THIRTY-TWO
Ain't Torture Grand?
Rudely ended by a fist, actually.
Harriet's fist. Right in Miriam's solar plexus. The air sucks out of her lungs. She'd double over if she could, but she can't, so instead she just coughs like she's trying to expel a squirming knot of angry weasels from her chest cavity.
"Awake now?" Harriet asks.
Miriam blinks away the haze from whatever drugs Frankie stuck into her. She notices that Harriet is wearing black gloves. So I don't see how she dies? Is she really that much of a control freak?
"In a manner of–" She wants to say speaking, but she only wheezes and hacks, trying to find breath to fill her windbags.
"The solar plexus is an excellent place to hit," Harriet explains. "At least, it is if your target is untrained. It's a massive bundle of nerves. Fighters know to toughen and tighten that area. They strengthen the muscles there to form a braid of armor. For everybody else, though, it's a beautiful and easy target to strike."
Miriam draws one last gasp, feels like her body has caught up with itself.
"Thanks for the MMA fighting lesson, Tito Ortiz."
"I don't know who that is."
Miriam licks her dry, cracked lips. "Not really a surprise. So, hey, thanks for waking me up out of my dream. It was getting a little too creepy in there for me; my head is no longer a safe place to visit, I think. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Harriet's hand forms a flat hatchet blade, and she chops it right into Miriam's neck.
Miriam gags and gasps anew. Her face goes red. Her eyes feel like they might suck back into her brain or pop out and roll across the floor.
"Mastoid process," Harriet clarifies. "Protects the windpipe. Hit that, and it forces the target to gag. The gag reflex is an instant limiter in a fight. It represents a terrible panic state for the body, which offers supreme advantage to the attacker."
When Miriam can breathe again, and when she's curtailed the urge to dry heave the dust and acid that's probably lining her stomach, she speaks.
"Why the–" Hack, cough. "– play-by-play?"
"Because I want you to know that I know what I'm doing."
"Again, why?"
"So your instinct will be to fear me. Eventually, my very presence becomes torture. If a man abuses a dog enough, soon the dog fears all men. The dog becomes weak. The creature exists in the flight mode of fight or flight, always ready to piss itself and turn tail."
Miriam almost laughs. "Trust me, I fear you. I fear the unmerciful shit out of you. Though, truth be told, I also fear that haircut of yours. It looks like someone cut it with a fire axe. Jesus, you could probably slit somebody's throat with those bangs."
Harriet just delivers three hammer punches to Miriam's armpit.
Miriam's body is a switchboard of pain. She cries out.
"Armpit. Another major bundle of nerves."
"What do you want?" Miriam shouts. "You want to ask me something? I'll tell you! Just ask. Stop it, please. Just stop."
"Begging. That's new for you."
Miriam almost weeps. "I like to remain versatile. Like a shark, swim forward or die. So, just ask me what you want to ask me. I'm an open book."
"I have nothing to ask you."
"You're not trying to find out how Hairless dies?"
Harriet shakes her head.
"Then why are you doing this?"
Harriet smiles. It's a scary sight. Her teeth are small, tiny white pebbles in that ankle-biter mouth. "Because I really enjoy it."
Shit. She's going to kill you.
Miriam has to find a way out of this. To forestall it, then stop it.
Miriam reaches: "Hairless wants you to torture me endlessly? Seems strange that you're just going to abuse your new coworker into bloody, babbling uselessness."
"He doesn't know. This isn't his desire. It's mine." Harriet's eye twinkles. "Sometimes a girl has to take a little time for herself."
"And a mani-pedi just wouldn't do?"
Harriet puts one foot up on the tub's rim.
"You and me," she says, "we're alike."
"That's true," Miriam says, going with it. But she thinks: On Bizarroworld.
"We're both survivors. We both do what we have to do to make it to the next day. But even more important, you and I enjoy what we do. You're a monster, and I'm a monster, and we embrace it. I embrace it more than you, of course. You still pretend that you're troubled, tortured, a little drama queen with the back of her hand pressed to her head – oh, woe is me. I've moved past that."
"Nothing about you is troubled or tortured?" Miriam asks.
"Nothing that bothers me anymore. I've let it all go."
"How'd you manage that?"
"Ingersoll showed me the way."
"Hairless? And how's that? I bet it's a real interesting story."
Harriet tells her.