Payback (6 page)

Darla decided that it was going to bug her until she went around and double checked everything. There had been some break-ins throughout the region recently so she did not want to leave anything to chance. She knew that if someone broke into her place they were going to be very disappointed because she really did not have much to take. But what if they wanted to just hurt her? She hated to admit that she was a rather attractive girl, but for some reason unknown to her she had a horrible time trying to keep a man in her life. She thought that it boiled down to poor choices. Just like the rest of her life. She hated to admit that the world sometimes was out to get her, but she painted a pretty big target on her back.

Darla took one last sip of her tea and began to inspect her tiny apartment. She checked that the door was dead bolted and locked and then she went slowly from room to room turning on all the lights and leaving them on—power bill be damned—and she was already starting to feel a bit safer. She checked the windows in every room to make sure that nothing looked tampered with. The bedroom was clean, as was the bathroom, and the little office nook where she liked to read sometimes. It was a relaxing escape but lately her mind had been too tired for even that she was finding.

Satisfied and feeling safer about everything she went back into her living room and sat back down on the couch to resume her show. Criminal Minds was probably the last thing she should have been watching when she was spooked out about someone possibly breaking in to her place and killing her, but she loved it anyway. She had to watch anything with Shemar Moore in it, and this was supposed to be one of his last episodes. Her beautiful man was leaving the show she loved. She wasn’t sure if she should stop watching it just to boycott the show.

Darla was just getting back into the episode when she felt the hand grabbing around her mouth. It was a heavy thick glove and it cut off every particle of air that she was trying to suck in as she gasped heavily for air. The air was just not coming. She couldn’t breathe. This fact was amplifying the fear that she felt quickly turning scared to full on panic.

Her body convulsed spasmodically and involuntarily as every fiber of her being did its best to escape the clutches of whoever was holding her back. It felt like a man’s hand, heavy and strong over her mouth, pressing harder and harder. Then she suddenly felt an even heavier hand on top of her head pressing down on her as if it was trying to squash her skull between the two hands.

Her body continued to writhe and move around on the couch, her feet flailing away knocking the tea over on her coffee table. The liquid splashed across the table and spilled to the floor. She could practically hear the steam response as the hot liquid hit the cooler floor. The idea that it could have been a weapon was popping into her head right then as well, filling her full of doubt which only added to the terror and panic she was feeling right now. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest as she tried again and again to scream through the glove, wasting more of the precious oxygen she had managed to hold on to before it had been smothered from her.

She was getting dizzy and light headed now and she didn’t know how long it would be before she passed out. Her body was feeling very heavy suddenly and she couldn’t move the way she wanted to as she continued to fight this monster on top of her. But she knew it was a total waste of time. She was going to be killed. That was all there was to it. Her life was going to end.

The darkness began to grow around her as she struggled harder and harder to breathe but the air was just not coming through the powerful hands that covered her face right then. The heavy and thick smell and taste of the latex was overwhelming. Any droplets of air that she managed to retain were soon soaked in the awful taste of those heavy latex gloves. They reminded her of the type of heavy gear that people in a lab might wear. They were not surgical latex at all. They were like the gloves you might wear if you were working with toxic chemicals.

That reminded her of a field trip she had taken to a chemical plant when she was a kid. She saw all of these guys dressed in that same type of rubber from head to toe. Head to toe… that was all she was remembering as the room spun around her and the darkness began to engulf her every thought.

She tried to stay awake with everything she had. She wanted to be awake. There was no way that she was going to surrender. Her mind kept screaming at her body to stay awake, but her body was shutting down slowly. She thought she heard her attacker grunting behind her as his arms were starting to fatigue. The softest glimmer of hope surged through her then but she realized how silly that was. She was done. Her body was almost out completely and she almost knew nothing but the throbbing pain in her head and the heavy weight that had been placed on her body.

In her mind she clearly saw a huge truck sitting on top of her, crushing her body with its massive weight as she just slipped away. She needed to just slip away and take a nice long nap. Everything would be better when she did that. Everything was going to be so much better when she just got some rest.

No! She knew that the sleep was going to be her last. If she went to sleep she might never wake up. But she didn’t really care so much right then. She just wanted to sleep. It was all she needed and she would not feel any more pain in her world anymore. She would be free of the pain that had haunted her for so many years. That pain was going to be gone soon.

The world went dark and she waited for the end to come.

****

Darla awoke to the crashing sounds of the real world beating her in the head. Her head was throbbing with violent spasms of sharp pain rolling through her brain, echoing off the walls. She tried to open her eyes but found that her eyes were not wanting to cooperate with her at all right now. She just wanted to go home. Back to her bed and back to her life, no matter how horribly messed up it was.

Where was she? She tried to open her eyes again and this time she succeeded a little better as she saw what was happening. Or rather what was going to happen? She recognized her own bedroom. Ironically she was still in her bed, but her mouth had been taped shut and she could feel something in her mouth gagging and muffling any sound that she tried to make. It hurt just to moan, shock waves of staggering pain moving up and down her voice box. She did her best to remain still.

Her eyes now adjusted to the fact of where she was and that she was not alone. There was a large man standing there, dressed in a black costume from head to toe. He wore a black ski mask over top of a black, thick rubber suit. She could tell absolutely nothing about him. She could not tell race or color of hair or even color of eyes. The man was wearing some black goggles over the ski mask. He was trying to hide his identity and she could tell that he was trying to appear to be more than human to her to scare her. It was working.

She wanted to try to talk to the man. There had to be a way to reason with him. He didn’t have to do whatever he was about to do to her. This was not right. She was a person. Didn’t he see that? Didn’t he know that it was unthinkable to do this to another human being?

