Page 23 of Jagged Line Paradise

“Don’t you fucking call the cops. Not in this neighborhood. You wanna get your toenails peeled off by your drug-smuggling neighbors? Jesus, son.”

He puts the truck into gear and drives off to our trailer up the hill. I shake my head. My dad is fucking useless, even when I need him the most.

I bend, pick up my phone, and call the goddamn cops.

Chapter 7

Avalon

I CAN’T SCREAMor cry anymore. My voice is hoarse and my eyes are dry. I know exactly how much time has passed because there’s a large, digital clock hanging on the dark wall, directly in my line of sight.

It reads 7:26 p.m. in bright red digits.

I’m late to meet Andrés.

I can’t think about that, though, because it only makes me want to cry and crying without tears is painful.

It was 3:23 p.m. when Mr. Hernandez finally stopped hurting me with the knife. He pulled off the coveralls he’d put on to keep his clothes clean and was done jerking off onto my bare stomach at 3:27 p.m. He finished cleaning my flesh and blood from his blade at 3:31 p.m., and he finally left a little more than a minute later. He left with promises of returning to torture me for another day—maybe two—before killing me and dumping my body.

I can’t imagine how much more damage he could cause. I’m bloody and shredded and feel closer to death than to life.

I’m naked, strapped onto a table that he told me he made himself, with his own two hands. He seemed so proud of the design that traps me solidly. A leather buckle latches around my waist. There are two crudely-placed boards branching off from the sides of the table where my arms are placed, stretched out painfully—almost at a straight, right angle from my shoulders—and they’re tied down with thick leather straps around my wrists and just above my elbows.

I’ve never been to see a gynecologist, but I think it’s the same kind of stirrups they use for their exams that my legs are latched to. I’ve never been so exposed to anyone in my entire life, but that isn’t even the worst part.

Actually, I don’t know what the worst part has been so far...or if, perhaps the worst is yet to come. His imagination is greater than mine has ever been. I don’t wish to ever see inside his mind, though I suppose I’m being forced to.

I’m no longer a virgin.

I laugh out loud as the thought crosses my mind. I laugh because laughing doesn’t hurt the way crying does. I think I must be dehydrated. I’ve been given one sip of water all day and my lips burn—I wish I had my lip balm. Such a simple comfort that would be, but it’s obvious that my comfort doesn’t matter to him at all.

He’s left the generator and fans running, though. I guess that’s as far as the Canyon Carver’s humanity stretches. It’s been like being in hell inside this box—not just for the constant torment for hours that stretched on into forever, but for the heat. It’s over a hundred degrees outside today and it’s been hotter inside.

I should have died from heat stroke by now, right?

Somehow, I think that death would be a welcome reprieve to the fear inside my mind for what he’ll do when he returns.

I’m no longer avirgin.

I have the thought again and I only laugh louder this time, though it turns quickly into a dry cough from my parched throat.

Did Andrés’ fingers inside mecount?

I guess I was overthinking the idea of losing my virginity. Maybe I should have given that last little piece of myself to Andrés last night. At least he’d have that to hold onto. At least then I could say that it wasn’t a filthy, middle-aged man who took my virginity with the handle of a kitchen knife before thrusting himself inside me until I was sore.

I suppose none of it matters. In a day or two, I’ll surely be dead—just another corpse for a hiker to stumble across randomly on a trek up a rocky hillside.

The mountains.

I press my eyes shut tight and I can see the sunset on the bluff so clearly.

7:28 p.m.

The horizon would be yellow and dark orange right about now, the citrus colors just kissing the fading blue in the cloudless sky. Another fifteen minutes and a brilliant shade of raspberry pink will fade in, mixing with the darkening orange as the ball of light sinks beneath the jagged lines that the mountains draw across the sunset—the jagged lines that once outlined the boundaries of my paradise; the jagged lines that now cut my paradise to shreds; the jagged lines that remind me that all things end...and paradise ends at those mountain peaks.

There’s nothing beyond, nothing outside, nothing else in the world worth more or less than that sunset that I’ll probably never get to see again.

I open my eyes and look down at my spread legs, strapped into the stirrups with my knees bent, and I watch the blood drip from the carvings he’s made into my skin. The flesh of my inner thighs looks like patchwork, skin barely holding onto the muscle and sinew beneath. I dry heave at the sight of it—it still burns like fire, but I’m growing used to the heat of the flame.

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