POSSESSION
Part one
By Sean Lennon
"I'm going out," he told her. "Behave yourself or else."
The woman he was speaking to just sat there on the burgundy couch, not saying a word. Her hands remained folded on her lap and her legs stiffly held together.
“I said, I’m going out.”
"Yes sir," she replied through the conditioned strands of mousy brown hair, “Have a good time, sweetheart. I love you.”
"And when I come back, it's bath time for you. You're filthy again," He said, even though he had bathed her several hours ago. Her skin was still raw from his scrubbing.
“Yes sir. I look forward to it" She was told to call him sir out of respect. It was one of the many things he made her do on a regular basis, yet by far the least disgusting.
He stepped forward and brushed the hair out of her face. He then took hold of her chin and lifted her face upwards to look closer. She sat there, wearing nothing more that a long T-shirt with a picture of Bugs Bunny on the front. He chose the shirt because it was his favorite cartoon character. She told him that she prefer
“No, you love Bugs. You always have. Do not forget that or else it’s the closet again,” he had explained to her. He was kind enough, though, to allow her in wearing the red silk underwear underneath the shirt, red being his favorite color. Pants were denied on the fact that he felt her legs were too beautiful to cover up with cloth. He would spend up to an hour rubbing lotion on them, making sure they were as smooth as they could be. It was important to him that she remain the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on.
"That's better. You know how I hate when you cover your face. You end up hiding all that beauty."
He released her chin and her head drooped down towards the carpeted floor. He frowned at the lack of respect she showed him but couldn't waste time punishing her for he was already late for his appointment. She would be punished when he returned from his appointment. A good twenty-four hours locked in the closet again would do the job. He knew how she hated the small closet, her claustrophobic coffin.
He turned and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He always went out every Thursday like clockwork. She once tried to ask him where he went and what he did outside the room but he refused to answer her. You don’t need to know about that, he would tell her. She need not worry about such trivial things other than what she could do to please him. And it was all about pleasing him. The dressing up, the putting on the makeup just right, combing her hair the way he liked it. And then the horrible sexual acts he forced her to do gave her a dirty feeling that not even the hardest scrubbing could remove.
Again, she was left behind. But what could she do? She glanced over at the head post of the bed in the next room and looked at the handcuffs that kept her locked up while he slept. It was all due to the time that she faked sleeping and tried to escape. But she should have known better, when she saw the sound proof foam that had been placed on the walls.
She remembered the day that she was brought here like it was yesterday. She had first seen him at the local pub and immediately had been attracted to him for his looks and charm. Her best friend had told her to go for it and hop in the sack with him, but she wasn’t the type of girl to sleep with him on the first date. She kept the flirting strong whenever she saw him at the bar. That was until the evening she came home from work and found him standing on her front porch.
“You are too fragile to be walking around without my protection,” he said when she asked what he was doing there. And before she knew what was happening, his arm shot forward and his hand wrapped over her mouth. The chloroform on the tissue knocked her out in seconds. He then took her home and locked her away from the outside world. She awoke an hour later and vomited all over her shirt. He picked her up and carried her into his bathroom. She was shocked by the organization of all the bath products lining the tub. He has shampoos, body lotions, shower gels, and other items according to name and size. As he ran her first bath, she had resisted his orders. It made him mad.
“Stop fighting me. You need to be washed. The filth on you is making me sick.” Yet, she continued to struggle. He became fed up and grabbed her by the arm. He dragged her across the bedroom floor and opened up a small closet wide enough to fit one person. Throwing her inside the closet, he slammed the door shut and closed the padlock on it. She screamed and pleaded with him to release her because she was claustrophobic but her voice went unheard as the closet was also heavily padded. Thirty-six hours later, he opened the padlock and carried her back to the bathroom and proceeded to bathe her the way he saw fit. That was seven months ago. And no one had found her yet. No one arrived to save her from this monster that kept her locked up in her own personal hell that was his apartment.
"Don't bother screaming or banging on the walls," he told her on the first day. "We're at the end of the hall and the walls are too thick here for the neighbors to hear you." And after trying for days and losing her voice in the process, she found that his words rang true. Shortly after that day, during the time when she had the privilege of a television, she saw news reports of her disappearance. The hopeless feeling of never being found by her loved ones put her into weeping fits. He did not like this.
“No crying,” he told her. “Crying causes bags under your eyes. My mother never had bags because I was good. Now be quiet or else it’s the closet again. He removed the television later that day.
