Chapter 5 – I Remember You

It didn't take long for Otis to storm in the basement, followed by Baby. He had a truly murderous look on his face. It matched perfectly with the truly murderous pistol in his hand. "Where is he?" he demanded, pacing in the small room, not seeing what he was looking for.

"Her" Baby pointed at me.

Otis looked at me intently, for the first time. He was slightly puzzled. "A girl?"

Good! I thought, much relieved, smiling at him with my eyes. Because I'm a girl, he's going to mellow down, even if he believes that I'm a cop.

Rolling his eyes and taking a deep breath, he opened the cage door, closed his hand around my arm into a tight grip, and pulled me out.

"What are you gonna do to her?" Baby asked as he pulled me along upstairs, excited curiosity in her voice.

"What do you think I'm gonna do, Baby?" he answered with irritation. "I'm gonna do the only fucking thing we do with pigs in this house."

At that, I began to scream behind the putrid rag, fighting back with all I had. Which wasn't much; not enough to even slow him down. He had said "the only thing we do", and I was positive he didn't mean cuddling. He dragged me out of the house, to the backyard, decidedly and without wasting words, in a let's-get-it-over-with, I-have-better-things-to do attitude.

As I weakly and inefficiently put resistance, trying to get loose of that iron hand probably giving me yet another purple spot, I concentrated, attempting to come up with a five-second brilliant plan to stay alive. None occurred to me.

Before, I had thought: worst case scenario, Otis and I will have a few hours of hot and rough sex, then he'll kill me and I'll die happy. But no, I was wrong; he wasn't even going to grant me that. What a waste of a time machine!

He stopped. "On your knees. Piggy-pie."

"No Slim Whitman on the background?" I thought bitterly, staring at the gun pointed at my face, then glanced up at his eyes in a silently plead.

"I said, on your knees" he repeated in a threatening tone, waiving at ground with his pistol, his hair flying behind him with the soft wind.

"Or what, are you going to kill me twice?" I thought. Slowly, I went down to my knees, since dying that way or standing really made no difference. All the while I didn't take my eyes off of his.

Otis looked down at me, gun pointed at my head, studying me for a few seconds. I kept holding his stare. To my surprise, he lowered the gun and, using his free hand, pulled the rag out of my mouth. "Any last words?"

"Yeah" I said, finding my mouth really dry. "Why didn't you rape me?"

He blinked in silence several times, furrowing his eyebrows. "What?"

It was the stupidest way to spend one's last words, but since I had gone out of my way to let that happen in the first place, I had to know. "Like the other girls in the basement," I explained calmly "and the others before them. Why am I the only one that has to die right away?"

Still looking very confused, he replied with additional anger: "I don't like cops, and I certainly don't fuck them. I just put a bullet in their heads and get them out of my sight. Does that answer your question?"

"But I'm not a cop!" I said eagerly. "I-"

He pointed the gun at my head again. "Girl, the next words that come out of your mouth better be some brilliant fucking Mark Twain shit, 'cause it's definitely getting chiseled on your tombstone."

Great. That was the perfect time to have an idea.

"Look into the back pocket of my pants" I asked, wide-eyed with fear. "There is something I have to show you."

After a moment's hesitation, still aiming the pistol, Otis bent down and reached for my pocket, grabbing its contents. A small stack of pictures. He glanced at the one on the top, then it caught his interest. He looked at it closely. He waved the gun away from me, using that hand to go through the pictures. Each one grabbed his attention more than the last. Finally he looked at me. "What the hell are these?"

"I made them."

He studied me with renewed interest. "You made these?"

I looked at him innocently. "You don't like it?"

Otis hesitated for a few seconds. "Stand up" he ordered with impatience.

I promptly obeyed, happy to be on my feet again, after believing that I wouldn't go higher than the ground from there on. As he regarded me in silence, obviously waiting for an explanation, I cleared my throat and pointed at the picture on the top. "I call this one "Mermaid" – I hope you don't mind my blatant plagiarism of your work, but I couldn't resist. And this one-" I pointed to the next "is my favorite, Lizard-Girl. It took me three days to finish it, but it was so worth it."

As Otis glanced a bit at me, a bit at the pictures, his face showing a mix of suspicion and admiration, I continued: "Then we have Bat-Baby, which could have been better if I had caught a larger bat, but it's still cool anyway. And here, can you guess what this is?"

He looked at the photo closely. "Was this a deer?"

I smiled. "That's right! It was, by far, the easiest one to make. I just had to cut its neck out, then stick the guy in from the waist up, add the antlers and the fur... and the final result is great." I kept quiet for a few seconds, allowing him time to make a decision. "So... what do you think?" I asked hopefully, knowing that the answer would grant me either a death sentence or my life back.

Otis looked at me, raising his brows and slightly curving his lips upwards. "I like these. A lot."

I grinned triumphantly. I owed my life to Adobe. Thank God they didn't have Photoshop in the seventies!