by Willow Rose
The woman had brought her magazines and books about having a child and every Wednesday she listened to a radio-show where some expert answered questions about having a child and bringing them up. That helped her along the way but there were days she would break down and cry, thinking how much easier it would have been if she had someone to ask, someone to help her when things got rough, when the sleepless nights were too many and the room too small. She cursed the fact that she had nowhere to run when the baby had cried for hours and she couldn't escape it. Some days she would bang at the iron door again, in desperation and frustration. Those were the really bad days. Other days turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Those were the days when she never even thought about being locked in, when all she could do was stare at her baby, while breastfeeding him, stroking him gently across his soft hair, smelling him, loving him like no other she had ever loved before. This was unique, she had realized and she had never thought it was possible to love someone this much. But she did. And as the years went by, they grew very close and like any mother Astrid started dreaming of giving him the world. She wanted him to be able to go for a swim in the ocean like the boys in the book the lady had given them to read, the one he cherished so much and wanted her to read to him every night. Astrid wanted him to have everything a normal kid had and it tormented her that she couldn't, that she was unable to give him everything he wanted. As he grew older, the questions multiplied.
"What's beyond that door, Mommy?"
"Why can't we go out of it?"
"Who's that lady giving us food?"
And on and on. Every year it grew worse. Soon Astrid couldn't avoid them any longer. Soon she would have to tell him the truth. She knew that and had decided that today was the day. It was his fourth birthday and he was beginning to understand more and more. So far she had been just teaching him letters and numbers and talking about the world outside, naming the countries and showing maps of where they lived. She had begun teaching him how to write and read and some math and he was really getting good at it. He was a smart kid and he deserved to know the truth.
"So Sebastian," she said while they ate their food. Sebastian wasn't looking at her. He was playing with one of his spiders. Ever since he had been able to walk he had been catching spiders in the bunker, keeping them as pets, playing with them like they were toys. They were the only animals he had ever encountered. The only animal able to get in and out of the bunker either under the door or through the ventilation shaft.
"Sebastian?" she said again.
Finally he looked up. The spider sat on top of his hand. Astrid had never liked spiders much and it always made her jump when he had them on his body. Sometimes he would even have them sitting on his face. It was natural for him.
"Yes, Mommy?"
Astrid sighed deeply and looked at her boy. That beautiful creature that had changed her life completely. The only light in her darkness. She exhaled again and then she told him everything. She told him how they were being kept from the world, trapped by that lady who brought them food, she told him about his father and how she had loved him and about how he should try to escape if she ever died and the door was opened.
"If the door opens and you have the chance, you run." She grabbed his chin and turned his head to have him look at her. "Do you hear me? You run, Sebastian. Run all you can, don't let anyone stop you. And don't talk to anyone, don't tell them who you are or where you're from. Do you promise me that, son?"
"Yes Mommy."
29
2012
Pastor Gotfredsen sighed, annoyed. He was sitting at the dinner table, reading his newspaper that was filled with stories about the death of Irene Justesen, the Queen of Fitness.
"Like she was ever queen of anything," he mumbled to himself and used his fork to pick up another piece of steak. It had been cooked too long and tasted horrible. The pastor shook his head while trying to chew the dry piece of meat.
"Melody!" he yelled.
The small woman came running through the door and stood with her head bowed in front of him. "You called?"
"You called sir," he corrected her.
"Excuse me, excuse me, you called sir."
"Yes. Well, this meat is not edible. I doubt it is even suited for humans anymore the way you cooked it. Is that the way you cook your meat in the Philippines, Melody?"
She shook her head. "No sir. Had no meat, sir."
"Very well then, but you need to do a little better from now on. I have my eyes on you, Melody. You don't want to go back in the hole now do you?"
Melody shook her head heavily with a wimp. "No sir. Not the hole sir. I'll be better. Promise, sir." The small dark woman kept bowing as she walked backwards out the door. Pastor Gotfredsen snorted. He was sick of that woman. Could never manage to get the meat cooked right, or the shirts ironed properly. He would have to replace her in the morning. About time someone else had the chance to wait on him. Pastor Gotfredsen finished his meal, even the meat since it was a damn waste to just leave it there. He tried to read his paper without reading the stories about the Queen of Fitness. But it was impossible. Almost everything was about her, her life, her career, her death that the police thought was a murder, but said they had no leads, not yet.
Pastor Gotfredsen didn't care who killed that woman. He was thrilled she was dead. Got what she deserved. But it did worry him slightly, all these deaths on the island. He couldn't help thinking that ... no that's just silly. Just an old man and his paranoid thoughts. Stop doing this to yourself.
Pastor Gotfredsen got up from his chair with a sigh, then walked to the living room where his coffee and brandy waited on the table next to his favorite chair. Just the way she knew he liked it. He sat down and drank some of the brandy to try and drown out his worrying thoughts.
You old fool. You're happy that Mrs. Heinrichsen is gone. Now you have it all to yourself, don't you?
