15
When Ron regained consciousness he was pissed, but I didn’t care. He could get as mad as he wanted, scream as loud as he liked, but there was no way he was getting off of that table.
“You fucking bitch,” he yelled.
“Now is that any way to talk to the woman you love?”
“Let me up.”
“No.”
“If you let me up right now, I’ll let you live.”
I tilted my head and pretended to think. “How about I keep you where you are, and I still live? Yeah. Let’s do that.”
It was obvious that my sarcasm only made him angrier, which was precisely the point. His nostrils flared and spit flew from his mouth as he spoke.
“I’m warning you, Nicole. You do not want to do this to me.”
“I’m pretty sure I do.”
“Nicole, let me up from this table. We can be great together.”
Trembling on the inside, I stood several feet away from Ron, afraid that if I got too close, he’d reach out and grab me.
His head was turned, his wide eyes staring at me, full of hate.
“Imagine the things we could do together. Just you and me. The stories we could tell. The fun we could have. Think of it, Nicole.”
Without saying a word, I turned and walked away, making sure to pound each step as I left the basement. I wanted him to feel the sinking feeling that came with the sound of retreating footsteps, wanted him to feel the loneliness that came from being left alone in the dark, defenseless and scared, not knowing what was in store.
At the top of the stairs, I flicked the switch on the wall and darkness filled the basement. To the sound of Ron shouting my name, I slammed the door shut.
I stood on the other side of the door shaking and congratulating myself on having the courage to do what I had done. I was proud that I’d maintained a level head, kept my wits about me, and was able to think quickly in a situation as frightening and stressful as that one. But I could never let it happen again. Next time, I may not be lucky enough to turn around before Ron got to me. I had to stay on my toes from now on.
From the dining room, I quickly brought in a chair to wedge under the doorknob. Just in case Ron managed to get off the table, I didn’t want him to be able to get out of the basement.
When the door was secure, I went through the whole house—both levels—locking doors and windows and pulling the drapes closed. When finished, I plopped down on the couch in the living room, but then I began to worry. I hadn’t noticed a door leading from the basement to outside, but what if there was one? What if Ron got off the table, went outside, got a spare key from a fake rock or under the WELCOME mat, and slipped into the house while I slept?
Worried that my fears would actually happen, I went out the front door, checked over the door, under the mat, under the potted plants, under every rock I could find, but found no spare key.
I then went back inside, locked the door behind me, and headed out the back door to do the same thing. Sure enough, under one of the potted plants on the deck I found a spare key. I took it in the house, locked the door behind me, and put the key in a kitchen drawer.
Just in case.
My nerves were shot, and my hands were still shaking uncontrollably. There was no way I’d be able to sleep, so I went in the kitchen and looked for something to take the edge off.
Seeing as I was in Ron’s house, I trusted nothing. No open containers for sure, even though I doubted that anything upstairs was tainted. I’d learned that upstairs was Ron’s house, his home. He kept his upstairs life and his basement life separate. But still, I decided it was best to play it safe.
I found a sealed bottle of wine in the wine rack. After opening it, I poured some in a glass and carried both it and the bottle into the living room. Settling onto the couch, I drank the wine and tried to pretend I was anywhere other than Ron’s house.
It took two glasses of wine to stop the trembling in my hands. It took another two to calm me down, and another one to make my eyelids droop. I left the glass and the bottle on the coffee table and curled up on the couch. Even with my shoes on and no blanket to cover myself, I fell asleep quickly, Taser clutch in my hands.
∞
It was a nightmare that woke me. In it, I hadn’t turned around in time to catch Ron sneaking up on met. Before I was even aware of his presence, he had wrapped his hands around my throat, squeezing the breath out of me as he dragged me across the room. I woke with my fists flailing as I tried to fight him off and keep from being bound to that table.
When I realized that I was safe on the couch upstairs and there was no sign of Ron, I relaxed and caught my breath.
According to the clock on the wall, it was a quarter to eight.
Considering where I was and what was happening, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to be hungry, but my stomach rumbled loudly and it wouldn’t be ignored.
Ron was a lot of things. He was a sadist, a kidnapper, a necrophile, a rapist, and a murder enthusiast. Fortunately he was also a great chef with an immaculate house. His kitchen was fully stocked, the pantry filled to the brim with every ingredient I could possibly need to make hundreds of dinners and every utensil I would need to prepare them.
However all I wanted was eggs.
It took a little while to familiarize myself with the kitchen and find everything I needed, but once I did, it didn’t take long to fry up a couple of eggs and slather some pats of butter on two pieces of toast. I washed it all down with a glass of cold milk while sitting on one of the stools at the breakfast bar.
Once the roar in my stomach had been silenced, my appetite satisfied for the time being, I put the dishes in the sink. From the living room, I brought in the wine bottle and glass and put them where they belonged.
