by Grant Hunter
She stood up, stepped over the bodies, and braced herself against the door. I felt a counter pressure and heard a murmur. My feet slipped slowly back. I clenched my teeth and pushed my shoulder against the door with all my strength. Angel gasped.
‘It is locked,’ I heard someone saying, annoyed.
‘Then let’s go to the toilet on the ship,’ a very familiar voice sounded. I bit my lip so as not to open the door and to slap Jen’s face. I waited until the voices faded away.
‘Y–your lip is B-bleeding.’ Angel bent over, wiped my lip and then frantically wiped the blood off her hands. ‘Oh, God... oh God.’
‘It’s nothing. Stop that! Look in their bags. We will take their identities. Take the clothes off of the little one.’
‘B-but. H-her head...’
‘Angel. Do what I tell you.’ I slapped her cheek just hard enough to get her attention.
She looked at me with her eyes wide open and stayed frozen for a second. Then she bent down and picked one of the handbags up from the ground.
‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ I whispered, while I was bending over the woman with the long red hair pulled down her trousers. ‘Hurry we have to be fast. Before the others come.’
The trousers of the woman were covered in splatters of blood, but because it was black it looked as if she had urinated in them. My hands were a deep red colour and I realised that I couldn’t even smell the metallic odour any more.
I rolled the woman out of her coat and pulled the torn blouse from her shoulders. Only now I noticed the huge wound in her belly. From the corner of my eye, I saw Angel making jerky moves. I quickly turned my head away when she emptied her stomach. I pulled the clothes together, dragged the woman by her arms to the toilet and pushed her into the cubicle.
‘Stop vomiting and help me here. We have to hide them, fast.’
Angel wiped her mouth clean with paper from the dispenser on the wall. She walked to the sink and drank straight from the tap. I sighed and began to undress the other woman. When I pulled her jacket off her head, her neck wound opened further. I had to swallow to hold back an acid reflux.
‘Don’t make so much of it, Naomi!’ I told myself, while I unzipped the jacket so that the woman could be rolled on her belly.
Angel came up and stood next to me and pulled the shoes off.
‘We have to move faster. We have to catch the boat!’ I said.
I threw the woman’s stuff to Angel.
‘Get dressed.’
‘But what about this then?’ She pointed at the blood stains on the dark green jersey.
‘Pull her jacket over it, which will still look reasonable. I have a bigger problem.’
Angel took something out of the woman’s bag. ‘Here...’ She threw me a scarf.
‘Perfect!’
Quickly I dressed. Rolled the trousers up to the ankle, put the blouse on, dragging the jacket over it. Finally I knotted the scarf around my neck and looked in the mirror.
‘Shit!’ I saw a far too thin woman with fallen eyes and red blood splatters on her face. In panic I ran to the tap and washed my hands and my face.
‘Here.’ As if Angel could guess my thoughts she held a makeup box open for me.
‘We have to be fast.’ I brushed a lot of powder on my colourless cheeks.
‘Shit. They will recognise us.’
Angel came and stood next to me. In the meantime, she had pulled the clothes of the other woman on and no longer appeared like the pathetic figure she had before. She had even managed to get her hair in a bun, so she looked like a schoolteacher.
‘There’s a problem,’ she said when I was done with the red lipstick. She showed me a ID pass with a photo. ‘You’re not a red head.’
She held the other ID pass in front of her and I saw similarities between the woman on the photo and Angel. On the other photo there was a woman with a striking head of red hair.
‘Damn.’
‘Boarding passes, have a look...’
I looked at the card and saw under the Net X Logo, a number, a name and the picture.
‘We will never get away with it like this. They won’t let us go through the way we look now. This was done for nothing.’ A tear ran down her cheek.
‘Wait, I do have an idea!’
Her eyes flew open wide. ‘What?’
‘Actually, you really don’t want to know.’
