Chương 65: Book Two - Chapter 15: I’m Your Fella, Anabela

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ZONE 2 INCINERATION: 02: 34: 42 Isabel went chalk-white, staring at the girl on the spinning wheel. She was two steps closer to it before I registered she'd moved.

"You know me?" Isabel's voice rose two octaves by the end of the question. Anabelle looked wounded, which took some doing considering her current situation.

"Know you? Are you—Oh fuck! They made you an NPC?! Hear that, Brad? You're not the only one who lost a friend, okay?!" Another first. Isabel's cheeks flushed to a light pink.

"Friend?"" Eat my scrote, shitgibbon!" Brad jerked wildly in the chair, cackling. The wheel turned, completing the rotation. I couldn't avert my eyes fast enough, catching the split-second of resistance right before the steel blades found the same track they'd just carved, parting her raw scalp a fraction deeper and peeling a clean, bloody ribbon of skin from the arches of her bare feet. Anabel clenched her jaw and sucked air between her teeth in displeasure.

"I'll fucking kill you." Brad pushed his bottom lip out in a fake pout." Oh, look how big and strong she is …" His head whipped around, twisting to an impossible degree so he was looking back at Anabel." Scream, bitch! It's my viagra!"

"What's this guy's problem?" Liam asked nobody in particular, voice low, angry. Brad turned around to face us, clear-eyed.

"Oh, God! No! I-Is she okay? Anabel?! Anabel, I'm here, babygirl!"

"Brad?!" Anabel's fury instantly drained out of her.

"Oh, Braddy Daddy! I love you so much. I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"Braddy Daddy?" Kane questioned it louder than he meant to. Gen shushed him.

"Hang on," Isabel said, moving closer to the girl on the wheel.

"How do you know me?" Anabel shook her head as the wheel groaned past the top marker, tilting her clockwise toward one o'clock. Her scalp wept, the blood immediately finding the lowest point of gravity along her left temple, soaking the bottle-blonde hair from her black roots to her cheekbone in a messy line.

"Can't believe how bad they fuck with your head, Bella."

"Bella?" Tre asked.

"Bella," Isabel said it like the word was made of liquid shit. Pat, pat, pat. Anabel's blood painted a grim picture on the concrete floor.

"C'mon, you've known me since Coral Springs middle, dude," Anabel said, flicking her head to one side in a semi-successful attempt to keep blood out of her eye.

"Where's Coral Springs? Outside Whisperwood?" Isabel slowed the words down to give the sarcasm room.

"Florida," Anabel said, too calm for someone about to pass under a razor. The wheel decelerated, stopping her at a horizontal angle with her head at three o'clock and feet at nine. In this position, gravity offered a temporary mercy. Blood pooling at her crown bypassed her eyes entirely, tracking down the side of her face to the concrete below. Beyond the fresh lines sliced into her head and feet, the steel brackets holding her to the wheel were doing their own damage.

Supporting her dead weight through every grueling degree of rotation, they had ground her wrists and ankles raw. Isabel turned away from Anabel to meet my eyes, searching for permission. She wanted to know if my bullshit detector was ringing. It wasn't. This entire setup could easily be a lie. The far worse reality was that the system had simply weaponized their history.

"Isabel Hoyos, you're twenty-six, a Virgo, but I don't hold it against you. We met because Mrs. Lehnsherr couldn't keep Anabel and Isabel straight, so she gave up and called us both Bella." Hang on. Twenty-six? Isabel had grilled me on being twenty-eight, rolling her eyes and acting like I was ancient. She was only two years younger than me in real life. She hadn't known it at the time, and her point about me withholding my real age was completely valid. Now wasn't the time to call out the hypocrisy.

We would have a good laugh about it later.

"We worked at the Rainforest Café in the Sawgrass Mills Mall together," Anabel said it like a foregone conclusion. Isabel showed no sign of recognition.

"Damn, Bella," Anabel said.

"That's fucked up how they just take your brain out like that."

"My brain isn't missing," Isabel snapped.