"Gwen Marsh." That was her name. She said this every day to remind herself that she was a person and not some possession like he made her out to be. She remembered her family and friends. She remembered getting up every morning at 7am and jogging a mile along Boulevard East. She remembered greeting everyone as she walked into work every morning. She remembered the freedom to go out to the store for some ice cream, to wash her own hair, to even pee by herself. Instead she was here, forced to do what he wanted. To look the way he wanted her to. To love him the way he wanted to be loved. He was nothing more than a pathetic loser who could never get a woman to truly love him. But he was also the one that had her locked away like some precious porcelain doll. But that was her. She was a fighter, a survivor. Yet, after the seven months, her will to fight diminished. She gave in and did as she was told, in order to prevent her from being locked in the closet again and again.
She watched him walk to the door. He turned and smiled at her, like life was perfect. There was adoration in his eyes and not a hint of the evil that he had unleashed on her one too many times. He walked out the door and the silence enveloped her. Suddenly, she felt a surge of fight pulse through her body. Just watching him leave had brought back the fighter that she was. Noticing that he had not chained her wrist to somewhere, she stood up. Her hands slowly balled themselves into fists and she removed the false smile on her face with determination to escape the madness that she was forced to live in.
"I am Gwen Marsh and I am not staying here any longer." She was finally ready. After giving in for several weeks she knew today was the day she would free herself. But first, she needed to undo the handcuff on her right ankle.
TO BE CONTINUED.....
Part Two
By Sean Lennon
Gwen shifted herself on the couch, over to the end table beside it. She had a plan and with a little hope, she would be able to pull it off without any complications. She had taken a safety pin from the bathroom two weeks ago when he was not looking. Gwen considered herself lucky. With the obsessive-compulsive behavior he exhibited towards her since day one, she was almost sure he would have counted the number of pins daily and realized that one was missing. But he had said nothing about the missing pin.
But having the pin was only half the trouble. Hiding it long enough was the difficult part. He cleaned the apartment as often as he did with her. She needed to hide it somewhere that he would never find it. That’s when she remembered her little gift from him.
“This is for you,” he told her a few months after he had kidnapped her. This occurred around the time she had given up hope and helplessly gave in to every demand he had. He was now rewarding her for her obedience after two weeks. He dropped the gift on the bed, looking for some sign of happiness or excitement. But she had none. She had nothing left, for this monster before he had taken away her life. It was now replaced with the demented imaginations of evil.
Gwen tore at the wrapping as if it didn’t matter whether or not it remained on what was underneath. Once, most of it was gone, she found herself staring at the cover of a bible. She almost laughed at the humor within the gift. As if God could save her from the clutches of this hellspawn. She looked up at him with a droll look on her face and smiled at him, the only being in her life now.
“Thank you sir,” she said, imagining swinging the bible upward and slamming it into his face.
“You know what you have to do now.” He unzipped his pants and waited for her to please him. She had no choice. He was becoming more violent with her lately. She was trying hard to do everything he demanded of her, in hopes of living another day. So, Gwen leaned forward and did what he wanted.
But that was all over now, she thought to herself. She’d rather die escaping than be exposed to his horrible plans another day. Gwen reached over on the end table and picked up the bible from it. She flipped the bible open to the Book of Matthew. Inside was a small hole, hiding the safety pin. She selected Matthew because it reminded her of her baby brother. She prayed that one day she would be able to see him again. Now she was going to take control and make that happen.
Gwen held the pin in her hand and felt the power of hope. She tossed the bible aside and got to one knee on the carpeted living room floor, bringing the handcuff to light. She took the head of the pin between her teeth and yanked on it. It did not break. She tried again. Still no success. Gwen hoped that this would not go as bad as the first time she tried to escape.
When he first took her, he had locked her to the bed. A few weeks after being there she had managed to free herself by tugging on the bedpost for three days straight. Slowly but surely, she managed to cause the wood to give way and break. Gwen took the broken headboard and carried it over to the bedroom door. As she opened it, she found that he had heard the snapping of the wood and was coming to investigate. Her mouth dropped and he pushed her inside, knocking her to the floor.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!” he screamed. His face became beet red and Gwen feared that this was the end and closed her eyes. He grabbed her by the hair and lifted her off the ground. She tensed up and was thrown across the room and into the wall. Hitting it with a loud thud, she slid to the floor and remained motionless.
