Held by Kimberly A. Bettes Page A

minute. But no more than that. He stuffed his dirty, meaty fingers into my mouth and pried open my jaw. With his left hand, he managed to cram in a handful of the stuff he held, which I now knew to be the rotten dog food I’d so cleverly hidden from him.
    He’d found it. He must’ve been down there cleaning and lifted the mattress. So as it turns out, I wasn’t quite the genius I thought I was.
    I was more afraid than I had been so far. Even more afraid than I’d been as I’d watched him hack Stephanie into pieces. I knew that he was angry. Not just angry, but directly angry at me, with me, for lying to him. I didn’t even want to imagine the kind of punishment he had for something like this.
    “Eat it, you stupid bitch,” he said as he continued cramming wads of rotten dog food in my mouth. Some pieces were still hard and crumbled as they scraped across my teeth. But other pieces had gone soft in their decay and fell softly into my mouth, threatening to slide down my throat. It was a battle to keep any from going down.
    I only had one free hand and I used it to alternate ly beat him in the face and pull at his arms. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe with my mouth and throat full of the foul kibble. I was trying to keep it all in my mouth so when he let go, I could spit it all in his face.
    “You think you can lie to me and get away with it?” he screamed in my ear. “Eat it!”
    I began to cough and choke. He stopped shoving more food in, but refused to allow any out. He cupped his left hand, which was still covered in dog food crumbs, over my mouth and bloated cheeks. With his right hand, he lifted up on my jaw, tilting my head back against his chest where I could feel his furiously pounding heart beating against his ribs, adding to the pounding I already had in my head.
    “Eat it, bitch, or I’ll snap your neck and then shove it down your throat while your heart still beats.”
    Trying not to choke, I swa llowed what was in my throat, some of the pieces scratching as they went. It took a few swallows to get it down, but I finally managed. Then, I chewed what was in my mouth. He didn’t give me any slack to chew, so I had to grind the bits of food against my teeth with my tongue to get it small enough to swallow. And worse, I could only breathe through my nose which meant I could smell. And taste. To say that it was a struggle to keep from puking was like saying that it was warm in Death Valley. A total understatement.
    When he was satisfied that I’d swallowed enough of the vile stuff, he let go of my mouth and jaw. Just as I began to relax a little, he put a hand on the back of my head and shoved my face down onto the table hard enough to rattle my teeth and blur my vision. I’d managed to turn my head slightly to the left, making my cheek cushion the blow and avoiding a certain broken nose. I had not been able to keep from biting the inside of my jaw, however. The metallic taste of the blood was welcoming, as it masked the putrid taste of rotten dog food.
    He leaned down and spoke directly into my ear loudly. “If you ever, ever, lie to me again, I’ll bring your family here and make you watch as I slowly kill them. Do you understand me?”
    I tried to nod, but his hand had my face pinned tightly against the table, so instead I said, “Yes,” in a weak and defeated voice.
    He let go of my head and stom ped back downstairs. To the sound of his fading footsteps, I vomited. I threw up all the dog food, spilling it onto the kitchen floor. When I saw the maggots writhing around in it, I vomited again.
    Using the back of my hand and the tail of my shirt, I wiped my face and mouth free of as much of the gross stuff as I could. Still, I could smell it. To expel as much of the smell as I could, I blew my nose into the tail of my shirt. It helped, but I still ended up breathing through only my mouth for the rest of the day.
    Also for the rest of the day , I didn’t speak to Ron or look at him.