Pricked

by Liz K. Lorde

  Bernard nervously put his hands together. “We’re bleeding profits overnight.”

  Tim turned his chair to look at Bernard. “Yeah, but it’s not that bad though,” he said casually, as though his bank account were made of candy and dreams. “I mean, Mike’s got this, right?” His confidence in me was truly endearing, but this was a critical situation of which I’d never seen.

  Not to mention I was still struggling with Jane.

  Tim continued as the suits bickered amongst themselves, “Even though it’s all absolutely binding, Michael can still take my position.” Something turned in Tim’s mind, that much was clear to me. His eyes went up, and his playful smirk widened into a full on grin. “Yeah,” he effused, “yeah this can work.”

  Anastasia put down her legal pad. “No,” she called out. “How’s that supposed--”

  “Not enough time,” Dresden commented, and a chorus of mumbled approval filled the room.

  Before long the whole room erupted into a frenzy of naming and blaming.

  Tim got up from his chair forcefully, becoming fully animated in this plan he seemed to be hatching. I was getting ready to shut him down, insisting that Jane was the only woman that I’d recently been with in the public eye. “If one of Jonathan’s lawyers combs through Michael’s proposal, he’ll try and pick it apart as being disingenuous. But that’s not going to be the case,” Tim was smiling from ear to ear now. He didn’t know that the better part of my soul was hurting with the thought of even seeing Jane. “We have witnesses who can testify, and I know there were pictures taken at the Bai’Kong charity.”

  It was time to put this idea to bed, “I won’t do that, Tim.”

  He turned his attention to me, not understanding. “What?”

  All eyes were on me. “I’m not going to propose to that girl to save this company.” It was pride that ate away at me, a haunting need to be stubborn.

  “Mike, you can’t be serious. If you don’t do this...”

  Dresden chimed in coolly, “We fucked.”

  I looked over to Dresden and nodded, then slid my eyes back to Tim. “How am I supposed to trust a woman like that?”

  “I can see it in your eyes,” Tim countered, probably getting at all of my feelings for her. He bit his lip, annoyed. “If I don’t stay for the full term your father was installing me for, if it’s anyone but you that takes my place, there won’t be any trust left in the company. Our image will get worse and worse.”

  I rolled my head back, feeling a surge of anger in my chest. The urge to send my hands through my hair was impossibly strong. “If you stay on through the full term, I can make all the decisions for you.”

  Charles put his hands on the conference room table. “That’s just a weaker version of having you at the seat. Any big decisions that you make through Tim will be scrutinized.” He wasn’t wrong.

  Tim nodded emphatically. “We’ll do all that we can to restructure and control the media, but you need to put in work. Get yourself in the public eye again with her.”

  “Ridiculous,” I told them. “Even if I did go through with this, even if there’s no dirt on me, the trust of the public is decimated. Gone.”

  Bernard fiddled with his hands nervously. “Well, we have to do something,” he added meekly to the conversation.

  Anastasia nodded her head. “It’s time to put up or shut up.”

  Dresden remained quiet, and someone in the room turned the TV up; the room’s collective attention darted over towards it at the sound of some black haired reporter. She was trying to work her way through the crowd of others journalists, citizens, law enforcement and private bodyguards. “Mr. Smoak do you have anything that you’d like to say?” She shouted, and a dozen other reporters were harping much the same phrase.

  All I could feel was utter disgust at the sight of my father holding his head down in a red fury and shame with cuffs strapped onto his hands.

  I can’t ignore this. And I can’t forget about Jane.

  I just can’t.

  Chapter 25

  Jane

  Michael was all that I could see in my sleep. His handsome face, and his masculine build; the way that we rode throughout the clearing on that brilliant day with the sun shinning overhead.

  The taste of his lips hungry on my own.

  Even in the embrace of my dreams, I could feel myself growing wet between my legs for the taste of him again. For the way that he would put himself between my legs and eat me; his tongue flicking and stabbing, his slick-with-cum mouth pulling on my drenched lips.

