Page 141 of If Looks Could Kill
Zeke. He’s huge. The one who slugged me in the gut. Oh, God, please, no.
It’s easier if you don’t fight it. Less painful.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rosie tells me. “They all do. They think they’re so brave. I’ve got three men here, and I’ll use ’em to break you down if I need to. Your choice.”
“Do you hate yourself?” I ask her.
Something twitches in her heavily made-up eye. “Aw, no, honey,” she says. “I’m training you up in a lucrative business. And what was good enough for me is good enough for you.”
I’m swimming through a nightmare. Only seeing and hearing dimly, as if through water. Perhaps, when the time comes, that will be a mercy to me.
“Now,” she says, “are you going to put on that suit? Or am I going to have Zeke come in here and put it on you himself?”
Breathe, I tell myself. My stomach wants to empty itself all over this floor.
“Zeke,” she hollers. “Get in here.”
Footsteps sound, and Zeke comes lumbering in. I can smell him. I want to be sick.
“Get those clothes off her,” Rose orders him. “But don’t ruin ’em. I can sell ’em.”
Zeke waves a hammy hand toward the bed. “Sit down.”
I sit down.
“Take your shoes off,” Zeke orders me.
I’m too frozen in fright to move.
He shoves me back on the bed, knocking me over, and tears at the laces of my shoes.
Outside, the relative quiet is broken by the clatter of fast-moving hoofbeats and wheels. I envy them their freedom to drive by this godforsaken spot and just keep on going.
Zeke’s got one shoe off. He attacks the other.
My stomach roils. God, take me out of this place, I beg. If only in my mind.
“What’s the matter with you, Zeke?” demands Rosie. “Those are decent shoes.” She gets in close beside him and starts swatting at his hands.
An answer comes. It’s the last answer I could ever have imagined.
Vomit.
I sit up quickly and shove a finger down my throat. I read somewhere that if you need to make yourself throw up, if you need to expel some poison you’ve eaten, this is the way to do it.
“What’s she doing?” Zeke asks.
Mother Rosie watches me with raised eyebrows. “She’s disgusting,” she says. “You never can tell. The hoity-toity prim and proper ones turn out to be odd ducks.”
I twang my tonsils for all I’m worth. Gag waves ripple down my throat.
They stare at me in fascinated horror. Zeke returns to the task of unlacing my other boot.
My mouth fills with saliva, and I hunch over.
Zeke looks up at me just as the entire contents of my stomach, one extra-large bowl of chop suey, come spewing out of me, baptizing both him and Rosie in a spray of bile.
“Littleshit!” Rosie screams, shrieking and wiping the nastiness off her.