It was the truth. He was happy she wasn't there anymore. She had been too powerful for many years. And he had let her, hadn't he? It was in some way his own fault. He was after all the pastor in a Lutheran church, but people from Home Mission had been too widely represented in the church back in the day when he arrived here, and little by little they took it all over, didn't they? As soon as Mrs. Heinrichsen put her fat butt in the seat of the Parish Council and she was made a chairman, pastor Gotfredsen never had much to say anymore. She even corrected his sermons. Went through them with a freaking red pen every Saturday night.
But you never asked her to stop, did you? You never refused her the right to do it, did you?
Mrs. Heinrichsen had a way to make people do as she told them to. No matter what. It was in her voice, her look, such authority.
Pastor Gotfredsen hadn't been strong. He had given up resisting her power and found his own niche working for God. He was helping poor asylum seekers who were being kicked out of the country. He had taken them in, given them a home and hid them from the government. Not only that, he gave them a job. They worked for him.
Pastor Gotfredsen sipped the coffee. Then he exhaled deeply. "MELODY!"
The small lady stormed through the door. She bowed heavily and looked at the floor.
"This coffee is too cold!"
"I'm sorry, sir. Let me warm it up for you."
"No. This is it Melody. I've had it with you." Pastor Gotfredsen grabbed the woman's arm and pulled her through the door into the kitchen. She was crying and pleading.
"Please no sir. I be better. I be better now."
But Gotfredsen had heard that too many times before. It was all about setting an example, teaching them, disciplining them, how else were they ever going to get by in this world? Those people coming to the country were so stupid, so naive and undereducated.
Pastor Gotfredsen opened the hatch in the kitchen floor. There was turmoil, someone yelled. Hundreds of brown faces looked up at him.
"Please no!" Melody cried but it wasn't enough. Pastor Gotfredsen threw her down to the others, and they gr
abbed her. Many faces stared at him with expectation. Pastor Gotfredsen pointed at one.
"You. You there. Come up here."
A set of bright white teeth in a dark and dirty face lit up in the darkness. Pastor Gotfredsen reached down and gave her a hand, then he pulled her up and closed the hatch behind them.
The woman looked at him, then at the floor. "Thank you, sir. Thank you."
Pastor Gotfredsen snorted. "Go and clean yourself up, take a shower, then come into my bedroom."
30
2012
The new girl tasted good. After her shower Gotfredsen had taken her to his bedroom and tied her down with rope. Her eyes were kindled with fear. Her lips shivering with angst. She was from Ethiopia. Been in Denmark two years in one of the camps where they waited till they got the answer from the government whether they got to stay or not. Her entire family was killed in her home country. Nothing there for her to go back to. Only death. But it didn't matter. Anisa still got rejected. She had to go back, they told her. It didn't matter that she had spent the last of her money to be transported in a container on a ship for weeks just to be put in a truck with hundreds of others and transported through Europe almost being killed trying to get here.
Gotfredsen remembered when she arrived at his house. Like most of them it was in the middle of the night. It was the same story. She couldn't go back because she would be killed. Gotfredsen understood that and told her that he would take care of her, while giving her a Coke and a smile in his kitchen. The people bringing her in their van were workers at the Red Cross asylum center. Gotfredsen knew most of them by now after all of these years helping these poor people out. They trusted him and he trusted them. The people they brought to his house he would keep safe for a couple of years, then smuggle them across the border to a man he knew in Germany who would take them in and ... well Gotfredsen didn't actually know what happened to them after that, but at least they weren't sent back.
He smelled Anisa's skin again and started licking the inside of her leg. She was moaning carefully, like she expected him to get rough with her any moment now.
"It's okay," he whispered and put a finger inside of her. Still a virgin. Gotfredsen smiled satisfied. It was rare he got them this young, what was she fourteen? Fifteen? Who knew. It was hard to tell with their brown faces. It didn't matter.
But this one was special. He was going to keep her with him for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe even months. It was rare to get such a pure girl just for himself.
"Please mister," she said.
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. The rope was hurting her hands, he could tell it had scraped off some of her skin on the wrists. It turned him on. The way she was lying in his bed completely defenseless, turned him on so much he could hardly bear it. She tried to speak again, but Gotfredsen put his hand over her mouth. She tried to scream but there was nothing but muffled grunting.
"There, there," he whispered in her ear while licking it. "I'll take good care of you. Just relax and enjoy."
His words made her fight even more. Gotfredsen watched as she tried to squirm out of his arms and pull her hands from the ropes. She was kicking and screaming underneath him. Then he laughed. He enjoyed watching them fight for it, it was one of his greater pleasures.
She was tight, even tighter than expected and Gotfredsen closed his eyes in delight as he made her a woman. When he opened his eyes again to better look at her while she was fighting him, he noticed a small spider sitting on the wall behind her. He groaned and moaned as he pressed himself further inside of her and she screamed muffled underneath him, but he found it hard to enjoy it properly. The spider irritated him. Gotfredsen growled and tried to close his eyes so he didn't see it. It didn't help. Just knowing it was there annoyed him.
He had always hated spiders. Ever since he was a young kid he had detested them. He used to pick them up and peel off their legs one after one. Sometimes he would only peel off the legs on one side of it and watch as it tried to run afterwards. They were stupid animals that deserved to be killed.
