That was it for Cody. I’d run my mouth so much since the preacher left he couldn’t take it no more and took it out on me now. He jerked me by the arms, made me stand, and wrenched an arm around my neck. He twisted the chokehold in tight, and Cory stood there and watched me suffocate. That went on until my vision started getting fuzzy, and all my thoughts got as thin as the air I was breathing. Just before I blacked out, Cory tapped his brother’s shoulder, and Cody let me go. I fell at their feet and sucked in all the oxygen my lungs could hold, but the Elis didn’t give me long to recover.

Cody grabbed me by the shoulders, tossed me into a wall, and pinned me there. He told Cory to strip me from my clothes, and even though I hadn’t caught my breath all the way, I said, “I knew y’all were always a couple of queers. Probably been waiting on this moment since high school. Bet the reason the preacher keeps y’all around is cause y’all let him diddle with your peckers when nobody’s looking.”

Cody punched the wall beside my head, said, “Stop fucking talking. You don’t stop fucking talking—I’ll break all your teeth.”

Cody whirled me around, smashed my face into the wall until my vision shattered. It was like trying to look through spiderwebbed plate-glass, and my ears started ringing. Cory said, “Keep your cool. Brother Jessup hears you talking like that, and he’ll lock you down here with him.”

“The girl’s down here,” Cody said. “I’ll show him what kinda queer I am.”

Cory grabbed his brother by the front of the shirt. “You won’t touch her. You know what he told us.”

Cody noticed me trying to slip away from him and slammed me into the wall again. My nose busted. Blood sprayed down my front, and I said, “Goddamn, I think you broke my fucking nose?”

The brothers stripped my clothes from me faster than any girl I’d ever slept with and left them in a pile on the floor. I tried reaching for my nose to pinch off the blood flow, but Cory grabbed my hands and wouldn’t let me use them. Cody grabbed my legs, and they lifted me from the floor. They slowed when we descended the basement steps. Neither of them paused to turn on a light, so they slowed down even more since they couldn’t see where they were going.

I said, “Good thing y’all can’t see my pecker. Hate to think what would happen to me if y’all could see how pretty it is. Cody, I know you’d like it especially. The way you’ve been looking at me all night’s made it shrivel up some. Don’t look as impressive as when your mama’s playing with it.”

That got me tossed on the floor, and a boot toe punted me right between my ribs. I balled up on the floor the way a roly-poly does when a child pokes it with a stick. Cody pinned me there, and Cory stumbled around the basement looking for the box.