“Don’t you ever, EVER, do that again!” He walked towards her and opened the handcuffs from her right wrist. He grabbed her by the hair again and dragged her over to the closet. Gwen was then locked inside while he went out and bought a new stronger headboard for their bed.
Gwen clenched her teeth and pulled with firm, yet, sweaty hands. The pin gave way and broke in two. The head of the pin remained in her mouth while the point gleamed in her raw hand. She quickly got to work on the handcuffs by attempting to pick the lock. Her one wrist, raw from the chafing of the metal handcuffs while she slept at night, prevented her from getting a good grip on both the cuff and the pin. He had noticed this before and worked on removing it by daily covering it in a healing lotion. But the nightmares that came when she closed her eyes caused her to struggle against the nightly chains regularly.
As she worked on the lock, the escape reminded her of a time when she was younger. She and her younger brother, Matthew, had been given a pair of real handcuffs after their family trip to Wild West City. Matthew had once again won the chance to be the good guy. So Gwen was handcuffed to the nearest object, the hallway radiator. The thought made her almost laughed. If you only knew back then where you would be now, she thought. Matthew had taunted her and held the key just out of her reach. She began to get fed up and started screaming for the key. Her screaming scared Matthew, a child at the time. He ran off outside and down the block before their father answered his sister’s cries. Their father grabbed some of his tools rather than chase after Matthew. Working diligently, he succeeded popping the lock and freed Gwen. Gwen stared upon the lock at that moment and wished she had remembered how her father had done it all those years ago.
Time and time again, Gwen tried using the pin to catch the lock and release it. But each attempt ended in failure. It was an hour since his departure that she finally maneuvered the pin in turning the lock. The sound of the hinge clicking open echoed throughout the bedroom. She watched the handcuff fall away from her raw and blistering ankle and drop to the soft carpet. Her jaw dropped. The hardest part of her escape was over.
She jumped away from the couch, whooping in triumph. There was still plenty of time to leave the apartment before he returned from wherever evil went during happy hour. She would run downstairs and alert the first cop she saw what he had done to her and when he arrived home, she and several police officers would be sitting there waiting for him. She could imagine the dumbfound look on his face when he found that she had escaped.
Screw you, you psycho!” she bellowed. Gwen ran over to the dresser on the opposite side of the bedroom. On top of the dresser were beauty supplies, neatly displayed by him according to facial location and color. She dropped her arm on one side of the dresser’s top and swung it across, spilling the products all across the floor. It was a further disruption to his insane organizational mind. And it was a bigger win for her, the victim.
“Take that!” Gwen screamed. She laughed almost maniacally. Once she had regained her composure and realized that she wasn’t completely out of the woods yet, she decided to leave for good.
She walked over to the entrance of the apartment and gripped the doorknob. This was it, she thought. The nightmare was over and yet again, she had come out on top. She couldn’t wait to do the menial things she took for granted in life. She’d enjoy life to the fullest now that she had learned how precious it was. And she would make damn sure that he would never be given the chance to do what he did to her to any other woman. He would pay for this, she vowed. He would pay for a long time.
Gwen took a deep breath and turned the knob. The knob slowly turned but the door remained stiff. It did not budge. Her shoulders sagged as the action hit her. Denying the truth, she tried again. The door refused to budge.
She then saw that one of the locks that he had installed in the entrance door was a deadbolt that could only be opened with a key. He had locked her inside from the other side of the door when he left. And according to his perfectly timed schedule, he was expected back in twenty minutes.
TO BE CONTINUED……
Part Three
By Sean Lennon
“No, no, no, no, no.”
Gwen froze where she stood. Just when she thought she was free, her hope had been snuffed out in an instant. But she had gotten too far to lie down and die. It wasn’t like she could just lock herself in the handcuffs again. She would never be able to replace the items from the top of the bedroom dresser accurately enough for him not to notice.
The time was ticking. She had a deadline now and the stakes were raised higher than she could reach. But she had to get out. Gwen tugged on the doorknob harder. But the lock held tight. In a fit of anger, she pounded on the door. Yet she knew it would be futile.
She knelt down to examine the deadbolt lock. She prayed that the keyhole was on the inside but found no slot. She would be unable to pick this lock as easily. And removing the hinges of the door would take longer than the handcuffs did. And time was not on her side. There had to be another way out. Gwen threw her head from side to side, looking for a different escape route.
Her eyes stopped on the small bedroom window located on the far wall. Could she? The window was wide enough for her to climb through. It seemed impossible but staying behind to face punishment made the impossible seem achievable. Gwen rushed over and pulled the window open, using what little strength she had left. She then stuck her head out the opening and saw that things could be a whole lot worse.
