Kill Sleep Repeat: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  I recognized that kind of behavior when I saw it. It was obvious, a skill built over years of stalking and killing predators, the understanding that JC Warren was precisely that.

  When everything in my life began to turn upside down, first the shooting in the grocery store, the interviews, the situation with Dunsmore, I realized that if I wanted to make a clean break, the easiest way to go about it would be to let “fate” take its course. He would not stop at my daughter’s half-sister, and maybe after everything, I considered it to be paying a penance of sorts. Or maybe I was just bored and up for a challenge, off the clock. Maybe I wanted to see if I still had it in me to draw a man in. Snare him in my web. More than likely, I was thinking about how good it felt to kill a person on my own accord, pro bono, so to speak. But I won’t lie. Of course, there was something in it for me. If I wanted to kill JC Warren, first I’d let him help me disappear. What a beautiful thing it is to kill so many birds with one stone.

  “Your husband has quite the resume,” he tells me as he undresses in front of me. I assume he is speaking of architecture. It makes me sad to think of Michael and the girls, to think of them wondering where I am and why I haven’t called. Have they reported me missing? I don’t know. All I know is the last conversation I had with my husband was about not knowing if I wanted to stay in the marriage. Maybe it is better this way, a clean break, but when I think of my own mother and the way she left, I’m not so sure.

  “I want that,” he says, with a nod toward my pelvis, his expression making it clear that he has every intention of getting what he has come for. He removes the restraints from my legs. Meticulously, he massages each ankle, rubbing in careful circles. “But first…first I have something I want to discuss with you.”

  My eyes scan the area of the room I can see. Not much has changed; he has brought nothing with him. No phone, no weapon, nothing that could be of any use. “Here,” he says, leaning in close, so that I can smell his lunch on his breath. Salmon. “Let me take this off. You’re going to want the use of your head for this.”

  “I have to use the restroom.”

  He glares at me disapprovingly. “That is what the diaper is for.”

  “I have to use the restroom,” I say once more. I don’t want to seem argumentative, but I don’t want to use a diaper again, either.

  With a curt nod, he presses a button, and then I am being hoisted up by my bound wrists. He lifts me by my waist and shuffles me off the bed, my arms suspended above my head in the air, attached to the ceiling. He pushes another button, and I am lifted higher until I am in a standing position, painfully teetering on my tiptoes.

  Hanging there on display, my body stretched out tautly, the whole of me exposed, I feel equally terrified and enraged.

  He removes the adult diaper, and I watch as it falls to the floor. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”

  “What could be worse than this?” I say, unable to help myself.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You always have a choice, Charlotte.”

  Tears sting the back of my throat as I hear my father’s words in this man’s mouth. Even if I chose this, it doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes we are only choosing the lesser of two evils, and I really wanted to live.

  “Then I want to know.”

  “First—there’s something I’m dying to know…why didn’t you mention your occupation? Your true occupation.”

  I can see in his face that he is not calling my bluff. He knows who and what I am. “Would it have changed anything?”

  “Probably not. But with your husband, yes. I would not have gotten close. I would have kept my distance.”

  “Okay?”

  “What is it like working with your spouse?”

  He pushes his lever again and I am pulled higher. My toes no longer graze the floor. It takes every ounce of strength I have to give him an answer, which is what he wants. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “He orders the hits, you carry them out.”

  I don’t answer. He’s not making any sense.

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’re right. I have captured something very valuable, Charlotte.”

  He walks over to me and runs his hand over the length of my torso. “Your husband is going to come looking for you, and it isn’t going to be pretty, I’m afraid.”

  He backhands me. “You’ve put me in a very difficult position.”

  I stare at the floor, keeping my eyes fixed on one spot. The more I refuse to meet his gaze, the more submissive and defeated I will appear. He kneels and parts my thighs. “I don’t think you are the kind that one just simply lets go.” I feel his tongue graze me, working its way from my inner thighs to the core of me. He is not inexperienced at cunnilingus, and I find it surprising to feel my body responding to his technique.

  My head lulls backward. I fix my eyes on the ceiling. If I react positively it will be over sooner and it just might earn me favor. “How does it work, exactly? He orders the hits, you carry them out?”

  My head snaps into its rightful position. “Michael is not in the business.”

  He stands and takes a fistful of my hair, forcing my eyes on his. “First rule, my darling. No lies.”

  “It’s not a lie.”

  Releasing my head, he takes a step backward and gives me the once-over. “Do I look stupid to you?”

  Before I can answer, he gut-checks me. The force of his blow knocks loose every ounce of breath I have in me. He kneels once more to kiss my stomach in the spot he hit me.

  Finally, my knee connects solidly with his face. He falls back onto the floor. Incensed, he comes at me again, and this time he strikes me with a closed fist directly beneath my chin. I taste fragments of bone in my mouth, my tongue overwhelmed with the taste of blood.

  “So you like to fight,” he says. “I do too.”

  As he positions himself behind me, I spit blood onto the floor. I stare at the door, and he enters me with a brutal thrust.

