My father was cutting the grass. He kept running the mower over me. My eyes were bandaged shut, so I couldn’t see him, but I’d hear the wheels rumbling through the grass. They would hit me, go right over me, and then roll back again. It was so cold, why was he mowing the grass when it was so cold out, and why didn’t he see me? The garden smelled terrible, like pee and vomit and blood.

I screamed at him to stop.

“Pepaiola, cara mia.” His only words of Italian, used on my mother and me both, his two pepperpots. “Why are you lying in my path? Get up, get out of my way.”

I tried to stand, but the long grass had wrapped itself around me and tied me, and then he was running the lawn mower over me again. He adored me, why was he tormenting me like this?

“Papa, stop!” I screamed again. He halted briefly, and I tried to sit up. My hands were tied behind me. I rubbed my face against my shoulder, trying to push up the bandages on my eyes. I couldn’t budge them, and I kept rubbing, until I realized that I was rubbing my eyes. I wasn’t bandaged; I was in a black space, so dark I couldn’t even see the gleam of my parka.

I heard a roar, felt a horrible jerk, and then the mower rolled over me again, knocking the breath out of me, so I couldn’t scream. My mind shrank to a pinprick in its retreat from pain. Another halt, and this time I forced myself to think.

I was in a truck. I was in the back of a semi, and something on wheels was rolling back and forth with the jolting of the truck. I remembered Marcena, with the skin missing from a quarter of her body, and tried to shift myself, but the motion of the truck and the assaults from the handcart, or conveyor belt, or whatever it was, made it impossible for me to move.

My hands were tied behind me and my legs were strapped together. I smelled, too, smelled the way Freddy Pacheco did when I attacked him. A hundred years ago, that had been. The vomit and blood and pee, they were all mine. My head ached, and blood had dried in my nose. I needed water desperately. I stuck my tongue up and licked the blood. AB negative, a good vintage, hard to find, don’t lose too much of it.

I didn’t want to be here, I wanted to be back in my other world, where my father was with me, even if he was hurting me. I wanted my mother on the other side of the door, making cocoa for me.