by Jeff Gelb
How many weeks had she been a prisoner? Time had long since lost any meaning. Months? She couldn’t guess. He had spoken to her four times that she could remember and she tried to recall each specific instance. They were points to fasten her shaky mental processes on. Three times he scolded her, then hurt her for infractions, once because she kept begging him to stop. That was the time he had explained who he was and what he wanted.
“Why are you doing this to me? I haven’t done anything to you,” she’d whined, and he had slapped her viciously, telling her if she spoke again he’d put the awful ball-gag back in and leave it in. She knew he meant it. That was when he’d told her.
“You stupid fucking bitch I followed you. Shit ass prolife cunt!” he’d called her. The phrase held all his secrets and she had repeated it to herself over and over, finally coming to agree that these few brutal words redefined her.
He left her food. Water. Kept the fire going so that she would not freeze. She knew he probably wouldn’t kill her yet and that was the only thing that kept part of her sanity intact.
The massive hands pinched, tore, pulled, rearranged her as he crudely wet himself and achieved penetration, cursing as he moved her back and forth on him; she tried not to break his rhythms because when she angered him he would pull her hair savagely or cuff her face or nearly rip her breasts off with his angry fingers of steel. It was not intercourse so much as masturbation—him moving her back and forth or up and down on him, controlling her easily with his powerful hands. A minute or two was all that was usually necessary and he would ejaculate, pull out and smack her away.
He finished this time, as always, in a few moments and moved off into the darkness. Did he go away between the times when he used her? Did he live there in the shadows somewhere nearby? Did he watch her? She didn’t know.
She felt sticky and even in the beginning stages of madness her intelligence was enough that she knew to fight the itching. Meticulously, carefully, she wet a small corner of the coarse blanket using a tiny amount of water from the jug he left with her and—as best as the situation would permit—gave herself a cold water sponge bath. When that was finished she did as she always did—fell into a long, drugged sleep.
During the terrible sleep she saw his fat, grotesque features, the doughy body—huge but heavily muscled—heard the voice telling her over and over “I followed you … pro-life cunt …” Then she was awake, or half-awake, or still inside the nasty folds of the dream—what did it matter?
If she did not fight she would slip away into complete madness; she dug her broken nails into her palms and fought to concentrate, to remember.
Once she’d been a socially involved human, a normal woman with a busy schedule of helping others, of political and ethical causes—pro-life? Yes. Proudly so. Her name was Lori, but her last name—Davis?—had become fuzzy and unreal. She had been one of the most active women in her community, a spokesperson and advocate against the pro-choice crowd. That was what had caused the monster to lock onto her, target her, stalk her.
She could recollect a speaking engagement. A loud public argument—she could recall the face of someone screaming about women’s rights—she’d called the face a murderer. Her memory struggled to picture the face of the monster in the crowd but could not.
The first time she’d seen him was in the crowded parking lot at Kmart, where she’d gone to buy … something. Lori … Davis. She had a husband named Tom somewhere up above. Children. Gena. Tommy, Junior. She made herself work to see their faces, to hear their voices, to see the drawings that were held to the front of the refrigerator by magnets made to resemble vegetables and flowers.
She composed a limerick in her mind: the king of hell and Lori-belle they live beneath the sewer. Something, something, pro-life cunt, that’s why he likes to do her! It made her laugh and cry and spit again. She suspected that insanity would claim her soon if she didn’t break free. She pulled the chain over the fire and tried to burn it again, even though she knew it would grow unbearably hot and she’d only succeed in hurting herself.
Now Lori-belle she had a chain that held her by the waist.
She liked to hold it in the fire and da da-da da-da.
The woman felt around, feeling the sack of burgers and ice-cold fries there in the shadows of the fire. The jug of tepid water. He’d put an apple in the sack—how thoughtful! He probably remembered she’d need some vitamin C.
The monster had done something to her as he yanked her into a vehicle in the Kmart parking lot. It was the last thing she could remember until she’d been rudely brought back to consciousness with smelling salts that made her gag. He’d made her wash her mouth out and then shoved a disgusting thing in her mouth that was like a large rubber ball on a cord. It tied behind her head, and she’d had to wear it all the way down into the pit.
She had a frightening memory of storefronts, peeling, cracked walls adjacent to the old boarded-over subway entrances and exits, covered in graffiti-painted lumber.
He pulled her through an opening which he resealed with a length of corrugated tin, and lit a lantern. It was pitch black. They started down. She almost fainted with fear.
The beast dragged her down around pipes, massive and dark, vast expanses of poured, reinforced concrete that stunk of sewage.
It became colder, wetter, and with the worsening smell came the shivery feel and echoing sound of a river bottom beneath a canyon stream. She was sure he was going to kill her.
There were rock steps like a regular stairway, but eventually these gave way to massive slabs that had wider and wider spaces between them. They hypnotized her. Several times she almost stumbled and once she looked down into the black shafts and became very dizzy, pitching forward and almost falling. She would have fallen to her death but the rough grip of steel held her.
