by T. C. Clover
security team isn’t afraid of the dark,” she challenged with an expression of annoyance at her colleagues. “Would you guys mind checking for spiders down there?” The plumber joked as she placed her hands on her hips over a pair of gray coveralls.
“Would you like a bottle of water?” The homeowner suggested and pointed to the entrance of a kitchen in the next room.
“I would love a bottle of water, Mr. Woolsy,” she responded with a hearty smile and teased her blonde hair, reaching back to adjust the ponytail. “Just lead the way.”
“The water heater is down those stairs and to the right,” Aron instructed Kevin with a lackadaisical wave of his left hand. “Do either of you want a bottle of water?”
“No, we’re fine,” Kevin answered with impatience as he approached a light blue door just six feet in front of the entryway. “Keep an eye on her,” he said to William in a whisper.
Litz walked through the interior of the townhouse with an attitude of optimism. She admired the white walls with pink seashells airbrushed on their surface, and the door frames painted in bright orange. The entire home was carpeted in a thick gray shag material, save for the white tiles near the entryway. There was modest furniture in the living room made of cherry wood. A darkly stained coffee table was positioned in front of a tan sofa, and it faced a seventy-two-inch television mounted on the opposite wall. Two end tables were on either side of the sofa, both matching the coffee table in design and color. There was also an odd, black, old-fashioned weight bench at the far end of the room.
The considerate plumber followed her customer through a sizeable orange door frame that led to a quaint kitchen. He walked over to a black side-by-side refrigerator and retrieved two bottles of water from the door on the right. Litz found Aron’s kitchen to be unremarkable, save for an orange countertop and a medieval mace mounted on the wall above the cherry wood kitchen table. She admired her host’s high school charm as he stepped over to the table and set down the bottle of water. The table featured six matching cherry wood chairs, which was the same material used for the kitchen cabinets. All of the appliances were black and seemed to be new.
“So how is your TV show going?” The cheerful man prompted as he snapped the cap from his water bottle and took a drink. “You seem like quite a character.”
Litz was about to answer when she heard the sound of a body tumbling downstairs in the next room. She felt a spike of fear travel down her spine and turned to see William standing in the entryway.
The security guard held up his right hand toward Litz and moved closer to the entrance of the basement staircase.
“Kevin, are you okay?” William inquired with blind reverence to the darkness as he began to descend the staircase for a better view.
“Is everything okay?” Aron prompted with a worried look and moved his face closer to Litz.
The vulnerable woman jumped back and grabbed her chest after the man invaded her space without making a sound. She exhaled in exasperation and took another step backward near the wall of the kitchen. When she realized that there was no danger, Litz nodded and smiled at the homeowner. Her chest was thumping with irregular heartbeats, and she sensed that perspiration was about to come on from her fever. She turned her head to the left, waiting for William to make an appearance at the top of the stairs, or for any signs of Kevin.
Litz turned her head to the right to speak with the customer and got a glimpse of his powerful fist careening through the air toward her jaw. She felt hot pressure on the left side of her face, and her body slammed against the wall like a truck had hit her from the front. The young woman detected instant pain in her neck and shoulders. It seemed like the man was trying to remove her head with one punch. She turned over onto her right side and watched Aron run over to the basement door and slam it shut. There was no sign of Kevin or William when her vision blacked out.
“One punch, one punch,” Litz overheard a man repeating when she awoke to find herself lying on something soft. “Punchy, punchy. Punchy, punchy. One punch, one punch.” She took a moment to inventory the pain in her body, which included a terrible headache, a throbbing jaw, and ringing in her left ear. “Punchy, punchy. Punchy, punchy. One punch.” The man’s voice seemed close, but she couldn’t be certain with the ringing in her ear.
Litz opened her eyes to find herself face to face with the tattooed brown-haired predator. She detected bindings on her hands made with something elastic, and her coveralls were gone. The disoriented woman became horrified when she discovered that Aron had stripped her down to a red bra and panty set, and tied her up with bungee cords. Her captor was snuggled up beside her with a vindictive sneer of triumph on his well-groomed face.