"Okay, girl. Damn. At least you're still a bad bitch," Anabel said, as the wheel tilted her nearly upside down again. She was coming around on another trip through razor-town.

"Can one of you get me out of here now?"

"Yes! P-please, help her," Brad cried, nearly in tears one moment, but then the next his eyes clouded." No! Let her bleed out like the piss-gargling trailer trash she is!" The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Seriously," Liam said, stepping up to the glass enclosure.

"What's this guy's deal?!"

"Don't hurt him!" Anabel begged.

"He's my boyfriend!"

"Boyfriend?!" Tre's head swung between the blonde on the wheel and the undead guy behind the glass walls. Gen turned to face me.

"We can't let her just keep goin' 'round like that." Isabel still hadn't broken eye contact with Anabel.

"What about Sameer?"

"Oh fuck. Is he in there too?! Jesus, they really got everyone."

"You know him? Knew him? Whatever?" Isabel feverishly asked questions one after the next, barely a breath between them.

"Yeah, duh, you two were like… barf," Anabel rasped.

"Just fuck already, you know?" The last part of her sentence turned into a high, strangled screech as the wheel turned and the horizontal blade on the bottom caught the crown of her head, creeping another millimeter down its track. This time, there was no hair or skin left to cushion the pass. Her whole face went bone white as the steel scraped directly against her skull with a dry, vibrating scritch. Blood found new paths down her scalp.

The blue in her eyes disappeared as they rolled up, eyelids fluttering, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Liam wasn't looking at Anabel. He was watching Isabel, his expression twisting with envy before hardening back into the same anger he'd been channeling at Brad. The demon-possessed man was hooting, jumping up and down in the chair. The wheel turned faster, Anabel going around for another go. It clicked. The cap on his head, the wires, the Fear meter, the wheel.

I moved toward the glass enclosure, searching for an opening." Yeah! YEAH!

"Brad bobbed up and down." Break the glass, you unwashed prolapsed poop-chute!"

"Don't!" Anabel's voice cracked through gritted teeth.

"If you take that thing off his head, the wheel goes faster." I paused.

"We can't just leave you like this."" Gargle ball juice, bitch," Brad yelled at Anabel. Then to me he said: "P-please help me. I can't stop him."

"Look, Bella's friend, the best thing is to keep him very calm," Anabel rasped, her irritation cutting through the panic.

"It's not a fuckin' switch. If he stays calm for a full sixty seconds, this thing lets me out."

"How do ya know?" Gen asked, standing next to me, also examining the glass box.

"Because he told me." Anabel didn't say who. She didn't need to.

"The boar guy?!" Liam balled his fists.

"I swear to fucking God if that's Summer under the mask…"

"Hey, buddy," Tre said in a high, calm voice.

"You gotta let the Summer thing go, man. She's gone."

"Yeah, okay," Liam said without meaning a word. Brad started screaming, and the wheel ticked up speed, rotating Anabel clockwise, through six, seven, eight, nine, and ten o'clock. Isabel wrenched her eyes away from Anabel, locking her gaze onto mine.

"We have to get her out!" That was when the wall above the wheel lit up. It was more a slab of light than a screen, projected onto the wall, although I couldn't trace a source for it. The face filling the frame was the same porcine nightmare that had welcomed us into this death maze. His modulated voice blared from speakers I couldn't locate, and settled over the room like an approaching thunderstorm.

"Look at this scene," BK said.

"Still making new friends. It's honestly adorable."

"Your maze sucks," Tre said to the image of the rotting boar's head on the wall.

"Worst maze since Jack Nicholson froze to death in the Overlook."

"Nice and slow," BK said, attention settled on Brad, or whatever was driving him.

"Don't rush the good part." Brad's whole body spasmed, the growl surfacing hard enough to bend him half out of the chair. I watched the contraction, realizing with a sick jolt that none of this was improvised.

"Is this really what you want, Nora?" He spat my name out of his mouth.

