Dark End of the Street

The scene wasn’t in the main casino. Looked like it was in some storage area with cinder block walls filled with old slots. Two people talking.

A woman leaned over a young girl who was lying down on a long table. I stood and walked toward the screen, transfixed and sickened by what I saw.

The girl was almost naked and tied down. Her arms were cuffed above her head to a water main and her legs were attached to the table by some kind of strips of cloth. Her loose hair fell into her eyes and she was twisting her head away from the woman’s face. I could feel my heart pound faster and heated adrenaline shoot through my body. The woman mashed a revolver in the girl’s eye as she poured something down the length of her legs.

Below the monitor was an imprinted plastic tag reading #102.

Chapter 13

PERFECT LEIGH WANTED to tear into Abby’s cuticles so bad that her temples throbbed, but the little girl was flailing about and screaming so much that it’d be tough. Maybe she could work on her hands with them still attached to the water pipe, she thought, as she tore off another strip of hair from Abby’s leg causing another muffled scream and another laugh from Humes. He was really getting his jollies watching a young girl twisting about her in her little undies. Sick bastard.

Hmm. It seemed the heaviest concentration of blond hair was on Abby’s calves, but that would come off with just a quick spread of wax and a flick of the wrist. Perfect stopped for a moment, pulled Abby’s wet, now-detangled hair into a ponytail, and stood back to admire her work.

Yes, there were possibilities. Her armpits were clean and her legs were almost done. She’d work on the cuticles next and then apply the makeup. Perfect found a long strip of what looked like stubborn hair and loosened the gag around Abby’s mouth. “Just a word, darlin’,” Perfect said. “Just a word. Where did your daddy keep those papers? Y’all have a bank? Or does he have a hidden safe at his office? Come on. You’re about all clean and then we gonna have to start li’l things that are much, much nastier. Mr. Humes over there is kind of kinky, too.”

Humes smiled, gave a short bow, and walked out the door. He’d be back. He’d be back because he didn’t think Perfect could handle getting what they needed. She looked down at Abby who was turning kind of a bluish color.

Perfect traced her bare white belly with the pistol and watched her try to stretch from her bound hands and legs. “All right, girl, your choice. I would like to put you in a nice little black dress before he starts. And we’ll have to burn that nasty T-shirt and jeans you got.”

She put down the gun for a moment on a stack of clean white towels and concentrated looping sticky gobs of wax up under the girl’s calves as she hummed along. “You’re going to be so pretty, Abby. Don’t you worry, I’ll make sure you are the belle of the ball before you take that last breath.”

I ran through the twisted concrete corridors searching for the room I’d seen from the monitor. Everything I’d come for seemed unimportant now. A girl was strapped to a table with a gun to her head. Hell, I didn’t know what I’d do if I found her. Kick in the door, pull a fire alarm. Something. I couldn’t just stand back and let everything shake out.

Jesus. Most of the room numbers were out of sequence. And most of the ones I looked into were storage filled with cans for vending machines, stacks of toilet paper, or new towels.

Just as I thought I was getting close, hearing my boots clacking on the hard concrete floor, the number jumped from ninety-nine to one hundred eleven. Shit. I ran back down the corridor, searching, but the hall was a dead end.

Suddenly, I heard another set of footsteps running down the tunnel and pressed myself close to the wall. A black man in a suit jogged past me, staring straight ahead. I took a deep breath and when I couldn’t hear footsteps anymore, I continued the search.

The next tunnel was dank and bare and the floor muddied with footprints. I was about to turn back when I heard something at the far end. Sounded like the feral cries of a wounded animal.

Abby tried to focus away from the pain. With each rip of her hair, she could feel numbness spread throughout her body. She tried to concentrate on that, imagining the dead feeling coat her skin in a protective layer. She bit down on the cloth gagging her mouth again and tried not to scream as the woman worked on her back legs, pulling more hair out by the roots.

She’d never felt such sharp pain in her life. She bit down harder on the cloth, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“My sweet little girl,” Ellie said, playing with the edge of a gun in her ear. “Get it all out. Purge yourself of all that filth in your mind. Were you Daddy’s little girl? Is that it? You know Daddy died for something that wasn’t his business.”