Page 99 of Beneath Her Skin

“You don’t know how to use that,” Kenneth snarls, clutching his knife awkwardly in front of him. He doesn’t know how to fight, Judith realizes. And why would he? He attacks his victims when he has them at their most vulnerable.

When Judith steps toward him, he flinches, then seems to recognize the weakness and manages to compose himself.

“I do, actually.” And then she proves it, swinging the axe toward him with every ounce of her strength. The blade lodges deep in Kenneth’s shoulder, and he howls and drops his hunting knife with a clatter as he falls to his knees and stares down at the blood pouring out of the wound.

“Wh-what the fuck?” he stammers out, wrapping his fingers around the handle.

Judith keeps her eye on him as she grabs the chain hanging from the ceiling and drags it forward. Everything about this feels familiar—the weight of the chain in her hands, the sound of the links clinking through the pulley. It feels familiar, and it feels good.

Especially as Kenneth watches her like he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing.

“We can talk about this,” he says. “Please, Judy, think of the baby?—”

The wordbabysends an incandescent rage slamming through Judith’s body, and she screams and loops the chainaround Kenneth’s neck. He lets out a strangled scream as she heaves him forward. Or tries to. He’s heavy when he’s dead weight.

“Gloria!” Judith shouts. “I’ve got him! I need your help!”

Kenneth screeches and fights back against the chain around his throat with his good hand. The axe slides out of his shoulder with a squelch and clangs against the cement floor as Gloria steps out, cautious, in that ridiculous transparent lingerie.

“Help me,” Judith spits out through her clenched jaw, and for a moment she thinks Gloria isn’t going to do anything, that she’s going to run. But Gloria looks at Kenneth—bleeding, thrashing, pathetic—and smiles.

It’s the fourth smile Judith has seen from her, and it lights Judith’s belly up from the inside.

“What do you want me to do?” Gloria moves up next to Judith and the two of them stare down at Kenneth, his face red and shiny from the chain cutting off his air.

“Drag him up so I can get to his back.” Judith tilts her head toward the pulley. Gloria lifts her gaze to it, then goes a little pale. But she does pick up the loose chain behind Judith. Together, they pull on it, their combined strength enough to jerk him up to his knees.

“Please!” Kenneth shrieks, froth of sit speckling his lips. “Please, we can talk about this.”

“Hold him in place,” Judith says, feeling more calm than she expected. Gloria nods and clutches at the chain, her whole body braced as Kenneth tries to thrash out of his bindings.

Judith walks around behind him and grabs the meat hook hanging from the ceiling. Kenneth thrashes harder, but Gloria manages to keep her grasp on him.

“Do you want to talk, Kenneth?” Judith drags the meat hook toward him. He screams again, kicking wildly, but she thrusts the hook into the meat of his back, making him scream and archup, as if he might pull himself out. But Judith has experience with meat hooks, and it’s in there deep.

“Let’s pull him up,” she tells Gloria, who’s staring at Kenneth with revenge in her eyes.

It’s beautiful.She’sbeautiful.

“I could strangle him,” Gloria says, sounding slightly dazed. “Right here.”

Kenneth howls in protest and whips his body back and forth against the hook, making the chain around his neck rattle. Gloria yanks back on it, cutting him off.

“Is that what you want?” Judith walks over beside her and pushes back a lock of sweat-soaked hair that’s fallen in Gloria’s eyes.

Gloria doesn’t answer right away. She just stares at Kenneth, her arm muscles straining beneath her skin.

“I want him to suffer,” she whispers.

Judith smiles, butterflies fluttering in her belly. “Then help me hoist him off his feet.”

Gloria nods and drops the chain. Kenneth slumps forward on the hook, gasping in air. Judith takes Gloria’s hand and leads her over to the other end of the meat hook’s chain, which has been wrapped around a bar jutting out of the wall. Together, they drag it up until Kenneth dangles about a foot off the air, twisting and shrieking, trying to bend his arms backward so he can get off the hook.

Judith grabs the chain from around his throat and unwinds it, then holds it loosely in her two hands. Kenneth stares at her, tears shining in his good eye.

“There,” Judith says sweetly. “Now we can talk.”

“Put me down, you fucking cunts!” Kenneth shouts.

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