For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

as hard as he could, then threw her across the room, yet, somehow, the tongue remained between his teeth.

His face went white.

It wasn’t a tongue.

Rye staggered back, his insides rising in revulsion. He spat the thing onto the rug, coughing convulsive barks as the vile taste expanded in his mouth. He braced himself against the wall as Renata stared from a heap on the floor, her tongue flicking from her mouth like a reptile’s. She looked to the rug on which he’d spat the foreign body. He slowly followed her eyes.

It was a finger.

He dropped to his knees. All fight fell from him as he stared at the yellowing digit. A mental barrier rose between him and the finger; its deadened shade, splintered bone, insect-like curl…it could be anyone’s it’s not hers it doesn’t mean anything this psycho cunt doesn’t have shit on you it’s—

The barrier crumbled as the spiralling tattooed roses fell into focus.

He wept.

She rose.

‘I’ll…the cops…I’ll tell them,’ he blubbered. ‘The cops…they’ll make you…they’ll…I’ll tell them you have her…the cops—’

‘No, you won’t.’ Renata stepped over the lonesome finger, blood streaming from her nose. ‘You’d have done so already. My dear Quentin, I know you’re afraid.’ Her shadow swallowed him. ‘You’re afraid of what I’d say, what they’ll discover about you.’

‘I’LL TELL THEM THAT…’ Rye’s words wilted into a whimper.

‘Then please, tell them,’ she said. ‘Let them come. Let them take me so you can watch the search for your daughter from a jail cell, and I promise you…’ She levelled her gaze. ‘…that search shall not be fruitful.’ Silence hung as her eyes drilled into his. ‘This was your doing. If any more harm comes to me, I swear you’ll never see the girl again.’

His lips trembled.

‘Understood?’

‘What…do you want?’

‘That’ll become clear with time,’ said Renata, turning from the kneeling man.

The front door had remained open as the storm continued to batter the house. The doormat flinched in the wind, sodden with rain. The leaves of a fallen aspidistra quivered in the gale next to the severed finger, upon which bite marks lay visible. It pointed to Quentin C. Rye.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch,’ Renata said, standing by the open door. She wiped her hands on her sleeves. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I must ask you to leave.’

Daddy, I heard you shouting my name! I tried to call out like you said but couldn’t. She covered my face in tape, my whole fucking face. Cut holes for my nostrils and ears. She wanted me to hear how close you were, Daddy. In my head I was screaming and screaming but nothing came out. I know you’re looking for me. Please, please, please keep looking, Daddy. My finger she cut it off it’s agony I can’t stand it I don’t think I

Daddy, I’ve begged but she won’t listen. I’m gonna try here instead.

 

I won’t use your name cause if you let me go I won’t tell anyone anything. You could dump me on the side of a road somewhere and I swear on my life and God and EVERYTHING I won’t tell. I’m beginning to think you don’t want anything cause if you did you’d have told them by now and my parents are rich and you’d have gotten anything you wanted and you’d have let me go. So what is it? You just want to hurt me for the sake of it? Torture me?! You don’t even fucking KNOW ME WHY WOULD

 

Daddy if you ever read this I want you to know I love you. I might lose my mind in here I don’t know how much more I can take it’s either pitch-black or so fucking bright and the pain it’s beyond anything I thought possible and is God even seeing any of this? How could anyone let this happen do other people suffer like this is this just the am I the only I thought they were worse off but this I not like this it’s

 

I hope I do lose my mind. She keeps saying she’s going to let me black out for a bit but just wakes me up over and over and over I just want to be in the black for

 

I just remembered where I saw that stuff wiped under people’s noses like she’s doing with me I remembered it was on TV that’s where on a crime show oh fuck oh God it was in a morgue dead bodies that’s where they did it to cover the smell is that it is there a body IN HERE WITH ME FUCK SHE

28

Sandie awoke to the glare of fluorescent lights. She looked at the stump where her finger had been, now treated and bandaged. The encrusted blood and vomit and waste and whatever else had now come to define her body were also cleaned. The gaping wound in her knee was redressed and even felt somewhat anesthetised. A fresh blotch of Vicks smeared her upper lip.

Blurry-eyed, she looked up as a handful of pills were rammed between her cracked lips. Once her mouth was full of candy – yes, just pretend it’s candy – the woman held a glass of water to Sandie’s dried out mouth. She groaned as the liquid soothed her aching throat. Renata returned to her desk.

‘Please…’ Sandie croaked. The pretence of intellect had died with her dignity, the awkward shoehorned vocabulary reduced to pitiful begging. ‘Renata, please. Just talk to me.’ The typewriter continued tapping. ‘I’m…sorry.’ The tapping paused, then resumed. ‘I’m sorry for whatever’s happened to make you feel like you need to do this. Maybe I had the life you didn’t. I’m lucky, I know that. Maybe I had the…the…’ The tapping stopped. ‘…the parents you didn’t, and for that I’m—’

Renata’s chair crashed against the concrete as she sprang to her