  Something invaded the private warmth of my momentary bliss, and I felt a burning prick in my neck. Darkness spread like ink through the images of my mind’s eye.

  Ow. What in the hell.

  The stinging grew more and more intense, and it felt like a sort of poison was pumping through my veins.

  Everything faded to black, and I caught myself tossing in bed, already muttering curses beneath my breath at the pain raging in my neck and head.

  The soles of my feet lit up with worry and panic.

  My eyes fluttered to life, the sleep still strong in me, but a sense of dread filling me. In the darkness, I caught sight of a moving shadow in front of me; it’s build was familiar to me. Lean. Tall.

  Jesus Christ please tell me that I’m still dreaming.

  My pulse was pounding now, and I went to try and move my body, but it felt like I was wading through quicksand. Attempting to push myself up from the bed, I croaked weakly for help, but my voice just wouldn’t carry far.

  The shadow shifted, stepping closer to me, then sitting down on the bed. All the horrors of my past slammed into my head and heart, and the certainty of death was well within me.

  That was when a voice I instantly recognized cut through the abyss.

  The sound of it only made my stomach crawl more.

  “Do not be afraid,” Lambert said in a careless, cold whisper. “A fitting, special dose of Vecuronium Bromide is working through your system as we speak. It has been inside of you for about ninety seconds now.”

  “You...” it was all I could get out, my body quavering as I still tried to get up. I mentally worked through the hoops of trying to find an item, anything, that might make me able to overpower him.

  Just thinking was becoming exhausting.

  When my mind jumped to the thought of JB, water welled up in my eyes. It was him that had to have done that.

  It had to be.

  He took my fucking dog from me. “Why?” That came out broken, and the thought of Michael not being here to protect me, it kicked me while I was down.

  “Because I saw you on the news,” he confessed in the way that one might mention they were picking up a pack of smokes at the gas station. He moved closer to me and put a hand on my chin, gripping me tightly.

  Wherever he touched was invasive. Perverted. Shameful.

  Needles found every part of my body, and I wanted to do nothing more than kill him for doing this - or to run for my god damn life.

  He looked right into my eyes, and because I was forced to look back, all I could see was the cold green of his eyes boring into me. “Do not worry,” he murmured gently, the familiar scent hot on his breath. “I will not be ruining your home,” he insisted, stroking my face like I was a doll or a toy. “I can already see you struggling to stay awake. You should not fight this.”

  It was true. All the strength was being sapped from me, and my eyes were quickly becoming lead. “Fuck... you...”

  “We are going to have such tremendous fun,” he replied, giving me a sinister Cheshire grin.

  ***

  When I finally came to, everything was groggy and out of this world. But feeling started to return to me. I could feel the bite of rope against my crossed wrists, suspending me a couple of feet off of the floor in total darkness. My Olivia Burton watch moved somewhat below my wrist as I tried to move.

  The thought of my mother flashed through my mind.

  Then came the fe
ar of my body never being found.

  It felt like my head was swimming, and I groaned aloud, moving my feet and toes, just trying to reach the ground.

  But I simply couldn’t.

  The air was cold across my body, and my nose twitched at the musty scent that hung in the air. The place reeked of death. Or maybe that was just in my head.

  It felt like I was hanging there for an eternity, playing over the sick images of Enzo Lambert’s face in my mind over and over. Even in complete darkness, I could still picture those haunting eyes watching me drift into oblivion.

  Michael… I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I hurt you, I never wanted to hurt you.

  I tried to hold on to the warmth of the love that Michael had so freely given me.

  The sound of a metallic door creaking open made it’s way to my ears, and instinctively my eyes tried to peer through the darkness. I could barely make it out, but I saw it, and the fact that Lambert was walking into the room. That lanky frame of his body.

  I rubbed my bound hands together, this time with more energy, some of the strength that I lost getting back to me.

  There was no time to try and escape.

  No hope.

