“Where?”
“A bar. I didn’t want to go, but Maddy insisted.”
“Why did she insist?” Marge says. “I know there’s a reason.”
“Because she didn’t like to walk alone.”
“Yet that’s what she ended up doing, isn’t it?” Marge says with a curious head tilt, as if she doesn’t already have the answer.
“She did,” Charlie says, knowing not to lie. If anything’s going to get her out of this, it’ll be the truth.
“Why is that?”
“Because I left her there.”
“All alone,” Marge says, not bothering to phrase it like a question. It’s a fact. One Charlie has tried to grapple with for the past two months.
“I regret it,” she says, her voice breaking. “I regret it so much. And if I could go back and change it, I would.”
“But you can’t,” Marge says. “It happened, and you have to live with that. This is your reality now.”
Charlie understands that. So much so that she wishes she could escape into the movies this instant. She longs for the soothing distraction of a film—even one that’s just in her mind. If she could, she’d summon one, taking her away from her current state of uncertainty, fear, and, she suspects very shortly, pain. But that’s not how they work. Even if the projector in her mind does click on, it won’t change the reality that Marge intends to hurt her.
The movies can’t save her now.
“What did you tell my granddaughter before you left her all alone?” Marge says.
Charlie swallows hard, stalling. She doesn’t want to say the words aloud. Not because she fears what Marge will do to her when she does—although Charlie fears that plenty. She wants to stay silent because she doesn’t want to hear them again. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her last words to her best friend.
“Go on,” Marge says. “Tell me.”
“The police already told you what I said.”
“I want to hear it from you. I want to hear the exact words you said to Maddy.”
“I—” Charlie swallows again, her throat tight and her mouth dry. “I told her to fuck off.”
For a long time, Marge says nothing. There’s just silence, thick in the darkness of the lobby. The only things Charlie hears are the pliers opening and closing.
Click.
Pause.
Click.
“For that,” Marge finally says, “I should rip your tongue out. But then you wouldn’t be able to tell me about the man in the alley. What did he look like?”
Charlie twists in the chair. “Please don’t do this.”
“Answer the question, sweetie,” Marge says, holding the pliers open now, the space between the tips exactly the size of one of Charlie’s back teeth. “It’ll be easier for both of us if you do.”
“I didn’t get a good look at him,” Charlie says.
“But you saw him.”
“I saw a figment of my imagination. It was different than the real thing.”
“Or maybe it was the same.”
“It wasn’t,” Charlie says. “He looked like something out of a movie. He wore a hat.”
Marge leans in closer. “What kind?”
“A fedora.”
“And his clothes?”
Charlie closes her eyes, silently begging her memory to conjure what she saw that night. Not the movie in her mind, but the reality she failed to comprehend. Nothing comes to her. All she sees is the same dark figure that’s haunted her for two months.
“I didn’t see them.”
“Yes, you did,” Marge says, angrier now. An anger so palpable Charlie can feel it in her bones. “Now remember.”
“I can’t.” Charlie’s voice is a desperate rasp. “I can’t remember.”
“Then I’m going to make you.”
Marge lunges for her. Charlie bucks in the chair as Marge draws near. Its legs rattle against the floor, creaking from the strain. But Charlie can’t force herself from the restraints.
Not like this.
Not with Marge upon her now, pliers in hand, the tips still opening and closing.
Charlie closes her eyes and, in a last-ditch move to save herself, thrusts all her weight to the left, trying to topple the chair, even though the effort is futile. Her tooth can just as easily be yanked out while she’s on the floor.
Marge uses one hand to steady the chair. The other shoves the pliers between Charlie’s lips without hesitation. Charlie turns her head, but the tips of the pliers hook the corner of her mouth, like she’s a fish caught on a line. Marge keeps up the pressure, first twisting the pliers then knocking them against Charlie’s teeth.
A scream forms in Charlie’s lungs, filling them. She doesn’t want to scream. She knows it won’t help. Yet here it is anyway, rising in her chest, choking its way up her throat, parting her jaws.
Marge finds the opening and stuffs the pliers through it.
Charlie bites down on them, her teeth grinding against metal.
Marge tugs on the handles.
The pliers open, parting Charlie’s jaw like a car jack.
She tries to scream again, but the pliers are inside her mouth now, snapping open and shut until they close around her tongue.
Instead of a scream, another sound erupts from Charlie’s throat—a strange, grotesque grunt that continues as the ridged insides of the pliers dig into her tongue and Marge keeps pulling, pulling, pulling. So hard Charlie fears she’ll rip her tongue right out. The pain it creates causes more white spots, and Charlie knows their appearance means she’s going to pass out again. Not from chloroform but from pain.
The pliers slip from her tongue with an agonizing rasp and latch onto a molar at the back of Charlie’s mouth. Marge yanks, and Charlie lets out another brutal grunt that’s quickly drowned out by the pliers scraping tooth enamel. A horrible sound that echoes against the inside of her skull.
But then another noise comes.
Distant.
Glass shattering from somewhere else in the lodge.
Marge hears it, too, for the pliers release her tooth and go slack inside Charlie’s mouth.
There’s more noise now. A door opening somewhere and a crunch of glass.
Marge looks behind them. She drops the pliers to the floor and removes the pistol from her apron pocket. Then, without speaking, she stands, grabs one of the lanterns, and leaves to find the source of the noise.