All of Her Men

by Lourdes Bernabe

  I was flabbergasted. It appeared to me, that I may have a somewhat dark and twisted secret admirer. I chuckled. Secret Admirer was a stretch. But still. I no longer felt threatened. It seemed I had nothing to fear I could finally take exhale.

  I couldn't actually believe that of course. However, the daunting feelings of dread had been completely emptied and replaced with excitement.

  Yes, someone definitely saw me.

  And no, that was most certainly NOT a good thing.

  But I couldn’t help but to sense that they might have actually enjoyed what they saw. And if that was true, I wasn’t the only monster in town.

  I heard some shuffling come from the bedroom. I had forgotten that Eric had still been asleep in my bed while I played with knives in the living room. I got a little carried away. I was a sucker for nice shiny things.

  Before he could see, I dumped the box behind the sofa and slid the knife into the box and set it onto my living room bookshelf. Hiding items in plain sight was always the best way to go. Eric wasn’t the snooping type. I wasn’t too worried.

  He quickly poured himself a cup of coffee and was halfway out the door.

  "You're up early. You goin' somewhere?" I asked.

  "Yeah, I’m just grabbing some coffee. I gotta go. I have some work I need to do," he said drowsily. Clearly he had a hangover, but not bad enough to prevent him from going about his day.

  "Well, that sucks. I was kind of in the mood this morning.” I was flirting. But it wouldn’t work this time.

  "Sorry babe. You know I want to. I just really gotta go. Rain check?" he asked already holding the door open with his foot.

  "Yeah, no problem," I lied. No use in begging for him to stay. I didn’t want to keep him.

  Of course it was a problem. But he needed to go and either way I had things to do as well. We exchanged the usual pleasantries of kisses and hugs and he went on his way.

  I shut the door behind him and headed for the room. I tidied up my bedroom and the rest of the apartment. Getting dressed would be another issue, but before that I would need some more coffee. Most of my hangover had subsided but I still had a headache and drinking copious amounts of coffee usually quelled the pang.

  I couldn't help but get the feeling that I was just waiting. Ever since I received that strange letter, I was in a constant state of waiting for the next move. I was just waiting for the unknown. It was awful. Not to mention, highly irritating.

  I wasn't even sure what I was waiting for. I had taken an educated guess that 09 07 13 was a date. And if it was in fact a date then that date would be tomorrow. I was usually prepared for anything the came my way but I just couldn't shake the feeling that I would never be able to prepare for whatever tomorrow would bring.

  That was enough to set me on edge once again. Admittedly, the knife was an unexpected yet welcome surprise. Even if the notes were both creepy and cryptic, I fantasized about using my new toy on my next expedition. Which couldn't come soon enough.

  Unfortunately, I would have to wait until after. After what though. Not knowing is what set me on edge. The urge to kill would not falter. It was an itch that had to be scratched eventually.

  That night, after the day was said and done I simply laid down on the couch and watched some television. I couldn’t say I watched anything of any interest I simply needed a diversion. It was getting late.

  I checked the clock, it was 11:03. I enjoyed nightly cable news and so I turned to CNN. I felt fatigue begin to settle in so I did a last minute check through my phone. No missed calls but I did get a text from Olivia. Wanna chyll? Nope. Not tonight. I didn’t even reply. She wasn’t the type to wait for an answer. She was probably way past drunk by now. I made a mental note to call her in the morning. I was in for the night. I continued to stare in boredom at the television and that's when everything went black-.

  __________

  My throat felt like it was on fire. I was taking in so little air. But there was no stopping. I had to keep running. The burning in my legs worsened. The pain grew with intensity and slowed me down to a crawl. I look down at my hands and I held a knife covered in blood...What have I done?

  I spun around. There was no one was there. I felt the heavy weight of being watched on my shoulders. Then I heard a snap. Instinct kicked in and I took off in the opposite direction. The tension mounted on my shoulders and my legs caved out from under me. Tiny rocks pricked my hands as I fell onto the cold gravel.

