Elester took out a little pistol from the back of his pants Terrence did the same. The junior partner climbed back up the ladder. Elester gave me a sick grin. "Once company is gone. You and me are going to get acquainted."
I thought about screaming. I closed my eyes and tried to think. If I upset this man, he would torture me until I stopped breathing. Probably the person upstairs was a demented fiend, but I had to take a chance. "PLEASE HELP! PLEASE!"
Elester ran at me, raised the butt of his pistol to bring it down on my head and I stopped. He held his clenched fist over me, ready to strike, his head cocked for some sign of trouble from above.
Sheila sprung. She landed on his back her arms around him her nails clawing deep into his face. He spun around got his left hand up under her arm and wrapped his massive palm over her mouth. He pulled her into his chest and with his right hand he put the point of the gun against her head. He looked at me and nodded. Sheila struggled to break free, but her efforts didn't concern him much. His mouth, his eyes they showed no sign of effort.
I strained to hear the slightest tell-tale sign of struggle, of conflict in the realm above, of some demented creature, preparing to come down the ladder, to add a new degree of terror to the last remaining hours of my life.
We all stayed in that never ending pose like Greek statues, a satyr and his spoils. Elester's face finally betrayed a slight impatience an eagerness for the interruption to be over so he could get to play with his new toy.
A slight breeze blew a tree branch against the outside wall but no one spoke. No one walked. No doors closed or opened. My heart skipped a beat, tears ran down my cheeks.
On the small island of Tulagi, Sergeant Joe Cabrio was tasked with infiltrating the tunnels of the imperial army where they fought underground to the last man. Joe Cabrio earned his first medal of valor on that campaign. On that island he stopped being human and became a kind of animal. A quiet, predator that lived in the dark. It was the beginning of his journey. In the end he became a death monster. I'd spent the last three years in fear, the last three days in terror, afraid that he was coming for me. Now I wanted him here. I wanted it so bad I couldn't tell where my thoughts ended, and my wishes and desires began.
I can't say how long I laid on the cot wanting to scream, to cry out, to launch myself into my captor. Instead, I was forced to lay still because I saw Sheila's skull explode over and over again. It may have been an hour or just twenty minutes, but Elester got sick of waiting. He shoved Sheila down onto the floor and went up the ladder like a wild baboon forced out of its lair.
The wind whistled through a crack in a seam, but the absence of any other sound made me believe that that the world was gone. Someone waved a wand and it disappeared. Me and Sheila were left behind, stuck in a hole, unable to live in the light ever again.
A lean shadow blocked the pillar of light. It came down the ladder without making the wood creak. It slid into a lightless recess. "You both still alive?"
I had hoped he'd come, a desperate magical desire. I'd asked for impossible things all my life. I never really expected any of them to be fulfilled, and not now when my petition was for a monster. I managed a whimper not knowing anything for certain. "We're alive."
"Ok this will be over soon. Don't try to leave. No matter what you hear. When I say, I want you to come up the ladder and go out the front door. But not until I say, now give me those blankets."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want you to see."
Sheila ripped the blankets from the cots and marched across the pit. She shoved them into the chest of the silhouetted figure. "Just make sure they are dead."
The darkness went up the ladder like an oiled streak. It took me a while to understand his whispered reply. "They are not ready for death."
I sat with Sheila on the cot. We held each other. The things up above didn't sound human. They cried out like swine, for parts of their anatomy that they wanted to keep. They made religious protestations; they promised to reform. They cursed their persecutor, made vendettas. The demonic beast did not reply, did not speak, just carried out his outrages as a matter of routine. In my mind I imagined a blade slitting skin. I thought of needles driven into soft tissue. I had to stop. I quit trying to understand the suffering that the physical bodies were being made to endure. I put my hands over my ears because the bleating seemed to be coming from inside my skull.
The mewling hit a crescendo. The satanic opera started to wind down. One by one the wailing turned to murmurs, low static groans.
Joe cleared his throat. "You can come up now."
Sheila took to the ladder first, skipping every other rung. I followed after her. At the top of the trap door the little room widened out. Joe stood in front of two lumps on the floor. Before I could turn away one of the blanket flaps shifted and part of a human face lay itself bare. I couldn't recognize which one it was. An eye dangled from a socket and I saw more than that, but it is too ugly to recount. They were still alive when we went out the front door. They were still alive when Joe got into the front seat of the pickup. They were still alive when the fuse ran out and the dynamite strapped to their bodies expanded and their matter blended with the microscopic fibers of the wood and stone.
