Tulip - Part One
Blood trickled down Jacob’s nose, mouth, and from the various gashes on his face. He looked like he should’ve been dead. He was close. But at this very moment, he was very much alive. Ivan, hair matted with sweat and his face scratched and bruised, was gasping for breath and willing his heartbeat to slow. How was he doing this, he asked himself as he looked at Jacob.
“It wasn’t deep enough,” Jacob mumbled.
“What?” Ivan, asked confused and out of breath.
“The hell you put me in—” Jacob said more clearly. “—wasn’t deep enough.”
Ivan understood. He knew what was to come and prepared himself as much as anyone could in that situation.
With surprising swiftness, Jacob swung the aluminum bat and connected with Ivan’s head. Normally, it would make a tinny echo as it connected with a baseball. But the target wasn’t a baseball. Whatever sound it made was absorbed by the squishing of flesh with undertones of crushing skull. Jacob shifted and took a left-handed stance. Swiftly and sharply, he took aim and swung. The bat connected with the other side of Ivan’s head. Though not perfectly symmetrical, both sides of the Russian exchange student’s head now at least had matching concave dents. Jacob took the end of the bat and rammed it into Ivan’s face. The teen’s nose shattered. Ivan crumbled to the ground in a 180-pound heap. There were a few spasms of his body before it rested lifelessly on the floor.
Ivan was no longer. He would be the lead in the evening news and the headline in the widely distributed but poorly read local newspaper because acts of this kind of violence in this little town were very rare. Actually, deaths here consisted of either terminal illnesses or natural causes. Never a homicide. Until now.
“Piece of shit,” Jacob mumbled, before wiping the bat against the portions of Ivan’s clothes that weren’t stained with blood or flesh. He looked at what was left of the exchange student. Ivan was barely recognizable, sprawled on the floor of a questionably clean back room of a convenience store with stacks of soda, boxes of chips, and shelves of candy as the only witnesses. Not feeling satisfied, Jacob took the bat and rained down several more thunderous bashes with the bat. He heard a thunk and crunch of bone over the dead teen’s clothes. If it was possible, Ivan was now more than dead. By Jacob’s measure, Ivan wasn’t dead enough. He slowly walked away, dropping the bat on the floor.
Jacob looked across the table over at Tulip, who was reading from a book she held with one hand and writing on a sheet of paper with another. She looked serious. Tulip looked up at her boyfriend through her gold-rimmed glasses. Her light brown curly, very thin hair flopping over the sides of her face couldn’t disguise that she was annoyed.
“Yes?” she asked. Jacob shrugged. “The test is tomorrow.“
Jacob shrugged again. Tulip wasn’t in a full-blown panic just yet but he knew that she was getting close. He didn’t need to study. In fact, he barely studied. The extent of his “studying” was to skim through the notes, maybe break open the textbook, and glance over his notes. The minimum effort would get him a 95 on the test.
“I hate this,” Tulip shot back, returning her attention to the book. “Some of us have to work.”
There was a part of Jacob that became sad. He had known Tulip since the third grade. It had taken them until their junior year of high school to finally find one another. He was a loner and the youngest of three kids who worked odd jobs to make money for a car his shitty father was supposed to sell him. She was the only child of a mixed race couple—mother was black, father was a shade of white that didn’t exist anywhere outside of Utah—who didn’t eat meat, made their own clothes, and really made a lot of whatever they had. Jacob never saw their family as anything but happy. On the flipside, he lived a miserable existence. He envied Tulip from afar. He took note of how she always seemed to smile. It didn’t matter if she was walking miles and miles in the pouring rain just to get home. She always smiled.
“I just want to say how amazing you are,” Jacob mumbled. He had a tendency to mumble. He inherited that from his recently deceased mother. They both mumbled and it was attributed mainly to a lack of confidence. At least that’s what the internet therapist who analyzed Jacob through a computer as he sat thousands of miles away would say to him. But with Tulip, he was confident. He was at ease with her.
“Amazing?” Tulip asked while furiously scribbling notes. She was either concentrating, unconvinced of his sincerity, or both. Even when she concentrated, she had a smile on her face. “How so?”
“I can’t imagine being without you,” Jacob said plainly.
“Hmm. Everyone says that,” Tulip replied. It was her way of telling him to try harder.
