SERAPHINE
Leroi sounds jealous. It’s almost as though the only penis he wants me torturing is his. While he fusses with covering the entire hallway in plastic wrap, I sit on the edge of the bathtub with the nail gun on my lap, watching Mike Ferrante.
Mike has gained weight since I last saw him. He doesn’t look so menacing, slumped on a toilet seat with a patch of blood on his t-shirt. The next time I dream of that night, I hope to find him sitting in the corner looking so helpless.
Leroi insisted on placing duct tape around his mouth, so his screams wouldn’t disturb the neighbors, and he even provided a notepad and pen in case Mike wants to share some information about Gabriel and Samson. He’s so thoughtful.
A murder bag sits on the sink, containing an assortment of knives, tools, syringes, and ammunition. We both know Mike will need some extra persuasion.
He grunts, and his eyelids flicker. I rise off the edge of the bathtub, expecting to see his terror, but his eyes remain closed.
“Open your eyes,” I say.
He doesn’t move.
“Wake up, Mike.” I kick him in the shin, but he doesn’t even flinch, so I press the nail gun into his shoulder and pull the trigger.
Mike’s muffled groan infuses my spine with a tingle of excitement. His lids snap open, revealing eyes so bloodshot they might as well be crimson.
He grunts through the duct tape and tries to raise his hips off the toilet seat, but he’s taped down with nowhere to go. Swinging his hand not handcuffed to the rail, he finds it’s chained to the cuffs and throttles his reach.
I step back, the anticipation making my pulse race.
“You have an hour before the clean-up crew arrives,” Leroi says from the doorway.
Mike’s head jerks toward the source of the sound, his eyes widening with even more alarm. He makes a noise behind the gag that sounds like, ‘What do you want?’
“Why are we on a tight schedule when Mike’s wife will be gone for at least eight hours?” I snap.
“You know why.”
My lips tighten. I don’t want to admit that Leroi has a point. If whoever shot at us earlier is connected to the contract out on the Montesano brothers, then Leroi might also be in danger. That’s not even counting what Samson is plotting from the shadows.
“Fine.” I turn my attention back to Mike. He’s breathing so hard and fast that the red blotches on his face darken to a nasty shade of purple.
“Five years ago, after you and your colleagues raped a woman by the name of Evangeline, your boss sent you to collect his son. Where did you go?”
He rears back, his head shaking from side to side as though denying any involvement.
“We don’t have time to sift through your lies.” I press the nail gun to his shoulder and pull the trigger.
Mike howls as much as he can with his mouth taped shut, and my blood sizzles with satisfaction.
“Answer my question or I’ll fill you with iron and then pull it out with a magnet.”
He shudders.
“Give him the notepad,” Leroi says.
I place a spiral-bound book on his lap, pull out the pen and place it into his trembling fingers.
Mike scrawls:
Girlfriend’s place.
“Where did you take him afterward?” I ask.
Some apartment in Queen’s Gardens.
“Then what?”
He shakes his head.
“That’s the last you heard of Gabriel?” I ask.
He gives me a vigorous nod.
I grind my teeth, the pulse in my ears pounding with frustration. It’s so loud I can barely think.
My fingers hover over the nail gun’s trigger, and I press its barrel into Mike’s collarbone. He makes a gibbering sound behind the tape and scribbles something else.
You are the daughter.
“So what?”
They said you ran away.
“And?” I ask
Take off the tape. It’s quicker.
“What’s he writing?” Leroi asks from the doorway.
“He wants me to ungag him.”
Leroi snorts. “He’s wasting time, thinking that someone is coming to save him in an hour’s time.”
I turn back to Mike, my eyes widening. “Is that why you’re holding back?”
He shakes his head vigorously, but doesn’t write anything else. My veins burn with a twisted sense of curiosity. If there’s a chance he knows something… I shake off that thought. Leroi is right. If Mike can speak the answer, he would write it.
“Where did Frederic Capello have his last surgery?” Leroi asks.
Mike scribbles: Somewhere in Mexico
My nostrils flare. We hadn’t thought of searching overseas. I ask a few more questions about who he brought with him, but Mike reveals that he thought his boss was going overseas to treat an ulcer. It looks like Dad was holding secrets from everyone, including his own guards.
“Let’s move onto Samson Capello. Where is he?” I ask.
Mike writes in extra shaky writing: DEAD.
“We all know he didn’t die.” I turn to Leroi. “Hold my gun.”
His eyes narrow. “What are you planning?”
