Payback

by T. S. Worthington

  She was getting dizzy and light headed now and she didn’t know how long it would be before she passed out. Her body was feeling very heavy suddenly and she couldn’t move the way she wanted to as she continued to fight this monster on top of her. But she knew it was a total waste of time. She was going to be killed. That was all there was to it. Her life was going to end.

  The darkness began to grow around her as she struggled harder and harder to breathe but the air was just not coming through the powerful hands that covered her face right then. The heavy and thick smell and taste of the latex was overwhelming. Any droplets of air that she managed to retain were soon soaked in the awful taste of those heavy latex gloves. They reminded her of the type of heavy gear that people in a lab might wear. They were not surgical latex at all. They were like the gloves you might wear if you were working with toxic chemicals.

  That reminded her of a field trip she had taken to a chemical plant when she was a kid. She saw all of these guys dressed in that same type of rubber from head to toe. Head to toe… that was all she was remembering as the room spun around her and the darkness began to engulf her every thought.

  She tried to stay awake with everything she had. She wanted to be awake. There was no way that she was going to surrender. Her mind kept screaming at her body to stay awake, but her body was shutting down slowly. She thought she heard her attacker grunting behind her as his arms were starting to fatigue. The softest glimmer of hope surged through her then but she realized how silly that was. She was done. Her body was almost out completely and she almost knew nothing but the throbbing pain in her head and the heavy weight that had been placed on her body.

  In her mind she clearly saw a huge truck sitting on top of her, crushing her body with its massive weight as she just slipped away. She needed to just slip away and take a nice long nap. Everything would be better when she did that. Everything was going to be so much better when she just got some rest.

  No! She knew that the sleep was going to be her last. If she went to sleep she might never wake up. But she didn’t really care so much right then. She just wanted to sleep. It was all she needed and she would not feel any more pain in her world anymore. She would be free of the pain that had haunted her for so many years. That pain was going to be gone soon.

  The world went dark and she waited for the end to come.

  ****

  Darla awoke to the crashing sounds of the real world beating her in the head. Her head was throbbing with violent spasms of sharp pain rolling through her brain, echoing off the walls. She tried to open her eyes but found that her eyes were not wanting to cooperate with her at all right now. She just wanted to go home. Back to her bed and back to her life, no matter how horribly messed up it was.

  Where was she? She tried to open her eyes again and this time she succeeded a little better as she saw what was happening. Or rather what was going to happen? She recognized her own bedroom. Ironically she was still in her bed, but her mouth had been taped shut and she could feel something in her mouth gagging and muffling any sound that she tried to make. It hurt just to moan, shock waves of staggering pain moving up and down her voice box. She did her best to remain still.

  Her eyes now adjusted to the fact of where she was and that she was not alone. There was a large man standing there, dressed in a black costume from head to toe. He wore a black ski mask over top of a black, thick rubber suit. She could tell absolutely nothing about him. She could not tell race or color of hair or even color of eyes. The man was wearing some black goggles over the ski mask. He was trying to hide his identity and she could tell that he was trying to appear to be more than human to her to scare her. It was working.

  She wanted to try to talk to the man. There had to be a way to reason with him. He didn’t have to do whatever he was about to do to her. This was not right. She was a person. Didn’t he see that? Didn’t he know that it was unthinkable to do this to another human being?

  No, she thought answering herself. He doesn’t feel any of the things that he should be feeling. A sickening thought flashed through her head just then; what if this was the guy that she had heard about on the news? What if this was the guy that had skinned those people alive that she heard about? Oh shit! Was that about to happen to her? Why did she wake up? Why couldn’t he just kill her and get it all over with? Why did she have to go through this? She had been dealt enough shit in her lifetime. She did not need to go through this. This was not right. This was not the way her story was supposed to end was it?

  Tears rolled down her face in long streams, bleeding into the duct tape that was wrapped around her head several times. Her feet and ankles were duct taped to the posts of the bed and she now discovered that she was naked as well. It had just come to her attention. She didn’t know how she had not realized it instantly.

  She became focused on every single move of this maniac. His movements were slow and deliberate as if he felt he had all of the time in the world. She could not see her phone or a clock anywhere close to her and she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. She didn’t think it was too long because it was still dark outside and Arizona sunrises happened about five in the morning during the summer. If she had been out hours then it would be getting close to that time and she doubted that he wanted to be there after the sun came up.

  This kind of got her thinking about sunrises and the magical things that they represented. It stemmed from memories of being a kid and then it went on to the ideas that monsters could not exist in the sunshine. This man could not still be here hurting her after the sun came up. She had neighbors, even though most of them were crackheads who were usually passed out on dope. One of them was bound to see something or hear something, right?

