Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

DIRK RICHARDS

The home phone rang. The Dicer put a finger to his mask, telling us to keep quiet. He placed some more duct tape over our mouths. I didn't try to resist, but Irene squirmed and whipped her head around. I was afraid our noggins would collide so I held her hand so the vigilante could silence her.

The duct tape behind us was slowly ripping and stretching. The harder task had been to withstand the threats and withhold information while also stalling.

He walked over to the phone calmly, swinging his katana around. He took off his mask to answer it and picked it up with his free hand.

He thought I was evil incarnate, but we hadn't explained it to him well enough. He couldn't possibly understand my desperation to save my family. The blind decision I had to make. I was torn apart, unable to grasp on hope. Hope that Ovi was still alive underneath that pillowcase.

But, I hadn't seen her face. I had already dug a large hole and I threw her body in with that pillowcase over her head. Her soft hair twisted from the bloody hole in her head was the last thing I felt. It became my last memory of her. My last inkling of acknowledgement of her existence. That she did exist once upon a time and lived in our home as a family member.

And still exists under a garden bed of lilies we had planted afterwards. Watered with love and shined on by the sun. They bloomed in the summer while we were repainting the house and the terracotta roof to get it ready for auction. When we left the house to be auctioned, they were withering to death. Our love wasn't enough for life to prosper.

"Hello?" the Dicer said, "Who is this?"

I couldn't make out what the person on the other side of the phone was saying because the phone was pressed firmly to the Dicer's ear and the duct tape over my mouth rode up over my ears as well, making it harder to hear.

"Yes, this is Dirk Richards," the Dicer said. He was pretending to be me. "Ahhhh Officer, what seems to be the problem?" He turned around to us and smiled triumphantly.

The kids had made it to the police station. We had lost. We were criminals now. "Oh, but what for?" The conversation continues, and his beaming face fades away. Much like his changing of personalities, his emotions become convoluted in this moment.

I see his chest tighten, a quiet rage building inside. He grips his katana with white knuckles and hunches over the countertop with a growing animosity. "I'll be right there."

When he gets off the phone, he slams it into the base several times until the number keys rattle off the pad. In his anger, I have hope again. That we are not criminals yet.

He strips the duct tape off our mouths. I lost a few beard hairs from his force.

I asked, "What's wrong?"

"Fuck you - you know what's wrong. You delegated this to them."

"We don't know what you're talking about," Irene said.

"They killed Zheng."

"Who? Our kids?"

"Who else?" Finally, a great burden had been released from my chest. Who knew death could achieve so much? Especially that of a boy born from the womb of a hag.

We were the torturers. And our children, the killers. Exacting the perfect revenge. To break the boy's mind and body and then to cement his own mistakes as harmful to our family by having the children finish him off. Inflicting an unshakeable afterlife thought. That he had destroyed us, but we had obliterated his spirit.

"How did they," I asked, "kill him?"

"The police found him all messed up from a car runover. They can't even identify who it is and your kids aren't revealing the name of their 'friend'. But the kids are saying - lying rather - that Zheng ran across the road and didn't see the car. Horseshit, I bet they pushed him onto the street in front of that car. Something you would have told them to do if ever he got out. Now, you've killed my only evidence of your malicious nature. And I want to get you the right way. They'll decide on a death sentence for you, I know it. And your family is going to prison, the whole lot of you."

He popped a Mentos in his mouth and threw the wrapper in the bin. He looked down into the bin for a long time. He was trying not to smile. I could see the twitch in his lips and the stifling of his amusement. I couldn't recall what was in that bin.

"Where's Ovi's body?" We did not answer. It was the question we had feared the most.

The tape was so close to being undone. We were so close to being free and running away from this madman. Running to our kids with open arms. Thanking them for their contribution. Being proud of them.

He swivelled away from the bin and swung the sword right above our necks. Irene yelped.

"Shit! Please, we don't know!"

"Then I guess I'm gonna have to start cutting in. Or maybe I'll go down to the police station and start dicing up your children. If you don't think I'll mow down an entire police station full of hard-working cops to get to your children, you wouldn't be the first but you'd be the last." Irene turned her head a smidge to have her ear touch the back of my head. Her wet tears streaked my hair.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I can't let him hurt my babies."

"It's fine," I said. "Tell him." The Dicer rose over us, digging the sword on the surface of our skins. If he moved the blade, we would be sliced. Irene spoke in a terse voice that suffered from sharp pressure from above.

"In our old home... 336 Signal Hill Road... a few minutes drive from here... in our backyard... under the lilies."