Colin: A Serial Killer Romance

by Stella Noir

  “Please sit back down, Abby.” His eyes burned into me as I stood there, slowly dismantling my remaining resolve with every second they held me in their gaze. I didn’t make a move to sit back down or look away from his stare or even blink. I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me. After what felt like an hour, but in reality probably only amounted to less than a minute, I decided to try and talk my way out of there instead of arguing with him. Maybe he would listen to reason if I pointed out how ridiculous this all was. He hadn’t struck me as an unreasonable man before. But that was before. Before he apparently turned into an insane person who was holding me against my will in this creepy old hospital.

  “You can’t keep me here, Jake. This is starting to feel pretty fucked up. What do you want from me? Couldn’t you just have texted me or sent me an email if you wanted to talk? I told you I needed some space but if you’d asked me I would have talked to you, you know that don’t you? I mean this is all kind of elaborate isn’t it?” I said as I gestured towards the door and the hospital ward that lay just beyond.

  “Ms. Scott. I’m going to have to insist that you sit back down or you will have to be sedated and restrained.”

  My mouth fell open and my eyes grew wide as I stood there with his words ringing in my ears.

  Sedated and restrained? Is he fucking kidding?

  I didn’t know what to do or say. I just continued to stare at him in shock as he slowly tapped his fingertips on the desk with a slight smirk on his face.

  “Please,” he said as he gestured toward the couch.

  I slowly sat back down, clutching my gown like it was some sort of life raft. It was literally the only form of a security blanket I had since I didn’t even know where my own clothes were.

  And holy shit where’s my car? I don’t even know what happened to my car.

  Up until I walked into this office, I had thought I was in a relatively normal, small-town hospital. Maybe with some renovation issues, but still, it seemed like a legitimate hospital. I’d had my doubts about the odd nurse and the food being drugged, but I had also written all that off to the effects of my nightmares and the creepy atmosphere. Now, I suddenly realized that this was all a lie or a game that had been carefully constructed by this lunatic sitting in front of me. I realized that talking to him as if he were Jake was getting me nowhere, so I figured I’d just go along with the doctor and patient game for a while. I didn’t feel like I had many other choices and was having a hard time concealing the fact that I was starting to feel like I was coming unglued.

  “Ok, so what happened to me? Can you tell me that?” I said with an edge to my voice that gave away the fact that I was on the verge of tears.

  “Do you mean the accident that brought you in here, or are you referring to your mental state before you arrived?”

  “Of course, I mean the accident! I didn’t have any problems before that! Mental or otherwise!”

  Oh God, Abby, get a grip! Don’t let him see that he is getting to you, I thought as I tried to regain my composure after raising my voice. I really didn’t want to lose control in front of Jake, in a hospital gown no less, while he literally held the key to my freedom. I took a deep breath and unclenched my fists then continued.

  “I…I mean…yes, that’s what I meant. I would just like to know what happened in the accident that brought me here. Were there any other people involved? Is my car ok?”

  “From what I understand, Abby, there were no other parties involved in the accident. You hit an elk on a dark, country road and rolled several times before coming to a stop up against a large tree. You were brought here in my private ambulance and I believe the county highway patrolman took care of your car.”

  Well, I guess that explains my confusion when I woke up here, I thought as I recalled that first morning, with flashes of an elk and paramedics and a woman on a stretcher. That was obviously me and I was being brought into this infernal private hospital.

  “Can I talk to the highway patrolman? Do you have his name or phone number?”

  “I’m sorry I don’t have that information in my records.”

  “Well, someone here must have it? The nurse that was on duty when I was admitted?”

  “I’m afraid no one is on duty at the moment, but I will check with the staff tomorrow.”

  “There’s no one else but you in this entire hospital right now? Not a single person? Not even that nurse that has been drifting into my room and feeding me…”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been clear enough with you about where you are, Abby.”

  “I’ll say.”

  I wished he’d stop saying my name. I’d loved hearing Jake say it before, but now it just sounded mocking and hollow.

  “This is a private hospital. The wing you have seen since you’ve been here is the basement level of my house. We are capable of catering to up to four individuals here at the clinic, but seldom have more than one visitor at a time and only part-time staff. We are located about twenty miles from the nearest town, and I own all the land for those twenty miles in each direction. I have created this place as not only a sanctuary for myself but also as one for patients that need the rest and recovery that can only be brought about by controlled isolation.”

  Controlled isolation. What the hell?

  My feelings of irritation and bewilderment with this game of his were turning to full-on panic.

  Did he actually think he could get away with holding me here against my will? I thought as I sat there and felt my heart sink into my stomach. I realized that I hadn’t said a word to anyone about going anywhere. I wanted to be alone and I didn’t want to be bothered by questions or gestures of sympathy. I figured maybe my boss at work would wonder where I was and call my cell phone a few times, but they sure as hell wouldn’t send out a search party. And Maxwell might wonder where I had disappeared to but I didn’t know if she’d take any action into her own hands since she was pretty preoccupied with her own life most of the time. I barely talked to my parents more than once a month so I was sure that they wouldn’t miss hearing from me for quite a while. I was notorious in my family for not being very good about phone calls or emails.