“I really can’t be without you,” Jacob repeated.
Tulip slowly looked up from her paper and let the pen fall from her fingers. There was a soulful, honesty-filled sincerity in what he had just told her. It wasn’t a throwaway line wasted just to combat the silence. Jacob meant it.
“I’ll never be without you,” Jacob continued.
Tulip was well aware of the effect she had on him. She wasn’t trying to control or change him like abstaining from eating meat, communing with Mother Earth, and all the things her parents had instilled in her. She just knew that when he said he loved her, it was the truth. There was a comfort that he found in her and she in him. As much as they had a profound effect on one another, they both knew (without having to admit to the other) that Tulip helped Jacob more than he helped her. Perhaps she even saved him. His father was a mean bastard. When Jacob first introduced him to her, he struggled to identify her ethnicity and when she spoke of her parents (in a bid to draw him in to liking her by getting him to understand her) he only squinted and stared intensely. Jacob knew it was a bad idea and he had told her so. But Tulip was an optimist. She was doing it for Jacob. She wanted to show that his father couldn’t at all hurt her or him or the both of them. And deep inside, there was a part of each of them that felt that Tulip was the kind of person who would get through to the old man.
Tulip looked at Jacob, her eyes setting forth a gaze that was every bit as warm and loving as he knew her to be.
“You’ll never be without me,” Tulip told him. “I’ll always be with you. We’ll always be together.”
Jacob nodded. Tulip, naturally, was smiling her Tulip smile.
In what seemed like a flash of time, in a blink of an eye Jacob and Tulip were in her room on her bed with his right hand up her loose shirt squeezing her breasts and their lips locked in an embrace. She, in turn, tightened her legs around his waist and ran her hands through his sandy brown hair. From their first kiss to the first time they made love, it felt natural. Tulip didn’t feel any regret that girls her age usually felt when it was their “first time”. Then again, Tulip had never experienced feelings for any guy until Jacob. They “found” each other (as they like to say) at the right time. And at this very time, both their clothes were off and he was gently penetrating her. Jacob was her first and, secretly she hoped, would be her only. Tulip couldn’t imagine anyone else nor did she want anyone else.
And as quickly as it had started, it ended. Jacob lay on his back and Tulip lay atop him. He enjoyed every curve and softness of her body pressed against his. Mainly, he liked having her close. He enjoyed feeling the rapid beating of her heart slow to a more normal rhythm. Jacob found it peaceful. His time with her is how he found peace. Tulip felt the same. Prior to Jacob, she always meditated to draw her away and clear her mind. Now that she was with Jacob, she found peace in being with him. Tulip didn’t abandon the practice altogether. She still fit in opportunities to meditate and she’d bring Jacob along with her. It worked, mainly because it was another reason to be together and to strengthen their bond.
Jacob put his arm around a sleeping Tulip and pulled her closer. Tulip, whether she was half awake or if it was her body naturally reacting, inched herself even closer to him. Jacob responded by wrapping both of his arms around her. Without words, he let her know he’d was always be there. Always.
Ivan threw Tulip onto the ground. She bounced off the dirt floor like an underinflated ball off a court. Pain shot up her back and a cloud of dirt flew up into her eyes and into her nose. Tulip struggled to breathe but she couldn't waste any time. She rolled onto her hands and knees and tried to rise and flee. Unfortunately, a hand grabbed a clump of her hair and pulled her back to the ground and flipped her on her back. This knocked the wind out of her.
“Niggerling,” Ivan roared disgustedly at Tulip.
Jacob, held back by Tommy and Steve, stopped struggling. His eyes were wide open in shock. The blood and saliva soaked gag muted him.
“What did you say?” Steve asked Jacob through his laughter, knowing full well that Jacob couldn’t reply.
Ivan was focused on Tulip who was vainly punching at his chest as he leaned over her. She gave as loud a scream as possible through the gag in her mouth but nobody would hear her. The barn was in the middle of nowhere. Nobody was coming for them. Tulip looked in Ivan’s dark eyes and worry free face and came to that same realization. He pulled off the gag and placed his hand over her mouth. He pressed down just hard enough for her to understand that there was a lot more strength that he could apply. He was choosing to hold back.
Ivan leaned in close.