I walked back to the toilet, pulled the head from the dead woman up, by the hair, and grabbed my knife. I put the sharp point next to the fringe on her forehead. I drew the knife swiftly across the skin and cut up behind the ears and the neck. It felt sloppy and stiff at the same time, but the sharp knife effortlessly drew a red edge around the head.
‘I think Hannibal Lecter would have felt like this, as well,’ I said to break the tension.
Behind me I heard Angel breathe deeply and sniff. I could not care less; we had to get away from here. I wriggled the skin up a bit, to get more space, and pulled hard to tear it off everywhere.
It’s just a piece of carpet. Do not look, just do not look.
Still, I couldn’t ignore it. I threw a look at the ravaged head. A dizziness came over me. Loose strips of flesh stuck like raw meat to her bald skull. I staggered when Angel pulled me away and shook me wildly.
‘Naomi! Heh, Naomi!’
I stood there staring at that bloody rag in my hands. Red moisture trickled on the women’s high-gloss shoes, which lay sideways on the floor. I blinked a few times. ‘Thank you. It’s going to be alright now.’
‘Well, I think you have a chance.’
She let me go and pulled the body she had undressed to the toilet next to mine. She struggled to get the door shut.
‘It doesn’t make any sense to hide them,’ I said, pointing out the pools of blood. ‘We just need to be quick. Get to the ship before they discover that these two are missing.’
I rinsed the bloody wig off and rolled it out like a cloth. When I had the last tangle out, I placed it on my own head. It felt nasty. Warm and sloppy. The untidy, wet hair hung straight and lifeless down my face. There was blood dripping down my cheeks.
‘Your scarf,’ said Angel. ‘Tie the scarf around it, you won’t see your own hair anymore.’
‘Damn, couldn’t you have come with that idea before?’
In the distance I heard the sound of engines that were starting. Angel ran to the toilet, stepped over the corpse and jumped on the bowl.
‘Hurry, they’re going to leave!”
I put my knife in the bag and looked back in the mirror. Wiped away a blood drop with a piece of paper and just like that we walked out of the toilet, in the direction of the ship.
As soon as we turned the corner, I made eye contact with the woman behind the counter. I smiled at her, until I saw the two guards standing in front of the huge entrance door. Their eyes were hiding behind sunglasses, making one of the two look like the Terminator.
Angel pulled my arm and bent towards me. ‘They’ll notice it right away,’ she whispered.
‘Shush.’ I tried to put a smile on my face. One of the bodyguards took his sunglasses from his nose and stared at my forehead. I knew that it was not a sweat drop that ran over my head. It had a red colour. I groped in the bag, pulled out a piece of tissue and quickly wiped my forehead.
The guard who was not wearing sunglasses elbowed the Terminator and then whispered something to him.
‘They have got us,’ moaned Angel. She stumbled when I grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the door.
‘Laugh!’ I said to her in a snappy voice.
Arnold Schwarzenegger looked at us when we stood just in front of them.
‘Shall I call a doctor for you? You are bleeding.’ He pointed to my head.
‘N-No, it-it is...’
I shook my head and noticed that the hair piece got skewed. The man took off his sunglasses and stared at me.
‘I-it’s... I have… I fell down.’
‘Yes,’ Angel nodded. ‘I was t
here.’
‘Exactly! From the stage. Be grateful that I am not suing the boat. Let me pass through, before I make an official complaint.’
The Terminator guard turned around and grabbed his mobile phone. The other guard stretched his hand out to my head. I just jumped back in time, but lost my balance and stumbled over Angel, dragging her down with me.
The guard turned a gun on me as I stood up. To my dismay, I noticed that the red hair landed on Angel, who jumped up frantically and threw the thing away, screaming.
‘What the...’ Arnold came further towards me.
The woman behind the counter screamed and ran back down the hallway. Only then did I see them from the side of my eye --- the cameras that were watching me. Had they seen everything? Everything we had done? Also in the toilets? Shit. Of course. Then I heard the sound of a horn. The ship, it was going to leave!
‘Damn!’
