do just fine.
She bit.
And her teeth clacked together, catching nothing. Jim had suddenly pulled out, his member unscathed. Still gripping her scalp, he ripped her face into his, their noses mashing. She saw lunacy in his eyes, smelled his sour breath as he started laughing.
“You think I’m fucking stupid?” he said. “You think I’m gonna let you bite my fucking dick off?” He gripped her hair harder, causing Amy to cry out. “You’ve got to be the most predictable bitch I’ve dealt with yet.”
Amy’s panic was electric. There was no plan B. Not even a sliver of one.
Jim stepped back and yanked Amy off the bed by her hair. She cried out again, moving with him willingly to relieve the pain on her scalp. Jim spun her around and pushed her up against the dresser, stomach impacting along the furniture’s edge. With one hand still gripping her hair, he began to tear at her pants. Amy struggled but his strength overwhelmed her.
She was bent over now, her hands slamming down onto the dresser’s counter, knocking over a small jewelry box and spilling its contents.
Jim’s pants were still around his ankles, his manhood still erect and prepared to violate her.
Amy’s pulse was off the charts, her chest and head pounding, each throb threatening a blackout. And then, as if handed to her by an invisible savior, her frantic hands fell upon a metal nail file that had spilled from the jewelry box.
She snatched it up and leaned forward, hoping her upper body would shield her find. She needed something else. She needed him to release the grip on her hair so she could spin around. She had no available target from where she was positioned. She needed to face him.
So she screamed. She screamed until her throat hurt. And it worked. Jim let go of her hair and slapped it over her mouth.
Amy didn’t hesitate. She thrust her hips backward into his groin, doubling him over and knocking him back a step. She then spun, and with both hands gripping the metal file, drove all six inches of it deep into his scrotum.
The expression on Jim’s face was that of a man who had jumped into a frigid pool. He froze, his breath gone. What followed was a pitiful groan of both excruciating pain and disbelief. Blood began to seep from the wound, and when Amy let go of her weapon, she saw that it remained stuck and standing to attention in a deliciously ironic similarity to his erection from only moments ago.
Jim backed up another step and looked down at his wounded groin. His hands shook as he went to touch the file. It looked as though he considered pulling it free, but fear of possibly making matters worse caused him to jerk his hands away.
Amy used both hands on the heavy lamp’s neck, her adrenaline giving her the strength to lift it overhead with little effort. A forceful grunt that started in her abdomen matured into a ferocious battle cry as she brought the lamp down onto his skull, shattering the whole of its porcelain bulk on impact. Jim hit the floor hard—out cold.
Amy spit on him a fourth time.
* * *
The occupants in the bedroom across the hall heard Amy’s scream. They heard Jim’s low, guttural groan follow. Then another scream. The sound of something breaking.
It all made Arty smile. He thought his brother’s groan was one of ecstasy. He thought Amy’s screams were those of terror. He thought the sound of something breaking was Jim getting carried away like he usually did.
Moments later, when he heard his mother’s cry for help coming from downstairs, and he took in the upsetting scene now being broadcast on the television, Arty realized he had it all wrong.
54
Amy was a whisper as she exited the bedroom, gently pulling the door shut behind her with the face of someone waiting for a balloon to pop; not a click or a clank could be afforded with Arty holding her family a mere few feet across the hall.
Her wrists and ankles still tied (there was nothing else in that jewelry box that could cut through her binds; and she certainly wasn’t about to pull the nail file from Jim’s bare balls, lest the pain wake him up), she shuffled softly past the closed door that held her family.
Upon reaching the stairs, Amy decided to do something she hadn’t done since she was a child: she sat on that first step, then slid and thumped