My Kind Of Crazy

by Nadene Seiters

  “Why not?” Condescension.

  “Because I knew that if I touched it, it would look like I had done it. That’s why I’m here, right? You think I lost my marbles, and I killed her. Now you’re just flouncing around the woods like faeries looking for a dead fucking body!” I slam my fists down on the metal table and bite the inside of my cheek to get the words to stop pouring from my mouth. By the time I feel under control, there’s blood coating my teeth and sliding down my throat. Oddly, the taste doesn’t disturb me.

  “We’re doing everything we can to find Anastasia.”

  “So she’s still missing. After I found May, I called 911 on Anastasia’s cellphone. The cellphone was under the bed in the upstairs bedroom, the one down to the right at the top of the stairs. I had to use her cellphone because the main lines were cut.” Blood is dribbling out the corner of my mouth and coating my tongue. I let my head hang as I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing to a normal level, or at least a level that doesn’t make me look insane. Then I chuckle to myself because I am insane, and what if they’re right? What if I imagined my earlier conversation with Anastasia and the lasagna? There’s a possibility that I did, and during that blackout I hurt her in some way. She could be dead in the woods because I lost my temper, and then I remember why I lost my temper earlier.

  “Mr. Taylor, I don’t know his first name, but he drives a metallic colored Lexus. He’s been stopping by every day for days now telling Anastasia that she has to sell her property to him, our property.” I hope that will help them, and if I get my hands on that rotten piece of dead flesh walking, I’ll kill him.

  Chapter Five

  Anastasia

  “Jonah?” My voice comes out scratchy and quiet, but it’s loud enough to get my captor’s attention.

  “No, not Jonah.” I don’t recognize the voice which frightens me. It’s not who I would expect it to have been, and that sends chills down my spine.

  “Who?” I try to clear the phlegm from my throat, but it’s thick and sticky, and yet my mouth feels drier than the Sahara Desert air.

  “Never mind who. Tell me where it is!” When I’m finally able to feel my arms and legs, part of me wishes that I still can’t. My wrists are tied tightly with something abrasive and stringy that reminds me of a thick twine, and my ankles are tied with the same. I’m lying on my side with my legs drawn up to my chest, and my shirt is tattered from being drug through the woods.

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. If you could just elaborate what ‘it’ is?” Now is not the time for a snarky attitude, but I can’t seem to control myself. I’m still unable to focus on anything in front of me, yet my sense of smell seems to be working on overdrive. The air is musty. I’m lying on dirt, and I can smell something that reminds me of death.

  “The tape, the tape, you must have the tape!” I understand why I’m unable to see right. It’s because my eyes are barely open. So I open them up fully and manage to get an eyeful of dust as the man walks past me in a pair of hunting boots.

  “What tape are you talking about? What’s on this tape?” I assume it’s not Disney movies, and since this man drugged me and kidnapped me, I assume that it’s not anything I really want to see. Yet I have a morbid curiosity to understand what is on this tape, and why this man would think I possess it.

  “You watch it don’t you? Late at night, you watch my tape!” He’s really starting to lose it, or he’s lost it a long time ago. The man begins to cackle in a high pitched voice, and I almost groan when I recognize the throes of insanity. I’m not going to get anywhere by asking him what is on this tape or why he thinks I have it. My remaining energy should be spent on figuring a way out of here because obviously I’m too far in the woods for anyone to hear my scream right now.

  “I have to pee.” That’s a viable excuse to get outside of this stinking hole in the ground, right? I assume it’s a hole, but perhaps I’m in some sort of dirt cabin. Did my father have more than one cabin in the woods with a crazy man in it? I must be feeling really awful because that thought makes me want to cackle right along with this psychopath.

  “You can pee when I have my tape!” Unexpectedly, he grabs my hair in his hand and wrenches my head back so that when I open my eyes I’m forced to look at his face, or lack thereof. He’s wearing a ski mask that leaves nothing but his eyes revealed, but I can tell that he’s fair skinned from his eyelids. I study the hazel eyes with tendrils of brown radiating out from the irises, and the dark ringlets around his hazel eyes. If he weren’t insane, I’d say his eyes are pretty.

  “I can’t concentrate if you’re pulling my hair out of my head! Let me think, and maybe I can help you get your tape!” My teeth snap together as he pulls my head back even further and runs a finger around my small Adam’s apple, what happens next will scar me for the rest of my existence. The creep puts his cracked, dry, dirty lips to my throat so gently I can barely feel it. But oh do I feel the shivers climbing up my spine and makes me want to hurl.

  “Maybe I can make a new tape.” The stranger suggests with glee in his voice, and if it weren’t for my insane amount of self-control I would be vomiting this instant all over the dirt floor.

