Skin Privilege

'You know why they kept me around?' Bart demanded. 'You ever ask yourself why they didn't give me a one-way ticket to the swamp? It was because they didn't trust your ski

Valentine chuckled. 'If you know them so well, then you know how they feel about family.'

'I think they'll be glad to get rid of you, is what I think.'

I think that I'm the only one standing between you and death right now.'

'Get over by the sink,' Bart ordered. 'Both of you.'

Valentine started, 'Hold on now-'

Bart shot him in the leg.

'Shit!' Valentine screamed. 'Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing?'

Bart reached down and picked up the shell from the bullet. 'I said both of you get over by the sink.' When Lena didn't move, he kicked her chair. 'There are worse ways to hurt you than with a bullet, darlin'.'

She got up, moved toward the sink.

Valentine held his bleeding leg, fuming, 'You think you can get away with this?'

'I think I'm go

'You think you can go back to the good old ways? There's too much money now, Fred. They're go

'Shut up,' Bart ordered, kicking Valentine in the leg right where he'd just been shot.

'Fuck!' Valentine screamed, his knees buckling as he fell down.

'You, too,' Bart said, waving the gun at Lena. 'Get down on the floor.'

She knelt slowly. 'I never told anyone it was you in the car,' she said. 'I kept quiet the whole time.'

'I know, hon,' Bart said. 'That was really good of you.'

'Let me go,' Lena begged. 'Let me and Sara go and neither one of us will say anything.'

Bart flashed his nasty little teeth. 'The fu

'She will.'

He shook his head. 'Jake, reach down there and pull that cuff through the pipe.'

'You son of a bitch,' Valentine muttered, grabbing Lena 's arm and passing the cuff through the bend in the drain.

'Tight now,' Bart instructed. 'Tighter.'

Valentine made the cuff so tight his wrist turned red. 'They will find you,' he warned Bart. 'They will find you and rip your intestines out through your asshole.'

Bart was over by the stove. He turned up the burners, as high as they would go and used the butt of the gun to knock the knobs off the stove. Satisfied they couldn't be turned down, he got the ceramic mugs and put each one over the open flame.

'You're go

'Yeah, yeah,' Bart said. 'And you're go

Bart knelt down and checked Valentine's pockets, the gun aimed at Lena 's chest.

'Don't do this,' she begged. 'Please don't do this.'

He found Valentine's cell phone and broke it under the heel of his cheap shoe. He told Lena, 'I really am sorry, darlinY

'Yeah,' Lena said, thinking if her hands were free she would choke the life out of him. 'Look, no problem. I understand.'

Bart shook his head, a faraway look coming into his eyes. 'You're just like your mama was. You know that?'

Was. Lena felt her throat tighten, all the fight draining from her body. 'What happened to her?' she asked. 'Please. I've got to know.'

'She was one of the good ones that crossed over, honey.' Bart stood, checked the mugs on the stove. 'She's in a better place now.' He indicated the room, the situation. 'I hope knowing that brings you some peace.'

'Peace?' she echoed. 'Are you fucking kidding me? You think you're doing a favor killing me?'

Bart tossed the gun onto the kitchen table. 'I'm sorry, baby.' He opened the door and closed it softly behind him.

'Fuck!' Lena screamed, kicking Valentine in the leg. He moaned, rolling to the side. She saw the top of his head where his skull had been caved in. The bald spot was on display now. The bottom of what could only be a red swastika was tattooed on his scalp.

'Sara!' Lena yelled, knowing there wouldn't be an answer. 'Sara!' She leaned out as far as she could, looking past Clint's lifeless body. Sara was still propped up against the wall, her eyes staring vacantly back at Lena.

Lena dragged Valentine's arm through the pipe, groaning from the exertion. He was deadweight; she might as well be cuffed to a boulder. Pushing and pulling, she managed to get him inside the cabinet, his elbow looped around the bend in the pipe. He was saying something, begging her to stop, to help him, but Lena ignored his pleas, bracing her feet on the sides of the cabinet, gripping his hand in both of hers, pulling as hard as she could without dislocating her shoulders. When she'd dragged Valentine into the cabinet as far as he'd go, she reared back from the sink and kicked the pipe with all her strength.

'Help!' she yelled, kicking the pipe again and again, her foot slipping and pounding into Valentine's shoulder. 'Help!'

' Lena…' Valentine whispered, his hand reaching out to her. 'Please…'

Lena started coughing as a fine mist filled the room. She had bent the pipe but it held in place – it was the only fucking thing Hank had ever replaced in this falling-down piece of shit house. She screamed in fury, kicking at the pipe until her foot was so badly bruised she could hardly lift it.

'Help!' she tried again, knowing even as she yelled that no one was coming. Bart had shot the gun twice and no one had bothered to ride to their rescue. This was a working class neighborhood. No one was home in the middle of a Friday morning; at least no one who would care.

The gun. Lena saw it sitting on the table against the wall. She lunged for it, her arm nearly popping out of the socket. She couldn't reach the table. Lena rolled onto her back and kicked out her feet, trying to loop them around the leg of the table so that she could pull it over. She grazed the metal with the toe of her shoe, then stopped as she heard a bottle break. A plume of white smoke erupted over the table. The liquid dripped to the floor, sizzling like bacon as it ate through the linoleum. What was she thinking? She'd just released more chemicals into the air. And what would Lena do if she managed to get the gun? She couldn't shoot a weapon in here. Fumes were already filling the air. A spark from a gun could blow up the whole house.

'No-no-no,' she panted, sitting up, trying to make herself think. 'Oh, God, please.' She jerked the cuff one more time and screamed in pain. Her wrist was bruised and bleeding. It hurt so bad that maybe it was broken. 'No,' she whispered, coughing around the word. Her lungs shook in her chest. She felt as if she'd inhaled cotton. Lena coughed to clear them, but nothing would work. She reached up and turned on the faucet, cupping her hand underneath and bringing the water to her lips, her eyes.

So many years she had sat in this house praying to God that she wouldn't die here, that she could somehow get out of this awful town and make something of herself, yet here she was, trapped in Hank's house, living out her worst nightmare.

Lena choked back a sob. Jeffrey would figure this out. He wouldn't let a fucking dentist autopsy his wife. He'd get somebody from the state to look at the bodies. They'd see Valentine's broken skull. Maybe there would be enough of Lena left for them to see the bruises on the bottom of her foot, the bloody pulp of her wrist.