  Faint trickles of blood formed on the palms that cushioned my fall. But I felt nothing. No pain. I lay there heaving. I tried to force my lungs to inhale and exhale evenly, yet still my throat could only take in so much air.

  Breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe. Breathe. Breathe. It was all I could do to will my body to function. Just breathe. Just breathe. Just Breathe. In and out and in and out.

  But my body could take no more. In its final act of betrayal, my eyes rolled back and my body went limp.

  Chapter 13

  Slow fluttering eyelashes came into view. It was all I could see. They were like long black spider legs crawling into my eyes. Were they my eyelashes? Who else's would they be? They had to be mine. I blinked rapidly to see them flutter again. Yes. They were definitely mine. But nothing else came into focus and my chin dropped forward. All else was a distant blur.

  A prickly kind of feeling crept up my throat. I swallowed to clear it out but it was so much harsher than I expected.

  "Hello," I whispered hoarsely. No answer. "Hello?" I said once more.

  My voice wasn’t carrying. I moved to get up and was thrown back against a cushioned chair.

  What. The. Fuck?

  Seriously what the fuck was going on here. I forced my eyes to open as wide as possible and looked down. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My hands were strapped down with duct tape to the arm rests of a chair. Was I still dreaming?

  I knew I’d been having a nightmare. Was I awake or was I still dreaming? I squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I possibly could and then flashed them open. I shook my head from side to side like a wet dog and nothing. No. I wasn't sleeping.

  This was all real.

  Panic set in.

  "Hello?" I screamed. "H-ELLOOOOOOO?" could no one hear me? Frantically, my eyes darted around the small room, taking in every morsel of information. I scanned the walls. Nothing. There was a door about five feet away directly in front of me. Where did it lead? Where was I?

  Nothing looked familiar. I forcefully threw my head back and saw a dimly lit light bulb hanging a few feet over my head. A light blanket of dust covered it preventing it from giving off much light. But it was enough to see that room was empty except for one thing. Me. I continued to scan the room hoping something would jump out at me.

  Think. Think Jolene think. What was the last thing you remembered? Huh? Nothing? Not a damn thing. The pounding in my head was even more intense. My shoulders slumped as I racked my brain for anything I could remember that could tell me how I got to be sitting all alone in this empty room.

  There wasn't much. Nothing in my head gave me any inkling as to how in the world I ended up here. I closed my eyes once more and took in a huge gulp of air. My eyelids shot back open and I remembered that I had been home. Before I woke up here I was home.

  I was home. The memories flooded back towards me in tiny incomplete and inconsistent waves. I was lying on the couch watching television when I fell asleep.

  So how did I wake up here? As far as I knew, I could have been here an hour, a day, a week, a month? I hoped not. Could I have been out that long? Every question that skirted through my very confused brain brought with it another ounce of panic.

  Overcome with fear, I cried for help once more. "Help!" I yelled. "Can anybody hear me? Hello!!!!!" I waited in silence. Where could I be that no one could hear my cries?

  But then I heard something. Tap. Tap. Tap. There it was. It was something faint. Was that....tapping? It was too far and too low to be sure but it certainly sounded like tapp
ing. Tap...tap...tap... It was getting closer.

  No. No. No. Someone was coming in. Why had I screamed so damn loud? I thought it would be help but what if I’d just made it worse? Never in my life had I ever felt such sheer terror. Every muscle in my body tensed as the sound came closer and closer. Sweat trickled down the sides of my face and into my eyes as I drew quick breathes in and out of my nose.

  And then the tapping stopped. I racked my brain for a clue. Anything. Anything that might help the situation but there was nothing in sight. Here in this empty room with my hands tied up I felt completely helpless.

  Helpless. It's a strange disposition. And yet here I was, festering alone in this room waiting for what? To die? A colossal amount of fear prevented my synapses from functioning properly. That's when the door swung wide open and a man came in wearing the biggest smile I had ever seen on a man's face. All the thoughts I had been thinking before flew right out the non- existent window. Now I was terrified.

