Bleeding Heart

“Do you know what I like best about you?”
Penny lowered her head and tried to stop herself from whimpering. The gag in her mouth was uncomfortable but necessary. She knew that if she spoke out of turn, with either sound or look or deed, things would get much, much worse.
Of course they usually did anyway, so she wondered why she even bothered.
Bobby, being new to the natural orders of things, still struggled against his bonds from where they held him trapped against the post in the center of the abandoned warehouse.
"Penny? Baby? I asked you a question. You know how much I hate it when you go and ignore me don't you?" He tried to sound hurt, but the laughter beneath his words made the effort a lost cause. Penny's arms twitched in their bonds and her teeth ground into the underwear stuffed between her teeth. The smell of gasoline was thick in the air and she heard rather than saw Richard strike the match in his fingers. The acrid smell of smoke and fear induced piss made Penny gag. The bright flare of a flame appeared out of the corner of her eye and she shrank back instinctively.
Earlier that night it had seemed an easy thing to get ready for her date. A simple thing to ignore the twinge of threat in the pit of her stomach and apply lipstick and mascara. To tell her new adopted parents that she was going out for ice cream and would be back later that night.
It was just ice cream and talking.
That's all she'd agreed to. Something quick and sweet.
Penny figured something as simple as ice cream wouldn't be punished. She could have Bobby, she could have a first date like other girls, and Bobby wouldn't have to be punished for it.
At some point between her first taste of cookie and cream and her and Bobby's playful run towards his car, they'd been caught up.
Richard took her first. Took her because he knew her and because he knew people. Bobby couldn't bring himself to leave when he turned and saw that the girl he'd just spent the last hour with was missing.
Bobby had thought it was a game. Penny knew because even now as the smell of burnt hair seared her nostrils she could remember the teasing in his voice as he'd called her name.
He knew better now.
No games, no eagerness now. Not unless it came from the man who was gripping the back of her head and forcing her face against the hardness encased in the front of his black jeans.
"I want to play a game. It's a simple game. It's called 'what am I?"
That illicited all sorts of rude answers in Penny's mind and he must have sensed that because he pressed himself so hard against her face that she had to fight for breathe.
He smelled of mint and the cloying scent of blood and she wondered what he'd been up too before he'd brought them here.
Her heart skipped a beat.
"Here are the rules. I ask you're little boyfriend over there a question and if he gets it wrong I burn you. If you get it wrong I kill him. Sound fair."
She shook her head without thinking and from above her heard Richard groan as her face slide along his crotch. Bobby struggled in his bonds and Richard tsked.
"None of that now. Escaping is cheating and I don't like cheaters."
He grabbed my hair and threw me from him as he made his way over to Bobby. Penny's squeezed my eyes shut and she tried not to cry when she heard the screaming and the scattered popping and stench of burning skin.
"One point to me then. Come on you guys have to do better than this. Now, question. What philosopher referred to man as a 'thinking reed'?"
They were so fucked.
The fact that we didn't know had almost nothing to do with it because Richard wasn't removing our gags. He had never planned on allowing them to get the questions right in the first place. By the forth question it was obvious that Richard was picking on Bobby specifically. He never asked her a question simply ignoring his own rules and burning the young man each time his muffled voice tried in vain to answer questions he didn't understand.
"Who invented dynamite?"
"Who's the third prime minister of Turkey?"
"Which came first the chicken or the egg?"
"If a woman dies in the forest and no ones around to see it does she really die or did she never exist in the first place?"
"How many woods could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck would?"
"If peter piper picked a pack of pickled peppers, how mans packs of pickled peppers did peter piper pick?"
By this time she was hyperventilating and rocking back and forth trying to muffle the sound of her desperate sobs against her bare knees. Bobby was slumped in his bonds, his body so thick with blood and blackened burns that the white of his skin could no longer be seen. His eyes were rolled into the back of his head and his breathing was harsh and ragged from behind his gag. He was sweating profusely and the salt against all those open would must have been excruciating. This was further evidenced by the trembling that wracked his body.
"What color shirt were you wearing yesterday?"
Groaning and whimpering Bobby tried his best to curl in on himself and turn away from his attacker. The matches littered on the ground around him shifting with his movements. Richard sighed and turned to Penny.
"This guys an idiot. Why did you pick him anyway?" Without waiting for an answer he came over to her and she struggled to scoot back as best she could with her ankles tied. She wasn't as restricted as Bobby and that left her with the very real suspicion that that was because while she would be released Bobby would not be. This left a sick churning of guilt and fear in her gut as Richard stood above her once more and gazed down at her bare body. He reached into his pocket and pulled forth a pearl handled needle and a neon green lighter. Penny didn't understand why he'd wasted his matches on Bobby when he could have used the lighter instead. Bending down next to her he set both things on the ground by her hips and ran his hands down her face.
"Sorry dear but rules are rules. You're little friend got the question wrong."
Penny's eyes widened at the implication of that.
He was gonna burn her because Bobby couldn't remember what color shirt he'd worn the day before.