“Hell,” he whispered. “This is it.”
Tulip froze in terror. The inevitable came to her vividly and so she stopped resisting. At this moment the world went silent. The words that were coming from Ivan’s mouth, the laughing from his stupid friends. Not even the muffled screaming pleas from the love of her life.
This. Was. Happening.
Ivan pulled down her sweatpants with ease since they barely hung onto her very lean frame. He took his hand off of her mouth, grabbed both of her small wrists in one hand, and pinned them together over her head. He ripped apart her buttoned shirt with one simple tear. Ivan dropped to his knees, straddling Tulip who was bottomless and essentially topless.
“Shit it’s gonna happen?” Tommy asked.
“Fuck yeah it is,” Steve said with a wicked laugh. He looked down at Jacob who was on his knees, both hands bound behind his back with a zip tie, and gagged by a rag. Jacob turned away. Steve grabbed him by the hair and forced him to watch. “Oh no, son. You’re gonna watch this with the rest of us.”
The following three minutes and twenty-two seconds might as well have been three days and twenty-two hours. For Tulip, it felt even longer. Jacob watched the love of his life being violated by a guy who only seventy-two hours ago had no idea who he was. But here was Ivan now, thrusting and squeezing and grunting and biting and fondling away.
When the ordeal was over, Ivan zipped himself back up and gathered himself. Tulip, legs still spread and body still bare, was turned to face Jacob. Her brown eyes, large and welcoming, were sending him messages of assurance and comfort despite the reality that it was she who needed assurance and comfort.
“So?” Tommy asked.
The question hung in the air. Jacob looked frantically from Tommy to Steve and, ultimately, to Ivan. His mind ran through the many scenarios and he could only come to a single conclusion. The three were looking at one another half nodding and fully enjoying what was supposed to come next. At that moment, Jacob lunged forward at Ivan with the ferocity of a raging bull driven by intentions of doing great bodily harm. Despite all that energy, the zip ties around his ankles and his wrists held him back and Jacob fell face-first onto the barn’s dirt floor. He quickly rolled over onto his back and began fighting furiously to stand but it was useless.
“Yeah,” Ivan said in a voice as flat and emotionless as a calm dark ocean at night. And like an unseen terror that lurked beneath the surface of the ocean, Ivan’s intentions were hidden behind the seemingly harmless words that fell from his lips.
Tulip readied herself but it wasn’t what she expected.
“Fucking niggerling,” Ivan muttered. Jacob shot a look at Ivan. But stares can’t physically stop a person let alone one who was already dead set on what needed to be done.
Ivan threw all of his weight behind his left hook and connected with the side of Tulip’s face. If the first punch wasn’t devastating enough, the eighth, ninth, and tenth certainly were. Painfully, Jacob, eyes closed and drenched with tears, counted each blow as he heard the impact of Ivan’s fist to Tulip’s face and Tulip’s face smashing into the ground.
When Ivan was seemingly finished, he wasn’t. The foreign exchange student stood over a barely lifeless Tulip and gave her several kicks to the side of her naked and bloodied body. Even over the noise of Steve and Tommy cheering Ivan on, Jacob swore that he could hear Tulip’s ribs breaking and ultimately her final breaths leaving her body. Her head lolled to the side and faced him. She was unrecognizable but it was her.
She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t…anything.
Jacob stood perfectly still. He remembered a joke his grandfather told him from a comedian named Stephen Wright. A young Stephen was made by his grandfather to stand with him in a closet with the door closed for about a minute each day. When young Stephen, confused by the ritual, asked what they were doing, his grandfather replied, “Elevator practice.”
Jacob always found the joke funny. Even recalling it at that moment he was tempted to laugh out loud. But he couldn’t let himself do that. He needed to focus. Rather than giggle over the punchline, he looked about the room. It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t make out the posters that hung on the wall (athletes in baseball, football, and basketball), the clothes that were strewn lazily on the floor, and the odd choice of a Winnie the Pooh doll on the bed. This was a teenager. The first two observations were certainly on brand. The third? Perhaps a cherished relic from their past.
Suddenly the door to the bedroom slowly swung open.
“The lights!” a voice scolded.
“Sorry,” came a reply.