  Sweaty and gasping for breath, he leans forward and nibbles my ear. I clench my jaw on impulse. “Your husband is molesting your oldest daughter.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Charlotte

  It is a lot to take in, the news that JC Warren delivers. Not that I need reminding, but he is a psychopath. It is in his nature, and undoubtedly it’s a goal of his to unhinge me. He has certainly done that.

  I tell myself it can’t be true; Michael could never, he would never, behave inappropriately toward Sophie. At least I don’t think. Would he?

  Whether or not what JC Warren says is true, I don’t know. What I do know is that his revelation makes me question my whole life. Like any mother would, I pore over the details of our daily lives, I think back on the years, searching for signs. Looking for anything amiss.

  Nothing stands out at me. Sophie is a moody teenager. But aren’t all teenagers moody? I know I certainly was. She’d rather get a ride home with her crush, rather than her father, but there’s nothing surprising about that. Michael has always loved Sophie. From the minute she was born. But has he loved her too much?

  He attends all of her basketball games, helps her with her studies, cares for her when she’s sick. The same as he does for Hayley. I’ve never been able to tell the difference between his actual daughter and the one he has always treated like his own. It makes no sense. I track and kill predators for a living. Is it possible I could have missed one in my own home?

  I’m not sure. But all I am left with is hours to mull it over. Nothingness that spans out in front of me for an eternity, until eventually, like the majority of women who are abducted, I die.

  I refuse to die without knowing the truth, and so I decide that JC’s attempt to unsettle me will also be the very thing that sets me free.

  It may take a while to make it happen. Considering that I haven’t eaten. Considering that the longer I am confi
ned to this bed, the more my muscles will atrophy.

  Last night, JC came in and stuck a needle in my vein and ran an IV line. After that he inserted a bladder catheter. He gives me a play by play, and although there’s a fair amount of fight in me, I realize it is useless. This, and with all those fluids in me, it will be best not to have to lie in my own piss. He says he learned all of this on YouTube. Said it’s amazing the kinds of things you can learn online. After I kicked him in the face, he wanted me to know that he’s researching a technique that will sever my spinal cord, taking the use of my legs, but that will leave other sensations. Last thing he wants is to have to change my diapers for the rest of my life. And he’d like a baby. Before I get too old. He wants to see the pain of childbirth etched into my features and fall in love with me all over again.

  That did it. One little comment can change your whole perspective. It made me realize what I had to do. Literally. I’d have to shit myself. If I made a real mess of it, he’d have to change me, and the linens too. He’d have to remove the restraints in order to clean me, and when it came right down to it, I realize that would not only be my best chance of escape, it will be my only chance.

  When I was young, and the night terrors came, my mother used to say that what happened in my dreams was far worse than anything that could happen in reality. How wrong she turned out to be about that. Wallowing in your own feces for ages is not all it’s cracked up to be.

  I was careful to wait until the room was dark. There are no windows in this room, but there is a skylight. Probably this is what saved me.

  In and out. In and out. Breathe. My eyelids flutter open. I jolt upright, unsure if I’m dreaming or awake. I know something very bad has happened, but all the pieces are scattered in my mind, thousands of tiny fragments, my memory is hazy and incomplete, like a jigsaw puzzle, before you’ve worked out what it is supposed to be.

  Thick liquid pools downward and wets my lashes, matting them together. Using the back of my hand, I brush the blood away. This is how I know I’m alive. There’s so much blood.

  But I’m alive. Injured, but alive.

  He might be too.

  I have to know. I can’t stay here, in the perceived safety of this room. So long as he is breathing, safety doesn’t exist. If he’s not dead, this will never ever stop, and I really need it to end here. I make my way through the cabin, following the trail of blood—his or mine I’m not sure. The marble floor is heated under my feet, and the expanse of the cabin is surprising.

  As I pass floor to ceiling windows, I stop at a grand fireplace, grabbing a fireplace poker. Gripping it tightly, I can’t help but stare out at the view. It’s mesmerizing. There’s seemingly nothing but white for miles. Snow upon snow upon snow. No houses, no cars, no roads, no people. I scan the property. I see a small shed, and a long drive. A row of birdhouses suspended in the air. That’s it. It’s terrifyingly isolated. As remote as anything I’ve ever seen.

  I hear something on the second floor. A creaking sound. I don’t know the house well enough, or at all, to know if it’s possible he could have made it up there.

  Clutching the fire iron, I follow the trail of blood into the kitchen, knowing it will be the best place to find a weapon other than a fire iron. Although it will do, a knife would be better.

  The kitchen is open, large, and it reminds me of a show kitchen, not one that has been lived in or well used. The blood specs have tapered off, and just beyond the massive island, I see him, slumped forward.

  “Warren?” I say but my voice comes out tiny and foreign. It doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like something is lodged in my throat. “JC, can you hear me?”

  Silence. Other than a hiss or a creak from the deepest recesses of the house, here and there, it is eerily silent. Using the fire iron, I nudge him gently. His body falls to the right.

  When he lands with an easy thud, I see the extent of the damage I have done. Slowly, it begins to come back to me. Him wiping my feces, a struggle ensuing. But then my mind goes blank. Shock, which acts as a protective mechanism, I know.