Gotfredsen grabbed a pillow and threw it at the spider on the wall. The spider fell to the ground, then ran across the wooden planks towards the door to the bedroom.
"Stupid creatures," Gotfredsen said and was about to turn to face the girl again, when he heard the door behind him open. For a second he thought it was the spider, but how could it be?
He turned and saw the spider. It was crawling on a shoe. The man in the door bent down and picked it up in his hand. Then he let it crawl up his arm until it sat on his cheek.
Gotfredsen gasped. His body went numb. He crawled off the girl, who had stopped screaming.
"You? It's you?" he asked.
"My identity doesn't really matter, does it?" the man asked. "You know who I am."
Gotfredsen saw the butcher's knife in his hand. He gulped. "Can't we talk about this?" he asked.
"It's kind of late for that, don't you think?"
The man lifted the knife high into the air, then swung it and cut the ropes holding the girl down to the bed. "Get out of here," he said to her. "Get your clothes and run. Get away from here."
The girl did as she was told. She picked up her clothes one by one while whimpering. Then she ran out of the room without looking back.
"You're not gonna kill a man of God," the pastor said. "You're making a fool of yourself. You'll go to hell."
"Been there and back," the man said.
"Please. I'm just a pastor. I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't make the decision. Mrs. Heinrichsen did. You were right about killing her. She did it. She was the one. She made the decision and talked the rest of us into it. Said it was the only way."
The man swung the knife at Gotfredsen with a wide grin like he was enjoying watching him plead for his life. Gotfredsen jumped off the bed and stood in the corner of the room. He climbed the chair and screamed.
"I'm gonna get you," the man said wiggling the knife in front of him like he was joking, kidding around with a child. But this was no joke.
"I assure you, I pleaded with her to not follow through with it," Gotfredsen continued.
"But you knew. YOU KNEW!"
As the man said those last words he swung the knife again and sliced Gotfredsen under the kneecap. Gotfredsen screamed and fell forwards.
"You bastard!" he yelled. Blood was gushing out onto his hand. Gotfredsen felt anxious and started sobbing. "Can't we just find a solution for this? Isn't there another way out?"
The man burst into laughter. "I could lock you in the cellar and release all your servants you keep down there. How would you like that, huh?"
Gotfredsen shook his head. "No. No. Please don't do that. There has to be something else I can do. Something, anything?"
The man laughed manically. Gotfredsen lifted up a lamp and threw it at him, but the man ducked down, still grinning. Gotfredsen's heart pounded hard in his chest. He looked at the door. Could he make it if he jumped and ran? Could he? He wasn't exactly young anymore and it would take quite the jump to get past the man, but maybe? After all he used to be a high jumper in high school. But still. His knee was bleeding badly and hurting like hell.
"There is one thing you could do for me," the man said.
"Really?" Gotfredsen looked at him with a grain of hope growing inside, but the man's face told him it was too early to be hopeful.
"Yes."
"What?"
"Come to dinner tonight. Well I don't really need all of you, just small parts and pieces. Mostly your insides, really."
Gotfredsen whimpered, then glanced at the door again. Then he made a jump for it. He drew in a big deep breath and leaped through the air, his eyes fixated on the door to freedom in front of him. But as he was floating in the air he suddenly felt something penetrate the skin just above his crotch. He looked down and saw the knife's handle sticking out from his abdomen, blood spurting out in the air.
Gotfredsen landed on the floor with a thud an
d never managed to get up again.
I can't move my legs. Oh my god, my legs!
Gotfredsen knew he had become paralyzed by the stroke of the knife through his spinal cord and could do nothing but watch as the man started cutting him open.
I can't even scream. Please take me home now, Lord. Please have mercy on my sinful soul!
31
2012
The clerk ran as fast as he could on the gravel across the courtyard towards the rectory. This is bad, he thought. This is really bad.
He reached the wooden door to the pastor's residence and knocked. The clerk panted and knocked again.
"Pastor Gotfredsen?" he called. "You're late."
The clerk had arrived an hour before the funeral service of Irene Justesen. He knew Pastor Gotfredsen wasn't very fond of the woman for some reason that went far back in time, but the clerk certainly hadn't expected him to not show up at all. Now all the guests, the relatives, the friends and the entire media was there, ready to listen to the pastor's words. All that was missing was the pastor himself. He had never been late to anything, not in the ten years the clerk had been working for him. Of all days why today when the eyes of the entire country was on them and the casket of the Queen of Fitness?
He knocked again, this time harder, almost hammering. "Pastor Gotfredsen?"
But still no answer. He grabbed the handle and realized the door wasn't locked. He walked inside. "Pastor?"
The sound of his voice bounced off the brick walls, but no pastor. This couldn't be? If he wasn't in the church, the pastor was always, always in his house.
"Pastor Gotfredsen? Are you alright?"
The clerk suddenly had an eerie feeling and ran upstairs to where he knew the pastor had his bedroom. He knocked carefully on the door before opening it. The clerk stopped. He cupped his mouth, but it was too late. Vomit spurted out all over his hand and floor. The clerk whimpered and sobbed while looking at the gruesome sight of his pastor on the bed, smeared in his own blood, his chest cut open.
