03:06
Episode 3: Dog Days Mechanix
Part 6
Violet lay curled on a cold, concrete floor. When she came to the first time she’d guessed she was in a house, although she could not be sure. The scale of the unfinished space baffled her. From the floor she could see skeletal supporting walls, rank after rank of vertical two-by-fours, marching off into the darkness. She lay close to one unpainted cinder block wall and could not see the far side of the room. An hour had passed. Now she could not bring herself to care.
Blood stained her jeans from the crushed points of her hips to the fractured knee-caps sticking through her skin, spilling down her legs to the smashed ankles secured with duct-tape. A blood stain radiated across her sweat shirt from her torn right breast and she could feel the sticky blood congealing on her skin all over her body. Pain arced through her in great, long jolts and she struggled to breath. A ninja stood over her wielding a wooden baseball bat. The ninja laughed.
“Wow. I did not think you could take this much of a beating,” the ninja said. “I really underestimated you all those years.”
Violet remained silent.
“You are really, really tough, girl. So tough I’d say you had powers.” The ninja tapped Violet’s head with the bat.
“Do you have powers, Vi?”
“Go to … go to Hell, Ned.”
Ned made a sad face at her and then smiled.
He rolled up the loose sleeve of his thin black shirt to reveal a raised and throbbing pentagram.
“Been there. Done that. And I have you to thank.”
He rolled down his sleeves once more and shouldered the bat.
“I’m gonna ask you again, Vi. Do you have powers? Hmmm?”
“Why…why me?” Violet asked. “What did I … do to you?”
The ninja laughed again, then savagely swung the bat down so that it struck Violet’s shoulder and brought out a long, high-pitched scream from the woman. When the bat connected there was a sickening pop and a crunch. The ninja lifted the bat and repeated the act. With his last effort Violet’s arm hung free. She screamed, then lay sobbing on the floor.
“You remember last November?” Ned asked over her sobs. “That final job we did for Carlos? I made a little side deal – just something to keep me alive. No thanks to you.”
Ned shouldered the bat. He looked down at his handiwork, prodding the blood-stained knees with the toe of one thickly padded foot. He shook his head.
“That’s healed already, Vi. You do have powers, even if you don’t think so.”
Violet began to feel numb. Ned’s voice sounded distant and soft like humming of bees. She forced herself to remain awake by concentrating on the fridged concrete, the dim fluorescent lights and the yapping of that damned little dog.
Ned shook his head. “You don’t even know how lucky you are, bitch. I went to hell and back just to be a common ninja, but you got your fucking power for free.”
He slung the bat behind his neck and hooked both elbows over it.
“But we’re gonna take ‘em away.”
A woman dressed in ruby-red sweater and pants entered the room. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Ned and examined his handiwork.
“Is she safe? Will she get up?”
Ned kicked Violet in her stomach making her groan. She did not move.
“She won’t get up, not from this.”
“Just don’t kill her,” the lady insisted.
“Can’t … ca’ kill me.” Violet slurred. “Not eight…yet.”
The woman turned on Ned. In her delirium Violet thought the woman’s eyes glowed.
“What did you just tell her?” the woman demanded. “She should know nothing.”
Ned looked at the floor. “She is completely ignorant. She knows nothing.”
“Who … whoshe?” Violet asked. “She Queen? Re’…red quee’?”
“What is she babbling about?”
Ned shrugged. Violet giggled softly, then moaned.
“She’s not to know. Not anything. Finish with her but leave her alive. We have work to do.”
She left.
Despite her pain Violet sniggered. Ned swung the bat down hard across her shins and was rewarded by a sickening crunch. Violet screamed and struggled to breath through the pain.
Ned smiled once more and tossed the bat into a corner where it bounced against the bare concrete and fell over on the floor. He swaggered out of the room.
Seeing as she was alone Violet took the opportunity to pass out.
In the corner the bat lay still. Covered in splatters of blood, dented and scraped it was a crime scene investigator’s wet dream. Before he had tossed it aside Ned had failed to see a new defect, one caused by his last beating of Violet. The sickening crack had not been caused by Violet’s shin bone fracturing beneath the wood. The bat sported a four inch section where the wood fibers had been crushed and the bat itself cracked along its width as if the wood had been struck by a shin-shaped steel hammer. Laying still now, her body knitting itself back together, Violet shrugged her wrecked shoulder. There was a sucking noise and a pop as the joint reconnected. She rolled onto her back, grunting softly in her unconsciousness, and stretched out her undamaged legs.
