The Beasts of Juarez by R.B. Schow (best books to read for beginners txt) 📕

He leaned toward her and spoke both softly and quietly, so softly and so quietly, in fact, that Callie had to lean forward as well just to understand him.

“I am going to ask you some questions you will not like,” he said, his breath smelling like cooked cabbage and raw meat. “They are invasive and impolite, but you need to answer honestly or I will do things to you that you cannot comprehend. I will start by putting cigarettes out on your tongue.”

She leaned back, her heart jolting to a full gallop, her chest pulling so tight she could hardly gather a breath. Callie was scared before; now she was terrified. It wasn’t just the cruelty he promised as much as how he promised it. He spoke delicately, his voice slight and unrushed, his eyes bright like he was happy in spite of the cruelty he promised.

When he started asking her questions about her sexual activities, her period, if she minded other men seeing her naked, she was overcome with revulsion. But when he asked if she was interested in being with older men or how she would feel about being tortured for pleasure, revulsion turned to sheer terror. She was so scared hearing the things he was saying that she had to clench her bowels just to keep from soiling herself.

When he was through with his vile line of questioning, there wasn’t a nerve left in her body that wasn’t raw. Her fight or flight response was off the charts. But there was no way she could run from these men or take them on in a fight. The worst part was that no one was there to help her. She was on her own, which meant she would have to save herself.

“What are you going to do to me?” she finally asked.

“Very, very bad things.”

She started to cry at that point.

Guillermo snapped his fingers, prompting one of his men to turn and leave. The man returned a moment later with a clean shot glass he handed to Guillermo.

Leaning close, Guillermo the quiet talker pressed the shot glass to her cheek and began collecting her tears. This perversion of her pain caused her to cry more, producing for him an even greater amount of tears.

She pulled away, saw the shot glass filling, but then yelped a little when he grabbed the back of her head and smashed the glass into her cheek once more. He had a grip on her hair now, which was both painful and humiliating.

“The ones who cry the hardest make for the best actresses,” he whispered. “There was a girl just last week, she cried so hard before they soaked her in gasoline and set her on fire, it actually made me cry. I did not shed tears of pain for her, nor was I overcome with the sadness of her death. I cried because fear like that—sadness and despair as deep as that—you can almost smell it in the air. It is the most powerful aphrodisiac I have ever felt and it is oh so very rare.”

“What do you want from me you deranged asshole?” she barked, her outburst tempered by an unsettling combination of hiccupping and sobbing.

“Only everything,” he purred.

She tried to back away from him, but he strengthened his grip on the back of her head, keeping her pressed against the shot glass. She knew he wanted to capture every last tear. When he was finally done torturing her, he shoved her head away and looked longingly into the shot glass. It was half full with her tears.

“There is a pureness to you that I don’t normally see in girls your age,” he said, smelling the inside of the shot glass. “You are virtuous, clean, and respectful. Do you keep a diary?”

She was so scared that it took her a moment to nod her head, yes.

“I bet you have a crush on a boy.”

She looked down, not meaning to confirm his statement but doing so anyway.

“I bet that little boy has no idea the depths of your feelings for him. He does not know how ripe you are for the taking. But I do. So many of us do. That’s why you’re going to bring me to tears once more.”

To the man who brought him the shot glass, Guillermo snapped his fingers once more. The man left only to return moments later with what looked like a decorative wooden box and a clean shot glass.

“Are you a drinker?” he asked.

“I’m only sixteen.”

“So, maybe?”

She shook her head. All she’d ever had were a few sips of this apple pie moonshine some guy named Boyd from Michigan brewed up in a whisky still that was supposedly legendary. She kept this detail to herself because it seemed irrelevant to the conversation.

“This is a Gran Patrón Platinum,” Guillermo said, opening the case. Inside the velvet-lined box was a bottle of Patrón. “The thing about this particular tequila is that it goes down smooth and naturally sweet. Usually, it takes the addition of sugar to reach this level of sweetness but not the platinum. The timing of the agave harvest is everything. If the crop is harvested too soon or too late, the agave’s sugar content is much lower. I see you the same way I see this particular bottle of tequila. You are ripe, so sweet, and perfectly aged. Any later in life and you’d have been run through by some arrogant little shit not aware of the virtue he has taken from you. And if taken too early, for some men, you would have looked like a boy with a vagina, which is no way to enjoy a child as far as I’m concerned, but to each their own.”

Inside, she swallowed a bit of vomit.