  The lights flicked on, and he was standing there in a pristine, cotton, white button-up shirt. I wanted to close my eyes and not look at him, but I didn’t want to even risk never getting to open them again – let alone not get the chance to describe every horrifying detail of this asshole. Lambert, if that even was his real name, wasn’t wearing his glasses any longer. He stepped closer to me, his black steel-toe boots pressing against the dirty and smashed up concrete floor; my eyes raked over his straight leg, flat front, charcoal colored chevron pants and matching belt. A shiver ran up my spine at taking in the sight of him, and I wriggled my body as I dangled. “Let me go!” My voice was hoarse, and it hurt to talk. There had to be something in this monster that was human. He let one go before. I could make him let me go.

  I could do it.

  “I do not think so,” the words came in a slow, sadistic cadence. The weirdest thing about how he spoke to me now, was that I could hear the French in his accent.

  He hadn’t done that before. My eyes scanned the room, noticing a broken down and unused radiator that looked like it used to be hooked up to something in the wall.

  “Nobody will miss you. Nobody will care for you, or mourn for you,” he droned, his hands tucked carefully behind his back, closing the distance between us so he could look up at me. “You will be my last work for quite some time, little lamb.”

  I wanted to spit in his face. Wanted to kick him in his groin. “You can stop this,” I said instead, trying to remain cool even though my head was pounding with paranoia. One wrong move and I was doomed.

  Hell if I wasn’t already.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I pleaded with him, the emotion starting to wrench through me. If there was anyway that I was going to come out of this alive, it wouldn’t be in pissing him off.

  “Yes I do,” he brought his hands into my view, and I witnessed a medical scalpel in his left dominant hand. He brought it up to my midriff and lightly made circles around my belly button, not enough to cut, just enough to painfully scrape. Up and down, left and right, each lackadaisical circle pressing just marginally harder against me. Each stroke made my nerves light up, and my body wanted to sweat from the mixture of fear and pain.

  “What really happened?” I asked him, trying to remain level headed, “with Anna.” If death was coming for me, the least I could do was pick at him for the truth of it all.

  I could see the twisted pleasure dancing in his eyes as he toyed with me. They slid back up to me. “I buried her beneath the floor boards,” he revealed, and my heart dropped. “She suffered from complete asphyxiation,” the words came clinical.

  Sickness wormed it’s way through my whole system, and things were becoming very, very clear when I remembered that day from before. “You’re the Wolf,” I deduced, connecting the story that I had done on this monster previously with Sidney.

  “That is what they call me here, yes,” the scalpel went upwards towards my chest, and he pressed down enough to draw a line of red on me. Pain surged wherever the blade touched, and I could feel the agony in my throat as I made a noise; somewhere between a whimper and a scream. “I have many names in this distasteful country your kind calls home. All this greed, all this sinful corruption.”

  I resisted the urge to call him disgusting. Scum. A hundred other things. “You let someone go,” I insisted, “I know that you did. Because I interviewed them.”

  The Wolf smiled. “I was feeling merciful that day,” he explained, “a favorite song of mine was playing at the time, you see. Before the,” he thought for a second, “how to put it. Grand finale.”

  “She said you looked completely different,” I was talking more out loud now than to him. Why did she lie to me?

  I could feel the stinging in my eyes at the thought of Michael. Of never being held by him, never making up for the things that I did wrong.

  Sayla. Beth.

  Please...

  The Wolf continued: “When you break someone, you can get them to believe just about anything,” he sank the scalpel between my ribs, making a terrible incision that made me scream. “Not so loud,” he hissed, “or I will have to remove that precious tongue.”

  “Please,” I begged, trying to quiet myself against the immense pain, my mother’s watch shifting an inch from the squirming. “Just let me go, you won’t have to worry about me.”

  He simply looked at me, pulling the scalpel from the hole that he made. I could feel the warm lifeblood trickling. “Do you want to know why I killed your companion?” JB.