I wasn’t quite ready to head downstairs yet and deal with Ron. It was too early in the day and my breakfast hadn’t even settled yet. I needed some time to prepare myself before facing him.
In the meantime, I went into the study which Ron used as an office. It was small, located just off the living room. The only furniture was a clutter-free desk and matching chair, and a bookshelf lined with copies of his own books.
On the center of his desk was a laptop. I went directly to it and pressed the power button. While it booted, I looked through the desk, searching drawers for notes or anything else I might find of use, but there was nothing other than blank pads of sticky notes, empty notebooks, and a handful of red, black, and blue ink pens.
The only item in the desk that I found to be even remotely incriminating was a calendar filled with notes written in small, precise letters.
I studied the pages of the calendar, trying to make sense of the notes. Since I knew Ron and knew the types of things he did in his basement, it was easy for me to determine that the initials were for women he’d taken into his house. A capital R followed by a period. A capital T. A capital B. All initials of women.
Beneath their names, there were words written in lower case and marked with no punctuation.
Way back on the thirteenth of March, Ron had written the letter C. Beneath that were the words glued eyes. My blood ran cold as I stared at those letters, and suddenly I wished I’d never looked at the damn calendar.
The next day, the fourteenth of March, the woman’s initial was absent, but the lowercase words were there; sex followed by nose ring and teeth. I didn’t need a codebreaker to know what those words meant. They were notes of the things he’d done to the women that had the misfortune to find themselves in his basement.
I could easily imagine what he’d done regarding this particular woman’s nose ring. I’d once witnessed him rip out a woman’s piercings—all of them—one at a time. And he wasn’t gentle about it.
As for the woman’s teeth, it was no stretch of the imagination to figure that he’d plucked them from her gums with pliers or some other tool. Or perhaps he’d knocked them out of her mouth, maybe with a hammer. Either way, it wouldn’t have b
een a pleasant experience for her. I could almost hear her screams as she was pushed over that line, the point where she stopped begging for her life and started hoping for death.
Unable to read any more of the disgusting diary of Ron’s crimes, I placed the calendar on the desk next to the laptop, which was now booted up and ready to go.
On the computer’s desktop was a file entitled WORK. I clicked on it, which opened up a dialog box that contained a list of files, arranged alphabetically. I scanned the list but wasn’t entirely sure of what I was looking at until I saw the word HELD. I knew then that these were his books, books that Ron had written. There were fifteen in all.
Even more disturbing than the number of books he’d already written was a file called NOTES. I moved the cursor until it hovered above the file, but I couldn’t bring myself to click on it. Not yet. I knew that it would contain a much more detailed version of the calendar, grisly accounts of things he’d done. I wasn’t ready to see that.
The fact that such a file existed suggested that he had no plans of stopping any time soon, and it erased any lingering doubts I had about whether or not I was doing the right thing. I now knew for sure that I was.
I found the file with the most recent date last modified and clicked to open it.
While it loaded on the screen, I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the words I was about to read. But honestly, would I ever really be prepared to read something like that?
When the file was ready, my eyes began scanning the words and I knew immediately that I would be skipping lunch.
16
Whatever Nicole was doing that was keeping her was not nearly as important as what she should’ve been doing, which was tending to Ron and his needs. For example, he needed to relieve himself but he couldn’t because he was still strapped to the table, a metal table that attracted the coolness of the basement and chilled him to the bone.
In addition to that, his back ached, his head was pounding, and the circulation was cut off to his hands and feet just enough to cause a prickly sensation that was unpleasant at best.
Ron had expected Nicole to come down to the basement first thing to see him, but as best as he could tell, it was late morning and she still hadn’t appeared. The thought crossed his mind that she had left him for good, that she’d strapped him to the table and left him to die alone, nearly naked and with a full bladder.
But she wouldn’t do that. Not to him. Not to the man who loved her.
So then the question was if she hadn’t left the house, what was she doing that was keeping her from him?
The obvious answer to that question was that she was nosing through his personal things. It infuriated him to imagine her, his beloved Nicole, intruding upon his privacy, reading things she shouldn’t read and seeing things she shouldn’t see. Fortunately, he was a man of few possessions. He had never kept souvenirs of any kind, and not just because he wasn’t the sentimental type. In the event that he ever fell under the suspicion of the police, he wanted there to be no evidence whatsoever to support their claims. Souvenirs equaled evidence. But even though there was very little for her to find, she should not be sorting through his things. It was beyond rude, and if he ever found out that she had in fact snooped, there would be hell to pay.
Left with no other choice, Ron closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It was the only thing he could do to try to take his mind off his discomfort and pass the time.
It was quite a while later before the overhead lights flicked on and he heard the sound of Nicole’s footsteps as she came down the stairs.
He wanted to yell at her, to scream and call her a filthy fucking bitch, but he refrained. It was common knowledge that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.
“Good morning, Nicole,” he said with a smile as she approached the table. “Or is it afternoon?”