  She knew the answers to these questions even as her mind continued to come up with scenarios and situations that were much better than she was actually in. She was still having a difficult time processing the fact that she was most likely going to die. And if she did not die it was only because this man had not decided to kill her for whatever reason. She still had no idea who he was or what he really wanted with her.

  What the hell was he doing now? He seemed to be very preoccupied with setting up a video camera in the corner of the room. He had removed the large latex gloves that had covered his arms up to the elbows. But he had on surgical latex underneath and she believed he was wearing two pairs on both hands. The man was meticulous and knew how to avoid being caught.

  He had most likely done this before. He had a very unique and detail oriented system in place. He was going to film everything that happened there tonight. He was going to do whatever he wanted and he was probably going to do some extra stuff just so he could watch himself doing it so that he could get his jollies off. That was her new purpose in life; she was this man’s new play thing. How the hell had she been chosen, she wondered. Was it completely random? Did he see her with car trouble and follow her home?

  No, that wasn’t it. He was here already. How had he got inside? He must have picked a lock or found some way to get a copy of the key for himself. Darla had no idea and she was tired of coming up with things to keep her mind off the fact that she was going to die very soon.

  The man suddenly looked over at her and stared at her for several seconds and then back to the camera. It was as if he was trying to make sure that the camera was in the perfect position in relation to her. After a few seconds of this he seemed satisfied and he picked up a heavy black bag off the floor. He sat it beside the bed and pulled out a long, sharp knife. It looked like some sort of special hunting knife that she had never laid eyes on before.

  The man held the knife to her throat and began to move the blade slowly around her neck, just testing the sharpness and building the fear inside of her. It was working; she was terrified and felt like she might soil herself at any second. She was trying to scream but the pain in her mouth was too much to bear. Her jaws had been stretched to capacity by this huge ball gag. She thought t
hat she might even be in a state of lock jaw, her jaw had been propped open that far. Her whole body began to shiver with fear and chills that felt almost feverish. She was sure that she was deep in the grip of a panic attack. She used to get those all the time when she was a kid and they had been worse after the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her foster parents. But she had not suffered an attack for a few years. It was actually after she ran away and was pretty stable on her own for at least six months. Then she started to learn that she was going to be just fine.

  But now she was anything but fine.

  The man pulled the knife from her neck and poked it against his palm as if he was worshipping it somehow. It was almost a sexual response the way he was lovingly flogging the instrument. Was this guy getting off on every single part of this experience for him? What kind of a one in a million freak was she looking at here? The behavior was terrifying. This guy was fresh out of the asylum.

  “You are probably wondering what is going on,” the man spoke. His voice was deep and robotic. She could not tell if he was disguising it or not. Maybe this was the voice he used when he did these things. Was this like a character that he played? Was it something that he had to get his own mind around to do properly? What was with this man? If only she could talk back to him then she could make him see her as being a human. There had to be a way to relate to him. There had to be.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. I am going to film our experience here together tonight. I’m sorry to say that you will never see this film. When we are done you will have moved onto another state of being while I will be forced to remain on this side patiently awaiting my turn to cross over to the next step.”

  The next step? Did this man want to die? Darla would have been more than happy to make his dream come true right then. If only she could get loose from these damn restraints. The duct tape was eating through her skin as she struggled. She had no idea that such a simple item would make such a handy set of handcuffs. The tape was thick and hard. There was no fucking way that she was ever going to be able to break free of them.

  “I have a need. It is a dark need and I have dealt with it for a long time. Unfortunately it requires me to do awful things to people. I’m not sure why but it is what I was chosen to do. You get to be a part of this tonight. I know that you don’t want to be here and if you had the opportunity you would find some way to kill me. It would be self-defense for you and I harbor no ill will towards you for thinking that way. Self-preservation is at the core of everyone’s survival instinct and it would be wrong of me to punish you for adhering to your own survival.”

  Help me! Darla fought the urge to scream through the gag and the ball in her mouth. There had to be something she could do. There had to be a way to get free. She just had to remain calm and find it. All she wanted to do was curl up in a little ball and run away somewhere but that was not an option right then. She knew that the only way she could really survive was if she worked as hard as she could to find a weakness, no matter how small, and then she could exploit it and turn the tables on him.

  She was suddenly remembering something that she had seen on Animal Planet where prey sometimes fought back and attacked the predator, catching them completely off guard and saving their lives through intimidation. The predator could easily win the fight but when they were after prey they were after animals who did not and could not fight back. Otherwise it was not going to be a good hunt, especially if they got injured.

  Darla had to find a way to inflict pain on this man. She had to scare him and hurt him. He obviously had an insane ego and thought of himself as some sort of a God. Then she was going to have to bring him down a few pegs. That was all there was to it.

