Fingers of light stretched into the cavernous corners, revealing sharp objects and treacherous tilling equipment. A metal auger, a machine used to empty grain on the bin floor, was a razor-edged spiral that stretched horizontally along the length of one stretch of open space. A dormant conveyor belt ran along the perimeter, at the end of it a giant cogged wheel. Tattered burlap bags of grain piled up six feet high. Ladder rungs stretched into holes in the ceiling.
“How long will it take you?” I asked, hardly able to stand the anticipation. Seconds ticked by fast and slow all at once. My heart and soul were ready.
Lena rotated in place, peering around the room. “Not long if I focus,” she said. The light from the lanterns played on the angles of her face.
She set up a series of three smaller cameras throughout the mill’s bottom floor, checking in a handheld monitor to make sure she caught the expanse of the room on camera. Single red lights blinked on and began to watch us.
Lena worked with skill and precision. It was easy to imagine her directing the lights, the camera, the action from behind stage. Someday maybe I’d see for myself.
But not tonight.
She’d brought the stagehands’ walkie-talkies. I changed the dials to matching stations and tested them. Then, I read through my list, checking items off as I completed a task. Lena showed me how to operate the monitor.
Minutes sank into hours and it was just after eleven thirty when I looked at my cell phone, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and realized that my honored guests would be arriving any minute.
“It’s all working? Did you check the microphones to make sure they’re picking up sound?”
Lena was adjusting a lens. She turned to me without a word, and through the nighttime dust-ridden air, I could make out the sparkle of tears in her eyes. “We don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Yes, we do.” My voice went flat.
She closed the distance between us. Her hands were icy as they picked mine up and held them. “No, we don’t. We could run away. Go somewhere, anywhere. Together. We understand each other and as of right now, nobody knows what you’ve done. We could stop this right here, right now. Please, Marcy. I know what they did to you, but it doesn’t have to be this way.” Her body reeked of desperation.
I examined her coolly. Finger by finger I removed my hands from her grasp, separating us. “You’re wrong,” I said. “This is the only way it can be.”
Her breath caught. She looked down at the bare space between us where there was now nothing linking us together. “Then I—I don’t think I can—”
“You can go,” I said, and I wondered if she had banked on the fact that she’d need my permission. “This is probably the part in the horror movie where you’d want to cover your eyes.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but there wasn’t a good response to what I’d said because in this direction, there would be only suffering, death, and ugliness not for the faint of heart.
As she turned to leave, I wondered if she expected me to run after her, to make some grand romantic gesture. I wondered if she expected to be enough on her own. But I watched her go without feeling or regret.
Twenty minutes later, they were here and I was ready: lights, camera, action.
There was a knock, a creak, and then footsteps. If these boys had any imagination at all, they might have guessed what waited for them behind the walls of the abandoned grain mill—broken bones, flayed skin, and boiled blood sacrifices at the altar of justice. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life.
The second they walked in, it was already too late for them. I wish they appreciated that, but then again, I loved a good surprise.
I perched on a crate on the second level, monitor in hand, ready to let the games begin.
I used the grain mill to design a maze of sorts that would separate the boys and bring them back together in turns.
A kinked cord attached a pair of headphones to the monitor so that I could hear what was going on downstairs. I’d have to ditch them as soon as the games began in earnest, though.
Shoot, popcorn, I thought with a snap of my fingers. I knew I forgot something. Popcorn would have been perfect.
I watched as three figures entered the shadowy ground floor. I could hear the shuffle of their shoes below.
Like mosquitoes to a zapper, the three boys gravitated to the lone battery-operated lantern that I’d left for them. I watched as they turned around, peered up, walked backward, and tugged at their hair, taking in their surroundings.
“What the hell?” The long-haired Jessup said this as if he’d been seriously inconvenienced. His voice echoed up to the second story. “Where are we?”
And, see, I would have thought that part was obvious.
Cruel, shark-eyed Tate with his cavalier, rumpled rich boy looks cupped his hands over his eyes as a visor and peered up into the rafters. “Is this some kind of joke?”
For the first time, I picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed down on the “talk” button. Three matching sets waited for them in a ring next to the lantern. “I’m afraid not.” My voice crackled over their speakers.
All three boys flinched. Alex’s arms flew up to the side of his skeleton face, half boxer, half refugee, preparing to get bombed.