of the water, is sucked under. The water wheel suddenly jerks, and Annie’s limp, swaddled form teeters on the edge, then slowly tips over the side. Already soaked to the skin, she plummets down towards the deep water below, but the cape of her gown catches on the fulcrum of the wheel. Her body is flung sideways and she is wrenched to a sudden stop, hung319from the neck. The wheel judders to a halt as Patel’s bike becomes lodged underneath and the spindle holding Annie by the throat snaps. She plunges feet first into the deep reservoir and Patel launches himself into the water after her.
*
Ben’s fingers dug into the veins of Max’s neck, and he squeezed hard.
‘It was an accident.’
Max’s eyes bulged but his hand on the camera lens maintained the shot. He needed this moment, whatever the price.