One tiny comfort; apparently they were not alone in all this black nothingness. Here and there lights twinkled off in the darkness. Who could live down here? Criminals? Runaways? The thought of where they were chilled her to the core.
The machine sounds above had become a faraway presence. The raw smell of feces was overpowering.
Beyond the glare of the monster’s lantern it was pitch black and as they moved with the light, great circles of sickly yellow ricocheted off into the dark. The shafts pulled at her eyes like deep wells of magnetic energy but she concentrated on not falling, and on keeping the rhythm. She had to stay with the rhythm of the slabs.
They moved beneath the looming pipes, the massive chunks of rod-filled concrete that squatted like secret pyramids far beneath Chicago’s high-rises. Sometimes she had a sense of slick and slimy things slithering or scuttling away as they continued to descend.
Were they going into the bowels of the earth? The woman’s disorientation became intense as they kept moving down the face of a subterranean monolith, dripping stone and rotting friction piles that drove into the substrata like an upside-down forest of redwoods.
At last, mercifully, they stopped descending. The immense monstrosity who had abducted her made sounds she could not identify and she caught quick glimpses of him at the edges of the lantern light. There was no thought of escape. She had no light, no idea where she was, no clue as to the way up and no hoping of finding it. She was also exhausted. Nonetheless that had been her one blind hope. She knew she should have run into the hellish darkness. In a few moments a small fire was going and he had hold of her again. He was chaining her to the rocks.
Lori tried to shake off the grogginess. Was this real or was she imagining it? Was she back in real time or remembering? Had he just torn the blanket from her and raped her or was it the first time, and was she remembering how he savagely stripped off her clothing and forced himself into her?
At first it had been such a puzzle. Why would he go to such trouble to rape a woman? When he finished with her he’d left her the scratchy blanket and the food and water—keeping her alive as if she were a pet. Why?
In time she’d learned the hor
rible truth. She’d been like a neon sign to him, advertising her reverence for life, and that was what had made him stalk her. That was why she was going to live—at least until the third trimester. He’d brought her here for breeding.
There was only a vague subliminal awareness of being late with her period—then the boredom and drugged lethargy of time without clocks. Slow hours? Fast days? Interminable nights? A timeless space very near the brink.
He had been gone a long time. It was the longest she’d been left alone since the abduction. There was no way for her to count the minutes, to measure the passage of time, but the water was almost gone and when she awakened now she was ravenously hungry. She could feel herself starving. He would not leave her to starve—because he would not kill the child growing inside her.
This was the thought she was fighting to hold on to when she heard the sounds, faraway voices floating down into the depths of her pit! She tried to scream and nothing came. They were coming to rescue her! She quickly put the dirty jug to her mouth and swallowed the last of the hideous water. This time she was able to scream and she screamed until she lost her voice.
The next thing she knew they were there, the police—a woman who tried to examine her briefly by their lights—she saw eyes staring down at her, caught fragments of floating conversation meaningless as coughs.
She was on her feet and the man was asking her something.
“Can you walk? Do you think you can climb part of the way back up? A stretcher is on the way.”
“Yes,” she said, “I think so.” They helped her, men on either side of her, virtually carrying her as they began the slow ascent back. “Where is he?”
“He’s gone. Don’t worry. You’re safe, now,” the kindly, older man told her.
“Wh … who …?”
“My name’s Eichord.”
She shook her head. “Who was he?”
The detective answered, “He’s the monster son of the ‘lonely hearts’ killer—the serial murderer I killed. Unfortunately, not before he’d fathered a child bom with his tainted blood.
“It’s going to be all right.” He tried to soothe her with his gentle tones but it only made her more upset. Why couldn’t he understand? She tried to explain but it took too much effort. They kept moving toward the brighter lights that winked far above.
“I’m carrying his baby.’“
She was exhausted. She felt pain so widespread throughout her body that she couldn’t analyze it or pinpoint the sources. She became very nauseated at one point and they had to stop.
They started again and she began making a kind of keening animal noise. By the time they’d reached the midway point she was trying to pull out of the detectives’ grasps but was far too weak.
“Just take it easy, Lori,” the woman told her. “Your husband’s up ahead.” She meant it in a helpful way but the words caused her to snap.
“I was for breeding—” she whispered to Eichord, trying to pull away from him. She had to explain what it was all about.
“You’re having trouble breathing?”
“No. Breeding. I was for breeding—his breeder bitch, he called me. I was his pro-life cunt who would have his baby because I could not allow myself to get rid of the fetus. Don’t you see? It’s how he intends to keep their spawn alive? I’m going to have his monster!”
“Take it easy, now. It will all work out. Let’s get you out of here and then we’ll deal with everything. I promise.” They kept climbing. She became more and more unglued.
Inside her head a battle raged: she could not have this baby and she could not abort the fetus. The moral dilemma she faced was as agonizing as the ordeal she had just survived. How would she tell her husband? What would he think of her? How could she reconcile an abortion with her unwavering belief that all life should be revered? What could she do?
Thoughts swirled inside her mind like pieces of food caught in a blender—they came out incomprehensible and mushy. She tried to ask how long she’d been down there but just forming the question presented incalculable problems in logic.
