Louise sits cross-legged on a box across from him, the David Lynch book open in her lap. She reads. “So we were down at the end of this street at night, and out of the darkness—it was so incredible—came this nude woman with white skin. Maybe it was something about the light and the way she came out of the darkness, but it seemed to me that her skin was the color of milk and she had a bloodied mouth.”
The Troll struggles, aware now of the impossible heat. Sweat is starting to pour down his face.
“Seriously, retard. You got ten seconds to cut me loose.”
Louise turns the page. “She couldn’t walk very well and she was in bad shape, and she was completely naked. I’d never seen that, and she was coming toward us but not really seeing us. My brother started to cry—”
She closes the book. “Welcome to Duane’s House of Torture,” she says.
Duane, sitting on the center console watching this spectacle, frowns. “Leave me out of this. I’m a pacifist.”
Louise jumps down off the stack, grabs another box. “Let’s see what America’s consumers have chosen for your punishment today,” she says. The Troll struggles. He’s an eighteen-year-old high school dropout named Evan who lives in the town house his parents bought him in Santa Monica. In his mind he’s always been a victim of persecution. Don’t say cunt. Don’t say wetback. Don’t say kike.
“If this is your, whatever, hurt feelings about having to suck a few dicks,” he says, “why don’t you go shout about it in some butch dyke drum circle. I’m innocent.”
Louise snorts, opens the box. Her eyes light up. “Yahtzee,” she says, and pulls a spray bottle out of the box. She displays it like a product model, turning at the waist to show Duane, then Evan.
“What the fuck is that?” says Evan.
Louise uses her open right hand to underline the words Coyote Urine, written in cursive on the plastic bottle. “Looks like some poor Riverside resident has got himself a marmot problem.” She holds the bottle up like a gun, nozzle pointed at Evan’s face.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he says.
“Where,” says Louise, “is he?”
“Who?”
She sprays Evan in the face. A musky stink fills the van.
“Jesus,” says Duane.
Evan screams and thrashes his head from side to side. There is urine in his eyes and mouth.
“Round two,” says Louise. “Where is he?”
“You fucking bitch,” yells Evan. “You fucking cunt.”
She sprays him again. He thrashes, retches, a wave of nausea hitting him.
“Unh-unh,” she says. “If you’re gonna barf, do it in a box.”
She throws the spray bottle behind her, grabs another box. Inside her is a simmering rage older than her body. She would hurt them all if she could, all the white boys with their tiki torches and backward baseball caps chanting Jews will not replace us, all the muscle car drivers plowing through crowds of peaceful protesters, all the minivan drivers with their Blue Lives Matter bumper stickers, all the cops they worship with their choke holds and high-capacity magazines. But she can’t, so she takes it out on the Troll.
“You’re crazy,” says Evan, then spits, “I was taking you there.”
Louise picks up a smaller box, thinking about the journey each one of these packages took to get here, the fossil fuels burned, plastics extruded. Items manufactured and flown hundreds, maybe thousands of miles, to a sorting facility, staffed by freelance contractors working long hours for low wages. Boxes sent by God so that she could be his righteous hand.
“You’ve got no right,” Evan sputters, “assaulting an honest white man in broad daylight just because you got your snowflake feelings hurt. That’s the fucking world.”
Inside this new box is a smaller black box with flames on it. The words MEAT CLAWS are printed on the side in yellow all caps.
“Inshallah,” says Louise, and shows the box to Evan.
He spits coyote piss. “What is that?” he asks.
She tears open the box. “Ever have a pulled pork sandwich?” she asks him, taking the black metal claws from the box. They have metal loops for her hands to slide through, the claws settling onto her knuckles. They are made of polished, sharpened iron.
Evan realizes he may be fucked.
“He’s in Palm Springs,” he says. “The Wizard. He’s been going crazy. Four days without pussy. I told him I could bring him some girls, but it’s loony tunes out there, kitty-cat, end of the world and all that, so bitches are hiding in their storm cellars.”
“Don’t call me that. Kitty-cat.”
“Fuck you. Your name is whatever I decide to call you.”
She holds up her clawed hands. “I’m the Wolverine, bitch,” she says. “Say my name.”
Duane stands. “Louise.”
But she steps toward Evan, already picturing the blood.
Duane puts a hand on her arm. “Louise. He told you where he is.”
She shrugs him off. “Address,” she says. “Number of guards. Exits and entrances. We’re nowhere near done.”
She clacks the claws together, causing sparks. “I wanna see what his guts look like on the outside,” she says, and smiles.
Evan thrashes against his restraints. Inside the foil bag it’s 122 degrees.
“It’s in my phone. He sent a photo. I don’t know about security. He just texts me, asks me for girls or drugs. I swear.”
She scrapes the claws together, making an awful screech.
“Evan, baby,” she says. “I wanna help you. I really do. But God has other plans.”
Bathsheba