"You've already got the jock, the goth, the toy, the married couple. Are you seriously considering adding Florida white-trash Barbie and her possessed boyfriend to your party? How many are you willing to feed into the machine just to win?"

"Just to win?! Summer fucking sold us all out to win! Where's she?! Huh?! Celebrating somewhere?!" Liam's fists were balled so tight his knuckles had gone pale.

"I want to talk to whoever's actually in charge."

"I am in charge." The boar's head tipped slightly to one side, the eyes in that ruined mouth staying fixed on Liam a beat past comfortable.

"Have fun." The wall went dark. Behind me there was a mechanical click, and the glass enclosure opened on a seam we'd either missed or that hadn't existed until now. The instant the door opened, Brad became completely unhinged, convulsing in the chair, mouth stretching into a demonic grin too big for his face. Caterwauling laughter erupted from his lungs. It felt deliberate, caused by the demon inside him, specifically to terrify the sliver of the real guy trapped behind his own eyes. And it actually worked.

The fear meter surged, fully charged by his own hijacked mind.

"Fuck you!" Anabel spun faster, the wheel hitting a frantic, high-speed whine. The top blade sliced deep, scraping against bone, while the lower razor split the arches of her feet. Her tears tracked through the blood on her cheeks in muddy lines. I went through the open door.

"Nora!" Tre shouted it loud enough that I stopped in my tracks. Then Isabel brushed past me and knelt next to the chair. She unlatched the leather straps around Brad's ankles and wrists, then put her hand on the metal cap on his head.

"What're you doing?"

"It can't be you every time. She knows me." That was all she said before she pulled the cap off Brad's head. The wheel screamed. Anabel screamed with it. Then Isabel had the cap on her own head, and they both stopped. Brad lunged out of the chair and pinned me against one of the glass walls hard enough to form a hairline crack. His tongue lewdly shot in and out of his mouth as he made an ah-la-la-la-la sound." Bet your bitch wrinkle tastes like red velvet cake." I kneed him as hard as I could in the crotch.

It worked. Apparently, demons still have balls.

"Festering bowl of dick-cheese!" He released me, dropping to his knees and clutching his groin. He seemed to consider pouncing on me again, but then his eyes cleared, and the other Brad said, "No," in a commanding voice. His body stuttered like it was being controlled by a kid learning to drive a stick shift. Outside the glass, the needle on the FEAR gauge slid down out of the red and kept going. The wheel slowed with it. Anabel's blood-soaked head now inched instead of sped toward two o'clock.

I checked my HUD to see my Fear level hovering close to sixty percent. Isabel's was at an impressively Zen twenty-three. It was remarkable, and also intimidating, which says more about me than it does about her.

"See?" Isabel asked me.

"I've got this. Get him out of here so I don't freak out and kill the only person that knows who I really am." Liam and Gen strode past me, each grabbing Brad by a different arm." Get these cum-crusted assholes off of me!"

"Nasty, bro." Liam muscled Brad out of the glass enclosure. Once they were clear, Isabel reached out and took my right hand in hers.

"You too, Supergirl."

"Stop it."

"You can see the same stats I do. I'm good," she said.

"Let me sit for sixty seconds and get her out." She left me nothing to argue with. I wanted to yank that cap off her head and drag her out of the booth by her hoodie. Obviously, I didn't do that. If I wanted to earn back her trust, I had to stand down and let her make her play.

"The minute she's out, we're getting that thing off you," I said, squeezing her hand.

"And I'm leaving the door open." Her eyes snapped to the ceiling.

"Okay, Mom." As I reluctantly stepped out of the glass room, Tre and Kane immediately looked anywhere but at me. Brad bucked, failing to shake off Liam and Gen, who had him pressed face-first against the wall, arms behind his back.

"When you're out," Isabel said, turning to face Anabel, "you're telling me everything."

"Obvs, girl. Just get me off this thing before it leaves a bald spot." Isabel flashed me a warm smile.

"Be chill. We'll all get out of here together." She sat in the chair. Then she was gone, with a soft pop.