James B Brandt

        Shamed, wrongly guilt-ridden, and terrified, Cristine tries to put her life back together until the boys show up where she works with promises of repeated rapes and threats against her sister if she talks about what happened. The pressure is too much. Cristine attempts suicide, but her sister finds her in time... and there is another layer of guilt added by her mother's Catholic teachings.

        Jana, however, is persistent. Despite different mothers, the girls were close and both had a deep affection for their father, whose Conservative ideals of self-reliance and independence resonate as loudly as her mother's more fatalistic views. At Jana's urging and assistance, Cristine returns to school and starts taking martial arts classes. She begins to look to herself for answers to her problems, to her own self-reliance. She discovers her answers in the public library.

        Fortified with her newly awakened internal strength, high school theater skills, and some notes from a few cooking books, she sets out to eliminate the problem by eliminating the source: Enrique, Juan, and Miguel.

        Disguised as a mute Hispanic girl, she sets up in the parking lot of a store the boys frequent. She is selling homemade fish burritos. They boys are attracted by her sign and she passes out two regular burritos and one special burrito earmarked for Enrique made from the puffer fish. However, Juan snatches the proffered burrito; a minor inconvenience. While the boys walk off, laughing at not paying the girl, Cristine packs up and slips away. She is gone before Juan goes into convulsions and dies of an "allergic reaction" to the burrito's stuffing.

        She then follows Enrique and devises a plan to deliver a deadly oleander tea to him while he is working at a tire shop. Disguised as a "dot" from India, she takes a borrowed car to a tire shop for repair. There, she switches out Enrique's tea with a similar container while he checks the tire. Unknown to her, Miguel sees her make the switch. He doesn't think anything of it until Enrique begins staggering around the tire lot, foaming at the mouth, to eventually collapse and die right as Miguel reaches him.

        Later, Jana goes out of town for the weekend and Cristine walks to the store for some groceries. Miguel, who has figured out what happened to Enrique and Juan, has been watching his time and preparing a place for his own revenge. 

        Seeing his opportunity - Cristine alone and walking - he grabs her and drags her into an empty store. He has prepared the place as a private torture chamber. Only partially put off by the pepper spray Jana gave Cristine, he manages to wrestle Cristine to an old mattress where he has arranged ropes to tie her to the wall. Despite his burning eyes, he lingers long enough to promise a long and painful sexual retaliation for his brother's death before leaving to shower and pick up a few "toys" for his games.

        Cristine is in a near panic, but falling back on her new resolve she manages to free a hand before Miguel returns. While he is bragging and posturing, she frees her other hand and, when me moves in to begin his torture, she puts her martial arts training to work, incapacitating him and, in turn, binding him with the ropes he had prepared for her. She returns his taunts, saying she will return the next day with games of her own. Whining and begging, Miguel reaches the softer heart of young Cristine. She is sorry he hasn't eaten and agrees to leave some brownies she made. She warns him, she hasn't tried them, but the icing is made with raw almonds and the brownies flavored with ground apple seeds - both of which contain cyanide.

        Vowing that he can do whatever she could do, he struggles with his bonds after Cristine leaves. But he is not as agile and he is bigger, so he cannot slip his bonds. Exhausted, and hungry, he decides to eat the brownies before the rats get them. He works the chair where Cristine left them near and gobbles down the first one. Before he can get to the second, he learns that bitter almonds are a fruit best left untouched...

 

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