The light that came into the room when the door opened crept along the floor and stopped just short of where Jacob stood. His eyes quickly adjusted from dark to light and back to dark again. Two figures clumsily walked in. They were under the influence and it was obvious. Jacob could smell pot and alcohol.
The two quickly and quietly closed the door. One plopped onto the bed and spread his arms wide to take up the width of the bed. The other walked over to the window and pulled out a joint.
“Man I am tired as hell,” the one on the bed declared. The other just laughed.
“Me? Can’t get enough,” the one by the window said to himself before putting on a pair of headphones and turning up some God-awful music. He lit the joint and took a long slow pull. A smile crept across his face. The high kicked in just as the guitar solo to his song kicked into high gear.
“This is the shit!” he exclaimed. He began awkwardly dancing to the music in his headphones and got lost in the rhythm of the beats. He couldn’t hear a thing. He definitely couldn’t hear or sense anything, not even how over his shoulder Jacob was stabbing the life out of his friend on the bed. The friend’s arms flailed wildly trying to push back but they were no match for the ferocity of Jacob’s downward stabbing nor the sharpness of the blade he used. Even in a dimly lit room one could see the blood spraying across the walls like some murderous art project. He couldn’t even hear his friend choking on his own blood as Jacob, for the coup de grace, shoved the blade into the tired friend’s throat.
The one by the window took another puff of his joint, tilted his head back to let the high and music carry him before smiling the most Cheshire Cat smile of smiles. The evening was going well until a blade ran through his back and out through his chest. He looked down half shocked and half numb before stumbling over to a desk to turn on a lamp that was missing its shade. A greater portion of the room instantly filled with light.
Steve stood in shock and was unable to comprehend that there was a Samurai sword in his chest and that a guy they had just supposedly killed was standing in his room soaked in blood. He looked over to his bed and saw Tommy, arms and legs spread Vitruvian Man-style with clothes drenched in his own blood. Tommy’s eyes and mouth were wide open in shock.
Jacob walked over and knocked the headphones from Steve’s head, the obnoxious rock music had changed to an odd orchestral arrangement. “H-h-how—”
The question that ran through Steve’s mind wasn’t how a guy had thrust a Samurai sword—a sword that he just got, by the way— into his body with an ease akin to slicing a cake. His mind was trying to make sense of how the guy with the Samurai sword had lived to be here in his bedroom having killed his friend and now—likely soon after he finished his thought—him.
“Here’s h-h-how,” Jacob mumbled mockingly.
With both hands, Jacob pulled the sword from Steve’s back and hoisted it into the air, blade down, over the teen’s body. Without hesitation, he plunged the sword down onto Steve, felt the flesh, bone, and organs it was tearing through. He drew the sword back out and drove it down onto Steve again. This went on for another forty-five seconds. Steve was already on the floor and dead after about thirty seconds. The remaining fifteen seconds were for Tulip.
Jacob looked down at Steve, whose back was riddled with slots that looked like they were meant for credit cards to be slipped into to complete a transaction. He glanced over at Tommy, who looked like a murdered marionette. Jacob looked down at the bloodied blade of the Samurai sword. He was impressed at just how powerful this instrument was.
“Just call me Neal,” Jacob’s father said very plainly. He could tell Tulip was uncomfortable. He could tell that Jacob was uncomfortable.
“Ok, Neal,” Tulip managed to say through her nervousness. Jacob looked over at Tulip trying to give her a look of reassurance and support. She did what Tulip always did—she smiled.
Neal lumbered over to the living room and sat in his recliner, which was positioned near the television. Tulip noticed the recliner was long past its better days. In fact, she noticed that the recliner was in a room that was more modernly decorated. It was a piece that was not in its time. Regardless, she could tell he had a fondness for the recliner by the way he ran his hands along the arms of the chair. It was as if he was either comforting it like you’d do to a pet, or he was seeking comfort from it.
“Jacob’s mom did the decorating,” Neal said, breaking the silence. He could tell Tulip was looking around and absorbing all that she saw. “This chair was the only thing that I wanted to keep. Been in the family since Jacob’s brothers were in kindergarten. It reminds me of some good days. Jacob’s mom tried like hell to get me to get rid of it. But I wouldn’t.”
Tulip smiled. Neal, seemingly unsure of how to respond, forced a smile back.
