Watch Me as I Bleed
The detective looked nothing like the
typical Hollywood version of a female detective, young and blonde and busty
beneath her pantsuit. No, the real life
version – Detective Abrams, her badge said – was older, probably close to
fifty, with graying hair cropped close to her scalp and overly large reading
glasses, which had slid down the bridge of her nose as she bent over her
tablet, the pen in her hand scratching furiously against the paper.
At the moment, it was the only sound
in the room, and though he knew the silence would soon be broken by another
question he’d be expected to answer, AJ closed his eyes, grateful for the
temporary reprieve. Normally, he hated
quiet; he was used to background noise – music, the drone of voices, the engine
of a plane or tour bus – and for him, total silence was not only strange, but
downright creepy. Even creepier than the
steady blips and beeps of the hospital monitors, which his nurse had silenced,
thinking it would help him sleep. But he
couldn’t sleep, hadn’t slept without the help of drugs since he’d awoken here,
and in the absence of the distracting monitors, he could hear their screams.
The pen stopped scratching, and AJ
reluctantly opened his eyes to meet those of the detective. They were kind eyes, sympathetic to the
horror their owner was forcing him to relive.
Yet they were also deep, penetrating, as they searched his for
answers. Uncomfortable, he looked away
and refused to make eye contact with her again, even as she asked her next
question.
“I know we’re getting to the most
difficult parts to tell, AJ, but remember, the more information you’re able to
give us, the more we’ll have to go off of to find the person who did this to
you and your friends. So tell me… what
happened once you awoke in the room?”
Closing his eyes again, he saw the
room. Bright. Sterile.
The room reminded him of the place in a morgue where autopsies
were done. It even had the stainless
steel tables, five of them in a row, and strapped to each, with heavy
restraints holding down their limbs and torsos, were the five of them. Kevin was on one side of him, Brian on the
other. Beyond Brian lay Nick and Howie;
he could just lift his head far enough off the table to see them. And when he lay his head back down, his neck
straining with the effort of holding it up, he could hear them. Their heavy breathing. Their questions and their cries.
“Where are we?”
“How did we get here?”
“Why… why is this happening?”
“What do you think she’s gonna do?
Oh God, what do you think she’s gonna do?”
AJ took a labored breath, the air
rattling in his throat. It was with
great effort that he spoke again, his voice hoarser than usual. “She took Howie first.”
Detective Abrams poised her pen over
her tablet. “You said ‘she’ again, yet
earlier you told me that your captor never spoke and was disguised the entire
time. How do you know it was a woman?”
Against his wishes, his mind conjured
a vivid picture of her: the
blood-stained apron, tied around moth-eaten clothes; the tall black hat,
concealing her hair; the mask, hiding her face.
He shuddered, opening his eyes so that he saw, instead, the lined face
of Detective Abrams. “I could just
tell,” he answered. “Her… her shape,
height, her hands… she was definitely female.”
He was sure of that fact, though it
pained him to admit it. Somehow, his
torturer’s gender made the experience seem even more nightmarish, even more
unfathomable. AJ McLean had always adored
women. How could one of them inflict so
much pain and terror upon him? And
why? Why? It the question no one yet had an answer to,
and perhaps they never would.
“I know you’ve been asked before, but
think again… is there anything else you can tell me about her? Any other details you might remember? Anything that could help us find out her
identity?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I told you… she didn’t tell us her name; she
didn’t tell us anything. She was all
dressed up; every inch of her was covered.
Even her hands. She had on wh… white gloves.”
Briefly, they had been white, he knew vaguely. He remembered them better as red, saturated
with blood.
“And a mask, correct?”
He nodded with mild annoyance. Why did she keep asking the same questions
over and over again? Did she not believe
him? Did she expect his answers to
change? He tightened his jaw. “Yes,” he said stiffly. “I told you… it was an Abraham Lincoln mask.”
The pen flew briefly across the paper,
underlining something, and then the detective looked back up at him, cocking
her head slightly to the side. “Why
Lincoln, I wonder? Do you think there’s
any significance to that? It’s an odd
choice of disguise.”
AJ shook his head, his annoyance
growing. “Fuck if I know. She was a fucking lunatic; does she need a
reason?”
“She must have had a reason for her
actions. Finding out what that motive
was will help us to understand why this happened to you. And from what I saw on the crime scene, insanity
doesn’t cover it. This person was not
insane. Mentally ill, perhaps – likely,
even – but not insane. Her ‘work’ shows
a great level of skill, of planning and resourcefulness. A truly insane person is not capable of such
rationalization. She was perhaps a
sadist, a sociopath, but also brilliant.”