  Chapter 14

  The man, whom I’d never seen before, bent down right in front of my face and stared deep into my eyes. "Hello Clarice."

  Had he really just said that? It was fleeting moments like this that often made me wonder if I was secretly living on a reality show where weird shit happens just to get a reaction from me. Somewhere on the opposite side of the world, rooms full of people were watching my life unravel. If they did exist, I sure hoped they were getting more of a kick out of this than I was.

  He laughed uncontrollably. Apparently something was hilarious. I stared back at him trembling.

  "Sorry. I always wanted to say that," he said.

  Fear subsided as anger took it's rightful place at my core. My eyes had to be fooling me somehow. I felt like I was losing my sense of reality. Yes. Yes that was it. I'm losing my grip on reality.

  I was really back in my living room asleep on the couch having another dark and twisted nightmare. I wasn’t all alone in this room with this man who just quoted a line from "The Silence of the Lambs" while strapped down to this disgusting chair.

  "Ok. I know you're really pissed. And...you're probably wondering what the hell you're doing here. I promise that I won't hurt you and neither will anyone else. It was just the only way. Ok?" He said shrugging his shoulders. As if this was a perfectly normal everyday situation.

  He didn’t look like he planned to hurt me. But looks only went so far. What was I supposed to make of this? Was this some sick game? Was I supposed to believe this guy kidnapped me so we could bake a nice homemade pumpkin pie as we sat by the fire and told ghost stories? Highly unlikely.

  "Who the fuck are you?" I spat in his direction. "What do you want?" Were those the questions you asked when you'd been taken? He just kept staring at me with a blank expression on his face. Did I have a glitter stick coming out of my ass or something? Anger always did bring about a certain vulgarity in me.

  “Why the fuck are you just staring at me? What's going on?" I asked taking my volume and kicking it up a few notches. Was he amused? Did he find this to be funny?

  "I gotta say I don't quite get the joke..." I spewed at him. I couldn't figure out if maybe I knew this guy from somewhere. My tired eyes peered on and I couldn't place him anywhere familiar.

  He was white, about 6 foot with a medium build with fairly shaped muscles. He wore a scruffy looking face but I could still tell that he wasn't that old. He was fairly young, maybe 30 or so.

  "You really need to start telling me what the fuck is going on right now!" I’d lost all patience.

  "I know," he responded. "Look. Just relax. I know who you are...I mean…I know what you are."

  The notes. The packages. 09 07 13. This is what that was all about. Finally. Oh finally.

  "I got your notes...and the knife," I said. "But I gotta say, I still don't get it. What is it that you want?"

  "We only want one thing," he stated point blank.

  "You."

  Me? I don't get it. What could they possibly want me for? They had the wrong girl. Maybe they've confused me with some other Jolene Hedon. They've got the wrong girl! The screaming in my head wouldn't stop.

  "Why me? What is this about?"

  "You're who we call THE QUEEN," he said rather seriously. His shoulders relaxed and he looked back at me in earnest admiration.

  What the fuck was he talking about? I was no queen. I suppose in my own narcissistic way of thinking, I was a queen. In my own little world, I was the queen. The world, in which, I killed men mercilessly for no other reason than my own pleasure and satisfaction.

  But this man said Queen as if he were referring to the Queen of England. I was fairly certain that I was not the fucking Queen of England. There wasn’t much I could be certain of in my life, but as to the question of being a Queen no less the Queen of England, I was pretty damn sure.

  "Ok. I see from the look on your face that you're thinking about it too much. Relax. You’re not French royalty. We call you the Queen here," he said pointing both his index fingers down.

  "You are the Queen to us and we have been waiting for you for a very long time." He beamed excitedly.

  "But why am I the Queen. What is it that I've done?" I pleaded.

  "Why am I here? What do you want from me?" I continued.

  "You're here to cultivate your lifestyle. I'm here to take what you do and turn it up a notch. Here, you will rise to the occasion. You, my Jolene, are one bad ass motherfuckin' gangster and in your world no one knows that. But down here, where the sick and sadistic come to meet, you my lady, are The Queen."