She glanced around the bedroom and wondered if they were upstairs. There was a tall oak dresser near the wall, which was tan-stained like the rest of the furniture in the room. The concerned woman felt a chill on her bare skin and saw a large mirror mounted on the wall behind her assailant. An oak chest of drawers was next to the wall under the mirror. There was a ragged green sweater on top of the unit with a framed photograph of a young blonde woman nestled within its folds. The picture frame was a cheap, tacky bronze color and the glass was dustier than anything else in the room.
Litz turned her chin downward to look at a pair of glass closet doors just beyond the foot of the bed, but the man jabbed her twice with his right hand in the mouth.
“Punchy, punchy,” Aron announced when his fist connected with the jaw of his captive. “Punchy, punchy,” he repeated in a reserved tone of voice, striking Litz with less force on her left eye and the side of her head.
“Ow, stop doing that!” She complained when her face began to report a plethora of new pain. “What the hell?” The half-naked plumber protested, but her cries inspired a new combination of punches and she decided to remain quiet.
After delivering another four blows to the face of his attractive blonde victim, Aron snuggled up close to her. His body pressed up against her right side, and he put his face close enough to Litz’s head to hear her breathing. The man seemed to enjoy the frustrated sounds that she made when he hit her with varying degrees of force. Aron grinned in silence and observed her movements as though he were waiting for her to cry.
“Punchy, punchy.” He taunted his captive in a whisper and watched her head shake back and forth in disagreement. “Punchy, punchy,” Aron threatened in a louder voice as he delivered another four punches to the face of the television star.
Litz held back a flood of despair as the brutality visited on her nose and eyes was causing tissue damage by the stone-like knuckles of the man. After a few seconds, she felt a small stream of blood and snot trickle from the left side of her nose.
Aron stopped hitting her and snuggled up closer to the restrained woman, waiting for her to break down.
The terrified plumber didn't want to consider what his attack was doing to her face. She recognized his disturbing pattern of violence and knew that the next round was coming soon. Her fingers detected a loose steel hook near her bare belly button, and the tenacious blonde was careful to maneuver the hook out from under the lengths of bungee cord. Litz closed her eyes and gritted her teeth in anticipation of another beating, but somehow Aron was uninterested in hitting someone that was prepared. Her hands fumbled through the loops of heavy-duty elastic cord, and she dropped the steel hook.
Aron delivered another series of four blows to her face; each of them softer and more targeted than before. He seemed to be toying with Litz and trying to build her disenchantment to a level that was acceptable to him.
Litz attempted to remain silent during this round of abuse, but she couldn’t help groaning in disdain. Her nose and eyes were becoming red and raw from the constant barrage of violence, and the man was picking some tender targets. While his punches were landing, she worked the bungee cords with eager hands and maintained a stoic face. The television star was delighted
when the bindings came loose from her lower torso, and then she ripped off the bindings from her upper thighs in one motion.
When he saw this movement, the muscular man’s eyes seemed like hateful blue orbs that one might see on a predatory lizard. He swung down with the jackhammer that was his right hand, forcing Litz to use her arms and abdominal muscles to avoid the punch. His fist crumpled the white pillow next to her head, and Litz used her right arm to elbow him in the center of his back.
Her counterattack added to the momentum of his body, and the muscular psychopath fell forward with his face on the pillows. Litz leapt from the bed and began to look around the room, but she was dizzy from the assault and had to freeze in place. The lightheaded woman took in a deep breath and grabbed her knees, trying to stabilize the spinning motion that she felt.
Aron shot up out of the bed like a bull with a rider on its back. He came toward her with a face of hunger that she had only seen before on trolls in books as a child. The man swung his anvil hand at her again, and she jumped to the right, which caused him to strike the center of the large mirror.
The spirited blonde grabbed her ears and put her head down when shards of glass exploded all over the room from his punch. Her mind