The guard continued to keep me covered with his gun. The other one put away his mobile, turned to him and whispered something. Immediately, the young guard holstered his gun.
‘W-what a-are they doing?’ whispered Angel.
‘The game continues.’
I could barely believe it. The guard who had held me under his control waved with his weapon to show that we had to go, while the other was locking the door.
‘Naomi, come, come!’ Angel tried to pull me along, but I was rooted to the spot.
‘No...’
‘But they are going to catch and kill us,’ she protested.
‘Really? We are already dead, right?’ I stared at the muscular man and leant over top to Angel. ‘I don’t think he is going to do anything.’
The man didn’t move. He put his sunglasses back on and pretended not to see me.
‘Watch out, Angel the…’
I picked the scalp of hair off the floor. The face of the younger guard turned pale. My hand slipped into my bag and I grabbed the knife. Then walked forward, to the door, with the scalped hair in front of me. Only when I was a metre away did the guard move.
‘Step back.’
‘Or else what?’
Another step forward, towards the guard, creeping, while I still had my hand around the knife in my bag and swung the hair round.
‘Back!’
The thin guard pulled out his gun again, but at the same time the muscular one left his in its holster and he warned the other that he should do the same. Bingo! That was what I was hoping to see. They were not being allowed to do anything.
‘Get out,’ said the man urgently. The guard grabbed me roughly.
‘Ouch! Let me go.’
He dragged me around the corner while Angel stood shocked at the counter. When we were out of sight, he grabbed me by my throat and lifted me up. My wind pipe was pinched and panic crept up in me. ‘You have such a big mouth. Let’s see if you dare, if nobody is looking.’
Immediately an alarm went off, making the man release me. ‘You’re in luck, for the moment...’
I rubbed my throat and breathed deeply.
‘You can’t do anything to me. I’m worth a lot of money. You aren’t! And you know why?’ I grabbed my knife when he shrugged his shoulders, turned and walked away. I jumped on his neck and pushed the blade into it. ‘Because I’m not the prey. I don’t do this sort of things and stop the viewers seeing it!’
The man gurgled and gripped the blade that thrust deep into his neck. Spurts of blood ran over his hands. He went down and his head bounced against the ground, and the knife came out through on the other side. Immediately the alarm stopped, and I noticed someone behind me who was breathing heavily.
Angel looked with bloodshot red eyes from me to the man who was now motionless on the ground. I pulled the gun from the guard out of his holster and checked if there were bullets in the magazine.
‘Bingo!’ I screamed excitedly.
‘I-I can’t believe you...’
‘Get a grip! It is them or us, Angel. They play prey and the predator. You are still alive because I’m the hunter and still playing. They continue to invest money because we give them what they want, like this.’
I beckoned her closer, so I could whisper in her ear. ‘I know what I am doing, Angel, Trust me. We are being bugged. Say as little as possible, or whisper to me, OK? Everything you say or do affects the viewing figures. Those guards have no value. I have value, because I do this, you understand?’
She blinked her eyes quickly.
‘I will go back with this gun, than put that other guard out of action. You have to distract him first, OK? Will you do that?’
She nodded barely noticeably.
‘Angel... these are not people. Put your humanity aside, otherwise we are doomed. They will slaughter us if we seem weak.’ I grabbed her shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. She felt so weak, yet I thought I’d seen a nod. A twinkle in her eyes.
‘OK.’
‘You and me, we are a winning team. This is a game. It’s not real.’
‘It’s not real,’ she whispered to me.
‘Exactly! Well then. You are going to distract that man...’
‘A game...’
‘Damn, Angel. Focus!’
‘OK, OK. Sorry.’
‘You are going to distract him.’
‘How?’
‘Jesus Christ, think of something!’
‘Yes. Alright, Naomi.’ She threw off her coat, turned and walked away from me.
37
I bent over and searched the other pockets of the guard and found a cell phone. I stood up and ran back to the camera, which I had seen fixed in the corner.