The height from twelve stories up alone scared her. But the flakes of white and the harsh winter wind caused her to think that she would have to be crazy to escape from the room via the window.
The wind’s cold bite sent her back a few months to a day in which she had left her food out for several hours. This caused the dinner to spoil and emit a foul odor. He was displeased with her. So as a result, he left the room for a half-hour and returned with the key for her handcuffs.
“What are we doing?” she asked, worried by the mystery of her punishment this time. But he remained silent the entire time. She knew if she continued to bother him with questions, it would only make the punishment worse than it was planned.
He brought her out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. The kitchen was similar to the bedroom and the bathroom in the sense of everything was neatly organized as if a group of old women spent a month in supplying it well. She could imagine the cabinets stuffed with cans according to size and food group. She looked forward and saw something even worse than the closet. He had removed all the food and the shelves in his refrigerator. The door hung open, quietly inviting her to yet another horrible nightmare.
“No. Please, I’ll be good. I promise. No more screw-ups. I can show you.” She couldn’t bear to be trapped in the working refrigerator.
“Be quiet. You’re whining. Mother never liked a whiner.”
He grabbed her by the arms and pushed her into the refrigerator. She screamed when he slammed the door shut, turning off the light inside. The first thing she noticed was the cold air being blown into her face by the top air vent. It chilled her to the bone. And it wasn’t before long that the enclosed space stole the breath from her lungs. She worked hard at keeping calm. If she didn’t, she would hyperventilate and collapse dead before he even knew she was in trouble.
“Come on Gwen, you have no choice. This is your only way out.” She looked out into the spotted darkness beyond the window. She looked out the window and downward for a ledge to climb across or a balcony to jump down to. The outside of the building provided only a thin ledge four inches wide. It was wide enough to fit her foot sideways. But where would she go once she was on the ledge? To her left was a similar window located about twenty feet away. It had to be the neighbor’s apartment. If she could reach that, she’d be safe from harm. But due to the wind and the numbing cold, she had her doubts.
All her doubts were tossed out the window when she heard one of the most fearful sounds emanate from beyond the bedroom door. She heard the key enter the deadbolt on the front door. He was home! But how, she thought. He wasn’t expected home for another fifteen minutes! She hadn’t planned for this.
She knew it was now or never. Grabbing a hold of the windowsill, she lifted her bare leg and swung it outside. The wind bit her tender skin and she drew a deep breath. But the thoughts of what he would do if he caught her forced her to continue her escape. Gwen wished that she had thrown on more clothing than wasting time making a mess of the beauty products.
She brought the other leg up and pushed herself out onto the ledge. The cold brick sent a chill up her spine as snowflakes landed on her bare flesh. She slowly shifted to the right, towards the neighbor’s window. Inch by inch, the bedroom window strayed away from her. But she knew that she needed to get far from the window before he entered the room and saw that she had escaped via the window. Baby steps, she told herself. Slow and steady wins the race.
It was two minutes and three feet later that she heard his voice pierce the quiet winter night. But it seemed fitting with the situation, almost like a banshee wail.
“Noooooooooooo! Get back here!” He reached out to her, in hopes that his precious object would return to him. He knew that the day would come when it disobeyed him ultimately to the point where he would have to destroy it and find another jewel.
Gwen made the mistake of looking back at him. His eyes bore through her with a fire as hot as the sun. His head vanished into the room and she felt fear run through her. She still had two thirds of the distance remaining. Her fingers were already becoming raw from the rough bricks and numb from the low temperature. She was freezing but better to freeze than to be locked up inside that miniature closet or raped by the evil that kept her trapped in a bedroom. She reached out and grabbed hold of another brick and pulled her body closer to freedom. As, she began to reach out again, she heard a crinkling noise behind her. Don’t look back, she thought. Women in movies always looked back and ended up dead. She was not going to die. Not after all this.
Suddenly, she felt an object smack into her thigh. It stung due to the cold night air. Gwen glanced back to see another object flying towards her. It missed her arm by a few inches. She couldn’t believe it. He was throwing things at her. Was he purposely trying to knock her off the ledge? She looked up and saw the panic and desperation in his eyes. He was losing control and they both knew it. Take that, you son of a bitch, she thought, a smile peeking through her lips. He held in his hands the bottle of healing lotion that she had tossed off the dresser. Taking a moment to aim in the midst of the current snowfall, he threw it with precise accuracy. The lotion grazed her head, the faucet top, scraping her scalp as it flew past. Gwen knew that if he hit her right she would fall to her death. If only the neighbor’s window was closer.
