The Lady with Blue Lips

by Brenda Franklin

Olivia cradled her almost certainly broken wrist as she stumbled away from him.

  “Olivia. Now calm down.” He said holding out his hands.

  “Calm down! You’re crazy!” She screamed. “Help! Help!” She cried running back towards the hall.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Austin ran after her tackling her to the floor and covering her mouth with his hand. “Be quiet Olivia or this could hurt.” He grabbed her wrist causing her to cry out below his hand. “Sweetie let’s get you somewhere more secure and where we don’t have to worry about people hearing us.”

  Olivia’s feet dragged across the carpet kicking violently as she tried to fight him off, but Austin was too strong. He held one hand over her mouth and the other tuck under her breasts to help him drag her back down the hall and into the room she had just come out of.

  “You know what’s so great about this apartment?” Olivia continued to struggle pulling herself towards the floor the best she could as he continued to talk to her. “My father helped to remodel this side of the hotel after a bad fire. So I added a couple of things.” He tossed her into the room shutting the door.

  “Help!” She cried out.

  “Help! Help!” Austin mimicked with a pouty after he silenced. “Oh no! I don’t’ think they can hear us.” He said lowering onto the floor towards her. She slid away from him. Her mind was frantic at the room around her. There was only two ways in and out of the room and both ways were locked secure.

  “Please.” She begged trying not to cry. She looked between the plastic and the art pieces, and then from the art to the freezer. She hesitated to imagine what he was planning on doing.

  “It’s okay to beg. I don’t mind, but I should give you fair warning.” He leaned in closer. “Begging never got the others anywhere.” At the end of his states she could feel the color draining from her face and nausea taking hold. He stepped back. She gasped for breath between rocking back and forth.

  “I want to show you something!” He grabbed Olivia and pulled her against him pressing her against the freezer.

  “Please stop!”

  “Why would I want to stop?” He unlocked the freezer and pulled the lip open revealing a woman tucked away inside. Olivia tried to turn away but Austin grabbed her back the back of the neck and pushed her upper half down into the freeze. Her hair touched the pale blue lips of the woman she had been seeing this whole time. Her hair once soaked now frozen solid against her body, her neck and legs broken to fit her in the freezer better.

  “Oh God!” Olivia cried clenching her eyes shut when the lights went out. Austin released her and took a step back.

  “What the hell?” he looked around and headed straight of a panel of wood which he revealed to be a breaker box and flipped the switched, but nothing happened. He flipped it again and again, but still nothing.

  Olivia slid to the floor against the freezer still holding her wrist. The only light present was from a little pen light he had found deep within his pocket. He flashed the light around looking for another cause for the lights to go off as the temperature dropped and Olivia was oh so familiar with feeling that started to flood the room. Her hot breath steamed in the air in front of her as Austin paced back and forth with haste. He seemed suddenly frantic.

  Popping and snapping, crunching and breaking stabbed sharply into Olivia’s ears. Austin stiffened and the light in his hands blinked. He quickly dropped the light to the floor and with a distinct click it was off leaving them in a blackened room with something other than themselves moving around.

  Olivia felt a mass ease down the side of the freezer barley brushing up against her almost suffocating her as it drifted across the floor.

  Olivia feared to move as the darkness moved across her ankles with such weight she thought her foot would break, but she stayed silent.

  “Open!” Austin cried fighting with the locks to the door. The sound of his angered voice was enough to pull Olivia to her sense and begin crawling across the floor frantically towards where she pictures the secret door through her closet was. The crinkling sound of the plastic under her body gave her away instantly and she had to work fast.

  “Where are you going?” Austin demanded just as she clicked back the first lock somehow her hand finding its way instinctually to the next lock. He reached for anything he could get a hold of taking grip of her hair.

  The next lock unlocked and she held firm onto the small handle for dear life as he pulled her back almost ripping her hair from her scalp. Olivia grit her teeth together and forced open the door into her closet as Austin reached down and grabbed one of her ankles making the biggest mistake ever. She slammed against the floor and started to violently kick at him until she nailed him in the groin.

  “You little--” Olivia didn’t stick around to listen to him cry as she forced her aching body up and into the closet space. She pulled at her hanging clothes and grabbed at the opening with her good hand to help pull her the rest of the way out of the nightmarish room Austin was still groaning in. Her skull was on fire; her wrist was pulsating pain with each thunderous beat of her heart, but she didn’t slow once collapsed into her bedroom.

  She bolted to the bedroom door and made it halfway down the hall when she heard Austin screaming.

  “No! Don’t come near me! No!” His voice was cut short with a slam of a door, but Olivia wouldn’t be going back to check on him. She flew out the apartment door and into the hall where she took her first real breath of fresh air.

  Between gasps of breath she managed to make it as far as the elevator before collapsing into tears and calling for help. It wasn’t long before the police were back at the hotel.

  “Ma’am, can you tell me what happened again?” The officer rubbed at his eyes and asked again as three more men searched throughout her apartment and into Austin’s.

  “I told you!” She cried. “I was locked in a room in Austin’s apartment which led into my closet. That’s how he kidnapped the other woman!”

  “Which you saw?” He asked doubtfully.

  “Yes!” She exclaimed as the medic finished wrapping her wrist.

  “What I don’t understand is--”

  “Sir!” An officer called from deep within Austin’s apartment. Olivia rose nervously falling in behind the officer as he headed into the apartment.

  “What is it?” He asked.

  “I think you have to see this sir.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Olivia gasped looking into the plastic filled room at the white freezer which all the officers were huddled around. Within the confines of the white freezer laid not one body, but two. Austin was laid like a marionette doll missing its strings.

  “His jaw opened in mid scream, his neck broken the same angle as the woman below him. Her arms were wrapped around him holding him into the freezer.

  “What happened to him?” One of the officers asked as another reached in to touch the woman and then Austin. He pulled away from the freezer a color lighter.

  “How can her arms be around him? He’s warm and she’s so cold.”

  “Of course he’s warm.” The older officer who was interviewing Olivia said turning towards her. “How do you explain that miss?” He asked.

  “I didn’t do that. I ran.” She said pointing at where she had crawled into her room from and there was even still a chunk of her hair.

  “Do you have a place to stay?” He asked.

  “My sister’s.”

  “Then stay there. We’ll get back to you later. Please don’t leave town until we get this wrapped up.”

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  “Can I ask you something?” He asked before she could leave the horrid place. “How did he end up like this? Honest.” His eyes lowered and he was judging to see if she was going to lie to him. Olivia took a deep breath looking once more on Austin before answering the officer.

  “Honestly.” She smiled feeling numb from the whole ordeal. “I think she pulled him into the freezer and saved my life.” With her final statement Olivia l
eft the officers with an unusual crime scene, several questionable looks, and more than a few chills.