The Pirouette Predator

by Jade Wright

He sighs.

  “Mind if I take a look around?” he finally asks me.

  I shrug, lacing with fingers together as he walks out of the kitchen.

  I try to calm River down as he searches the cottage.

  He's only gone for a few minutes. When he reappears, the speaker and my set of house keys are in his hands.

  “Found these under your bed,” his lip twitches.

  His stare is boring into me.

  I shake my head in bewilderment.

  “I didn't put them there!”

  I can tell he doesn't believe me.

  He drops the keys onto the table in front of me. The key chain thumps down hard onto the wood, a hand carved lemur that I'd bought from a little market in Madagascar with Michael.

  It was from our last trip together. I still haven't been able to remove it from my keys. Still in denial.

  I stare at it now, unable to meet the officers eyes.

  “If you don't mind, I'll take this,” he's still holding the speaker in his hand.

  I nod silently.

  I want nothing to do with that thing.

  “I threw it away. I put it in the bin outside and the next day it was gone. I'm telling you someone is getting into this place and planting shit. Someone is doing this to me!”

  I'm hysterical now, but all he does is sigh. Again.

  He's had enough.

  He stays with me up until the repair guy has boarded up the door securely... as if that's going to help me sleep any better tonight.

  I end up staring at the ceiling, jumping at every little sound until my eyes are dry and bloodshot.

  CHAPTER 16

  When day breaks, I am absolutely exhausted.

  Running purely on caffeine, I make my way to school.

  I can't stop thinking about that Alexa Echo speaker and my house keys under the bed.

  How is someone getting in?

  I know it's not really my place to do it, but I swing by the local locksmith on my walk.

  The signage is old, as though it hasn't been changed for over twenty years. You can just make out the name of the company, Evans Locksmith. It is, like the rest of this town, antiquated.

  The man behind the counter agrees to change all of the locks on the doors after I tell him a bit of my story.

  “Used to know your sister, Robyn,” he grumbles as he takes down some details on a worn leather notebook.

  “Oh yeah?” my interest piqued.

  I study the wrinkles embedded in his forehead as he drops his pen to the paper.

  “She taught my daughter in school,” he chews him lip, not meeting my eyes. He looks deep in thought.

  “Ah, right. Well, I'm probably teaching her now then. I've taken over for a while,” I give him a smile he doesn't return.

  I watch his shoulders droop.

  “She's gone,” he whispers, his sniff startling me.

  “Gone?”

  “He took her,” he slams his hand down onto the counter-top.

  I back away slightly. He looks up at me, his cataract ridden eyes are haunted.

  “He?” I ask, my voice wavering.

  “Luke took Chloe. I know he did. I told her from the start that boy was trouble. I swear I'm going to kill that son of a bitch myself.” With that, he rips an invoice out of his pad and hands it to me.

  “I'm so sorry. I had no idea-” I start, mortified that I didn't realise that he's Chloe's dad. Paul Evans.

  Evans Locksmiths.

  How hadn't I realised that?

  I should have known. It's such a small village.

  Everyone knows everyone here.

  I eye him guiltily as I pocket the invoice.

  “I'll be over this afternoon to change your locks, Ms. Brady.”

  Bibiana and Verity aren't at their desks in the classroom when I arrive.

  We've had to implement a role call at every class now. If one of the students is missing from class we have to inform the headmaster. He then sends out people to search for them if they'd been in earlier classes or, if not, their parents are immediately called to make sure they are OK.

  I'm too worried about how I'd explain myself, stalking my students online. The headmaster would want to know how I knew about the 'Girls Night' the girls had planned.

  Luckily, I don't have to.

  A couple of the other students mention it and the police are sent to Bibiana's place straight away.

  It isn't long before the news breaks.

  When they had arrived, they saw a large windowpane by the kitchen completely shattered.

  There was a muddy footprint on the windowsill where someone had climbed through.

  A brick lay in the middle of the floor. It had been thrown through the window and connected with the marble counter-top.

  Whoever flung it must have done it at full force because the marble was dented.

  Whoever had done it certainly wasn't worried about making a noise...

  Both of the girls were gone.

  Their handbags had been ransacked.

  Police could only assume someone had taken any money inside their purses because all of their cards and cellphones were still there.

  The house was cordoned off as forensics came in to investigate. The footprint was analysed.

  It belonged to someone with a minuscule sized foot and the sole of the shoe appeared to be a female brand, not male.

  The police gave a statement saying that their hope was that one of the girls, Bibiana or Verity, had managed to climb through the window and get away from the abductor.

  They were still waiting for confirmation on Verity's shoe size to see if it could be a plausible theory.

  People online were in an uproar, desperate to have their say.

  If one of them managed to escape, where is she now? Someone had asked.

  Hundreds of comments followed suit.

  Some said she must be hiding, others wondered if she was somehow involved.

  Can someone tell me how the parents could leave their daughter alone for a night while they go gallivanting off to the bush to watch some stupid zebra grazing in a field? While there's a psychopath on the loose!?

