by B. B. Hamel
I lean against the door, breathing heavily. Nobody is around.
The girl is easier than I thought. I just pretend that she’s drunk, and instead of carrying her over my shoulders, I throw one arm over my neck and hold her up that way. I half carry, half drag her through the house and through the yard before putting her into the back with her father. I prop her up and make sure she won’t roll around as I drive.
Once that’s done, I head into the bathroom for a final cleaning. I have to wipe every surface with bleach and make sure nothing is left behind. It’s painstaking, but it’s very, very important.
The sun is going to rise soon and three hours have passed when I finally finish. I get back into my van, placing my pack onto the passenger seat, and head out.
As I drive, anger at myself rages through me. I’ve never made a mistake like that in all my years of hunting. I plan meticulously and research every last detail. I make sure my victims are guilty of their crimes by using a huge networks of informants all through the city, mostly homeless men and women that need an extra buck. I stalk them and witness their actions for myself if at all possible.
I’m careful. I’m beyond careful. I’m flawless.
Not this time. I don’t know how I missed her. In all of my time watching Rick, I never once saw his daughter. I only was able to get into his house twice, but I still never ran across her when scouting the place out.
I got sloppy. I don’t know how, but I did. It had been too long since my last kill and my screaming need was fucking with me, pushing me to go forward. It must have pushed me too hard and made me careless where I should have been paying attention.
Now I was paying the price.
I drove for an hour, heading out of the city. I live in a custom-built cabin on the outskirts of town, really as far out into the country as possible without getting too far from the city. I have two acres to myself, which means plenty of privacy, and I live alone.
I have to live alone. Nobody would want to live with a serial killer.
I pull into my driveway, a long dirt road with multiple “Private Property: Trespassers Will Be Shot” signs. I curl around the forest that surrounds my property until I finally spot my home.
It’s three stories tall with a large basement and sub-basement complex beneath it. Everything is state of the art and fully customized. I had it built ten years ago with the money I won from the lawsuit against the family of the man that murdered my parents. I still live off that money, or at least off the investments I made with that money. I don’t have to work a day in my life if I don’t want to, but sometimes I wish I did have to work if it meant having my parents back.
I pull the van out front of my house and kill the engine. I climb out and walk around back, puling the doors open.
The girl is slumped right where I left her. Rick, however, was sliding around on the whole way back.
He doesn’t mind, though. He’s dead.
I reach in and grab Rick’s feet. I pull him out, letting his body thump onto the ground. I spend the next ten minutes dragging him around back toward the incinerator. I’ll have to fire that up later and toss him inside, but for now I need to get the girl into my house.
I walk back around and gently lift her from the van. She’s so small and light, surprisingly so, especially for a woman with such beautiful curves. She’s more attractive every time I see her, and I can’t help but feel my cock stir in my pants.
Which is fucked up, considering she’s unconscious and I just killed her dad.
I carry her to the front door. I stop and place my thumb against a fingerprint scanner which unlocks the front door and activates the house. I hear the hum of the air conditioning click on and the lights slowly illuminate the rooms ahead of me.
I stand in the foyer, wondering where the fuck to keep this girl.
With a sigh, I realize exactly where I have to put her. I don’t like it, but I know I have no other choice. I wish I could do better, but it’s the safest place in the house. I have no idea what I’m going to do with her, but at least I won’t have to worry about her escaping.
I carry her to the elevator that runs down the center of the house. I get inside and hit B2 for the sub-basement. The elevator slides down into the dark basement.
The doors open. I step out into the room. The lights automatically click on.
I look around at what I like to call my Killing Room, and begin to plan how I’m going to keep her.
4
Amelia
The world slowly comes back into focus. I feel like I’m waking up from a deep, deep sleep with a really, really bad hangover. The room is dim and bare, and the floor beneath me feels like concrete. I don’t know where I am or what time it is, and everything swims around me when I try to move.
It takes me a second before I remember the man.
And my father’s body with the knife in his heart. All that blood.
I gasp and crawl backwards. There’s a blanket wrapped around me, but I shed it off like a dirty skin. I’m still in my normal clothes and nothing hurts except for my head and a general nausea. I finally hit a concrete wall and stay there, looking around the room, heart pounding.
I’m in a clean, cold room with a concrete floor. The ceiling is white drop tile with fluorescent lighting, half of which are turned off. Aside from the blanket, there’s nothing else in the room. On the far wall, there is a set of elevator doors and a small pad next to it.
Hurrying, I slowly stand. My vision swims but I ignore it. I know I have to move fast. He can be anywhere, absolutely anyway. I hobble closer, closer, and am within a few feet of the elevator doors when I hear a clink.
And I fall flat on my face.
It takes me a second to figure out what just happened. I stare at the manacle around my ankle and the thick iron chain connecting me to a steel rod in the concrete floor.
I’m a captive. I want to scream and cry but I’m too terrified to even move.