‘Jack? I want to talk to you,’ I shouted straight at the lens.
Less than a second later the mobile phone began to vibrate.
‘You are doing fabulously, Ms. Quinns. You are giving a fantastic show, the like of which I have never experienced before!’
‘Asshole!’
I heard him laugh.
‘You’re a pig.’
‘Ironic, Ms. Quinns. Coming from someone who has murdered so many. You actually seem to enjoy our show. But tell me. Why do you want to speak to me?’
‘I have a deal to offer you.’
‘Oh, really? And what can you possibly have to offer me?’
Looking unconcerned, I raised the guard’s gun, stared directly at the camera and put the barrel against my temple.
‘Naomi..,’ His voice sounded nervous, even worried. ‘Naomi, please wait!’
‘Oh, it’s Naomi now all of a sudden? Not Ms. Quinns anymore? What’s my life worth, Jack?’
‘Come on, let’s talk about it, can’t we?’
‘How much?’
‘A client offered millions after what you did in the toilet.’
‘Millions?’
‘Yes millions. This has never happened before. You have them eating out of your hand.’
I pulled the hammer of the revolver back.
‘Stop! Stop it, Naomi. You don’t seriously want to do this, do you?’
‘Why not, Jack? What do I have to lose? You’ll never let me go. I will be held here until they stop paying money, and then I’m dead. For me it is already over.’
‘Naomi. Wait!’
‘So you can earn even more money? No way.’
‘Tell me what you want.’
‘Give me a way out!’
I heard him mumbling.
‘See. You won’t let me go. But now if I put a bullet through my head, your clients will be disappointed. Do you think they will trust you afterwards?’ Inside I felt calm, even emotionless.
‘No, Naomi. You won’t do it.’
‘Really? After all I’ve endured, this is the easy way out. But you won’t get out so easily. They will always blame you for this. Maybe you’ll lose them all.’
This was it: all or nothing. If he didn’t believe me it was over. I had to pull the trigger.
‘Do you want this?” I turned to the camera; talking to the voyeurs directly. ‘You want me
to put a bullet through my head, just for your entertainment? Then this show is over, right?’
‘Stop. Please,’ begged Jack.
‘Why? I have only just started.’
‘Naomi…’
‘Shut up. This is my show. You like this, don’t you? Now what if we swap roles. If the director were to come here? Face to face with the animal that you have made of me. Would you like that?’
‘Stop it! Idiot! Of course I won’t do that!’
‘Are you afraid of me, Jack? You are a coward!’
I walked back to the hall where I saw Angel half undressed on the ground, with the guard on top of her. She had done what I was hoping she would do.
‘What a show. Do you see that, Jack? That’s what they want. How much are they putting on Angel?’
When I blew a kiss to the camera, I walked over to the guard, pointed the gun at his head, and without hesitation pulled the trigger.
Blood and brain matter spurted over Angel, she screamed and pushed the man away from her.
‘Damn, Naomi!’ Jack shouted in my ear.
Angel stood up and threw up behind the counter.
‘What a wonderful show this is, isn’t it, people?’ I waved the gun in circles. ‘Shall I show you something unforgettable?’
‘Naomi. For God’s sake, tell me what you want,’ whispered Jack on the phone.
‘Are they asking that? Asking you what I want? Let me show you what I want...’ and I bowed to the camera, while I put the gun on the ground. Slowly I started to undress and I stripped, until I was left only in my blood-soaked underwear then I said; ‘I want to close a deal with you, dear ladies and gentlemen.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ Angel asked.
‘Shit, Angel, put something decent on. Even better, just take that crap off. What will people think of you, you look a mess,’ I snapped at her.
I saw a sparkle in her eyes when I winked at her. She immediately took off the blood covered clothes.
‘Much better. Isn’t it, people?’
This was my great plan: to grab viewer’s total attention. Until I had them on my side.
‘They want to keep you alive, Angel. Say something nice. Don’t just stand there looking like a zombie.’
‘Oh--- Err. Well...’