TO BE CONTINUED……….
Part Four
By Sean Lennon
He walked into the diner next to the
But something was wrong. He looked closer and noticed that the doctor, who always sat at the end of the table, was not there. He felt sweat bead on his forehead. Everything was not the same. One thing was out of place and because of it the universe was off kilter. He felt himself overcome with a deer in the headlights feeling. And it was that feeling that he was there in the first place. He continued walked towards the table, but slower than normal.
“There he is! It’s party time!” Keith hollered. Keith was there on the fact that he suffered from manic-depressive symptoms. Keith went from being a slug, not wanting to do anything, to bouncing off the walls happy. It bothered him because there was no constant, no uniformed mood. But like, Keith, the doctor said that he too had issues needing to be dealt with.
“Where is Doctor Cross?” he asked the other members of his therapy group. They all looked at him with happy faces and bright smiles. Things kept getting scarier to him.
“We’ve got the night off,”
“The doc called and said that he wouldn’t be coming to group tonight! Let’s all go out and celebrate! Who’s up for beer and naked girls!?!” Keith threw his arms above his head and whooped. He really wished Keith would be quiet and docile like he wished It at home was supposed to act. But nothing listened to him. His mother had taught him that the world was full of slacking morons who followed each other around like lemmings.
“So what are we supposed to do?” he asked, the worries within him leaking out in his tone.
“Doctor Cross said that we can have group without him.”
“But-but how? We tell HIM our problems. HE helps us deal with them.”
The others tried to calm him down from the change in plans. They ordered dinner and began discussing what each had been doing since the last session. He refused to cooperate because Doctor Cross was not there. Nothing was normal here and the longer he sat, the worse things became. But he had dinner with them on the fact that it was the exact time he always ate dinner.
Once he was finished with dinner, he realized that he had to leave. He fidgeted in his seat every few seconds and
“I have to go.”
Everyone looked at him and stopped eating.
“But we’re not done!” Keith said excited. He wanted to shove the table down Keith’s throat at that moment.
“I….I have something to take care of,” he told them. It was a lie and his mother burned into him that lying only hurt you instead of others, but he could not take the anxiety for another second. Besides, he would be able to travel back home and begin to give It the punishment it deserved. He quickly put on his coat and wished everyone a good night.
When he entered the lobby of his apartment building, Clint, the doorman, greeted him. He was back in his familiar routine once again. It felt good. He smiled and greeted Clint in return like he always did.
“Oh, be careful when you call for the elevator, the one on the left has a short on it and doesn’t always appear when the doors open. The janitor has put the caution tape on every floor, just so you know.”
“Thank you, Clint.” He pressed the call button and waited until the right elevator arrived.
Once upstairs, he opened the door and immediately sensed that something was wrong. He could smell it in the air. Closing the front door behind him, he sniffed the air and tried to identify the scent. It smelled like a mix of odors. All of them were perfumes that he had bought to cover It’s rank sex smell. It had gotten into things again while he was gone. But how? Did he not leave it cuffed to the couch? He glanced over and saw that It was no longer cuffed to the couch! Where did It go? The door was still locked from the outside so It couldn’t have escaped! Throwing his head around, looking for It, he stopped when he saw that the bedroom door was closed. He had left it partially open when he left the apartment. Was It waiting for him in there, ready to strike?
Quietly, he crept over to the bedroom. He slowly opened the bedroom door and found a perfumed-smelling cold gust hit him in the face. He stared into the room and saw the bedroom window wide open. It had escaped. His face turned red in rage. This was the last time he would tolerate It’s lack of respect. He had hoped this one was different from the others in the past. But like those, this one had to die.
Gwen felt her legs get weak. The thought of falling twelve stories threw her stomach into knots. She was now several feet from the neighbor’s window. He had not thrown anything at her in the last three minutes. Gripping the ice-cold brick tightly, she turned her head back towards the bedroom window. He was no longer there yelling at her. That worried her even more. Where had he gone? What was he up to as she hung in the midst of a light snowfall a hundred feet above the ground?
Gwen pressed on. She was close now. Just a few more steps and she would be at the neighbor’s window. She had to get over quickly for her toes were numb from the icy wind and her fingers were starting to bleed from the rough edges of the brick that prevented her from falling backwards into the night. Her blood made it harder to keep a hold on her handles. But her determination screaming inside her head drove her towards the safe window.