I stare at the chain and begin to claw at the manacle around my ankle. It’s thick metal with a solid clasp and a large keyhole. I have no clue where a person would even get something like this, but that doesn’t matter.
I keep seeing his face in my mind. Handsome, beautiful really, and deadly. I keep feeling his body against mine and his voice deep and warm in my ear.
And the pinch of the syringe as he plunged it into my neck.
My thoughts are interrupted by an incredibly comical ding. It takes me a second to realize that it’s the elevator. Panicking, I crawl back across the floor and huddle against the wall as the doors slide open soundlessly and he steps into the room.
It’s the killer. I’ll never forget that face. He changed into a pair of jeans and a loose white button-down shirt, but it’s definitely still him. He’s holding a tray in his hands with a glass and a bowl of something steaming on top of it. He smirks at me as I cower there, staring into his deep blue eyes.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
I stare at him but don’t answer.
“This will be easier if you talk,” he says.
“Amelia,” I say softly.
“Amelia,” he responds, smiling. “I’m Noah.”
“Please,” I say, sitting up onto my knees. “Please let me go.”
“Why would I do that, Amelia?”
“I won’t tell anyone what I saw. I promise. I don’t even care about my father.”
He laughs. “I believe that.”
“He was a bastard. Do you see this?” I point at my eye, my black and blue eye. “He did this because I decided to throw out his beer bottles.”
He stares at me but doesn’t say a word. I can’t read his gorgeous face, and for a second I find it hard to believe that he’s really a killer.
But I saw it. I saw what he did to my father.
“Please,” I say to him, begging for my life. I know I’m begging. There’s nothing dignified about begging for your life but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been through so much sh
it already, been abused and put down my whole life. I don’t want to die in some psycho’s basement without ever living at all.
“I don’t want to die,” I say to him.
He smiles at me. My blood runs cold but an excited chill dips down my spine.
“I don’t kill innocent people,” he says.
“What?”
“I don’t kill innocents,” he says again. “But I’ll admit, this is a new situation for me.”
“I’m not a bad person,” I say. “I’m not. Please. Just let me go.”
“Your father was a bad person,” he says. “A very, very bad person. You don’t know the half of it.”
“Yes,” I say softly, staring at him, surprised at the anger I suddenly feel. “I do. I know all about Rick.”
He looks a little surprised as he silently watches me. I stare back, feeling defiant. What does this bastard know about me? I take a deep breath, calming myself.
I need to stop begging. I need to get over this fear. I’ve been afraid my whole life and it never got me anywhere. I need to breathe and think, or else I’ll end up just like my dad.
“I’m not letting you go,” he says finally. “But I won’t kill you, either.”
“What are you going to do, keep me here forever?”
He laughs. “Maybe,” he says. “I think you’d like that. What do you say? You can become my little pet.”
“You’re disgusting,” I say before even realizing it.
He laughs again, a charming and deep laugh. “You’re right there,” he says. He walks over to me and stops about five feet away. He crouches down and gently places the tray on the floor. “Eat,” he says then back away to the elevator doors.
I stare at him. “No.”
“Eat,” he says again. “If you want bathroom privileges.”
I look around. “I don’t see one nearby.”
“Look again,” he says, grinning, and points at the far wall.
I squint at it and watch as he walks over and presses a button. The wall suddenly rises up into the ceiling, revealing a full bathroom.
I gape, shocked.
“Your chain is too short right now, but if you’re good and you eat, I’ll give you more space.”
“Enough to reach the elevator?”
“Not quite. I can’t have you trying to ambush me every time I come down to check on you.”
I just stare at him, not bothering to reply. He smiles again at me and walks back over to the elevator, going along the far wall. I can tell that my chain is nearly long enough to get into the bathroom, but would need at least another twenty feet to make it to the elevator. I’m guessing the bathroom is only an extra five feet, ten at max.
He stops at the elevator and presses his thumb against the pad. The doors open again with a ding and he looks over his shoulder at me.
“Eat,” he says. “You’ll feel better soon.”
He disappears into the elevator.
I watch the closed doors for a few minutes before reluctantly crawling over to the tray. There’s a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a glass of water. There’s no spoon but I can easily pick up the bowl to my lips and drink it if I wanted.
I don’t want to give in to him. He seems like a cocky bastard, even if he is handsome. He’s younger than I thought at first, maybe in his late twenties, early thirties. I can’t tell for sure. He’s probably eight years older than me, give or take a few. For some reason, that fact makes me even angrier.
This bastard. He wants to lock me in his basement, chain me up. He wants me to eat. He’s holding the bathroom hostage against it. He’s playing games with me.
I hate him and I’m terrified of him. But there’s also another feeling deep inside of me, a feeling that I’m ashamed of.
I’m excited by him
He killed my father. He freed me from the prison I’ve lived in my entire life. True, I’m in a new prison, but at least I know I’ll never go back to that bastard Rick’s house. I’ll never be used and abused again. I’m not angry that he’s dead.
