Relative Terror

by R. E. Sargent

  Kent stopped at the nearest gas station and filled the tank on his car. He had quite a drive in front of him and he wanted to make sure he made it with no problems. After all, he had a party to go to, even though he wasn’t invited. This was one party that he was looking forward to crashing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jenny decided that it was time to head back to the cabin. She had lost track of time and had already been gone two and a half hours. She’d spent too much time driving around, checking out the town and now it was already after 1:30 in the afternoon.

  Jenny turned on the dirt road, anxious to see Dom. She was really attached to him and wanted to spend every moment with him. Thinking about Dom made her want to hurry, so she pressed the gas pedal down and sped up the gravely dirt road.

  The gravel flew out behind her tires and she could see rocks bouncing down the road behind her when she looked in the rearview mirror. A cloud of dust arose directly behind the vehicle and continued on down the road. The sun shone directly above her as she drove and she thought about what a wonderful day it was.

  A squirrel ran across the road in front of her. She had to stomp on the brakes to avoid hitting it. Jenny thought about the poor animals that got run over every day. She was glad that this one had not died. There was enough dying going on.

  As Jenny pulled up to the cabin, her spine started to tingle. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she felt a little odd. She decided to be careful.

  She got out of the truck and slowly walked up to the house. Instead of walking directly to the door, she walked around the side of the house and peered in the window. Dom was sitting on the couch watching TV. She watched him for a minute and everything appeared to be normal in the house, so she went back around to the front door and entered the cabin.

  Dom looked up from the TV. “Hi, you’re back!”

  “Sorry I was gone so long. I drove around for a while.”

  “That’s okay. What else did you do?”

  Jenny paused for a second. “Remember? I called my parents?”

  Dom smiled. “Oh yeah, I’m sorry, Hun, I’ve just had a lot on my mind. What did your parents have to say?”

  “Well my mom wasn’t home, but I talked to my dad and everything’s cool. He stands behind me on everything and he isn’t mad. He wants us to stop by when and if we can, after things settle down.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Dom said. “Are they going to come up here?”

  “No,” Jenny said.

  “What about the police? Are they going to call the police?” Dom asked.

  “No,” Jenny replied. “They are just going to wait it out with us. If we figure it out and find out who the killer is, we’ll be okay. Otherwise, they know that we’ll probably leave the state and maybe the country.”

  “So who do we think the killer is?” Dom asked.

  The question puzzled Jenny. Finally she responded, “We don’t know.”

  “Yes,” Dom said. “That’s too bad.”

  She decided to change the subject.

  “Mind if I join you in watching a little TV?” she asked.

  “Not at all. That would be nice,” he replied.

  Jenny sat beside him and grabbed his hand. She was uncomfortable with something, but she could not place it.

  “Are you okay, Jennifer?” Dom asked.

  “Oh, I just have a migraine,” she lied.

  “Do you want me to get you some aspirin?”

  “No thanks,” she answered.

  They sat there in silence for a while longer while they watched TV and then Jenny finally realized what was bugging her. Dom’s hands, which were normally very warm, were very cold, which was unnatural for him. This made her uncomfortable. She also hadn’t heard him call her Jennifer before. It was always Jen and Jenny. Not only that, he seemed unaware of the fact that she went to call her parents. Dom was acting very strange and she didn’t know what to do. She figured she could keep quizzing him nonchalantly and see what his answers were. If he was acting weird all of the time and didn’t have all of the right answers, then there was definitely something wrong.

  Jenny started thinking about how well she actually knew Dom. She had only known him for a few days. He seemed to be the greatest guy in the whole world, but maybe she was only seeing one side. Maybe he had multiple personalities. He sure seemed to be having an awful lot of bad dreams lately. Was it possible that Dom actually was the killer? Was it possible that he was totally unaware of what he was doing when he went out slaughtering people?

  Now Jenny was starting to get scared, but she couldn’t let on that she detected something was wrong. It was time to start asking questions, without being obvious.

  “So how was dinner last night, Dom? Did you like it?”

  “It was great,” Dom answered. “Thank you.”

  “What would you like for dinner tonight?”

  “Anything is fine,” he answered.

  “Well decide on something we picked up from the grocery store yesterday,” she suggested.

  “I forget what all we bought. Anything will be fine.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Maybe I’ll make steak.” She knew damn well that she had just made steak the night before, but did he remember?

  “Steak sounds great, Jennifer. Thanks!”

  Jenny sat and watched TV for a couple more hours with Dom, occasionally slipping in a question here and there to see how he would answer it. He wasn’t doing so well and Jenny was getting really nervous. She figured that he was in one of his other states of mind and that he might be dangerous. This could be the Dom that killed. The Dom that did all of the dirty work while the unsuspecting, innocent Dom was in there somewhere, in the other half of the brain.

  Jenny had never seen this side of him before and she was surprised. She didn’t think it was possible for anyone to have such multiple personalities without her being able to detect it right away. She knew what she had to do. She hated to do it, but she needed to get away. Either that, or have him arrested and imprisoned until they could test him for mental illness. If she was right, Dom would probably be able to plead insanity and get put in a mental hospital, or get off entirely.

