Silently, I take the flash drive, our fingers briefly meeting with an electric spark, static passing between us.
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond, pushing the laptop toward me. Waiting while I insert the flash drive into its slot.
The drive contains only one file: a video, twenty-eight minutes long.
My mouth has gone dry. When I try to lick my lips, my tongue rubs across them like cardboard.
My index finger hovers over the cursor. I’m frightened, and I don’t want to see whatever Cole is trying to show me. I know it won’t be good.
He stands up from his chair, coming around the back of mine. Watching over my shoulder.
There’s no way out of this.
I click the video to make it play.
The image that flickers onto the screen is dimly lit and grainy. It appears to be the interior of some kind of small house—wooden floors and walls, only one room that includes the kitchenette, single bed, and the door to the outside. It could be a cabin or a shack.
A man kneels directly in front of the door, shirtless, wearing only boxer shorts, his legs bent beneath him and his large, misshapen feet splayed out below. His graying hair is scruffy and his back hairy and sagging.
I recognize him immediately. I’ll never forget the shape of that blocky head, with its roll of fat where the skull almost meets the shoulders.
The wave of revulsion that washes over me is physical, so strong I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to prevent the carbonara from making another appearance. I want to jump out of my chair, but my legs are rubber, bent under the table.
I thought the video was silent, but now I hear Randall let out a low moan.
His nose is pressed against the door. He appears to be kneeling on something—possibly marbles. He squirms with discomfort but doesn’t dare take his nose away from the door.
“I can’t …” he groans. “I can’t do it anymore … you’re gonna break my fuckin’ kneecaps.”
“You spoke,” Cole’s chilly voice cuts through the video, clear and unemotional. “That means another hour.”
Randall lets out a strangled sound that is part sob, part snarl of rage.
I’m mesmerized, staring at the screen. Watching this man endure the same punishment he inflicted on me at seven years old. I know how his kneecaps feel. There were no marbles in my case, but the wooden floor became agonizing all on its own as the hours crawled by.
Once, after three hours of punishment, I passed out and hit my head on the floor. Randall made me finish my time the next day.
I stare at his nasty old back as his hands begin to shake, bound at the wrists with zip-ties.
A maelstrom of emotions whips through me: guilt, fear, disgust, anxiety … and also a dreadful spitefulness that whispers, Serves you right, you motherfucker.
I thought I had moved past this.
Now I’m finding that the rage was always there, deep down inside me.
What I told Cole was true: I hate Randall. I fucking hate him.
He delighted in tormenting me.
When my mother would frustrate him, he’d take it out on me.
He loathed me, but couldn’t leave me alone.
And always, that skin-crawling edge to his attention—his eyes roaming over my body. His orders to put on the plaid skirt so he could whip me in it.
Even at seven, I knew. He was my stepfather, but his interest was anything but fatherly.
Randall can’t hold the position anymore. His legs collapse beneath him, and he rolls over on his side.
Cole appears in the camera frame, striding forward, dressed in an outfit unlike anything I’ve seen him wear before—a plaid shirt and jeans, with a baseball cap. In his hand, a pair of bolt cutters.
The punishment is swift. He snips off Randall’s thumb.
Randall howls and howls, animalistic screams of pain that buzz with distortion in the shitty speakers of my laptop.
I jerk in my seat, instantly breaking out in a sweat, my heart racing at a gallop.
“Jesus! Fuck!” I cry.
I don’t know what I expected to see, but I’ve never witnessed anything so graphic. Every cell in my body screams at me to turn away, but my eyes are locked on the screen with sick intensity, my hands clamped over my mouth.
Cold and pitiless, Cole orders, “Kneel on those marbles. Your time isn’t up.”
I look up at Cole, the real Cole, standing beside me.
He’s watching the screen with exactly the same expression as before, hands clasped loosely in front of him.
I can’t believe those are the same hands that wielded those bolt cutters just … just how long ago, exactly?
“When did you do this?” I whisper.
“Last night. While you were asleep,” he replies.
My mouth falls open. I understand now why he booked that morning show for me—it seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m sure he pulled the strings behind the scenes.
“Was Randall in Burbank?”
“Close by.” Cole nods.
I’m pulled back to the screen by a fresh round of cursing and screaming from Randall. He was only able to hobble back into position for a moment before falling over again. This time he loses his left thumb.
“Fuck,” I cry, covering my face with my hands. “How long does this go on?”
Cole checks the time ticking away on the video.
“Looks like twenty-two more minutes.”
“Oh my god.”
I don’t think I can watch this.
“Did you kill him?” I ask Cole.
“Of course I did.”
My heart races, the underarms of my shirt soaked in cold sweat. I can’t believe I’m watching this. I can’t believe I’m participating.
I had come to terms with the idea that Shaw had to die, but this is something else entirely. Randall wasn’t a threat to me. This is nothing but revenge.
More screams. Another finger gone.
“Why did you do this?” I ask Cole.
“I told you,” Cole says, his black eyes fixed on mine. “I need to prepare you. You think you know what it means to set yourself against another person. To lure them, to hunt them, to overpower them, and take their life. But you don’t know. You don’t know how they’ll beg and plead. How they’ll do anything to survive. How they’ll stick a knife in your eye the moment you lose focus, the moment you even think about offering mercy.”
Randall is begging and pleading. He alternates between cursing at Cole, thrashing around, trying to escape his bonds, then sobbing and sniveling, offering money, secrets, anything and everything he can think of to save himself.
“What do you want?” he howls. “What do you want?”
The Cole on the screen looks down at Randall: an avenging angel, dark and pitiless.
“I want you to give Mara her childhood back.”
“FUCK Mara!” Randall snarls. “Fuck that little bitch and fuck her mother and fuck YOU! She deserved everything she got. I hope she fucking rots in hell!”
“Wrong answer,” the Cole on the screen says.
What follows is a bloodbath.
I stare and stare, all feeling draining from my body. All emotion, too. I become strangely calm, my head floating above my shoulders, my body a block of ice below.
I watch Cole murder Randall slowly, brutally, with obvious pleasure.
I watch my vengeance unfold in front of me.