I’m angry that I got dragged into it. One last Fuck You from dear old dad. I can’t escape him, not fully, not even in his death.
But I will soon. I’ll start by taking some control back in my life.
I take the bowl of soup and throw it across the room. I smile as it shatters against the wall. I take the glass and do the same before sitting back down on the cold concrete floor.
It felt good to break something. But I know I have to eat and use the bathroom eventually. I’ll give in to that, but I won’t give up. I’ll break free of this prison and finally take my life back.
5
Noah
I stare into the fire and watch it crackle as the sun slowly rises over the treetops. The heat from the incinerator is almost unbearable but I manage to heft Rick up onto the slab and slide him into the depths.
I stand back and watch the smoke pour through the stack. The sun rises and a new day begins. I take a deep breath, a smile on my face.
There’s nothing like starting the day with the incineration of a rapist pig.
Except next I have to check on the girl. She broke the soup bowl and water glass I tried to give her last night, but that doesn’t matter. She slept, though poorly, since she only has the one scratchy blanket.
I’ll give her more comforts as soon as I think I can trust her. But I have to be careful.
She’s dangerous. I can see it in her eyes. She’s a wild animal that has been hurt and caged for a long, long time. She wants to get free, and I know she’ll do anything to have that freedom.
As I walk slowly back toward the house, I can’t help but think about how I want her to have that freedom. I wish she hadn’t walked into that bathroom. If she stayed away, she’d be able to do anything she wants without the scourge of her father hanging over her head.
Instead, she’s locked in my basement. And I have no fucking clue what to do with her.
I can’t keep her forever. But I can’t let her go without being sure that she won’t go to the police. She’s seen too much of me. She knows my face, my name, and she’ll figure out where I live easily enough, eventually at least.
I have to break her. I have to make sure she’ll never speak a word of what happened with her father. I think that might not be too hard, especially considering the way I noticed her looking at me as I was leaving.
It was only for a moment, the briefest of seconds. But I saw it there, clear on her face.
It was desire. A strange desire, but desire. It mirrors my own surprisingly strong need of her. I want to take her, control her body, make her feel things I bet she’s never experienced before. In my time as a killer, I’ve learned the human body better than most people do in their entire lives. I know how to give pleasure just as easily as I can give pain.
I want to give her so much pleasure it overloads her mind, makes her never want to tell a soul about me. I want to give her all the pleasure her father stole away.
I’ll make her grateful. She’ll earn her freedom and thank me for it in the end.
I go back inside and make her breakfast, a simple oatmeal in a metal bowl with water in a tin cup. I put it on a tray and ride the elevator down to B2.
When I step off the elevator, she’s huddled in the corner wrapped in her blanket. She looks up at me as I approach, but she doesn’t move. Her eyes pierce into me and I can see the defiance still there, though lessened.
I place the tray on the floor. “Eat,” I say.
She stares at me. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Eat,” I repeat.
“You say you don’t hurt innocent people. You’re hurting me.”
I watch her for a second. “Make this easy on both of us. Eat.”
She watches me and I study her beautiful face. The bruise around her eye is just starting to yellow in the center, and I know it’ll probably be completely healed in only a few days. I can’t help but wonder what her body looks like under her clothes, an
d if it’s as covered in scars as I think it is.
I want to find out, but not yet.
She slowly gets onto her knees and then crawls over to the tray. She looks at the oatmeal and the water before finally picking up the cup and drinking it down.
“Metal,” she says when she finishes the water. “Smart.”
I smile at her. “It’s a learning process.”
“You should clean up that other stuff.”
“Why?”
“I might use it to hurt myself.” She pauses. “Or try to hurt you.”
I watch her for a second before nodding. “Good point.”
I turn without another word, get into the elevator, and ride it up. I head into my laundry room, grab a broom and a dustpan, and then head back down.
By the time I step off the elevator again, she’s eating the oatmeal. I smile but don’t say anything, worried that I’ll break the spell if I do. Instead, I walk over to the shattered bowl and clean it up, followed by the broken glass.
When I’m finished, she sits back and looks at me. “Well?” she asks.
I grin. “Don’t worry.” I take a key from my pocket and hold it up. “As promised.”
I walk over and unlock the padlock holding her chain on the metal bar. I pull more chain through, giving her more slack, about five more feet in total. It should be just enough to get her into the bathroom and to the toilet.
“Give it a try,” I say.
She stands and walks past me, eyeing me warily. She goes into the bathroom and, just as I guessed, it’s the perfect length. She has to keep her right leg extended, but she just fits.
I walk into the bathroom and look around. I took off the vanity mirror and removed all the hardware from the walls leaving only a sink, a toilet, and a tub. She can’t get into the tub and can probably just barely reach the sink, which is just as I planned it.
I want her to rely on me for some things.
“Good,” I say to myself and then head toward the elevator.