She reached her arm out to the right and took hold of another brick. Once her grip was solid, she slid her right foot out and slowly brought her left side over. She wanted to reach the window so bad she could taste it. But she had to do it carefully or else everything she had done so far would have been for nothing. She was only one reach away from it now. Her arm slowly extended from her side again and she touched the side of the window with success.
“Oh God! I did it!” She yelled into the white dotted sky. She dragged herself over to the neighbor’s darkened window and pressed her face against the welcoming glass. A sigh of relief expelled from her lungs and she laughed by the insanity of the situation. She couldn’t believe how one square of glass was so desired like this one was. But she was not out of the woods yet. She was still out on the ledge and needed to get inside to safety before hypothermia set in.
Gwen rapped on the glass with her knuckles that were partially spotted with the blood from her fingertips. She could see that there was light peeking out from the edge of the curtains. That meant there was someone home at least. Seconds went by and she decided to knock on the glass again, harder this time. After a few more seconds, she heard someone inside the apartment. The curtains rustled and then opened up, revealing the inside of the apartment and her savior.
But then she saw her savior’s face and her jaw dropped as her eyes grew wide. It was him. He stared at her from the opposite side of the window. His evil grin radiated his power over her. He had beaten her at her own game.
He raised the window open and laughed at her. Her body tensed at the sound of his cackling.
“It’s a good thing the neighbor asked me to watch over his apartment and feed his cat while he was on vacation, isn’t it?” he asked her. She couldn’t believe her luck. After all this, she was back in his hold. But she still had one more escape left. She was damned if she’d let herself be locked back up. This was her last stand.
Gwen released her grip on the windowsill and took a step back, off the ledge.
TO BE CONCLUDED……..
Part Five
By Sean Lennon
She watched his cocky victory look transform to sheer terror as he watched her fall away from the window. The feel of her own triumph over evil relieved her of the cold numbness that she had been exposed to for the last fifteen minutes. She closed her eyes and felt the night invite her inside it. She smiled as well, knowing that she had beaten him by ending her life as opposed to giving him the pleasure of doing it.
But her happiness was extinguished as fast as it covered her. She felt his slimy fingers wrap themselves around her wrists. He had denied her freedom once again. She cursed her life for being so full of miserable shit. He tugged her back towards the building and halfway through the window. Once her head and shoulders were in the apartment he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled the rest of her inside what she once knew as freedom. But the neighbor’s apartment was just another level of her hell.
“You thought you’d get off that easy? You’ve been very bad. And Mother always said, those who have been bad asked to be punished severely. You have to be punished,” he prattled on. She was no longer hearing words. It was just grunts and sounds to her now. What was once Gwen Marsh had died on that ledge. Now all that was left was a cornered animal. And cornered animals were the most dangerous.
He grabbed her wrist to pull her to her feet, but was thrown backwards when she leapt up at him. Her bloody fingers clenched onto his face. He screamed in surprise and pain but they were drown out by her own screeching. He struggled from under her but found it difficult to remove her from his face. She dug deeper and deeper into his flesh. He fought to raise his leg up to his abdomen and succeeded in kicking her back across the apartment and freeing himself from her insane attack.
She recovered quickly and picked up the closest weapon for a second attack. Her hands found themselves around a large painted clay vase. Gwen raised the vase above her head and ran forward. She then brought in smashing down onto his skull. The vase shattered into tiny shards of partially colored clay. He crumbled under the hit and fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
The human side of Gwen Marsh returned when she laid her eyes on the heap of evil before her. This was her opportunity. The door to the hallway was opened an inch, teasing her with the easy freedom that lay beyond it. She stumbled to the door and over the threshold to the quiet hallway. Silence surrounded her as she paused to look over her options. There was one elevator a dozen feet to her right and a door marked STAIRCASE to her left, just past the door to his apartment. She took the doorknob in her hands and pushed the door open. She leaped into the stairwell and immediately ran down the metal steps. She had gotten three floors down before she heard the opening of the door that she had just gone through. He was still after her. The escape was not over yet. The chase continued on.
Gwen heard the steps getting closer so she pushed herself harder down the flights of stairs. She wanted to turn around and see just how close he was from her, but she knew that would only slow her down and she could not let him get any closer. She needed to reach the ground floor. She needed to find total strangers to help her to safety. She needed help in defending herself from this monster that stomped down the stairs behind her.
