Guilty

Barbara didn’t know how she had ended up here, kneeling on a cold cement floor in a shadowy factory with a ceiling obscured by metal fans that moved in large, languid circles, casting blades of darkness over her. And why was she dressed this way, in rags with her hair matted and sweaty? She was supposed to be suited up for court, in her daily armor. Perhaps she was in some sort of trouble. 

She looked up. A man in a close-fitting blue business suit approached her. What a beautiful pink tie, she thought. He was middle aged, slim and well built, though not at all attractive to her. He looked too haughty, she thought, though she wasn’t sure how she could know such a thing from his appearance.

“Have I done something wrong?” she asked, though surely it could not be. She had been so careful, she had tried to do so well. She was an honest worker. A hard worker. A mother. What could she have done wrong? The man only smiled. He walked to the door and opened it slightly, letting in a blinding white light that stabbed the factory’s thick air. 

“She asked if she’s done something wrong,” he said to someone outside. She heard laughter. The man came back to Barbara. “It was either you or the girl. Who do you suppose did it?” Barbara looked down at her brown, ripped dress. How could she answer the question? 

A wonkish looking man with sharp, angular features, pinched cheeks and a bent back entered with a small, pale-faced young woman. The angular man caressed white straps hanging from his belt, sliding them between two fingers. He seemed to luxuriate in the motion. He slurped, then jerked on a strap and moved towards Barbara. 

He took Barbara’s hand almost gingerly in his own and began to unclip the straps from his belt with the other hand. The straps were made of a soft stretchy fabric, she noticed as he began to wrap her wrist with them. “What are you doing?” she asked. 

“George said it was you, not the girl.” The man moved quickly, like a spider adeptly weaving its web. He hooked the end of the strap attached to her wrist to a rafter above her and began wrapping her other wrist. He wrapped the bands tightly. They began to hurt. “That’s not true,” said Barbara. “I didn’t do anything.” 

“So it was the girl?” said the angular man, twisting his sharp chin to look her in the eye. His milky eyes and stale smell disgusted her. She turned her face away from him and saw the girl. Her dark hair was pulled away from her soft, round cheeks. She was dressed plainly in black, though she looked clean enough. Not like me, thought Barbara.

 The girl’s brown eyes bore through Barbara as she waited for Barbara’s answer.

“It wasn’t me,” said Barbara. The man unhooked the straps and unwound them from Barbara’s wrists. George grabbed the young woman by the shoulders. His long square fingers engulfed her slight frame as she tensed against his grip. Together George and the angular man tied the girl’s arms and legs and hoisted her into the air, suspending her in a snow angel position. 

Barbara shook, what had she done? “Get upstairs,” ordered George. He followed her up the stairs and pushed her to the floor. “Now watch,” he said as he forced her face to a hole in the floor. She could see the girl below breathing hard. She was young enough to try to refuse to be broken, thought Barbara.

The angular man yanked the strap connected to the girl’s arm. The girl screamed. “Give in to the movement,” Barbara yelled to help the girl avoid some pain. Barbara felt a whip crack across her back. “Shut up,” said George. The angular man pulled another strap. “Bend your knee,” Barbara said—but more quietly this time. The whip sliced her back open again.  

The angular man pulled a long metal file from his belt and ran it across his tongue. He grabbed the girl’s jaw, squeezed her mouth open and forced the file inside. The sound of the girl's teeth grating against the file filled Barbara’s stomach with a viscous horror. She forced herself to watch. The girl’s eyes bulged and blood soaked her mouth. The floor below her was shrouded with shavings colored white and red.

A woman wearing a flowy white suit kicked open the factory door. Light poured in behind her, setting her hair aglow. She was tall and graceful. She is probably good at everything, thought Barbara. She must be a wizard.

The woman in white seemed to be guiding a black-haired woman who was running full speed towards a wall. The runner was wearing a black bikini and thigh-high boots with spiked heels. The men stopped torturing the girl and pursued the sexy lady in the black bikini. Her pursuers laughed. “You are trapped,” they chortled. But at the last moment the wizard turned the wall into an image. The bikini-clad woman burst through it, her feminine muscles rippling ever so slightly. Then she disappeared.

The wizard pointed to a metal door with her white, feminine hands, perfectly painted with blush pink nail polish. The metal door slid up like a guillotine’s blade. Blood rushed into the room and swept the men into boxes that the wizard lifted into the air and then flipped. 

The men fell out, swinging, ready to fight–but no one was there. The sexy lady had escaped with the girl. The wizard had vanished.

Barbara stood up and found her suit draped across a metal chair. She was not a wizard, she could not fight. She dressed for court instead. The wounds on her back soaked her shirt with blood.

George watched her limp down the stairs. She would go to work. She had done nothing wrong. Had she? 

She brushed past George. He was coated in blood. “It will wash off,” she said to him at the door. “Yes,” he said grinning hideously, “but yours will not.”