“Are you praying?” The freak grins. He’s got the blowtorch in his hand. “God doesn’t answer prayers here.”

He fiddles with the camcorder, then kneels between her open legs. The torch ignites with the strike of a match. It’s the shape of a small fire extinguisher. The blue flame shooting from the nozzle hisses like a leaky tire.

“I won’t lie to you. This is going to hurt. A lot. But it smells delicious. Just like cooking bacon.”

Moni wonders how she can possibly brace herself for the oncoming pain, and realizes that she can’t. There’s nothing she can do. All of the mistakes, all of the bad choices, have led up to this sick final moment in her life, being burned alive in some psycho’s basement.

She clenches her teeth, squeezes her eyes shut.

A bell chimes.

“Dammit.”

The freak pauses, the flame a foot away from her thighs.

The bell chimes again. A doorbell, coming from upstairs.

Moni begins to cry out, but he guesses her intent, bringing his fist down hard onto her face.

Moni sees blurry motes, tastes blood. A moment later he’s shoving something in her mouth. Her halter top, wedging it in so far it sticks to the back of her throat.

“Be right back, bitch. The FedEx guy is bringing me something for you.”

The freak walks off, up the stairs, out of sight.

Moni tries to scream, choking on the cloth. She shakes and pulls and bucks but there’s no release from the twine and the gag won’t come out and any second he’ll be coming back down the stairs to use that awful blowtorch…

The blowtorch.

Moni stops struggling. Listens for the hissing sound.

It’s behind her.

She twists, cranes her neck around, sees the torch sitting on the floor only a few inches from her head.

It’s still on.

Moni scoots her body toward it. Strains against the ropes. Stretches her limbs to the limit.

The top of her head touches the steel canister.

Moni’s unsure of how much time she has, unsure if this will work, knowing she has less than a one-in-a-zillion chance but she has to try something and maybe dear god just maybe this will work.

She cocks her head back and snaps it against the blowtorch. The torch teeters, falls onto its side, and begins a slow, agonizing roll over to her right hand.

“Please,” Moni begs the universe. “Please.”

The torch rolls close—too close—the flame brushing Moni’s arm and the horrible heat singeing hair and burning skin.

Moni screams into her gag, jerks her elbow, tries to force the searing flame closer to the rope.

The pain blinds her, takes her to a place beyond sensation, where her only thought, her only goal, is to make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STOP!

Her arm is suddenly loose.

Moni grabs the blowtorch, ignoring the burning twine that’s still wrapped tightly around her wrist. She points the flame at her left hand, severs the rope. Then her feet.

She’s free!

No time to dress. No time to hide. Up the stairs, two at a time, ready to dive out of a window naked and screaming and—

“What the hell?”

The freak is at the top of the stairs, pulling a wicked-looking hunting knife out of a cardboard box. He notices Moni and confusion registers on his face.

It quickly morphs into rage.

Moni doesn’t hesitate, bringing the blowtorch around, swinging it like a club, connecting hard with the side of the freak’s head, and then he’s falling forward, past her, arms pinwheeling as he dives face-first into the stairs.

Moni continues to run, up into the house, looking left and right, finding the front door, reaching for the knob…

And pauses.

The freak took a hard fall, but he might still be alive.

There will be other girls. Other girls in his basement.

Girls like Charlene.

Cops don’t help whores. Cops don’t care.

But Moni does.

Next to the front door is the living room. A couch. Curtains. A throw rug.

Moni picks up the rug, wraps it around her body. Using the torch, she sets the couch ablaze, the curtains on fire, before throwing it onto the floor and running out into the street.

It’s early morning. The sidewalk is cold under her bare feet. She’s shaken, and her burned arm throbs, but she feels lighter than air.

A car stops.

A john, cruising. Rolls down the window and asks if she’s for sale.

“Not anymore,” Moni says.

She walks away, not looking back.

An Unkindness of Ravens

Gary, Indiana, 2003

Javier Estrada

Javier had been transporting a package west out of Pennsylvania en route to meet his drop-off in Boise—a fat-assed trucker named Jonathan—when he started seeing the billboard advertisements.

The early ones, those just over the Indiana state line, were vague.

GOT BABGAKS?

By Richmond, the billboards were advising him to….

GET BABGAKS!

…and he was becoming angry—some bullshit American marketing scheme. All this fucking country did was try to sell you shit.

But by the time he reached the west side of Greenfield, the acronym had revealed itself, literally:

BABGAKS = BULLETS AND BABES GUN AND KNIFE SHOW

Jav’s anger melted, just a tad.

A gun show.

Hmmm.

In theory, he hated them. Or rather, he hated the people who attended them. Small-dicked redneck pieces of shit who had no concept of the beauty and function of a perfectly-constructed weapon. Crackers who didn’t have a drop of the inner-steel it took to use them for their true purpose.

It wasn’t shooting mangy-looking deer, and it wasn’t shooting targets at the range.

But despite this, he could feel himself coming to the gradual realization that he kind of wanted to go. The billboards said the show was being held at the Indianapolis Merchandise Mart, which was right off I-70, not even ten miles ahead. He’d driven all night out of Pittsburgh, and he was already well-ahead of schedule. Even better, since his Escalade was in the shop for a new sound system install, he’d rented a brand new 2003 Infiniti G35 sedan for this job.

Which had a trunk.

Which was where his cargo currently slept in a blissful black tar dream. He could simply redose her, hit the gun show for several hours, and see if there was anything special that caught his eye.

Porter

Leo Porter, of Porter’s Guns and Ammo, surveyed the customers milling about in his eponymous shop and frowned. He was busy, but not busy enough. Unless he started selling some big ticket merchandise, and plenty of it, he was never going to be able to repay the loan.

The loan, eleven thousand bucks, had been given to him by Sal Dovolanni, a Chicago wiseguy who wanted the principal, plus an outrageous thirty percent interest, by noon tomorrow. Porter had taken the loan to bid on hosting the annual Bullets and Babes Gun and Knife Show. The BABGAKS traveled around the country, and Sal had done well as a vendor during the past years. But he’d been told the big money was in sponsoring the event. If Sal did that, the vendors would pay him, and he’d be able to offer his entire inventory for sale, rather than just the limited amount of firearms he could cart from state to state.

So he’d taken the loan, convinced that he’d make the money back and plenty more besides. And actually, he’d more than doubled the loan. But he’d forgotten something extremely important.

The majority of his sales were by credit card. Porter wouldn’t see that money until next week, when it was direct-deposited into his bank account.

Dovolanni wanted cash. Wanted it right fucking now. And Porter only had 5k in the safe, maybe another few hundred in the register.

He’d realized his mistake that morning, but a frantic call to Dovolanni for more time had been met with derision. Sure, Porter could be late. But he’d get two broken legs just the same.

So earlier that day, Porter began offering drastic discounts for cash. In some cases, he was actually losing money by selling below cost. But he liked his legs as they were, functional and unbroken. Years ago, he’d dislocated a finger. That had been agonizing. He couldn’t imagine the pain of a larger bone being broken. If it came down to that, he’d seriously consider eating a bullet first. Porter knew plenty of guys who’d been shot. Supposedly, it didn’t hurt that much.