“How can you say that?!” AJ lashed out
in anger, and the exertion brought his torso flying forward off the
mattress. He felt both enraged and sick
to his stomach. “She murdered my
friends, my brothers! She fucking
mutilated us! You call that brilliant?”
Detective Abrams seemed to realize she
had gone too far; her face took on a stricken look, and she shook her
head. “I apologize. I… I didn’t mean to sound insensitive. Please… lie back, take a minute.”
He didn’t want to obey, but he was too
exhausted not to. Wearily, he let his
body fall back against his pillows and lay slumped there for a moment, his
chest heaving. Tears swam in his eyes,
but he blinked them back, knowing he could not allow himself to break down yet. There would be plenty of time for tears
later, but first, he had to force himself to tell this woman everything he
knew, if not for her, then for them.
The perceptive detective seemed to
sense his resolve, for after another minute of silence, she asked him gently,
“Are you able to keep going, AJ? You
said… ‘She took Howie.’ Can you tell me
more? Where did she take him?”
AJ blinked rapidly, his eyes wandering
anywhere but her face. He caught sight
of the monitor off to the side of his bed and watched the numbers change to
reflect his pounding heart, his rapid breath, his rising blood pressure. It was going to kill him to go on, to tell
the rest of the story, but what did that matter? He had survived – technically, in the
physical sense – but he felt dead already, dead on the inside, dead in his
soul. How could he go on living after
this? How could he live without them…
and the way she’d left him? If the
strain of answering the detective’s questions did kill him, he would welcome
death.
So he started talking again. “There was another room… off of the one we
were in. I never saw the inside, other
than when she came and went from it. She
kept the door closed the rest of the time.
She… she took Howie there.”
“No! D!”
“Where are you taking him?”
“Stop! Please, don’t!”
Their screams and their pleas made no difference. Without a backward glance, the short Abraham
Lincoln wheeled the table holding Howie away from the others, into a room that
appeared much smaller, though just as clean and bright. The door was slammed shut, and they fell into
silence, listening in horror, straining for a hint of what was to happen to
their friend behind that door.
“And then what?”
AJ shook his head, and the tears he’d
been fighting streamed down his cheeks.
He forced himself to keep talking.
“I… I don’t know. We couldn’t see
anything; we could only hear…”
The screaming came first, and oh God, AJ had never heard Howie
scream like that. Beyond the screaming,
he could hear a violent, rattling, crashing sound, and he knew, because he had
produced a similar sound when he’d awoken here, that it was Howie’s body
desperately slamming against the steel table in his attempts to free himself
from his restraints. They had all tried,
and failed, but the sound of the movement had reached a new level of
franticness behind that door.
Then a new sound joined the chaos of the screaming and the
banging, and it was even more horrible to listen to. It was a grinding roar, like the sound of a
saw, and they all started to shout as they heard Howie’s voice crescendo into absolute
terror. Their own screams soon died on
their throats, and they could only listen, helpless and horrorstruck, as the
saw muffled Howie’s shrieks. Yet the
tortured screaming didn’t stop; it went on and on for what seemed like an
eternity, strengthening from time to time, then weakening to a wail… then long
moans of agony… then strains of whimpering…
And finally, though the shrill, grating sound of the saw
continued, Howie’s voice could be heard no more.
Detective Abrams scribbled notes as AJ
gave a shaky, faltering description of what they’d heard, and continued to
write even after his weeping had rendered him incapable of speech. She gave him a few minutes to recover, to get
a hold himself, and when the tears did not slow, she asked, “Should we stop
now? I need the rest of your testimony,
AJ, but I can come back, if that would be easier.”
Slowly, he shook his head. He wanted to wipe his tearstained face, but
couldn’t, and when she realized this, she pulled a tissue from the box and did
it herself, blotting the moisture from his cheeks and chin with surprising
tenderness. The gesture warmed him to
her, and he cleared his throat, willing strength into his voice. “No…” he rasped. “I’ll… I’ll finish. It’ll be easier if I get it over with now.”
The detective nodded. “I think so too. Take your time, but when you’re ready… tell
me what happened next.”
But it was easier said than done. What had happened next would be much more
painful to describe, and AJ felt a fresh batch of tears flood his eyes as he
thought of what he would have to tell.
Witnessing it had been torturous enough, but reliving it through his
words? Watching what had happened to
Nick was easier done than described.
Yet he had to do it. As much as he wanted to leave Nick with some
dignity, he knew he could better serve his friend by telling the police exactly
what had happened to him so that they could catch the person who had done it,
bring her to justice, and avenge his brutal death.
He sucked in a deep breath, trying to
calm himself, though he knew the effort was in vain. “The other room was quiet for a few minutes,
and then she came back out…”
The sight of her brought another flood of hot, stinging tears to
his eyes. The white apron she was
wearing was spattered with blood.
