when you were tied spread-eagle and standing up, barefoot on a cold metal floor in the middle of a walk-in freezer with a boy you’d just met half an hour ago behind a dumpster at McDonald’s. Especially not when the boy you’d just met half an hour ago behind a dumpster at McDonald’s was holding a meat cleaver in his right hand, wearing a dress and smiling at you like a maniac while the two of you were surrounded by huge chunks of bloody red meat that hung from sharp steel hooks positioned all around the room.
‘You’re going to be up there pretty soon too, you know,’ the boy said, gesturing idly to one of the empty steel hooks with the sharp silver cleaver in his hand. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you to never take rides from strangers, Claire? You really should be a lot more careful in the future, my dear. Not that you have much of a future left any more, I’m afraid. At least, not one that extends much past the next ten minutes or so.’
The boy paused and corrected himself. A sardonic smile crossed his blood-red lips. ‘Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I suppose you have a future when you get to heaven. Or to hell. To tell you the truth, Claire, I’m not quite sure which one you’re heading for at this point. But I’ll bet you have a pretty good idea of the answer to that question, don’t you?’
Claire’s breath hitched in her throat as the boy leaned down and adjusted the hem of his designer dress, affording her a clear view of the false breasts tucked away inside a delicate black-satin bra, small lace bow positioned in the middle. Lifting up his stare to meet hers, he froze her in his icy gaze. ‘So which one’s it going to be, Claire? Chilling out with God for eternity or sweating your ass off in the ninth circle of hell with Satan? Which one of those two fates do you think you deserve?’
When Claire didn’t immediately answer him (mostly because she lacked the requisite breath for it) the boy looked down at the floor mournfully, as though the responsibility that had fallen squarely upon his slender shoulders was almost too much to bear. Shaking his head sadly, he said, ‘For now, I suppose I’ll have to be your god and your devil. Which one do you think it should be, though? To be perfectly honest with you, I’m a little bit stumped on this one and I could really use your input. I can either have horns and a pitchfork or I can have a long white beard. Totally up to you at this point.’
He paused again and looked down at the wickedly sharp cleaver in his hand, shifting the thick black handle back and forth in his palm and studying the glinting edge. ‘Seems to me that I already have the pitchfork handy, though.’
Claire Bishop finally screamed then – screamed as loudly as she possibly could – and she didn’t stop screaming for thirty solid seconds, until her throat had been rubbed as raw as the beef all around them. Not that it did her any good. The walk-in freezer was like a soundproof booth.
The boy watched her silently until she’d finished. Then he laughed disgustedly. ‘Just shut up, Claire. Just shut the fuck up or I’ll chop off your disgusting little tongue for you with this handy pitchfork of mine. Nobody’s going to hear you anyway. I’ve made damn sure of that.’
Claire tried her best to take in a deep breath for a second round of screaming but couldn’t manage it. It felt like a thousand-pound weight was pressing down hard on her chest, strangling her lungs into submission and making it impossible to get enough oxygen into her system. Worse, what little breath she did manage was painfully cold; hurt her insides; froze them together.
‘But why?’ she finally sobbed as the drug-induced fog in her brain cleared and the first tears of horror began to leak out of her big blue eyes, streaking her heavy mascara in thick rivers of dirty water on her smooth cheeks. Saltwater droplets slid down her face before falling to the metal floor at her feet like the first raindrops of an impending storm dotting a sidewalk. ‘Why me? I didn’t do anything to you. I don’t deserve this. I was nice to you.’
The boy shook his head and waved the cleaver distractedly in