The man called Horror stood in the middle of the room, idle, relaxed, his hands at his sides. He watched me with those incurious eyes. Then he lifted his right hand and crooked a finger. My cold, bruised feet walked toward him. When I was only a few steps away from him I came out of the trance. I suddenly remembered, and my hand came up to the soaking waistband of my pants and I felt the head of the ice-pick under the apron. It was going to be difficult to get it out, to get at the handle. I stopped in front of him. Still holding my eyes, his right hand came up like a snake striking and slapped me, biff-baff, right and left across my face. The tears started from my eyes, but I remembered, and ducked down as if to escape another blow. At the same time, concealed in the movement, I got my right hand down inside the band of my pants, and when I came up I threw myself at him, hitting wildly toward his head. The pick connected, but it was only a glancing blow, and suddenly my arms were gripped from behind and I was pulled back.
Blood was oozing from a cut above the temple of the gray face. As I watched, it trickled down toward the chin. But the face was unmoved. It showed no pain, only a terrifying intensity of purpose, and there was a fleck of red deep inside the black eyes. The thin man stepped up to me. My hand opened and the pick fell to the floor with a clang. It was a reflex action—the child dropping the weapon. I give up! I surrender! Pax!
And then slowly, almost caressingly, he began to hit me, now with his open hand, now with the fist, choosing his targets with refined, erotic cruelty. At first I twisted and bent and kicked, and then I began to scream, while the gray face with the blood-streak and the black holes for eyes watched, and the hands sprang and sprang.
I came to in the shower of my cabin. I was lying naked on the tiles, the tattered, filthy remains of my pretty clothes beside me. Sluggsy, chewing at a wooden toothpick, leaned up against the wall with his hand on the cold tap. His eyes were glistening slits. He turned off the water and I somehow got to my knees. 1 knew I was going to be sick. I didn’t care. I was a tamed, whimpering animal ready to die. I retched.
Sluggsy laughed. He leaned over and patted my behind. “Go ahead, baby. First thing after a beat-up, everyone vomits. Then clean yourself up nice and put on a nice new outfit and come on over. Those eggs got spoiled with you running off like that. No tricks! Though I guess you ain’t got stomach for any more. I’ll be watching the cabin from the back door. Now don’t take on, baby. No blood. Hardly a bruise. Horror’s got a nice touch with the dames. You’re sure lucky. He’s a hippy guy. If he’d of been real mad, we’d be digging a hole for you right now. Count your blessings, baby. Be seein’ ya.”
I heard the door of the cabin bang shut, and then my body took over.
It took me half an hour to get myself into some kind of shape, and again and again I just wanted to throw myself on my bed and let the tears go on coming until the men arrived with their guns to finish me off. But the will to live came back into me with the familiar movements of doing my hair and of getting my body, sore and aching and weak with the memory of much greater pain, to do what I wanted, and slowly into the back of my mind there crept the possibility that I might have been through the worst. If not, why was I still alive? For some reason these men wanted me there and not out of the way. Sluggsy was so good with his gun that he could surely have killed me when I made a run for it. His bullets had come close, but hadn’t they been just to frighten, to make me stop?