He’s trying, Jacob thought to himself. But was his father trying not to be something or was he trying to be something?
“So you two are…dating?” he asked. The question felt like it was tinged with a bit of pain, disgust, and confusion. Tulip and Jacob didn’t know which of the three was worse or the more acceptable.
“Yes,” Jacob answered, inserting as much force and bass into his voice so as to sound sure and confident. He knew that his father responded to that.
“I guess that’s good,” Neal replied to his son. It didn’t seem like the kind of answer that felt at all approving.
Tulip had a sense that things weren’t going as well as she expected. On the other hand, things were going exactly the way Jacob expected. He knew his father. He knew he wasn’t going to be truly forthcoming with how he felt about Tulip, a mixed-race girl with light brown skin, brown eyes, freckles, and stringy thin hair. She might as well have been an alien. In Neal’s eyes she pretty much was. There wasn’t a concern as to whether he would ever get used to her. He had resisted everything else the modern world threw at him as it advanced and evolved. But this was Tulip’s idea. She wanted to be closer to Jacob. It made for a very solid foundation to their relationship. The next step was family. Jacob was already loved and accepted by Tulip’s parents. Despite his resistance (which she was now discovering to be justified) Tulip pushed to get to know his side. It started with his father.
“Nice sword,” Tulip exclaimed, her positivity-filled voice cutting through the silence. She pointed to the wall opposite of where they sat. Set in a glass display case that had been custom built to hold it, was a sword that was so shiny that it hummed when the light shone on the blade.
“What’s the story?” Tulip asked, genuinely interested.
Neal seemed to perk up.
“Samurai sword. Picked it up when I was stationed in Japan when I was in the Navy. Custom made for me,” Neal explained, staring longingly at the sword.
“Dad sort of likes history,” Jacob injected, looking disgustingly at the sword.
“That’s pretty cool,” Tulip said smiling, going from the sword and back to Neal. She swore she saw a faint smile start to creep at the corners of his mouth. This might be the way in, playing to the interests that drove him. “Tell me more!”
“Not much to tell other than it’s Samurai. I was stationed in Japan—Yokosuka. On leave I found someone who could make one. So I asked him. Took almost two years. I don’t know why it took almost two years but it did. Things of beauty like that don’t just go through some assembly line and get mass produced. There’s a skill to crafting one.”
Neal seemed to drift in thought. Where his mind drifted to, Jacob and Tulip didn’t know or could even take a guess.
“What do the characters mean?” Tulip asked innocently.
“It means, ‘The Power of Right is Might’”.
Tulip nodded slowly trying to make sense of the saying. It might have meant something to someone but it didn’t resonate at all with her. She just smiled at Neal who was still staring deeply into the sword.
“Do you know what Ronin are?” Neal asked. Tulip did not. Jacob remained silent. He knew. “Jacob. Ronin?”
“They were Samurai who didn’t have masters to serve,” Jacob replied.
Neal looked deeply into his son. “Ronin were like fallen angels, orphans. See, anyone will tell you that Ronin were Samurai without masters. That part is true. But what few don’t know is that Ronin were Samurai who were dismissed from their clan. Their clan, Tulip, essentially served as their family. If you didn’t have a master that was one thing. But to not have a family—well, that’s another thing. Basically Ronin are like orphans, abandoned by their family. So they have no purpose."
Jacob wanted to vomit.
“Tulip sort of likes history. She did a paper on Ghengis Khan,” Jacob replied, trying to break the unease. The fact of the matter is Tulip loved the Ghengis Khan. She told Jacob as much about the Khan as she could. He thought it to be an odd conversation, but he didn’t care.
“The Mongols were savages. They weren’t disciplined and elegant like Samurai. Mongols just hacked and slashed and killed.”
“Well, the Great Khan had extended his kingdom to all of Asia and crept into Europe. Some say he was greater than Alexander the Great,” Tulip added.
“That doesn’t make them great,” Neal replied dismissively, still not lifting his gaze from the sword. “They’re dogs.”
“Well, as a society the Mongols conquered many tribes and many people. But they absorbed them into their society and were rather multi-cultural. They took in those who were educated or had skills. In fact, there were many religions during the Khan’s reign and some converters to Christianity—”
Neal slowly turned to Tulip. He had an expressionless look that she found hard to read.
