Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

The tall man then turned his attention to Kelly. He leaned in closer to her and sniffed the air, his nose almost touching her skin, Kelly turning her head away. He inched closer, and she kept moving away until her head was against the wall and couldn’t go any further. He laid a kiss against her cheek, and she shoved him on the shoulders, the man stumbling back, smiling. He pushed himself up with his gun planted on the floor. “We have a winner,” he said.

He grabbed a fist full of her hair and yanked. Her mouth opened in pain, though no cries emerged, and he forced her to her knees. Elise reached out, her hand wrapping around Kelly’s forearm but quickly slipping away. It seemed like she needed to do something. Anything. But she found herself looking down the barrel of the tall man’s gun. “No, no,” he said, “you stay where you’re at.”

He yanked Kelly upward by her hair toward the middle of the room, Kelly crying now. He trained the gun toward her and looked over at Elise and Molly. “Go and join your husband,” he told Elise.

As she rose, he clicked his tongue and then tossed the cuffs over to her. “With these,” he said.

She slid her hand along the floor in jittery motions and picked them up. He followed her with his eyes while they crawled to the radiator. “Your hand goes in one and your daughter’s in another. Loop the middle to the radiator.”

She complied and strapped herself first, fed the cuff around one of the thick poles of the radiator, and clasped the cuff around her daughter’s wrist. The tall man smiled, his gun never leaving Kelly, walked over to the two women, and pressed the cuffs down against their wrists so tightly that it dug into their skin. Elise gasped. “That’s better,” the man said. “I had a captive slip the cuffs on too loose one time. Won’t be happening again.”

The man rotated his head toward Kelly, and Elise’s insides scrambled. They couldn’t reach any of the guns on the floor. She grabbed Sean’s arm, pleading—demanding that he do something. From the way he looked at her, she knew he was trying.

“What am I to do with you?” the man asked Kelly.

She stood with her hands locked next to her sides, her hair covering part of her face. With each step the man took toward her, she took one back, the tall man seeming to relish the chase. He rotated his gun in a circle. “Spin around for me.”

She didn’t move.

“You deaf?”

Her lips parted, but she said nothing.

“Spin for me.”

He stuck his pistol out toward the others. “How about I blow one of their kneecaps out right now? We’ll start with the little one. Sound good to you?”

“Don’t. Please,” Kelly said.

“Spin.”

Elise’s skin crawled. Kelly spun, but he demanded it slower. So, she closed her eyes and did as he asked. “You remember what the boss said earlier. Your shirt belongs to me.”

Kelly froze. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Give me your shirt.”

The garage door downstairs screeched in its tracks. A tear rolled down Kelly’s cheek. She gripped the edges of her shirt and paused. Looked over at her niece.

“Stop looking at them.”

She pulled her sweatshirt off and tossed it to the ground, now standing in a tank top, covering herself with both arms.

“Your other shirt.”

She sighed and grabbed the straps on her shoulders. She yanked it up when the tall man shouted, “Slow it down.”

She obeyed, now standing topless before him. “Well, look at those,” the man said.

Elise pulled Molly into her chest, shielding her eyes. Kelly reached to cover herself, but the man shouted for her to stop. He commanded her to drop her pants.

Elise looked at Sean. He was trying in the subtlest way, dipped below the edge of the bed, to reach out further. But his hand was a foot short of the table, let alone the contents on top. She racked her mind for a solution that would extend his reach.

The tall man was no longer paying attention to him. Kelly stood naked before him, and his focus was on her. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Elise turned away, knowing this would be the first time but not the last—imagining what these people had in store for later. Again and again. And again. For all of them.

“Lay on the bed. On your stomach.”

She crawled on top of the mattress.

“Make it sexier.”

Kelly choked up. Sean strained, blood dripping from the cuffs tearing into his skin, but could only get another few inches and nothing more.

As Kelly lay atop the bed, shaking, the man said, “Ass up.”

She raised her hips a little and turned her head toward the others, her eyes red. The man wrestled with the front of his pants. Elise mouthed to her that she was sorry—God, this was her fault—holding her daughter, but knowing there was no consolation. Forgive me, she thought, please, I didn’t know. But there was nothing she could say to a person about to have the deepest parts of her soul violated. A part of her that should be kept safe but was now raw and exposed.

A place where goodness lived but would soon die.

HIS STRAINING WAS getting him nowhere. Each attempt to reach the gun sank the handcuff deeper into his skin. But he tried again.

Kelly gasped, and Sean turned his head. He didn’t want to see, but he turned anyway. Frustration was brewing on the tall man’s face, the man looking down at Kelly, his scowl growing angrier. Sean made another try at the nightstand but collapsed in defeat.

The tall man said something, staring right at Sean.

He froze like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Where’s the lube?” he said again. Sean hadn’t heard him the first time.

Sean’s hand shook as he pointed to the nightstand. The same nightstand with the gun. The tall man tumbled over the bed, his pants at his ankles, and reached out for it. Grabbed at the top drawer and jerked it toward himself. The nightstand tipped forward—Sean had always meant to fix that poor center of gravity—and the contents on top spilled onto the floor before it rocked back into place. Elise gripped his arm. The tall man waddled back and flipped the cap off the lubrication.

With the tall man’s attention back on Kelly, Sean stretched his arm out toward the gun safe that was now on the ground. He gritted his teeth and reached as far as he could.

Still short.

His flashlight lay just out of reach of his fingertips. He jerked his hand forward but couldn’t get it. Couldn’t give up. With his teeth clenched, suppressing a scream, blood trickling down his wrists, he jerked forward one more time and his fingertips stuck to the flashlight. He flexed and pulled his fingers, inching it closer millimeter by millimeter.

His heart’s thumping drowned out almost all the noise around him. He finally took the flashlight in his hand. With his extended reach, he got the edge of the flashlight around the side of the clock and slid it a hair toward himself. He looked back at the tall man—wishing he hadn’t—and saw that the man, mouth hanging open, was not paying attention to him. Sean’s wrist was flashing white hot, screaming for him to stop the abuse. He extended the flashlight again and nicked the corner of the safe. Did it again. Each motion moving it a little closer.

The tall man jumped backward and looked between Sean and Elise. “What’re you doing?” he said.

A light beeping sounded through the room, and Sean raised his pistol up over the mattress. The tall man screamed, but it was cut short by the gun popping and a hollow-pointed bullet drilling into his chest. He whirled back. Sean fired three more times after that to make sure he wouldn’t get up, the last bullet catching the tall man just below his larynx. He wasn’t aiming for it, but he’d take it.