No, she thought answering herself. He doesn’t feel any of the things that he should be feeling. A sickening thought flashed through her head just then; what if this was the guy that she had heard about on the news? What if this was the guy that had skinned those people alive that she heard about? Oh shit! Was that about to happen to her? Why did she wake up? Why couldn’t he just kill her and get it all over with? Why did she have to go through this? She had been dealt enough shit in her lifetime. She did not need to go through this. This was not right. This was not the way her story was supposed to end was it?

Tears rolled down her face in long streams, bleeding into the duct tape that was wrapped around her head several times. Her feet and ankles were duct taped to the posts of the bed and she now discovered that she was naked as well. It had just come to her attention. She didn’t know how she had not realized it instantly.

She became focused on every single move of this maniac. His movements were slow and deliberate as if he felt he had all of the time in the world. She could not see her phone or a clock anywhere close to her and she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. She didn’t think it was too long because it was still dark outside and Arizona sunrises happened about five in the morning during the summer. If she had been out hours then it would be getting close to that time and she doubted that he wanted to be there after the sun came up.

This kind of got her thinking about sunrises and the magical things that they represented. It stemmed from memories of being a kid and then it went on to the ideas that monsters could not exist in the sunshine. This man could not still be here hurting her after the sun came up. She had neighbors, even though most of them were crackheads who were usually passed out on dope. One of them was bound to see something or hear something, right?

She knew the answers to these questions even as her mind continued to come up with scenarios and situations that were much better than she was actually in. She was still having a difficult time processing the fact that she was most likely going to die. And if she did not die it was only because this man had not decided to kill her for whatever reason. She still had no idea who he was or what he really wanted with her.

What the hell was he doing now? He seemed to be very preoccupied with setting up a video camera in the corner of the room. He had removed the large latex gloves that had covered his arms up to the elbows. But he had on surgical latex underneath and she believed he was wearing two pairs on both hands. The man was meticulous and knew how to avoid being caught.

He had most likely done this before. He had a very unique and detail oriented system in place. He was going to film everything that happened there tonight. He was going to do whatever he wanted and he was probably going to do some extra stuff just so he could watch himself doing it so that he could get his jollies off. That was her new purpose in life; she was this man’s new play thing. How the hell had she been chosen, she wondered. Was it completely random? Did he see her with car trouble and follow her home?

No, that wasn’t it. He was here already. How had he got inside? He must have picked a lock or found some way to get a copy of the key for himself. Darla had no idea and she was tired of coming up with things to keep her mind off the fact that she was going to die very soon.

The man suddenly looked over at her and stared at her for several seconds and then back to the camera. It was as if he was trying to make sure that the camera was in the perfect position in relation to her. After a few seconds of this he seemed satisfied and he picked up a heavy black bag off the floor. He sat it beside the bed and pulled out a long, sharp knife. It looked like some sort of special hunting knife that she had never laid eyes on before.

The man held the knife to her throat and began to move the blade slowly around her neck, just testing the sharpness and building the fear inside of her. It was working; she was terrified and felt like she might soil herself at any second. She was trying to scream but the pain in her mouth was too much to bear. Her jaws had been stretched to capacity by this huge ball gag. She thought that she might even be in a state of lock jaw, her jaw had been propped open that far. Her whole body began to shiver with fear and chills that felt almost feverish. She was sure that she was deep in the grip of a panic attack. She used to get those all the time when she was a kid and they had been worse after the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her foster parents. But she had not suffered an attack for a few years. It was actually after she ran away and was pretty stable on her own for at least six months. Then she started to learn that she was going to be just fine.

But now she was anything but fine.

The man pulled the knife from her neck and poked it against his palm as if he was worshipping it somehow. It was almost a sexual response the way he was lovingly flogging the instrument. Was this guy getting off on every single part of this experience for him? What kind of a one in a million freak was she looking at here? The behavior was terrifying. This guy was fresh out of the asylum.

“You are probably wondering what is going on,” the man spoke. His voice was deep and robotic. She could not tell if he was disguising it or not. Maybe this was the voice he used when he did these things. Was this like a character that he played? Was it something that he had to get his own mind around to do properly? What was with this man? If only she could talk back to him then she could make him see her as being a human. There had to be a way to relate to him. There had to be.

“Well, I’ll tell you. I am going to film our experience here together tonight. I’m sorry to say that you will never see this film. When we are done you will have moved onto another state of being while I will be forced to remain on this side patiently awaiting my turn to cross over to the next step.”

The next step? Did this man want to die? Darla would have been more than happy to make his dream come true right then. If only she could get loose from these damn restraints. The duct tape was eating through her skin as she struggled. She had no idea that such a simple item would make such a handy set of handcuffs. The tape was thick and hard. There was no fucking way that she was ever going to be able to break free of them.

“I have a need. It is a dark need and I have dealt with it for a long time. Unfortunately it requires me to do awful things to people. I’m not sure why but it is what I was chosen to do. You get to be a part of this tonight. I know that you don’t want to be here and if you had the opportunity you would find some way to kill me. It would be self-defense for you and I harbor no ill will towards you for thinking that way. Self-preservation is at the core of everyone’s survival instinct and it would be wrong of me to punish you for adhering to your own survival.”

Help me!
Darla fought the urge to scream through the gag and the ball in her mouth. There had to be something she could do. There had to be a way to get free. She just had to remain calm and find it. All she wanted to do was curl up in a little ball and run away somewhere but that was not an option right then. She knew that the only way she could really survive was if she worked as hard as she could to find a weakness, no matter how small, and then she could exploit it and turn the tables on him.