A Family Affair
This short horror tale appeared in issue number one of Eulogy. Story copyright 1992, William D. Cissna.


"What in the hell d'you think you're doing?" he said, with the overweighed stress on "the" clueing her in
again: whatever else he may be, he hailed from some backwoods hollow, tarpaper shack, trailer park heaven;
possibly from West Virginia, maybe further south.
For whatever good that would do her.
She had simply shifted her position in the straight backed chair, trying to give one sore buttock a rest by
putting weight on the other. She'd lost track of the hours in the chair, the number of times she'd made an
identical, increasingly futile move without reaction from him. Perhaps she'd made more noise than usual. Or
perhaps ... who knew? Normality did not apply.
How he expected her to reply to his question, she couldn't figure. Her wrists were bound behind her and cross
wrapped to the chairback supports. Her feet were similarly intertwined with the chair's legs. But chiefly, the
wide swipe of silver duct tape, stretched tightly from earlobe to earlobe across her compressed lips, defined the
limits of communication from her to him.
So, when he stepped back and threw the flat of his hand from what seemed like the other side of the room into
the side of her face, knocking her sideways and painfully onto the cold concrete floor, she could muster no
more comment than a confused whimper muffled by the tape.
"When I tell you to be quiet, I mean to be quiet. Daddy don't want his children making wise at him, no sir, huh
uh. When I tell you to sit still, I mean it, honey, can't have this carrying on all the time, no just can't," the man
mumbled as he towered over her, hand still raised. "Ain't gonna do, sweetie pie, just ain't gonna do." He shook
his head from side to side and turned, walking into the shadows at the far end of the room.
As far as she could tell, she was in the unfinished basement of a house. The room had a basic concrete floor,
which her face still caressed. Basic concrete block walls. Basic chain pull light bulb fixtures. A huge furnace
and a water heater. Him, her, chair, ropes and tape. The universe reduced to basics.
Where she was precisely, and how she had been brought to this place, she had no idea.
Drugs, she suspected. He must have given her drugs somehow. How else could she be so detached, lying here on
the side of her face, cheek burning from where he whacked her, tied to a chair with some kind of quasi human
thing stalking around just beyond her view, and wondering what state or national highways they might have
traveled from the peaceful world of her college campus to this interesting scenario of a bleak personal Hell.
She remembered the end of layout in the newspaper office, setting the boards carefully in the plastic bags for
the printer and locking up. It was late, just after 2:00 a.m., when she left the Union to walk back to the dorm.
Silent, peaceful, her favorite time. Never a moment's trouble for nearly three years, except that one drunken
kid during rush week once.
But then he'd been there, suddenly, blocking her path in the darker section of the sidewalk near the old
library. A dim shade, a mottled darkening among the leaves, turned frightfully solid. A devilish behemoth
blotting out the dim light with his bulk, smothering her in his grasp, the fear driving all common sense deep
into her body where a scream, a possible savior, took too long to grow and thus, after he slapped on the tape,
was stillborn.
Something first, though, before the tape. A shape, small but hard, forced through her lips, forced to swallow. A
pill? Had to be.
And so practiced, so smooth. She knew in her gut he'd done this before. Developed a skill, built a professional
practice in nabbing young woman and squiring them to this pit to indulge in God knows what.
Then, she was here, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, who knows how long since she was taken. Heavy
black drapes over the below grade windows -- it could be noon or midnight.
Something would happen soon, she felt sure. Daddy would pay the ransom, he had the money, no question. And
she would either live or die.
Unless. A queasy feeling danced through her stomach. Unless he didn't know who she was. Or care.
The fear brought beads of sweat to the junction between her shoulder blades. He'd never mentioned her name.
It had been so dark when he took her. Reflexively, she tried to reach for her shoulder strap, but couldn't. The
memory came back nevertheless. When they'd grappled, her purse had fallen to the ground. He hadn't picked it
up, her tired brain insisted.
He didn't know who she was. And he didn't care. Oh, God.
Suddenly, he had his arms around her and the chair, lifting with frightening strength and plopping her
upright. "Can't have you gettin dirty now, can we, no, he wouldn't be happy with that. Daddy's got to keep em
clean and neat cause that's the way he likes em. Can't act up, now, had to hit you, didn't want to, you made me.
Clean up now."
Babbling. Didn't make any sense whatsoever. Knocks her sideways, then stands there mopping at her face with
a warm washcloth, as if she was a baby. Cleaning up for ... for what?
She had barely assimilated the shock of the bath when he began scrabbling about at her feet. Hope grew
tumorlike in her head. On his knees, behind the chair, he was untying ropes. Beyond all dreams and
expectations, feet and legs, tingling with new blood flow, came into a freedom once taken entirely for granted.
Then, though her arms were still bound tightly behind her, she stood, wobbly, finally unconnected with that
damnable chair.
He looked completely surprised, face stupid, when she sat back down and let her head droop, exhausted. It
brought him close, to see what had happened to his little human doll.
Her right leg lashed upwards with every ounce of force she could muster. The toe of her sneaker caught him
between the legs, crunching, the contact and his agonized groan bringing her a thrill of pleasure, along with a
greasy kind of nausea. As he bent forward, though, she brought the left in from the side and connected with his
head. It threw him sideways, into the concrete block wall, head smacking with a fluid sound. His eyes rolled up
and he flattened on the floor.
She didn't wait to see how long he'd stay there. Clumsily, tied arms making the going rough, she jolted for the
stairs. As she made her way up, her mind registered the pale decorations leaning against the wall on each step:
empty socketed human skulls, some large, some small enough to be children. Each one dented and cracked
where the top of the head once was.
She shut it out and pushed her way through the door at the top. A natural if gray toned light blinded her for a
moment. She stumbled through a grimy, cluttered kitchen, through an arch and down the narrow hallway to
where a door to the outside beckoned. Panicked, thinking she heard sounds from below, she turned her back to
the door, unlatched the knob with her tied hands, and ran into the arms of a man who stood outside, raising a
hand as if to knock.
"Hey, there, honey, whatsamatter, where ya goin in such a rush?"
She squirmed and tried to point back into the house with her head.
"Guy living here givin you some trouble?" he asked.
She nodded her head furiously.
"Ah, well, he's just like that. Kinda dumb up in the head, you know. Ever since his Pappy died, he's been tryin'
to take his place, doin' things that need being done, you know. I ought to know," he said, looking into her eyes
for the first time, "'cause he's my brother. And he does things for me." He held her tight with his right arm
and grabbed for the baseball bat leaning against the front of the house with his left. "Let's go on back in and
see how he's doing, shall we?"
They would have heard her scream all the way down the hollow to the Interstate, if it hadn't been for that
damned tape.
***
Horror shorts -
by Bill Cissna
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