There were only six more floors remaining according to her count. But she couldn’t be accurate in that number. The fear that engulfed her mind blurred all intelligent thinking. It could have been eight or even ten more floors left for her to climb down. But she couldn’t give up. There was a reason why she had gotten this far. There was a sliver of a chance that she would get to see her family again. She just might be able to feel the warmth of safety and home some time soon.
Gwen hollered in success when she found herself without any more flights to climb down. Instead she was presented with a door. Throwing the door aside she found herself in another hallway. She could see no doors but the end of the hall disappeared around a turn. She ran down the hall and quickly made her way around the turn. She was presented with a path to an open lobby. There were doors with lettering on them, representing law offices and other businesses that she recognized to be in the Galaxy Apartment Mini-mall. She knew where she was. It was the apartment building on Boulevard East. There was a mini-mall located just under the apartment building with a two screen movie theater. And below that was the parking garage. Now, her main objective was getting help.
Gwen ran forward to the center of the shopping area. She stopped at a set of wide stairs leading upward to the second level of stores. Looking around, she cursed her luck. All the stores were dark. Nothing was still open. But ahead of her was the world. A line of glass doors lay in front of her. It drew her like the calling of a lover. Her feet moved faster than her brain. She ran forward and prayed that she could find someone before he caught up. It was going to happen. She would survive just like she always did. She was a few feet away from freedom.
That was when she noticed from the corner of her eye, the lights on her left. She paused and looked over. There, she saw a small ice cream shop. And the shop was open. Gwen stopped running for the doors and went straight to the ice cream shop, hoping the worker there would call for help.
The shop was small in comparison to the other stores in the area. There was one girl in her teens leaning against the wall behind the counter. She was flipping through a entertainment magazine yet seemed too exhausted to pay attention to it. Gwen rushed into the shop and the girl looked up absent-mindedly. When she saw Gwen’s appearance and the wild, scared look in her eyes, the girl dropped the magazine and crept back from the counter.
“Please, I need you to call the police! There’s a man who kidnapped me and he’s after me now. Please, call them now!” She didn’t realize the blood from her fingertips covered her hands and that her hair and clothing were not in the best condition. The girl stood, frozen. She was too afraid to move. Gwen could not blame her. She would have done the same if in this situation. But Gwen needed help immediately. So she jumped onto the counter by the cash register and leaned across to grab the phone. She was inches from the receiver when an arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back. It was him. He had caught up with her.
“I’m terribly sorry, miss. My wife has not taken her medication today and she managed to get down here in the middle of a panic attack,” he told the girl behind the counter. The girl seemed to relax a little at the sight of him pulling Gwen away from her.
“She’s sick?”
“No!” Gwen screamed. “He’s kidnapped me! He’s a monster! Don’t listen to him!”
“She gets hallucinations from the dementia that she suffers from when she goes off her medication. I’m her husband. I was just going to take her to Riverside for help. Again, I apologize.”
Gwen was the closest to freedom now then she had ever been before. She couldn’t be sent back upstairs to her prison again. Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked upon the girl who had no idea her night was going to be this exciting. For a second, she saw the girl go from scared to concerned. She felt the girl start to believe his lies for a minute. But he dragged her out of the shop before she could say anything more to strengthen her truth.
Once they were out of the ice cream girl’s sight, he clamped his hand over her mouth and carried her back to the hallway they had just come through. She saw that next to the door to the stairway was an elevator. He let go of her mouth briefly to press the call button. She went limp when the elevator doors open and they entered. She was on her way back to the apartment to be punished for this entire evening. And the punishment will be the worse yet. She wondered what exactly would she be forced into this time.
“You’ve been very bad. Mother always said those who’ve been very bad must be punished. You will be.” And with that, he lunged at her and slammed her head into the side of the elevator. She cringed and held her head in her hands. He picked her up and slammed her head into the side again. Her head throbbed from the pain. She cried out in agony and shied away from him. It was over for her. Her escape fell flat and she had lost. She peered from between her fingers and saw him standing there, his back to her. He was waiting for the elevator to stop and the doors to open. But he was not worried about her fighting back. He had considered her no longer a threat. She was reduced to nothing.
They arrived back on the 12th floor and he grabbed her by the back of her neck. Pulling her down the hall, he opened the door to the apartment and threw her inside. Gwen flew forward and hit the floor with a thud. He closed the door behind him and locked it. She pulled herself to her knees and he helped her to her feet.
“Time to clean you,” he told her. “You stink.” He took her through the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom.