She screamed and bucked but he held her still easily enough. When he grabbed the belt that kept her ankles together and used it as a lever to lift her legs into the air her heart nearly stopped and a cold sweat broke out along her spine. Panicked bursting yelps sounded throughout the warehouse as Richard positioned himself between her legs so that her bound ankles rested on his shoulders and against the back of his neck. With her arms tied behind her and his hands gripping her hips she was completely helpless when he lowered his head and swiped his tongue against her cunt. She struggled and cursed but her bucking only helped settle his tongue deeper inside of her heat until that panicked struggling lost it's panic and simply became struggling.
For what she wasn't sure. The warm heat of him between her legs intoxicated her, spun her mind and had her gasping each time the tip of his tongue thrust slow and deep inside of her.
She was sick. Sick and horrible and the knowledge brought tears to her eyes.
When his teeth scrapped over her clit Penny jerked upright only to be forced on her back once again by the large hand he placed at the center of her belly. In a distant part of her mind she could hear Bobby yelling but his presence seemed insignificant now. She heard something like a crack and Penny forced her eyes open to glance down a the dark head between her legs. At that moment Richard raised his gaze to meet hers and grinned. Penny shivered and tried not to throw up. He slid more of his body between her legs so that her ankles slid from his shoulders to reast around his lower back instead. For a brief moment they were eye to eye and fondness had him leaning forward to kiss her so that she tasted herself on his tongue.
She gagged and turned her head away. When she heard the snick and whoosh of the lighter as Richard knelt on his knees between her legs she couldn't help but scream. The needle and lighter he'd sat beside her earlier were now in his hands and he held the gleaming tip of the needle over the open flame as he stared at her. When the tip of the needle turned blood red he grinned down at her and said apologetically,
"This might hurt a little, try not to struggle. This will make it easier for when I have to sew it up later on."
The he tossed the lighter to one side and opened the lips of her pussy with his free hand. She screamed, her head falling back and her eyes rolling in her head as the burning point of the needle pierced her clit.
Struggling was instinctive even though she knew she shouldn't. Her hips tried to jerk away from him on their own and Richard cursed as the needled cut along her insides and the hot flow of blood mixed with her excitement and the saliva from his tongue from earlier. He raised the hand with the needle and struck her across the face and she felt the tip tear along her upper lip. She was grateful because as unconsciousness threatened and he went back to his work, humming quietly to himself, the pain seemed to ebb and die away on a wave. There was another crack and suddenly all the pain was gone. There was yelling, screaming and Richards weight between my legs was pulled away. I smelled smoke and gasoline and the nausiatinly familiar scent of burning skin and then I felt and sensed nothing at all.



Somehow Bobby had managed to break free of his bonds. Richard hadn't poured all of the gasoline on Bobby because it hadn't been needed and that was what saved them. Richard had been too focused on Penny to pay attention to the boy who'd snuck up behind him to stab him low in the back with the box cutter he'd found. After he'd dragged Richard from between her legs and cut her bonds the other man had regained himself enough to start fighting back but desperation made Bobby strong. He'd barely managed to kick over the red container of gasoline as Richard lay knocked down on the floor and light the match he'd picked up.
But he managed it and with a whoosh the pool of gas traveled up and exploded around Richards face and body. Bobby had grabbed her and dragged her as best he could from the building as above them the sky rumbled and rain began to pour.
The fire acted as a beacon for the police and they found the two of them naked and trembling together in a ditch down the street from the flaming building. They hadn't checked to see if Richard was dead and that was their mistake. They'd simply assumed, for years, that he had been destroyed with the warehouse and that they were safe. And they were. she and Bobby got married after high school, and not long after that while Penny was busy studying for her communications degree and working part time at the local radio station that she found out she was pregnant.
It would be a girl.
That's when the calls came. Abort the baby, divorce the putz and I won't come for them. I won't punish you.
That's what the voice on the other end of the phone had told her and maybe the years of peace had made her cocky. Maybe the years of happiness had made her selfish because Penny had gone to the police for help and they didn't believe her until Bobby turned up gutted like a fish and hanging from the flagpole of an elementary school the week before spring break.
Richard was back and he was angry.
After that the visits started up. Each and every time the police would send her away, each time they would tell her they were this close to cracking the case she could hear Richard laughing in the back of her mind. From what she could see of his face neath the mask he was without scars. This made her think that he'd went under some sort of plastic surgery so she really had no idea what he looked like now or what name he went by and that made his capture that more unlikely. All throughout her pregnancy he was there, a silent threat. She'd expected him to do something to her to kill off the baby so she couldn't have it anymore but each and every time she saw him he simply stared at her through the slits of his mask. He would stare at her belly and talk to her. Touch her, pet her and punish her but never so much that the baby was harmed in any way. She was instructed that were she to call for help any sooner than five minutes after he left her then the next time he caught ahold of her he would not be so forgiving and she believed him.
It was what had made her so careless after Sarah had finally been born.
Now her baby was dead and she was on the run again.
And again, she had no doubt that he would find her.
It was just a matter of when.