  If they could find a way to control this part of him, maybe someday they could have a relationship. After all, Jenny couldn’t hold it against him if a little part in the back of his brain was making him do what he did. If he knew about it, but didn’t get help, it would be one thing. Dom had no idea he was the killer. It was not until recently that he even questioned whether it was him or not. It was not until now that Jenny ever suspected that it could be.

  Jenny loved him and for this reason, she would stand beside him through everything. But one thing she couldn’t do was stand back and get herself killed. If Dom had actually killed everyone that he had ever loved, then she knew that she was next. Jenny had no doubt that Dom loved her immensely. She could just tell. He loved her enough to kill her.

  She was pretty sure that Dom didn’t want to kill the people he loved. She wasn’t an expert, but she figured it was some deep-rooted psychological problem that triggered a violent reaction to anybody that Dom’s normal personality loved. Dom had told Jenny the other night in bed that she was the first woman that he had ever fallen in love with.

  Then it hit her. Dom’s love for Jenny had just become apparent to him recently and now his subconscious was taking over. When his brain detected love, a hidden switch went off inside his head, triggering a Dom that no one knew or would want to know. Dom the killer. Dom the murderer. The Dom that had brutally killed Nina.

  Jenny had to be sure. She had gotten a lot of inconsistent answers to her questions, but there was one question that she knew he could not get confused about if it was really the Dom that loved her, not the Dom that would love to kill her.

  “Dom?” she asked, softly. “Do you remember the first night we made love, in the motel room in Phoenix?”

  “I sure do,” he answered.

  “How was it for you?” s
he asked.

  “Really good,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Oh, I was just curious if you liked it as much as I did.”

  “Of course I did, Jennifer.”

  “Would you like to do it again tonight?”

  “You know I would,” he answered.

  To Jenny, it did not sound like the Dom she knew. And of course, they had not made love yet. He did not even catch it.

  Jenny was, by this time, positive that something was wrong. She had to come up with a game plan. She could wait until he fell asleep and then leave, but that would be dangerous. First of all, he might want to have sex with Jenny which she could not handle right now. Secondly, she might not make it that long if he decided to kill her. She was kind of curious why he sat there and pretended instead of taking care of business. Not that she was complaining. She just couldn’t figure out what he was waiting for.

  Finally, Jenny got up enough courage to make her move. When they had brought the stuff from the truck to the cabin, Jenny had put the gun under the mattress in the bedroom. Her only chance of escape was to get the gun and get away from him, or take him at gunpoint to the police. She thought that it was pretty ironic. The cops get the man they are after and put him in jail. She broke that man out of jail and now, a day later, she was going to try and send him back. So much for her good judgment.

  Jenny got up from the couch.

  “Where are you going, Jennifer?”

  “Just to the bathroom, Sweetie.”

  “Hurry back,” he said.

  “You can count on it, Dom.”

  Jenny slipped into the bathroom which had a door leading into the hallway and another into the bedroom. She closed and locked the hallway door to the bathroom and quietly slipped into the bedroom, leaving the light off as she went. The door leading from the bedroom to the hall was slightly ajar and she didn’t want to bring any attention to herself.

  When she got to the bed, she got down on her knees and slid her hands between the mattress and the box springs. Her fingers closed around the cold steel of the barrel and she withdrew it from its hiding spot. She was going to make it. Jenny closed her eyes and said a quick thank you to God. Breathing a sigh of relief, Jenny withdrew the gun and stood up, spinning around to face the door just as the light exploded across the room and Dom was there, standing in the doorway, an evil look on his face. It was a look of betrayal, hatred and vengeance.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

  Jenny just stood there with the gun hanging in her limp hand.

  “Do you really think that will help?” he laughed, glancing at the gun, an evil grin on his face.

  Jenny raised the gun.

  “Do you really think you can shoot me, your precious Dom?”

  “Stay back,” Jenny yelled, racking the slide and aiming the gun at him.

  Dom took one step closer to Jenny, like he was challenging her to shoot.

  “Or what?” he asked.

  “Or I blow your damn head off,” she screamed.

  “You don’t have the balls,” he sneered.

  “Neither will you if I aim a little lower,” she challenged.

  “I dare you!” Dom said. He took another step.

  “I mean it, damn it! Back the hell up!” she screamed.

  He laughed, a sinister, evil, laugh. He started walking towards her. Jenny steadied the gun and placed her finger on the trigger.

  “Stop NOW!” she yelled, spittle spraying from her mouth.

  Dom came closer and Jenny closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. Her heart was pounding in her chest as the striker started its long, slow descent towards the firing pin. It was a second later that she realized the striker had not connected with a cartridge. Dom continued towards her and she pulled the trigger again. No shots were fired. He let out another wicked laugh and stopped two feet from Jenny. He held out his right fist and opened his fingers. In the palm of his hand sat fifteen shells. The shells from the gun.