“Relax, I’m not going to touch his dick. At least not with my hands.”
Mike makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and he jots something on the paper. Ignoring him, I walk to the bag of tools perched on the bathroom sink and sort through the tools. No matter what Leroi says, Mike is still one of the monsters that took pleasure in violating Mom. He’s one of the reasons memories from that night still haunt my dreams.
There’s only one fitting punishment for a rapist. If I can’t directly touch his junk, I just need to improvise.
I return to Mike, holding the smallest pair of pliers. He eyes the tool, his breath coming in ragged pants, and then he meets my gaze.
“If I’m satisfied with your answer, I’ll let you keep your balls. Where is Samson Capello?”
He writes faster, the words almost blurring together.
In his summer house.
“Where?” I flip the page to a fresh sheet.
After he scrawls down an address, I rip it out and hand it to Leroi. “Can you check on this?”
Leroi disappears down the hallway with the scrap of paper, and I turn back to Mike to ask, “Is there anything else you want to tell me about Samson or Gabriel?”
He shakes his head.
“You’re sure?”
Mike nods, his eyes squeezing shut, seeming resigned to his death. After all, he heard Leroi give me an hour to wrap everything up. He probably thinks he’s given me all the information I need, so I’ll drive a nail through his skull.
He would be wrong.
“Let’s move onto the next subject,” I say, my voice shaking with rage. “Evangeline.”
His eyes snap open, his pupils tiny pinpricks within his light-brown irises. He tries to write something on the notepad, but I snatch it out of his hands.
“She’s a what?” I snarl. “A slut, a whore, a cheater who had it coming?”
He shakes his head, his eyes darting around the room, searching for an escape. Mike thrashes within his restraints, looking like he’s finally realized his fate isn’t to die quickly.
“I watched you all through the crack in the door,” I say. “She was begging, screaming, crying for it to stop, but you all laughed as you took your turns.”
He flinches.
I use the pliers to pull down his zipper and return to the sink to extract a larger pair that remind me of crab claws. After cutting through his boxers with a retractable knife, I clamp the plier’s jaws on his foreskin and pull out his penis.
Mike’s muffled screams are so loud that Leroi charges back to the bathroom with more tape and winds it around his nose.
“But he won’t be able to breathe,” I say.
Leroi scoffs and returns to the doorway and leans against his frame, holding a TV remote. “He’ll survive for long enough.”
Mike groans, his face covered in sweat. With most of his face now covered with tape, all I can see are his bloodshot eyes, which stream with tears.
“You slapped my mother across the face with your stinking dick, just to make the others laugh,” I yell, loud enough to hear myself over the blaring TV.
He makes a noise behind his gag and gestures at the scrap of paper.
“What?” I snap. “Are you going to tell me she’s an undeserving victim because that’s not exactly news.”
I snatch the nail gun, press its nose into the base of his dick, and squeeze the trigger.
Mike’s muffled roars mingle with the sound of the television from the bedroom next door, sounding like it’s part of the movie.
“Don’t whine.” I backhand him across the face with the power tool. “You’re the one who joked about nailing her, and now I’m nailing you.”
With the help of my pliers, I nail his penis to his thigh, without so much as touching it. Blood soaks his lap and spreads across the bathroom floor. I shoot nail after nail into his withered dick until the gun’s magazine is empty.
“How do you feel?” Leroi asks from the doorway.
I stare at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Better, but not satisfied.”
“How will you finish him?”
I glance down at the open murder bag and extract the longest screwdriver. “Mike also said something about wanting to screw Mom, so this is only fitting.”
By the time I turn back to him, his eyes are closed. No amount of threats will force him to open them, so I jam the screwdriver’s sharp edge through his eyelid. With my free hand, I hammer its handle further in until it’s sunk deep into his socket.
Blood pours down one side of his face, making pretty trails over the tape. It settles on his shirt with large splotches.
Leroi approaches me from behind and wraps his arms around my waist. His thick erection presses into the small of my back, making me shiver.
“How do you feel, now?”
I turn around in his embrace. “Compared to being chased in the woods, it’s a bit of an anti-climax.”
He nibbles my neck. “But we’ve found out two new things. One, Gabriel was forced to donate his liver in Mexico. Two, Samson has a summer house and we have its address.”
“I wish we could have kept him alive to check his facts,” I mutter.
“Sorry to have spoiled your fun. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Reaching between our bodies, I trail my fingers over his length and give him a gentle squeeze, making his breath quicken.
“I want to try the nipple clamps.”