“They’re dogs,” he said plainly.
As if on cue, Tulip’s phone chimed with a text message. She looked down and noticed it was a message from her mom. Jacob felt saved.
“She’s swinging by to get me. We’re volunteering at the soup kitchen,” Tulip said while texting a reply.
Tulip stood and straightened her top and skirt. Neal didn’t consider himself fashionable or having a fashion sense, but he knew what she wore didn’t at all match.
“It was great meeting you, Neal! Next time we can talk more history.”
Neal just nodded. Next time, he thought. Sure.
Jacob walked Tulip out of the house and they stood on the curb. He held her hand tightly. Tulip patted Jacob’s hand with her free hand, which Neal interpreted as her way of reassuring him that all was well. Jacob pulled Tulip’s head close to him and kissed her on the kid. They stood holding hands until her mom pulled up in a car that looked every bit it’s thirty years and 200,000 plus miles. Neal watched as Tulip gave Jacob a kiss before getting into the vehicle. Jacob leaned over and waved to her mom, said a few words, they laughed, and then drove away. Part of Neal ached. Part of him was angry. Most of all, there was fear.
Jacob walked into the house and began to hurriedly make for his room. He didn’t bother to look his father’s way. The smile and happiness he had only moments ago had vanished. Neal knew he was upset.
“Jacob, wait!” Neal called to his son. Jacob stopped. He sensed that his father had something important to say just by the difference in the tone of his voice. He didn’t hear that tone often but when he did, it meant something important was about to be said. Sometimes, it was to say something that weakly masqueraded as an apology.
“She seems nice,” Neal said calmly. Jacob looked at his father, a man in his mid-fifties with scars from years of life but from the mileage within those years.
“I love her very much,” Jacob replied.
Neal nodded slowly. “I see that.”
“Good,” Jacob answered, almost as if he was being defiant. There wasn’t much else so Jacob continued on to his room. Neal heard the door close. He shut his eyes and took a deep, measured breath. Things had to change.
Be calm, Jacob told himself. Be calm. There was only so much oxygen and very little time left.
Only minutes ago Tommy, Steve, and Ivan had each taken a couple good shots at Jacob. Tommy went for the body, Steven and Tommy went for his head. They punch like girls, Jacob thought to himself. And he was grateful that they did because he could more easily shake off the effects. Still bound by his hands and ankles, they threw him into a rather large, industrial-sized chest freezer. It was likely used by whoever used to own the barn. They either froze the wild game they caught or it was to freeze any kind of fresh food that was used for the horses. Regardless, it now contained Jacob. His knees were slightly bent and he was hunched, but laying on his left side.
Ivan appeared from the top of the freezer opening and looked down on Jacob who looked up at him. Apparently, they were on some lower level of the barn.
“Nobody is going to find you,” Ivan, with his Russian accent, told him as Jacob tried to scream through the rag that gagged him.
Jacob could hear Tommy and Steve giggling.
“We give you company, a friend,” Ivan smiled.
The very next moment Tulip’s body was dumped on top of Jacob.
Though her head of hair covered his face, he could still see Ivan smiling.
“Have fun in hell,” the foreign exchange student laughed and then slammed the chest freezer shut. Everything plunged into darkness. The very next moment, the chest freezer began to roll. They were turning it upside down so that if by some miracle Jacob freed himself, he couldn’t just kick the top open and inchworm his way out. Tulip’s lifeless body rolled along with him as the freezer was turned. Where she was initially on top of him, now he lay on top of her. It was pitch dark. He might as well have been blind. The very next moment he heard the sound of something banging against the freezer. They were throwing things on top of the freezer. It wasn’t just to hide it from anyone looking for them. It was to add weight so that if by some Hail Mary of a miracle, Jacob got himself free, the weight would be too great to overcome.
Stay calm. He closed his eyes (though it was so dark, it seemed like his eyes were already closed) and focused on the situation. In his mind he began to count. Three hundred seconds. That would be five minutes. Jacob was gambling that Ivan and his friends were already gone. Don’t panic.
Three hundred.