She walked right up to the table, stood next to it, and glared down at him.
“What’s the matter? You look angry.”
In a flash, she drew back her hand and slapped him across the face.
Ron clenched his jaw to keep from screaming at her.
“What was that for, may I ask?”
“For being the sick fuck that you are.”
“Now, Nicole. Such language isn’t becoming on a woman.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’d be happy to. If only you’d let me off this table. Or I suppose I could still get the job done if you’d climb up here with me.” He smiled and winked, offering up his best flirtations.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“And why is that, exactly?”
“Because you have to be stopped and apparently I’m the only one with balls enough to do it.”
“What do you mean you’re the only one? Have others tried?”
He could see her weighing her words, deciding whether or not she should say anything more.
“I went to the police about you.”
Ron raised his eyebrows. “Did you now?”
“I did.”
“Interesting. That must not have worked out well for you because I certainly don’t see any police officers here. What did they say?” He was curious to know. So far, he gathered from her demeanor about the subject that they’d blown her off. At least that’s what he hoped had happened.
“They couldn’t find you. They sure as hell didn’t try too hard either.”
“Well now, Nicole,” he chastised. “Police officers are busy people. There’s a lot of crime in this city that needs their immediate attention. They don’t have time to run down every story told to them by some delusional woman. No matter how pretty she is.”
She said nothing, just stared at him with hate in her eyes.
“Nicole, if you could be a dear, I really do need to relieve myself. I’ve been holding it for quite some time now, and as you may or may not know, that really isn’t healthy. It’s not good for the bladder. So if you don’t mind, I would love to use the restroom.”
She smirked. “I bet you would.”
He looked at her quizzically. “What does that mean? Are you not going to let me up so I can relieve myself?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Well how am I supposed to go?”
Nicole shrugged. “I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass. You can either hold it until your bladder bursts or you can piss on yourself. The choice is yours.”
“Nicole, have I not been nice to you ever since you broke into my home and began holding me captive? Have I not treated you with respect and kindness?”
“Need I remind you of all the things you did to me? Because I can. I’ve got nowhere to be and a long list of grievances.”
“But that was before. It’s all in the past. This is now. And now I have treated you with kindness.”
“Kindness? Had I not turned around when I did yesterday, you would’ve killed me.”
“Now that’s an unfair assumption on your part. I’ve done nothing to give you reason to believe I would’ve killed you. If I wanted you dead, Nicole, I could’ve done it long before now. I could’ve done it when I had you in my home the last time. Or I could’ve done it on any number of days since you ran out my front door. It’s not like I didn’t know where to find you. I didn’t kill you because I didn’t want to kill you. I didn’t want you dead, Nicole. I still don’t.” He wanted to say add yet to that sentence, but he held it in and kept it to himself.
“If killing me was so easy to do, you should’ve done it. Because I’m here now, and I’m not leaving until you’re no longer alive. That’s a promise you can believe in.”
For a moment, Ron was struck speechless. He could tell from her demeanor that she meant what she said. Even without the serious tone, her words were easy enough to interpret. What he couldn’t understand though was why she would feel that way. Why would she hate him so much when all he’d ever done was love her? It was a mystery to him, a puzzle that he was determined to solve.
T
rying to keep control of the situation, he changed the direction of the conversation.
“I see you haven’t lost that spunk that I love so much.”
She turned and walked away, slowly drifting over to the wall of tools that hung above the work table.
“You know,” Ron said, trying to keep her attention away from the tools. “It was your attitude and lively spirit that attracted me to you in the beginning. Like a moth to a flame, I was drawn to you, Nicole. I always have been. I suppose I always will be.”
“Lively spirit, huh?” she asked without turning to face him. She pulled a tool off the wall, but from his position behind her, he couldn’t see which one she had chosen.
“Yes. I found your quick wit to be stimulating. Conversations with you were always such a joy for me. You have no idea just how much I pleasure I obtained from playing the many games of cards with you, from eating all those meals across the table from you, and from your company in general. I’ve certainly missed you, Nicole, and I’m ecstatic that you’re back.”
“You shouldn’t be, Ron.”
“Why is that?”
She whirled around to face him.
“Because I’m going to kill you.”
It was then that he saw which tool she had chosen. She held it tightly in her hands with a determined look on her face.
17
It felt good to watch Ron’s eyes grow wide as he noticed the belt sander I was holding. It shouldn’t have felt good, but it did. I certainly didn’t enjoy instilling fear into another person, but this was Ron. He didn’t count as another person. He was a monster who deserved to be frightened.
“What are you planning to do with that, Nicole?” His question was directed at me, but his eyes remained on the sander.
“Well the way I see it, you can’t be trusted. You proved that yesterday when I turned around to find you sneaking up on me. I’d left you upstairs, positive that you couldn’t get free. Yet you did. So to keep something like that from happening again, I’m going to take preventive measures.”
Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) Page 27