  Oh my God, no one knows where I am and no one’s going to come looking for me. This man is crazy. This man that I thought I knew is fucking out of his mind.

  I tried to think of anything I could say to him to get him to let me go?

  “Well, doctor, as you can see I’ve recovered from the accident. I don’t know what other recovery you have in mind, but I do need to get back to my job. I’m sure they will be wondering why I haven’t shown up or called for a week. Perhaps we could make an appointment to see each other on an outpatient basis.”

  The corners of his mouth started to curl again and my heart sank even further when I realized he wasn’t going to play the game my way. He had it all figured out in his head. It was his game, after all. He stood up and walked around his desk, stopping to lean on the front edge a few feet in front of me. He crossed one arm over his chest and rested the elbow of the other on it while rubbing his chin.

  “Your place of work has already been contacted, Abby. They’ve been told that you’re taking an indefinite leave of absence.”

  “Contacted? By who? They won’t just take a stranger’s word for it. That’s ridiculous!”

  “I had my nurse fax a letter from my office and they accepted it without question. I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear from you when you’ve recovered, though,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  I couldn’t look at his horrible face any longer. He just seemed to be standing there, mocking me and laughing at me.

  “According to my records, you were suffering from a breakdown when you were admitted, Abby. It’s my understanding that the accident was a direct result of your breakdown.”

  “According to your records.” I looked up at him again incredulously. “What records? Where are your records? Let me see the re…”

  “And…it is my recommendatio
n that you stay here for further observation and recovery.”

  “Your recommendation? So, if it’s just a recommendation then I’m free to leave, right?”

  He held my gaze with the coldest look I had ever seen in my life. He wasn’t going to let me go.

  “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Abby. It is my professional opinion that you could be a danger to yourself or others if you were to be released. I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that at this time.”

  The silence that filled the room as I looked into his eyes came crashing down on me. I couldn’t even hear a clock ticking or a faucet dripping or a whisper of the breeze that might have been rattling the leaves on the tree just outside the window behind the desk. I started to experience the same tunnel vision that had slowly blacked out everything in the perimeter of the room the night I left Jake. Everything was closing in on me and narrowing down to a small circle so that all I could see were those dark, gorgeous, cold, calculating, terrifying eyes. I could barely breathe. I was so furious and terrified and stunned that I was actually surprised that I was still sitting up at all, or capable of making a coherent thought or sentence. And on top of everything I pretty much wanted to kick myself all the way to China for still having a reaction to those fucking eyes. My mouth was dry and my head was swimming with everything that was happening, but I had to try one more time.

  “Look, Jake…”

  “That’s actually a topic we could start with right now, Abby. This ex-boyfriend of yours, Jake, is that his name? Tell me about Jake,” he said as he uncrossed his arms and rested them on the desk he was leaning on. He was still mere feet in front of me, towering over me as I sat there and stared at the floor, completely worn out and deflated.

  This was infuriating. Why was he doing this to me? Was he getting off on this? I was suddenly realizing that I had dodged a major bullet by breaking up with this psycho. But, what did he do that night? Did he follow me when I left his apartment, then bring me here to his hospital mansion in the woods after I got into an accident? I didn’t even know he had a fucking hospital mansion! Or did he cause the accident just so that he could bring me here?

  Good lord, this is really starting to sound like the plot in one of my romance novels.

  My head was still swimming and all I wanted to do was go back to my room. That horrible, creepy, cold-floored room was starting to sound pretty good to me. There was no way I could reason with this lunatic. All I could do at this point was hope that I would be able to talk some sense into him after a night of sleep, and that meant spending another night in this damned place, but I didn’t have a choice. I looked up at him and shrugged, asking with my body what the hell he wanted with his insidious stare.

  “We were talking about Jake. You were about to tell me about him. Please continue.”

  I laid my head back on the couch and closed my eyes. If he wanted to play this ridiculous game I was just going to have to go along with it for now. I needed some time to figure out how I was going to get out of here and I was just too weak to argue at this point.

  “Ok, what do you want to know?”

  “Why is he your ex-boyfriend?”

  “Because we broke up.”

  “Would you care to elaborate? I can’t really help you if you won’t let me, Abby.”

  I lifted my head off the back of the couch and narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Can you, at least, quit hovering over me like this?” I said, gesturing at his standing in front of the desk just a few feet away from me.

  “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

  I didn’t say anything and he got up from the edge of the desk where he had been leaning and walked around to sit in the chair behind it. I sighed deeply and looked at the books on the bookcase to the right of the couch. I would rather look at anything but him right now, even books with titles like Psychoneuroendocrine Dysfunction and Sin, Science, and the Sex Police: Essays on Sexology & Sexosophy. I didn’t really understand what kind of doctor this guy thought he was. He apparently took care of me after I got into the accident, but now he’s acting like he’s some kind of psychotherapist. But what if there never actually was an accident? I didn’t even know what to think anymore.