“How long …?” The thought went up like smoke.
“We’re almost there.”
“No—” Why wouldn’t they listen to her?
“You’ll be fine. Just a little further.”
What would she say to her husband? It’s me, the monster’s breeder bitch, back from hell? Lori-belle, back from hell, when her belly starts to swell … something.
“Lori!” A man’s voice boomed out from up above. She saw the detective smile and she pulled both hands loose, tearing away from them, doing the only thing she could do.
She was screaming before her feet left the cold concrete. In her burgeoning madness she’d seen only one way out and she’d taken it—over the high side of a parapet to her and her baby’s death far below.
Unfinished Business
Michael Garrett
Mark Hopson’s skin tingled with fear. His pulse soared to uncharted heights, his forehead damp with perspiration and eyelids twitching nervously. He fumbled with a mound of paper clips on his desk and stared blankly at his loose-leaf appointment calendar, reminding him of the employee he’d deliberately scheduled last. Efforts to calm himself through a series of deep breaths had proved fruitless.
Violence in the work place.
CNN cable coverage of business-related fatalities flashed through Mark’s mind—employees of an Oklahoma post office shot to death by a disgruntled co-worker. A New Jersey executive gutted and hanged by a respected office worker he’d fired a week earlier. A Florida sales manager permanently paralyzed from a knife wound inflicted by a terminated account executive.
Now, for the first time in his career, Mark faced a similar threat, and no one had listened. No one seemed to care. Relax, his own boss, John Russell, had told him. It’s an occupational hazard of the nineties. The odds of anything like that happening here are almost nil. But there was no way Mark Hopson could be calm. Not with Brett Hardiman remaining on the list to be fired—the only employee with a violent temper that Mark had ever had to let go.
Although Brett had earned an excellent reputation on the job, he had exhibited episodes of unprovoked aggression in his personal life. He’d roughed up his wife on several occasions, and only a couple of months earlier had severely beaten a man much larger than himself under the pretense of defending a waitress. Mark trembled at the thought of being the target of Brett’s potential rage.
Mark Hopson, the trembling, weak-kneed vice president of HammerStock Industries and presumed heir to the presidency, took a deep breath and exhaled. Having never experienced such an overwhelming premonition of impending doom, he straightened his necktie and drummed his fingertips on the polished mahogany surface of his desk. Convinced that his fear was not the least bit unwarranted, he groaned and ran his fingers through his hair. After all, Brett, the winner of the state-wide Tough Guy boxing tournament, had already been summoned, and was on his way to becoming an unemployment statistic. For Mark, the risk could be akin to spitting in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face.
Suddenly the telephone rang, jarring Mark’s train of thought. He snatched the receiver from its cradle, cringing at the sound of his boss’s gruff voice on the other end of the line. “Hopson?” the chief executive officer boomed. “Is it over yet?”
Mark swallowed hard. “No, sir. Not yet.” He paused, attempting to hide the noticeable quiver in his voice. “But won’t you reconsider posting a security guard outside my door? I’m really nervous about this one, sir.”
Mr. Russell just laughed. “Hell, Hopson, you’re paranoid. Hardiman has never laid a hand on anyone at work. Besides, if I could afford to hire security guards, maybe I wouldn’t have to get rid of these people in the first place.”
Mark cleared his throat and nervously twisted the telephone cord around his index finger. “But Mr. Russell, I’m willing to pay for a guard myself, for my own peace of mind, if you’ll just allow me—”
“Forget it, Hop
son,” Mr. Russell interrupted. “I won’t discuss this again. I don’t want anyone getting the impression that we have an unsafe work environment here. How the hell do you think the rest of the staff would react to an armed guard walking around for the first time ever?” He broke into a hacking cough, then added, “We’ve never needed a security force in the thirty-four-year history of this company and we’re not about to start now. Just do your goddam job like I told you to.”
The line crackled and the dial tone buzzed into Mark’s ear as Mr. Russell resorted to his famous phone-slamming tactic to terminate the call.
Mark’s pulse raced higher. More than anything he’d like to quit this job—it was affecting his health—but for the sake of his family’s welfare, he had no choice. All he could think about was Lisa and the kids, especially Randy, his second and most dependent child, who was afflicted with Down’s syndrome. Mark slowly shook his head. Working for the world’s most self-centered CEO had been a nightmare. But better positions were hard to come by in this day and age, and suffering the wrath of Mr. Russell was better than weekly visits to the unemployment office.
Still, Mark couldn’t help being saddened by the impact of today’s lay-off on the lives of his co-workers. He’d opposed the staff reduction from the beginning, suggesting more humane options for cutting expenses instead, but Mr. Russell—John Vincent Russell—had refused to back down. “Let ‘em go,” he’d growled. “It’s happening everywhere. It won’t come as a surprise.” And with a cruel smirk he’d added, “They’d better get used to it.”
And at least so far today, Mr. Russell had been right. The five employees Mark had fired already, two men and three women, appeared to have seen it coming. Only one had exhibited any hint of surprise at all. The others had sat in cold silence as if in a daze, their expressions pale, their eyes blank and lifeless.
