Wicked Games
Chapter Six: This Is How I Disappear
She was alone.
Lila trembled on her spot on the floor. The tips of her fingers were tingling and prickling with the lack of circulation happening there. Hot, fast tears soaked her face, irritating the skin around the duct tape with their saltiness.
They had left her. Her only hopes for survival had flitted away on winged feet. She tried to control the shaking but she couldn't. Sooner or later, when they realized Helga and Arnold had done the sensible thing and gotten away, Rhonda and Hank would come back for her. The shining gleam of the long thin dagger on Rhonda's hip would not leave her mind. Even with her eyes shut, it's glint winked in the darkness. Rhonda would hurt her. She might even kill her. What had she done to deserve that? What horrible cruelty did she bestow to earn her best friend's hateful punishment? Out in the world, people raped and murdered and pillaged but she was being tortured for flirting?
No, that wasn't it. That was just a mask. Rhonda was disturbed. She was fucked up. There would be no rational answer to this because she wasn't rational. She was going to be cut up and murdered and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.
She heard a sound. She looked up, foolishly though, into the inky blackness around the halo of spotlight she was confined in. Of course she couldn't see out of it but she could sense it. She could sense someone watching her. Instinctively she curled away from it, even though she knew it would protect her from nothing.
Rhonda stepped into the light suddenly, stiff as cardboard as she stood with her hands folded behind her back. Her eyes were narrowed at her, for what reason she couldn't have said. Perhaps her delusional mind was inventing reasons as to how she had ruined the whole scene. She stood there saying nothing though for such an excruciatingly long time. Although her seething black glare was too much to bare, she couldn't look away. She was terrified the moment she looked away, it would happen. The definition of what it was wouldn't form in her mind, but she knew she didn't want it to happen. Somewhere in her mind, stopping it involved meeting Rhonda's empty hateful gaze.
Suddenly Rhonda was stalking towards her. She flinched away, twisting her body left and right to try and wiggle away but she was no match for the untethered Rhonda. She caught her immediately, jerking her up by the shoulders onto her knees. She knelt down too, her face inches away from her own. Her eyes burned as she glared right into her face. Hank came into the room, his heavy footsteps giving him away.
"They're in the vents. Wait. Catch'em when they come out." His deep voice thundered. Lila was tempted to look over at him, confused by his simple exchange but couldn't tear her gaze from Rhonda. Rhonda said nothing, giving no indication she had even heard him, she just continued to glare into Lila's eyes. Hank seemed to get the message though. He thundered over and grabbed her roughly, holding her by the shoulders. She screamed then. No one heard it. No one would have recognized it as that. She screamed anyways though and tried to jerk away in his vice like grip as Rhonda pulled her knife out. It flashed in the light as she pulled back to strike. She grabbed Lila's hair, jerking her head violently to the side at an awkward angle to stop her struggling. She didn't though, still fighting as Rhonda sawed savagely through the tuft of hair fisted in her hand. She was cruel too, yanking at the roots, her scalp lifting up, until finally she got what she wanted. She shoved her to the ground. Lila's head banged against the floor, black spots danced across her vision again. She lay still, staring up at the spotlight hoping against hope they would leave her be now that they had defiled her.
"Done?" Hank grunted.
"Just leave her." Rhonda bit out. All she could hear were the short clips of her ankle boots as she walked what sounded far away. She could hear Hank's shuffled footsteps move away from her too. He stopped several feet away and the light shut off. The bright ghost of it dancing across her vision anyways, moving away every time she tried to look at it head on. Eventually it faded as it drifted away. She lay there in the dark, shivering as the cold crept up through the floor into her bones. She closed her eyes and let the dark swallow her up.