“Where’s Howie?” he screamed at her, hoping to startle her into
speaking. “What did you do to him?!”
Abraham Lincoln’s face remained stiff and stoic. The stranger behind it said nothing. Her hands were behind her back as she walked
calmly towards them, and at first, her posture made her look less
threatening. Then she brought her hands
out in front of her, and the illusion vanished.
She was holding a large ax. AJ
noticed its sharp blade gleaming in the fluorescent light before he realized
that her formerly white gloves were stained crimson. They left wet, bloody prints as she moved
them higher on the ax’s handle, like a batter choking up on his bat.
What a sick image she created:
“Honest Abe,” the rail splitter, wearing a bloody apron over his clothes
like a goddamned Civil War surgeon.
She raised the ax, higher and higher, as she made her way up to
the nearest table, where Nick lay, strapped down and helpless, his blue eyes
widening in horror as the ax blade grew closer.
They all started to scream and rattle the tables again, but there was
nothing any of them could do. Instinct
told AJ to shut his eyes, but some impulse, just as strong inside him, kept him
watching in horror, like a spectator gawking at a car wreck, as Lincoln swung
the ax above the masked head and brought it down upon Nick’s unprotected neck.
They all screamed again, but Nick’s was cut short, choked out, and
AJ’s died in his throat as he watched his little brother’s head tumble off its
neck and roll back onto the steel table with a dull thud. The image was so surreal to his disbelieving
eyes that it happened almost in slow-motion, like in the movies, except it was
real, and the reality struck when the nightmarish Lincoln sent the ax clattering
to the tiled floor and lunged for the rolling head, grabbing it by its blonde
hair. She lifted it up, completely
separated from the still-twitching body on the table, and AJ heard Brian cry
out as the familiar blue eyes, still bulging with panic, blinked a final time
and then froze, fixed and staring in death.
The headless body stopped twitching as the last nerve impulses
quit firing through it, and the sound of Brian’s sobbing filled the room. AJ was dimly aware of the tears rolling down his
own cheeks, but he didn’t cry out this time; he felt numb, frozen, incapable of
sound or movement. He couldn’t believe
it, couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that Nick was dead, decapitated
before his very eyes.
“What did she do with the body?” asked
Detective Abrams, and AJ was jolted back to the present, where fresh tears were
still rolling down his cheeks.
It took him a moment to find his voice again, to focus on
continuing on when he had just had to relive Nick’s death again. He wished, as he’d wished then, that time
could stop and let him grieve, but he knew he had to keep going, or he’d never
be able to finish. “Sh-she just left him
there,” he said, and he had another gruesome flash of Nick’s body, the river of
blood flowing from the open neck. “She
took his… his head… into the room where she’d taken Howie. When she came back out, she had a… a
scalpel…”
Again, he saw the gleam of the metal blade in her hand; it was
much smaller than the ax, but just as sharp, just as deadly. She carried between the thumb and forefinger
of her bloodstained gloves and didn’t hesitate as she passed the table holding
Nick’s body, stepping over a small pool of blood on the floor, and walked up to
the next table, where Brian was trembling, his face soaked with tears, his eyes
squeezed shut, his lips constantly moving as he muttered desperate words of
prayer, words AJ could not make out, unable to even clasp his tethered hands
together.
He opened his eyes just as the scalpel touched his skin, and AJ
saw them bug out of his head as the blade swept swiftly and neatly across his
throat. Lincoln stood back to watch as
blood began to pour from the slashed folds of skin, the jugular severed. AJ cried and shook his head as he heard Brian
gag and rasp and choke, as he watched his friend’s small body writhe in pain
and fear upon the table, powerless to staunch the deadly flow of blood from his
neck.
It didn’t take long for his movements to weaken, and within a
couple of minutes, the bright blue eyes dimmed and rolled back into his head,
and the eyelids fluttered closed. Brian
Littrell’s final breath, a deathly hiss, escaped his severed windpipe. It was the last they would ever hear of the
voice which had taken lead on so many of their songs. And now it was Kevin’s cries that sounded the
loudest, for it was only AJ and him left, and he had just watched his cousin
bleed to death.
As he told this part of the story,
haltingly, through his tears, Detective Abrams frowned at AJ. “Why do you think she slashed his
throat? It seems out of character,
compared to what she did to the rest of you.”
AJ shook his head. “How the fuck should I know?” he said
raggedly, wishing again that he could swipe the stinging tears from his
face. But he thought back to what had
happened next and found he had an answer from her. “She… she took something from him. From out of his neck. She used that fucking scalpel, and she cut
out his… his windpipe or his voice box, or… hell if I know what it was; it was
bloody, and I... I didn’t want to…”
3000 words reached.
Watch Me As I Bleed Ó 2008 by Julie