  His face is torn off. Or rather eaten off. The bones that make up his nose, his eye sockets, and chin remain. But his flesh and some of the muscle is gone. His eyeballs bulge and flitter every once in a while, confirming that he is alive. His lips are missing, but his tongue is intact, or at least what is left of it. His teeth, once shiny and white, are now tinged with blood.

  I’ve seen worse. Maybe. My stomach lurches forward, and I want to throw up, but relief takes over, pushing the bile down.

  Now, I must focus.

  I am in the middle of nowhere. I need to get out of here. I need to find a phone and a car, but first, clothes. My body is weak and bruised, and there is a severe gash at the base of my temple that I need to stop bleeding. My right hand is possibly broken. There is a dead man on the floor, his face half chewed off. The sun is sinking, the light will soon fade. But for now, I am safe.

  Safe, as in to say, this bastard has me pretty good and well fucked. After striking him with the iron, just to ensure he’s really done for, I reach down in search of a pulse. He flops forward, his eyes fixed on some faraway place. It’s the first time, in all of my kills, that I’ve ever seen what it looks like under the skin on a person’s face. Bile creeps its way up my throat. My stomach rolls.

  I leave him, and then fumble through the cabinets, hoping to locate a first aid kit, some aspirin, and the knife drawer.

  Walking over to where he is slumped, I flash the knife in front of his dead eyes. “Fancy a spinal cord severing?”

  His body twitches, which gives me a good scare. The body is not always still, once it dies, and no matter how many times you’ve seen it happen, it’s the sort of thing one never quite gets used to. If you’ve ever seen a skeleton without skin, you can imagine what he looks like. I have done an extensive amount of damage. There will be no open casket for him.

  One minute I was laying in my own shit, my backside stinging, my own waste burning my skin. The next, he was changing me, unfastening my restraints, placing me in a tub of cold water.

  I stared straight ahead, playing on the shock factor, while he sponged my body clean, while he lathered my hair with shampoo, while he shaved my legs, armpits, and pubic area. All the while, I stayed mute, silent, resigned.

  Then when he was satisfied with his work, and he turned for the towel, I saw my opportunity and I took it. I lunged at him, knocking him off balance, my nails clawing at his skin, his eyeballs, my teeth tearing into his neck and face. I bit and chewed, and hit and clawed, until eventually his whole body went still. I tasted his blood and his flesh in my mouth, and my fingernails were full of bits and pieces of him.

  I won, at least temporarily, but I did not come away unscathed. Sometime during our scuffle I had either been struck or had hit my head, and blood was raining down. It painted my naked body, and when I momentarily glanced in the mirror, I nearly smiled at the feral woman, staring back at me. I looked like a warrior painted in my own blood, mixed with the blood of my prey, unable to tell which was which.

  And now in this kitchen, I look at him lying there. A pathetic excuse of a human. Now nothing more than a corpse.

  I want nothing more than to get the fuck out of here, to find my way home. But I don’t want to mess that situation up, either. While I have time to plot my next move, I plan to take it. And more than anything, I want to remember how I made him suffer.

  My entire body aches. It aches worse than any pain I’ve ever experienced, worse than the aftermath of childbirth, when your whole body feels like it has been hit by a Mack truck. Being tethered to a bed, being hung from the ceiling for hours, is, for me, new territory. I wonder what it will be like if I died here. Would anyone ever find me? Likely not. I only care because of the girls. It’s hard to accept death when there’s no body—believe me, I know.

  I have to stop. I have to get it together. None of this matters now. I don’t want to die. I am not going to die. You have to move. The
whisper is urgent. Persistent. You have to move, and you have to move now.

  I search the house, looking for a phone. Of course, I’m not that lucky. The only thing I find is a safe. No computer, no TV, no phone. Is that where he keeps it? Locked away? I know he has a cellphone. He said he’d been watching my house. Was it just another of his lies? I sink to the floor. I need to find keys, a car. I need to get out of this house. It would be stupid to walk out into the night in search of help. It’s getting dark, I have no idea where I am, or even which direction to drive, even if I can manage to locate Warren’s keys. This means I’m stuck here with his dead body until dawn unless by some miracle I manage to locate his cell. I pop two aspirin into my mouth and chase them down with a small amount of water. Ignoring the pain in my ankle, I stumble toward the bedroom and riffle through the drawers in search of clothes. It is not surprising to find that JC Warren is meticulous; everything is white and folded neatly, in identical fashion. I jostle through the clothing, looking for anything that might be hidden. In the end I find nothing, except for a pair of long johns, a baggy pair of men’s jeans, a flannel, and wool socks that are too large for my feet. In the closet, I find a row of TVs, each screen showing a different area of the house. The display provides me with a good view of the rest of the house, and, creepily, the room I was in, with cameras mounted at multiple angles, Warren had a shot of me from all sides.

  There is a shot into the garage where the old truck is, a vintage Bronco as it turns out. If I can’t locate the keys, I may be able to hot wire it, an old trick my dad showed me once or twice, when my mother took his keys and refused to give them back. Those memories, situations that felt chaotic and awful at the time, now feel like a pot of gold at the end of a very shady rainbow.