Page 118 of Beautifully Shattered
Abbey nods. “What about your stepdaddy?” she curls her lip. “You know where Banes is?”
Karl shakes his head. “No. He has hideouts all across the state, but I don’t know where a single one is aside from the commune, which you bastards destroyed.”
Karl gestures weakly to me and JD as Abbey turns to face me, lowering the gun from Karl’s face.
“I really feel like a big, hot bonfire.”
My lips twitch. “A really big one?”
She nods. “Ginormous.”
JD chuckles, turning to leave the room, and calling over his shoulder, “On it.”
Abbey returns her attention back to Karl.
“My baby is dead because of you and your fucked-up cult.” Her head tilts, her words laced with venom. “So naturally, you have to die too.”
“Wait, no. Please.”
Abbey rolls her eyes and turns back to me.
“I think I also need a nail gun.”
I smirk. “A fucking nail gun, Angel?”
“Yep.”
Snickering, Jols walks past, “Leave that to me.”
Karl spends the next ten minutes calling out to us from the living room as we ransack the house, looking for anything that might lead us to Daniel or Banes, but we come up empty.
JD returns with several fuel cans, and a few of the Marx security help him douse the inside of the house, while Jols produces the nail gun for Abbey.
“I’m almost scared to know why you want this.” Jols grins, and Abbey shrugs.
“Didn’t Jesus die on the cross?” Abbey asks, and when both Jols and I look at her in confusion, she points down the hallway to where a huge macrame seven-foot cross hangs on the wall at the end.
A slow smirk spreads my lips as I lock eyes with my wife.
“I’ll get the dead man walking.”
Riggs joins me in dragging Karl out into the hallway as he begs for his life, and we hold him up to the wall, positioning him on the cross as Abbey teaches herself how to use a nail gun, and proceeds to nail Karl’s limbs to the wall.
It takes considerably more nails than it took for Jesus, given the size of them, but by the time she’s done, Karl has pissed and puked and rivers of blood trickle from him in the close to one hundred nails Abbey pinned him with.
When she’s done, she stands back and admires her work.
“I don’t know, Karl. Maybe I should have been an artist.”
All Karl can do is blubber incoherently, and she turns her back and walks to the front door.
We fall in behind her, with JD the last one out, drizzling petrol straight down the hallway to the open front door, before tossing the canister into the living room off to the side.
“I like your work, Abs.” JD grins, and she nods like they’re talking about a batch of fucking cookies instead of a man nailed to a cross. “You wanna do the honours?” He holds out a box ofmatches, and Abbey takes it, not even hesitating to strike the match.
Riggs and his men retreat to the street, and JD and Jols start walking to the car, but I stay planted at my wife’s back, watching her end yet another life.
Holding up the match, she giggles and calls sweetly to Karl.