Jacob, face down on the lifeless body of his love, brought his knees to his chest. He could only move maybe half an inch at a time at best. Not to mention just how awkward it was to contort his body into a very unnatural position. If there was any pain, he didn’t feel it. One thing at a time. The plan was to get into a squat position and use all the power in his legs and back to push against the freezer to free himself. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a simple move from squat to stand. He had to push up and back. Plus he had the base of the freezer, and whatever debris the boys had thrown on top of it. If it was just the lid of the freezer, he would be out by now. That wasn’t his situation.
Success. His feet were now beneath him. Unfortunately, he was also standing on top of some part of Tulip. He wanted to apologize. But (were she alive) she’d understand. One thing at a time. If his ankles weren’t zip-tied together, he could move his feet to be shoulder-width apart and have a much better means of distributing his strength. That wasn’t the case. He had to do with the situation he was currently in.
Push, Jacob ordered himself. And push he did. The action was singular. Use all your strength. This allowed him to redirect his mind to other things. He wanted to focus on something that would motivate him, that would send more power to his legs and back. Strangely, the thought of killing Ivan, Steve, and Tommy wasn’t enough. The thought of doing this for Tulip was a greater motivator. She would want him to live. She didn’t want him to give up.
Jacob pushed harder.
Suddenly, the freezer moved! Jacob stopped and processed what had just happened. He had gotten it to move slightly. It was a tremendous victory. If it could move ever slightly, he had a chance to move it even more and possibly escape. With replenished strength in his legs and back, Jacob pushed harder and harder. The freezer began to crack open. He then heard whatever debris was piled on top begin to slide off. The load began to lighten. Jacob gave bursts of upward thrusts, his legs acting like pistons. More debris slid off. Then finally, the freezer cracked open wide enough to allow a sliver of light to creep inside. Jacob smiled. If the gag wasn’t around his mouth, he would’ve laughed.
Finally, Jacob gave one last thrust upward and this time the freezer gave way to freedom. He heard several cracks, unaware that the hinges were so worn that they were not too brittle, but weak enough that with ample motivation they could be cracked.
Sunlight cascaded down upon Jacob. The smell of fresh air filled his nostrils. He couldn’t take it in fast enough. But he wasn’t about to celebrate freedom. Not yet. The next step was to free himself of the zipties. He looked around and noticed a circular saw on a table several feet away. Jacob had come this far. What was a few more feet?
He inchwormed his way towards the saw, crawling along the dirt of the barn basement floor. Jacob used the same method to escape the freezer, pulling his knees up to his chest and forcing any remaining power he had to stand himself up. When he did, he turned his back on the saw and felt around for the blade. Locating it, he pushed the zip ties against the blade then began the work of breaking the ties apart. After several moments, it happened. He felt the sound of the snap. His wrists were broken free of the zipties! With his hands freed, he quickly removed the gag. His jaw ached but that would have to wait. He took the blade from the saw and began to hack away at the zip ties around his ankles. In no time, they too broke.
No time to celebrate.
Jacob walked over to the naked, lifeless body of his love. Either he hadn’t realized just how badly they beat her or the length of time she was dead (Jacob had no sense how long it had been) made her almost unrecognizable. There wasn’t time yet to weep.
Jacob looked around and found a sheet that was of a thin canvas-like material. He brought it over and began to carefully wrap Tulip in the sheet. Once wrapped, he slung her over his shoulder (and it pained him to treat her like she was a piece of luggage or some other unimportant thing that could be carelessly handled in the way he did just now) and began to climb up the steps to the main floor of the barn. Jacob looked out into the empty fields that had once held rows and rows and rows of corn. The sun had risen and a golden glow draped over the fields. As barren as the fields were, there was a feeling of promise and hope. Perhaps rebirth. Jacob was left to die what would’ve been an excruciatingly horrible death. He likely wouldn’t be found for many years if ever.
Jacob gently placed the rolled-up sheet that held Tulip, on the ground. He ambled out of the barn and looked in all directions as if seeking an answer. There was nothing there. But Jacob refused to surrender. He had not come all this way to have the love of his life raped and killed, be beaten and thrown into a freezer, then escape, only to be undone because he didn’t have a ride.
Then Jacob remembered. A tiny smile began to form at the corners of his mouth. He began a slow and cautious walk down the road that led to the barn. He figured they didn’t get very far.
To be continued…
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