Gwen is forced to sit on the toilet while he prepares her bath. She did not know how this was going to end. But she knew that her death would be part of the ending. She found herself trembling at the thought. She never thought about her death until the night he kidnapped her. Now, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. How could it end like this? Why was she being put through this? Life was a puzzle that was impossible to solve to her. That was the one thing that angered her. She preferred that things were under her control. But this was all his game. She was nothing but a pawn.
She was a pawn. That was her one advantage. An underdog always wins in the movies. This was not real, she thought. If she did not take this as serious as it was, she just might have a chance. Gwen examined the bathroom and took note of the situation. He sat on the edge of the tub, leaning over to fix the knobs in pouring out the correct temperature. He was unaware of her thoughts and was unfocused. Now was the time to rise up.
Gwen silently stood up and looked down on him. It was time to end this. It was time for her to win the battle. She lunged across the tiled floor and grabbed his head, bringing it crashing down on the side of the porcelain tub. His forehead cut open and his body slid into the tub. She couldn’t stop there, though. He would still stand up and follow her out of the apartment. Her head turned towards the sink and she saw the row of brushes that he used to brush her hair, just the way he liked it.
Her fingers wrapped themselves around one of the brushes and she shoved the pointy handle of the brush into his side, just below his rib cage. A howl escaped from his lungs and the water in the tub began to turn red with his blood. Gwen knew the time was right. She ran for the apartment door and struggled for the locks that held the door closed tightly.
Once the door was open, she went for the elevators. She hit the call button again and again, praying for it to arrive quickly before the inhuman monster inside the apartment chased after her. Time seemed to crawl slowly. Every second appeared like an hour. She had to escape this time or else she would definitely die by his hand. Her eyes shot from the elevator doors to the apartment door and back to the elevator doors.
“Come on, please hurry,” she yelled. And with that, the elevator doors opened and she hopped into the elevator waiting for her. Pressing the button for the lobby, she jumped up and down, praying that the doors closed quickly. She sighed in relief when they began to close. She was safe.
Then, he appeared beyond the doors. She screamed and jumped back to the wall of the elevator. Blood trailed down the side of his head and one hand held his side where she had stabbed him. His free arm slammed the fist into the closing doors. She watched as the doors closed completely and she held her breath, watching the digital number, praying it would change. Once it changed, she knew she was on her way to the lobby and finally freedom. She stood, waiting. It was taking too long.
He watched as the doors closed. The pain throbbing in his head like a drum, with the blood dripping from his head wound, caused his vision to blur. Meanwhile due to the wound in his side, he was having trouble breathing. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. It was all Doctor Cross’s fault. Because Cross was not at the group therapy session this evening, he had been hurt by It. He had no intention of letting it escape so easily. He had slipped up and let his defenses down. And now he leaned against the wall in the hallway, leaking blood.
He moved over to the call button and pressed a bloody thumb into it. The button lit up and he prayed that he could catch the elevator before it began it’s descent. If only he could get the drumming in his head to stop. But he had hopes, for mother had always told him that the good get what they want. And she always praised him for being a good boy. Her sweet angel, she’d called him.
Over the drums in his head, he heard the ping of the elevator arriving. It was here! She will not escape. Just like his mother always said, the bad never get away unpunished. He staggered to the side, honing in on the sound of the ping. The blood in his eyes prevented him from seeing anything. Everything just a blend of smeared colors. He heard the elevator doors open and he stumbled forward, laughing at It’s horrible luck. He would definitely kill It now.
But as he stepped into the elevator, he felt something wrap around his waist. Before he could realize that it was the caution tape that was placed in front of the elevator that Clint, the doorman, had told him was faulty. It was too late though. He fell forward and plummeted down the dark shaft to the bottom.
She sat in the lobby as Clint handed her a hot cup of coffee. The lobby was swarmed with police. She sat on the doorman’s bench while everyone completed their missions. Just like she had hoped, she had survived the horrible ordeal. She was sure that the nightmares would haunt her nights for years after but as long as she no longer had to look upon him in real life.
The squeaking wheels of the stretcher that rolled across the lobby caused her to look up from the cup in her hands. Upon the stretcher lay the black body bag containing the remains of her captor. She watched it pass her and felt the irony of the scene. She suddenly began to laugh at the sight. The officers turned their heads to look at her and find out what was so funny to her. But they wouldn’t understand. Only she knew what mother always said.
“The bad never went unpunished.” Mother was right.