  That comment had over seventy likes.

  I wonder if Bibiana's parents had seen it.

  I wonder what they are thinking.

  How can ONE person abduct two people?! There must be an accomplice, right? Another student had asked.

  One of my other dancers, Britt, had replied to him asking him if he'd ever seen 'those true crime documentaries.'

  She pointed out that it is more than possible for someone to kidnap two people at once.

  Glad I didn't join the party! Another girl had added, with a relieved looking emoticon next to her comment.

  A bunch of people told her they were going to 'unfriend' her because of her comment.

  The bickering was constant.

  Helicopters were sent up to search for the missing girls but returned with no sightings. No answers.

  They had vanished into thin air, just like the rest of the girls.

  In the house there were absolutely no fingerprints found.

  The only thing they had to go on was that one clear footprint. Cadaver dogs have been scouring the streets and nearby forest, but even they can't seem to pick anything up.

  It looked like the girls had been watching the film, Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman.

  It's a movie Robyn used to love when we still lived together.

  She used to make me watch it at least once every few months. We'd huddle up on the sofa, a plate of celery sticks and mixed berries between us as we sipped on a glass of wine each and watched the movie.

  I feel a surge of shock rush through my body as I think about my sister. Sometimes I still can't quite believe that she's one of the missing girls. Sometimes it still hits me.

  She's gone.

  Bibiana and Verity's wine goblets were sticky with lipstick, the bottle half empty on the coffee table in front of the television.

/>   I feel like I've failed. I should have said something.

  I felt this one coming. I sensed it.

  Why didn't I say anything?

  Useless. Useless. Useless.

  I slap my head with my hands, admonishing myself for being so stupid.

  Even though I'm rattled by what happened to me last night, I have to carry on.

  I'm busy prepping for my next class when Cody comes into the room.

  I look at him through my spectacles that are slipping down the bridge of my nose.

  “Cody-” I start, watching as he closes the door to the classroom behind him.

  I stand up from my seat.

  He walks towards me and before I know it his big hands are grabbing my jaw. I try to pull back but he pulls me into him. I instantly feel how much stronger he is than me.

  He presses me up against the wall, his fingers grazing through fallen strands of my hair.

  His eyes are determined.

  He looks at me, letting a few seconds pass and then he kisses me. I can feel his belly pressing up against my body and his tongue easing its way into my mouth.

  I'm so shocked that for a moment I do nothing, but then, I find myself kissing him back.

  I fall into him.

  I allow his big warm arms to hold me close.

  I've needed this feeling for so long. Relief floods through my body.

  I dip my head down, stopping the kiss and pressing my forehead into his chest.

  God it feels good to be held.

  He cuddles me close and kisses the top of my head.

  As wrong as I know this is, selfishly I can't remember the last time something has felt so good.

  CHAPTER 17

  Setting up Black Swan on Bibiana's television was supposed to be a clue.

  I underestimate just how stupid people are in this town, especially the fucking police.

  A ballerina consumed with dance, struggling with her sanity!

  A white swan. A black swan. Dissociative Identity Disorder. Paranoid schizophrenia. That's the premise of the film.

  It couldn't have been more obvious.

  I gnaw at my knuckles with frustration. The need to scream at the top of my lungs is enormous.

  Instead, I let the electrifying sound of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's music from Swan Lake calm me down.

  I've been playing it on repeat for the girls.

  Dancing around them, twirling and whirling through the basement.

  I still need to dig more graves outside. That stupid old couple had ended up in two of them.

  I'd dragged their beaten bodies right to the edge and kicked them in without a second thought.

  I had to do it, didn't I?

  God that feeling! Hearing their dead weight hit the ground hard was so enjoyable.

  I'd covered them up as quickly as I could. I'd even gone to the lengths of picking a few flowers to place on top of their graves. I'm not all bad! They turned out to be special to me, surprisingly. They were my first ever kills, after all.

  I'll deal with the graves later, though.

  First, I need to have some fun and ease up this tension.

  I've set up a little gas hob in the centre of the room today and brought down an old scratched up pan to cook on in celebration of the change of season.

  The snow on the mountaintops are turning to sludge and there's a promise for warmer days to come.

  I saunter up to the girls, still bound to their chairs. They look dismal, grey.

  I recoil at the sight of the girls foot.

  The rotting flesh where her toe once was is crawling with maggots. They are feeding off of her, moulting, festering.

  Flies are swarming all around her. She is delirious.

  I swat the flies away and grab her limp foot for closer inspection. Drawing the knife out from my back pocket, I slide it across her remaining toes. Her head is heavy as she shakes it at me, pleading eyes blinking down at me.

  I flick maggots onto the ground with the knife, the tip of the blade searing right into the wound. She roars in agony but Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Little Swans' is so loud no one can hear her.

  In one quick, fluid movement I slice the blade right through her remaining toes. They fall to the floor like little kidney beans.

  Now she will never dance again.