  “We broke up because I didn’t want to be in a relationship anymore. I was the one that broke it off. It was me, my problem. It had nothing to do with you…I mean him. Is that enough information?”

  “Can you tell me why you didn’t want to be in this relationship any longer?”

  I sighed deeply and closed my eyes.

  “Relationships end. There’s no mystery to it.”

  “Has this sort of thing happened to you before?”

  “What do you mean happened to me?”

  “Have you broken off a relationship before? Is that a common denominator in many of your previous relationships?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  I felt his eyes on me as I continued to stare at the books on the shelf. I was suddenly getting very tired of talking about my private life with this lunatic. Not that I had enjoyed it earlier, but now he was starting to hit a nerve and I didn’t like it one bit. Yes, I had broken up with a couple of previous boyfriends, but I most definitely hadn’t ended every relationship, that’s for sure. I knew I had issues and had a tendency to leave when things started to get serious, but everyone had their flaws. I was still young and I didn’t think there was any reason for me to tie myself down just then. And I didn’t need to explain my actions to anyone, especially not this asshole who thought he had the right to kidnap me and pretend to be my doctor just because he hadn’t gotten his way. I finally got the courage to look at him in the eyes again.

  “I’d like to go to my room now. I had a suitcase with me in my car. It has my clothes and things I need in it. Is it here in the hospital?”

  He smiled that barely perceptible smile again and looked down at his hands.

  “I’ll check with the next shift nurse when she gets in. Is there anything I can bring you in the meantime?”

  I glared at him for a few seconds longer than was necessary, then stood up to leave.

  “No.”

  “Then let me show you back to your room…” he said as he came around the desk and reached for my arm. I pulled away from him and backed up a few steps.

  “I can find my own way back, thanks.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist, Abby. I can’t have patients just roaming the halls on their own. There are many things that can pose significant danger within these walls,” he said as he moved closer to me, reaching his hand up to the side of my face. I froze for a moment as he moved his head down closer to mine, running his thumb over my lips and cheek and gripping my head like he was about to kiss me. I was suddenly paralyzed by his gaze and couldn’t move away. His dark eyes were boring into me as his face grew closer and I felt his hot breath close in on my lips. I tried to take another step away from him but the couch was right behind me and his towering body seemed to have me surrounded. Just then I felt a sharp pain in my arm and the room slowly dropped away underneath me.

  5

  ABBY

  I woke up in a daze, with sunlight streaming through the window, but no idea what time it was. My lips and mouth were incredibly dry and I licked them futilely, only succeeding in briefly getting my tongue stuck to my lower lip. I tried to sit up but my head was pounding so I slunk back down under the covers, deciding that it would be best to stay where I was for a little while longer.

  I just lay there, rubbing my temples and trying to remember what had happened the previous night. My head felt like it was filled with molasses and I was having a hard time forming any kind of image of what had taken place at all yesterday afternoon, or why it was that I felt so incredibly rotten. Suddenly, my eyes flew open and a flash of anger seared through my chest as I remembered.

  Jake! I’m being held in this horrible hospital by him, I thought as the events from the previous day slowly leaked back into my consciousness. I just cou
ldn’t believe that Jake had kidnapped me and was pretending that he was a doctor. Well, honestly, for all I knew about him, he might have really been a doctor, but he had told me that he was the CEO of some tech company that had offices downtown. I admittedly didn’t know much about that part of his life, but he had never volunteered much information and I had never been that compelled to ask. I loved the person he was, not the job he had. And to be honest, I had never told him what kind of novels I wrote, I think mostly because I still felt like a bit of a fraud. I guess we had both been keeping things from each other. I realized that communication wasn’t really my strong suit, but I had never lied to him or tried to trick him like he was doing to me. A wave of sadness swept over me and my heart sank while thoughts of my childhood came flooding back to me and my eyes flooded with tears.

  How could he do this to me? How could he treat me like they did?

  I curled up into a ball as flashes of the cruel kids in eighth grade came back to me and I turned and wept into my pillow. I wasn’t a child anymore, so why did a trick some horrible kids played on me ten years ago still make me so sad? And why were all of these horrible memories flooding back to me in this hospital? This place is seriously bringing up things that, as far as I was concerned, were way better off left in the past. It had been a long time since I had thought about those awful kids and I guess I hadn’t really gotten over the pain.

  I thought it was true. I thought that when I had been asked out on a date by one of the most popular boys in the class that I had finally been accepted by the cool kids. I was so excited that a boy really liked me, and in those few moments when I believed that we were really going to go out on a date my mind raced. I sat at my desk and imagined the date and the first kiss and then hanging out with the cool people throughout the rest of the year and into high school. I pictured myself standing with them at my locker and laughing as we walked down the hall together, talking about cool kid stuff. I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore or feel like such a freak. Then the harsh reality came crashing down when I heard them all laughing in the back of the room, but not right away. I thought to myself that someone must have told a joke, or said something about the teacher, anything just so that they weren’t laughing at me. But then he came up to me. He actually came up to me where I was sitting in class and said it out loud.