  “Looking for these, Bitch?” he yelled as his fist closed again around the shells and she saw his fist come at her face. It happened too fast for her to move and his fist connected with her face with a loud CRACK. Jenny felt her lip split open as the shells from the gun scattered around the room and she fell to the bed. She could taste the blood as it oozed into her mouth. She knew she must have the look of a trapped animal in her eyes, for he had the look of a deranged psychopath in his. There was no love in those eyes, only hatred.

  Dom walked over to the bed to grab Jenny and as he approached, she brought her leg up as hard as she could between his legs. She heard him squeal as she crushed his manhood and he almost went down, but not quite. Before he could move, she fired her leg at his stomach as hard as she could and dropped him to the floor.

  Jenny could hear Dom gasping for air as his lungs tried to take in the sweet, precious oxygen he so badly needed. She rolled off the bed and ran around him as fast as she could, trying to avoid his hands, not wanting to get her ankles grabbed. The gun had left her hands when Dom had hit her and had fallen somewhere in the bedroom. While she was tempted to find it and also find a shell, she knew she did not have that much time.

  Jenny ran to the front door and tried to open it only to find the deadbolt locked. Since the deadbolt had a keyhole on each side of the door, you needed a key to get in or out when it was locked. The key was nowhere to be seen. Dom was one step ahead of her the whole way.

  Giving up on the door, Jenny knew she did not have enough time to go to the other door of the cabin. She would have to go by the bedroom door to get there and she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Instead, she grabbed the DVD player off of the TV and yanked its wires loose. With all of the strength she could muster, Jenny slammed it through the front living room window. The sound of the glass exploding onto the deck was phenomenal and Jenny saw the player bounce across the deck and slide over the edge.

  Jenny climbed on top of the older console TV and kicked more of the glass free from its frame so that she wouldn’t cut herself on the way out. Satisfied that she had enough room to get out, she jumped out of the window and landed on the deck just as she heard a crack and a bullet whizzed by her head.

  “Shit!” she screamed as she landed, tucking into a roll and then springing into an upright position. She took off running towards the woods. She was pissed.

  “You Bastard!” she snarled, her will to survive greater than ever.

  As she reached the edge of the woods, she thought she was going to make it until her right leg gave way under her and she collapsed into a heap on the ground. It was a few seconds later that she realized that the pain she felt in her leg was from a bullet that had entered her thigh from behind. The pain was so excruciating that she almost blacked out.

  As Jenny tried to move and get up, the pain in her leg was too great and she fell back down to the ground. She was helpless. As she lay there with her face buried in the dirt, she heard the sound of footsteps approaching. She shut her eyes as tight as she could, afraid of the wrath of the maniac that had shot her. The footsteps stopped near her and she waited. There was nothing. After a few minutes, she thought that she had been hearing things until pain exploded in her side from a kick. The air was knocked out of her and as she tried to breathe, scream, and cry, she realized that it was over. She was going to die.

  “You silly Bitch!” he yelled. “Did you really think that you could get away from me?” He punctuated the word “me” with a kick to her bad leg. Jenny cried out in pain as he continued to lecture her. “I thrive on killing people like you. Believe me, I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.”

  Dom grabbed Jenny’s arm and pulled her to her feet. She almost threw up from the nausea that enveloped her. She half-hopped and was half-dragged by him into the cabin. Shards of pain shot through her entire body as he pulled her along. Jenny tried to speak, but she was silenced by a backhand to the mouth.

  “Shut up!” he growled. “I don’t want to hear your little whinin
g.”

  Dom dragged Jenny into the living room and threw her onto the couch. As she watched with fear, he went over to the window and ripped the cords down from the blinds. Securely, he tied Jenny’s hands and then her feet. As an afterthought, he tied her hands to her feet. Lastly, tired of hearing her whimper, he gagged her.

  “I can’t believe you,” he spat. “You’re pathetic. I should kill you right here, but I’m not sure I want to do that. I’m thinking of a little fun I’d like to have first.”

  Dom watched the shocked and scared look on Jenny’s face and laughed.

  “What’s the matter? Are you shocked that your precious Dom is a murderer? Believe me, so was Nina. You should have seen her face as I chased her around the house, stabbing her with her own knife. It was a sight to behold. I was worried for a while when she didn’t die right away. I thought I’d have to start all over again. Luckily, God took over for me and righted the situation.”

  Jenny just stared at him.

  “Don’t look so shocked. Phillip was just as easy. Was he ever surprised to see me in the woods on his hunting trip. He was really pissed off. Told me to go home. His buddy was off somewhere and didn’t hear any of the commotion. You should have seen the look on Phillip’s face when I stuck my .357 in his face and pulled the trigger. He turned his head at the last second and I blew the side of his head off. You should have been there. You should have seen it. You might have enjoyed it.”

  Jenny again felt like she was going to be sick and she had to fight really hard to keep it down again. Please God, take me now, she silently prayed.

  Dom went on. “You know the one I had the most pleasure with, that is until now, was Billy. Not only did I get to blow him away, but I got to take his wallet too.”

  You’re a sicko, Jenny thought.

  “I bet you’re still wondering why!” Dom said. Jenny nodded.