Page 52 of Crybaby

This place is creepy as hell. I push the door wide open from my standpoint on the porch.

“Hello?” I singsong, but there’s no response. I turn to see where Rev is, but he’s already rounded the corner.

“Is anyone here?” I continue. This feels like a movie where the chick stupidly walks inside and then gets hammered in the face with a chainsaw.

So I walk in. Down a long hallway with cracks in the walls and creaky floorboards.

“Hello?” I sound like a broken record.

I find myself in a dining/kitchen area, and the dishes are piled high in the sink with buzzing flies over them. Some are caught having seizures in the Venetian blinds that are bent and crooked. It looks like someone tried to let some light in but failed and bashed the side of them to death. It smells like cat piss, but I don’t see any cats.

The music is coming from a room farther in. I’m guessing whoever is in there couldn’t hear me because it’s so loud.

Not my vibe at all, and I’m guessing the person living here won’t be either.

I push my way past cluttered kitchen chairs toward the back room where the music is coming from. It’s a closed, dark-red door and I can hear whimpering from inside. God, I hope no one is having sex to this music.

I hold my nose as the stench overpowers me and knock on the door. A sudden shriek emits from inside the room—a female screams bloody murder, and the hairs on my neck go apeshit. My fight-or-flight senses switch to fight, and I open the door—fast.

“Get me the fuck out of here!” shouts a young girl about my age from a urine-stained bed with no covers on it and barely a sheet tucked in beneath her.

She’s kicking and bucking. Her arms are tied above her head, and her face is swollen and red. She looks like she’s been beaten.

“You gotta help me! Untie me before he gets back! Untie me! Untie me!” she begs, sobbing her heart out against her naked chest.

She’s completely exposed, and I’m so hyped up by what I see that I clench my fists automatically.

“Stop fucking screaming,” I say to her through gritted teeth. She starts screaming louder and louder in my ears as I try to rip off the plastic straps locked around her wrists.

“For fuck’s sake! Hold still!” I yell at her. “And shut UP!”

“Fuck you!” she snarls and spits in my face.

Clearly, she is traumatized, so I forgive the behavior.

I get one arm free, and she reaches over to rip at the other side.

“Well, well, we have a little party on our hands,” says the gruff voice of a big fat bastard in a plaid shirt and stinky old jeans standing in the doorway. He’s laughing and adjusting his belt buckle.

“You invited a little friend over, darling?” he mocks his pet on the bed, and his beady eyes are hungry and buried deep within his ample cheeks.

The girl starts screaming…again.

“Oh, fuck me,” I curse and grab the heavy lampshade from the nightstand.

I slam the end of it full pelt into the asshole’s face, and surprisingly, he rolls back like a babushka doll and hits the deck.

Unfortunately, he’s not out, though, and grabs my ankle with his big meat hooks and pulls me down to the floor. He really picked the wrong girl to mess with, and while the girl is still on the bed, struggling with her wrist tie, I start bashing his face.

Something in me suddenly snaps…

“Fucking rapist asshole! How do you like that?” It sounds like I’m punching raw meat with porcelain. Over and over again.

“Did you fuck her in the ass? Did you?” I demand and smash him again before he can attempt a response.

The girl starts wailing again behind me.

“Men like you don’t deserve to breathe,” I say, and my body regenerates like a battery plugged into a charger. “Rapist c—”

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