  This would have been the appropriate time to let my jaw drop thus allowing my tongue to unravel down to the floor rendering me speechless. But that didn't happen. My jaw didn't drop to the floor. I froze in shock.

  Not a muscle even flinched as my mind attempted to decipher whatever it was that he had just finished iterating. My thoughts skirted around so quickly I could barely grasp pieces here and there and form coherent lines of thought. They knew I was a killer...but a bad ass motherfuckin’ gangster? Why did he have to say it like that?

  Then it hit me. If they knew what the things I did, then how long before someone said something to the rightful authorities? Almost instantly, I brushed that thought aside. If they were going to turn me in they would have done so already. No. I could tell this guy, whoever he was, loved what I did. He wasn’t afraid.

  "If I'm the Queen why am I still tied up down here?" I inquired.

  "Well, we knew you’d never come willingly. Once you're here though, we figured you might change your mind. You're a vicious cold-blooded killer which is precisely why we want you. But as they say, better to be safe than sorry," he said.

  "To be fair though, I should warn you. As vicious and as cold blooded as you are my queen...so am I. I’m Derek. Derek Jeter actually... kinda funny, I know. You can laugh about it now. But I’ll tell you, there’s nothing funny about what I do. There are similarities between us. Like you, I found that I have a gut-wrenching need to kill..." he continued.

  He went on some more but it was all just a tad too much to take in all at once. I decided I needed a mental inventory for fear of losing all my marbles. I liked to kill. Check. He and presumably others knew this fact. Check. And...he's a killer too. Check. The others? Who were they? What did they all want?

  “Yeah. I know it’s a lot right now…”

  “Ya think?” I rudely snapped.

  He exhaled loudly. I could tell he was contemplating something in his head. He did say he was like me and even though he did say that he wouldn’t hurt me, this wasn’t exactly the type of scenario where you just took someone for their word.

  I was a killer after all and a ruthless one at that. Though I couldn’t speak for all those who were like me, I knew the instinct was there. That fucking relentless tug and pull. It never just let you be. And yet, as if I did have some miniscule instinct into this man’s psyche, I honestly could not bring myself to believe that this man was here to hurt me.

 
Of course, I could never know for sure. Deciphering a seemingly normal person is difficult in and of itself. Trying to figure out someone like him or hell even someone like myself would prove increasingly difficult.

  I decided right then and there that I would trust him for the foreseeable future. This could only go in two directions. I could be right or I could be wrong. I wanted to get this show on the road for God’s sake.

  “Ok. I’ll go with what you’ve told me thus far. Can you untie me now? It’s not exactly comfortable,” I said as calmly as I could muster given my current state.

  “I would love to untie you, and I will. But first, there’s something you need to know. Me and you? We’re cut from the same cloth. If you try to take me out or if I end up having to take you out then all this was for nothing. You really need to believe that no one here wants to hurt you. We want you alive; we want to see you’re work. We admire you. We really, really do. And while I know this will take time, I really think that you may come to admire some of our work as well.”

  I must have thrown what seemed like a hundred daggers with my eyes in his direction. He held up his hands as if he were waving a white flag of surrender.

  “Ok. Ok,” he said. “Now would probably be a good time for you to meet the others. Don’t worry, they don’t want to hurt you either. Believe it or not, they’re very excited to meet you. They’ve been waiting a long time for this day.”

  He grabbed a ridiculously large pair of scissors and cut off the duct tape that held my arms captive for so damn long. It had felt like an eternity. He finally cut the straps that released both of my arms. I flexed my wrists and cracked my knuckles and it had never before felt so good. I didn’t have much experience in the world of captivity but the short amount of time I spent there was nothing to write home about. I could only hope that I would never again experience my hands or legs bound by anything ever again. Well…perhaps I’d be willing to experiment with sexual bondage. There turned my sick and sadistic gears again. I shook my head rapidly to rid myself of my own obscene thoughts.