"You're not going to kill me," she informed him.

He slammed the knife through the bars. It missed her ear and tore across her cheek. She grabbed the blade but couldn't get a solid grip on it as he pulled it away, slashing open her palm. More blood dripped onto the floor.

The door opened.

"Ken! Wait!" said the woman. What had he called her? Viv?

This should have been the moment where Warren—Ken—looked over at her, and Gertie took advantage of his split-second of distraction to kick him off the ladder, where he'd splatter his head onto the cement. But he didn't look away from her. He simply climbed down the ladder.

Gertie was too frightened to be relieved.

Viv looked at the tiny pool of blood underneath the newly dead woman's cage. Then she looked over at Gertie.

"Did he rape you?" she asked.

Gertie wasn't sure what the correct answer was, so she went with the truth. "No."

"Did you fuck him?"

Gertie shook her head.

Viv turned her attention to Ken. "You can keep her," she said.

"Seriously?"

"Yes. But I'm not going to let you sit here surrounded by shit and piss and puke. That's mentally ill. You're going to clean up the floor, and I mean clean it good, with bleach, and then you're going to start moving the corpses out. Not all at once, but I want them gone within a week. She can stay until she's dead. Does that work for you?"

Ken vigorously nodded. "Yes. Yes, it absolutely works for me."

"Are there cleaning supplies upstairs?"

"Yes, in the garage, I think."

"Then do it now. I'll wait upstairs. I can't take the smell any more."

Viv left the room. Ken moved the stepladder several feet away from Gertie's cage. He wasn't smiling, but he looked intensely relieved.

With the threat of imminent death gone, Gertie could focus on her wounds. The pain in her legs was excruciating and the blood was still flowing. Same with her palm. She could feel several trickles of blood running down her cheek. If this had happened at home, she wouldn't be worried about bleeding to death before she could receive medical attention, but up here in a cage...

"Are you going to patch me up?" she asked.

"Hell no."

"I can't starve to death if I bleed to death first."

Ken flipped her the bird as he walked out of the room.

Surely he wouldn't just leave her like this. Gertie had no idea how long it would take her to bleed out, but if he didn't at least give her something to wrap up her legs she wouldn't last the night.

He returned a few minutes later with a mop, a bucket of water, and a large plastic jar of bleach. He dumped the mop into the bucket and began to clean up the floor.