  Now how could she work this... Darla could not explain this to herself but her mind was suddenly possessed by a feeling of eerie calm and tranquility. There was no fear. There was no self-doubt. There was really only the desire to save herself, as the maniac had said. He did not know this, but he had just reawakened in her the desire to live at all costs.

  The man continued to ramble as he checked out each and every knife in his kit. The kit must have contained ten different knives of different sharpness, shape, and length. She was actually curious what each knife’s job was, but as he spoke she began to formulate a plot.

  The duct tape was tight around her bare skin, but the maniac had not realized that the air conditioning was not on. He was wearing a full body suit so he was probably sweating profusely under there anyway. Darla was starting to sweat like a pig the more she writhed and moved against the duct tape that was tied tightly around her ankles and her wrists.

  The assailant was paying her no attention as he spoke. He had his back to her and as he went on with his retarded speech he was holding each one of his knives up to the light and inspecting it, as if making sure it was ready to do the function that might be asked of it.

  The tape was giving away a bit, even as it dug into her skin. She found the chafing and the pain to be lessening as her wrists began to get very moist. She concentrated on keeping her breathing as shallow as she could to drive her body temperature up and to keep the sweat pouring on.

  “I am going to remove each and every single section of your skin with these knives. There is something about the human animal that is so beautiful, but the skin is the real marvelous creation. It covers everything, wrapping around it in perfect formation. It stretches and it retracts. It is the biggest organ in the body and people mistreat it so. They cause it to age prematurely. They subject it to harsh weather without the proper protection and they don’t take care of flaws and cuts when they happen, allowing bacteria to form and to infect the body. The skin is supposed to keep all of that out, but people fail it. It is not the other way around.”

  Her right hand had now popped free. She could hardly believe it! She quickly went to work on the other hand while he was still blabbing. She knew exactly what she was going to do. She just had to have the guts to achieve it. That was all. She had to do the right thing here and take this psycho out. Who could tell how many other people he was going to hurt with this? The man had to be stopped!

  Her other hand popped free and in one swift motion she sat up in the bed, grabbed the knife from his hand and caught him totally by surprise. He did not have time to react even a little bit when he realized what was happening. Jerking the knife from his hand she spun it around and planted all six inches of the blade deep into his chest, just missing the heart due to the fact that he still had his back to her and he turned on her as she swung at him. His shoulder blocked a little bit of the blow as the blade glanced off and plowed through his flesh to stick deeply in his chest.

  The man tried to scream but the sound had been choked off by the fact that the knife had landed in his chest. She wondered if maybe she had punctured a lung or something else important, but she did not have time to think about it now.

  He rolled off the bed to the floor clutching the knife in his chest and trying to scream, but she could tell he was holding it back also because he did not want any of the neighbors to possibly hear him. Darla unhooked the duct tape from her ankles and rolled off the bed.

  The masked man pulled the knife from his chest in one swift movement, leaving a gaping hole in his chest that was now gushing blood. Darla jumped off the bed running past him as he lunged forward to her, but she was out the door and running down the hall. She did not care how naked she was right then.

  She heard him stumbling into the hallway behind her but she was already unlocking the front door and making a bolt for it. The second she was outside she began to scream at the top of her lungs for help, running from apartment to apartment banging on the doors hoping that someone would hear her. Someone would have to be awake.

  Finally after the fifth house she pounded on Mrs. Mccorkle, the crazy old lady in the neighborhood answered the door to see a somewhat bloody and fully naked Darla screaming for her life. As soon as she opened the door and saw that Darla neede
d some drastic help she let her inside and locked the door behind her.

  Darla called the cops and told them everything. When they finally arrived thirty minutes later there was no sign of the man who had attacked her or any of his tools or accessories that he had brought with him.

  And the strangest thing—there was no blood anywhere. Not a damn drop.

  Chapter 7: Truth and Consequences

  “So, you can’t remember anything else about him?” Brian asked for what must have been the twentieth time. He knew that Darla was getting annoyed with him for asking her to repeat herself, but that was an old interrogation trick. People could always remember just a little bit more if they were forced to recall and recall and it was also to keep things straight and to rule out any inconsistencies. Darla had been brutally attacked tonight and now after two hours of going over the same story repeatedly she was really starting to break. Brian figured that he could push her just a little bit more before she clammed up and refused to talk. Brian often wondered if these techniques did more harm than good. They seemed to be designed to make people not want to come forward and make reports. If they were going to have to repeat themselves a million times in a row then it was often better just to stay a victim. Brian knew that while it did help the victims remember what they saw; it also did wonders to break any chance of a bond between them and the victims. So it was anybody’s guess which method was more valid and which one was more harmful. Brian would have loved to conduct a sociological experiment on this sort of thing one day. Maybe he would do that if he ever wanted to retire to the world of academics. That was all a possibility.