  Now, she is useless. Pathetic.

  The one thing she was good at in life besides being a whore, is gone.

  I scoop the toes up and head over to the frying pan.

  There's a bottle of canola oil next to the hob. I pour a hearty lug into the pan and turn on the heat. The blood on my hands is sticky and thick.

  The toes sizzle angrily as I drop them into the oil. I turn to look at the girl, she's passed out in her chair.

  The oil spits at my bare arms.

  I unscrew a bottle of Two Oceans white wine and splash a bit into the pan to simmer.

  I grind some salt and pepper into my concoction, the smell of cooking flesh filling the room. The sauce is a mixture of seasoning, wine and blood.

  I deposit the meal onto a plastic plate and head to the CD player to turn down the music.

  “Whose hungry?” I ask the whores, holding out the plate.

  One of the girls throws up, sick leaking through the duct tape covering up her mouth. She has no choice but to swallow. She's crying hysterically.

  She's one of the new girls. Verity. Collateral damage, really.

  She wasn't one of my targets. To my knowledge she never did what the others did, but who knows at this rate. It is possible that some slipped through the cracks.

  She's also not a dancer so she isn't a part of the Corpse de Ballet I'm creating.

  Oh well. The more the merrier at this point.

  “This is all there is for dinner tonight. Come on, eat up!” I push the toes right under her nose, ripping the tape off from around her mouth.

  Vomit drips down her shivering body. When she still resists I roll my eyes.

  I pick up one of the toes, hot pink chipped varnish still visible.

  I yank her mouth open and shove the toe between her lips.

  She convulses, dry heaving.

  I slam my hand over her mouth so that she can't spit the toe out.

  “Chew it,” I whisper into her ear.

  Her black braided hair still smells fresh and clean, like coconut.

  I don't expect her to give in quite as easily as she does, but beneath my hand I feel her starting to chew.

  She squirms as her teeth crunch through the tiny bones.

  “Swallow,” I warn her.

  I watch as I see her throat move in an unwilling gulp.

  My hands are slick with her vomit and blood.

  “Good girl,” I pat her on the head and wrap a new strip of duct tape around her face again before moving on to the next girl.

  “Looks like there isn't enough her to feed everyone,” I pout.

  “Maybe it's time for someone else to contribute!” The blade is in my hand.

  I walk around the room, looking at all of the girls one by one. Who to choose next?

  I choose slowly, smiling down at the girl who knows what is about to come.

  Bibiana.

  CHAPTER 18

  I am so lost in Cody's mouth that I barely register the scream.

  A piercing shriek followed by a stampede of students charging down the hall.

  I blink up at Cody questioningly.

  What is going on?

  Britt hurtles into the room, tripping over herself in the process. The sound she makes is a gargled wail, something guttural.

  “Britt, what-” I start to say but she slams the door behind a bunch of other students who topple over each other to get inside.

  “Call for help!” someone begs, tears falling freely down their face.

  I watch as another student drops to the floor, rocking themselves back and forth.

  That's when I hear the gunshot.

  Everyone screams in unison.

&n
bsp; My eyes go wide.

  Cody slams me to the ground and puts his finger to his lips.

  He squeezes his eyes shut as he silently begs everyone to keep quiet.

  Everyone is trembling with fear.

  There are so many thoughts flying through my head.

  A school shooting. I'd heard of them. Seen the devastation they cause on the television.

  I never thought I'd be in the middle of one.

  You never think it's going to happen to you though, do you?

  I'm in so much shock that I actually feel numb.

  This cannot be happening.

  Cody slips his phone out from his pocket and dials the police.

  The line is engaged. I can hear the droning beep, beep, beep crackling through his speakers.

  “Everyone must be trying to call them,” he whispers shakily when he tries again.

  Students are tucked away into the corners of the room, barricading themselves behind desks and bookshelves.

  There's another gunshot that echoes throughout the school hallway.

  Everyone jumps in fright.

  “Why is he doing this?” Britt sobs frantically.

  “He?” I ask.

  “Luke! Luke came in with a gun. He started shouting at everyone. He told everyone they've made him do this,” her shoulders are heaving up and down as she cries. She's clutching at her shirt, her fingers almost ripping it to shreds.

  My stomach drops and for a moment, I'm sure I'm going to pass out.

  Luke has a gun.

  Luke is shooting in the school.

  This is real.

  What Chloe's dad said this morning comes flooding back to me.

  'Luke took Chloe. I know he did. I told her from the start that boy was trouble. I swear I'm going to kill that son of a bitch myself.'

  This is happening right now.

  As hard as I try, it just won't sink in.

  “He fucking killed all those girls and now he's here for us!” someone in the back yelps.

  Cody grips my hand to ease the trembling.

  His skin is clammy. Cold.

  The glass of the schoolrooms door is frosted, but I can just make out a shadowy figure lurching towards us from outside. I can see without a shadow of a doubt that it's Luke's silhouette.

  I can see the pistol he has in his hands.