  I gritted my teeth at him, the rage pounding through me.

  “Because you did not look at me enough in that last session,” he calmly explained. “I am not letting you go, miss Chatworth.” Even the way he said my name made me want to go numb inside. “You will be mine until there is nothing left of you.” I noticed a bulge in his pants then, and he must have noticed that I did, because he quickly became flustered.

  The sick fuck was actually getting off from all of this. “You’re taking in pleasure in this,” I told him.

  “I always do.”

  “It’s disgusting,” I breathed, hoping to goad him into being utterly ashamed of himself. “You can’t-- you can’t work like that… it’s not right.”

  “It will go down,” he raked the bloodied blade upwards agonizingly slow. “I have cut up prettier things than you.”

  “No--” I winced, “it won’t. I’ve… I’ve seen the way you look at me.” Consideration filled the demon’s eyes. “It’s pathetic,” I chided, “what kind of man are you? I bet you have problems down there.” I swallowed absently when fury flickered over his face. “I thought your work--” just speaking to him was a filthy endeavor, “was sacred. You’re tainting that.”

  “You know nothing, little lamb,” his tone had grown sinister. Unhinged. He brought the blade of red up to my neck. To my jugular. But he didn’t do anything, he just kept it firmly pressed, ready to end my life at a moment’s notice. The seconds ticked by as our eyes locked on each other; he was weighing my words carefully now. I prayed that Sidney was right. Heartbeats later, and he eased the blade from my neck, stepping away from me and taking in a deep breath to compose himself. “I will need a moment, mon cheri.” His jaw worked in anger, no doubt frustrated by his own perverted compulsions to this fucked up ritual. He excused himself slowly, heading towards the door, “do not miss me too much. I will not be long.”

  No doubt.

  As soon as he was out of the door and from my sight, I began to work at the rope bindings on my hands and wrists; I wriggled at them relentlessly, knowing that I only had to loosen it so much for the rest of it to come off. The only problem was that I was still weak from whatever the hell he shot me up with.

  Pain seared me every time that I moved, and the blood from
my chest rolled down past my bellybutton. I thought back on my day’s as I was working part-time as a magicians assistant.

  God only knows how thankful I was for Frederik Delrin’s hellish work hours and low pay now. Trying to use my body, I shifted my whole weight, swaying with the rope back and forth, helping me widen the gaps in the tightly knit rope, done in as far as I could tell a robust square knot.

  I thought about JB, and it pushed me onwards. How I wanted to stop this twisted killer for what he’s done. To me. To him. To Sidney.

  Michael touched my mind like a cool breeze, and when the pain of it all made it seem like I couldn’t go on a second longer, I kept pushing.

  Still, my heart was pounding fiercely in my chest. The pain was all I could focus on. “Come on,” I muttered, swinging and swaying more and more, exhausting all of the little energy that I had. Drops of red spilled from my wounds as I worked.

  I can’t imagine it takes that psycho much longer to relieve himself.

  While I worked at the knot, I continued to scan the room; there was a pipe that was deeply rusted at it’s base, attached to the radiator I’d previously spotted.

  That would have to do.

  Sweat formed on my skin, and I could feel the beads beginning to roll down. Each second that passed only made it feel like the Wolf was going to come back through the door; I couldn’t peel my eyes off of it now. Had it even been two minutes yet?

  In that moment, I vowed that I would do everything I could to make things right with Michael. That I’d gain his trust back, somehow, some day.

  I couldn’t die here.

  I won’t die here.

  Finally the knots began to loosen, and a palpable sense of relief flowed through me. I picked at the opening with my fingers, tightening my hands together and tugging with the whole weight of my body. Each time that I did, the ropes burned against my red and chaffed skin.

  I gritted my teeth and worked at the ropes, fraying them further and further.

  Finally, I slipped free, and fell to the ground, landing straight on my damn knees and hands. The rope burns around my wrists were red and raw and pulsing with agony; my whole body was suffering from light tremors.