  “No!” I swallow harshly and try to get my galloping heart to stop pounding on my rib cage. “No, you’re other tape is much better, and I will help you find it. Just please, let me go outside to pee.” I’m not lying anymore; I really do have to pee. And yet, if I were actually given the chance to squat and do it I probably wouldn’t get anything out I’m so terrified right now.

  “I can’t let you out of here. No, if I let you out you will run and tell the pigs out there looking for us right now that I’m here. And then you will tell them how to find the tape!” Before I can protest and lie through my teeth that I was not about to do any such thing, my captor hits me across the face with something long and cold. It eerily reminds me of a gun. That’s my last thought before I collapse back onto the floor unconscious.

  “Daddy?” The man sitting on a bench with his back to me looks oddly familiar, but I’m afraid to sit down beside him. What if he looks different than he did when he was alive?

  “Ana, sweetheart, come sit with me.” Even with the irrational ball of fear tangled in my abdomen, I make my legs jerk forward like a zombie’s. I’m almost to the back of the bench when my father turns his head to the side, and I have a clear profile of half his face. The fact that it looks like it did any other day of the week when he was alive soothes me. So I move around the bench and sit on the opposite side, looking out over the gray mist ahead of us.

  “I’m so lost without you. I miss the phone calls on Wednesdays, and the fact that we always promise we’d get together sometime.” My throat clogs with my unshed tears, and I look down at my arms, the scarred, ugly arms that are mine. “I wanted to fall into old habits again after the police called.”

  Without any knowledge of how I got there, I’m suddenly soaking in the warmth of my father’s hug. Here, in a place where no one will ever know, I whisper to my father all the heartache I’ve been dealing with for the last week since his death. I tell him about how angry I was that he never told me about Jonah, or the fact that he split everything down the middle between me and Jonah. All the while, my father holds me and strokes my hair. I even tell him about how everyone is calling me Ana now and not by my real name, and he stiffens.

  “Tell me about the tape, Anastasia.” I feel my throat working as the words slice through me, and then the mist is starting to recede from my vision. I’m running after it with my hand outstretched, silently screaming as the back of my father disappears.

  I’m jerked out of the dream, and slapped in the face with reality as I realize that it’s my captor who is holding me. He’s stroking my hair with a gloved hand as he rocks me back and forth as though I’m his own child, and then his hand begins to wander down my front to my abdomen. His fingers bunch in the remains of my shirt while I fight the urge to kick and scream. I have to wait for my
moment, and then I’ll kick, but I won’t be screaming. No, it’ll be this Weirdo who will be writhing on the floor in agony by the time I’m done with him.

  “You have much softer hair than the others. It’s like cool, silk sheets running through my fingers.” The vomit is starting to gather in my esophagus. I really don’t want to know what lasagna will taste like the second time around, although I have a feeling there won’t be much left. I think I’ve been out here longer than I previously guessed, which means the police might have stopped searching already.

  “If I tell you where the tape is, will you let me go?” My voice quivers, but I manage to keep my body from shaking like leaves in a wind storm.

  “If you tell me where the tape is, and I find it, then I will let you go.” I know what that implies. “If you lie to me, Anastasia, I will cut off each one of your fingers until you tell me the truth. It will be a shame because they are such long, elegant fingers.” I’m going to hate my own fingers for the rest of my life now. But I nod anyway, and I struggle to plow ahead with my reckless plan.

  “It’s in a fire proof box, in my father’s bedroom, underneath the third floorboard from the door.” I hope that’s enough detail for him to believe me because I don’t have anything better than that.

  “Don’t scream while I’m away, it’ll be useless darling. There is no one out here to hear you!” He lets out this laugh that reminds me of a child, and then he’s opening up a door to my right to let the night sounds waft in.

  As the moonlight graces the inside of what looks like another cabin, I take in as much as I possibly can. There are tarps over the windows to block the light, and it looks as if they’re held up with boards over the ends nailed to the wall. I don’t see a weapon that I could use, but if I could get one of those boards to rip off before he came back, I might be able to break a window. That is if I can get out of my restraints.

  “Don’t go anywhere. There are worse things in the woods at night than me.” I highly doubt that. I manage to keep that thought to myself as he steps outside of the door. A chain rattles as it thunks against the wooden door and I know that the door is not a viable option for escape.

  Over two hundred seconds later, I counted, I hear his footsteps crunching away from the cabin. I count to two hundred one more time, and then I start to jiggle the rope around my wrists first. It’s not budging, and neither are the ropes around my ankles. Making an angry, guttural noise, I pull myself into a sitting position and start scooting around so that I can find something that will help me get these bindings off.

  I have no idea how long I search the floor for something worth helping me before I start to attempt squeezing my hands through the opening. If I twist my wrists methodically to the left and then to the right, it feels as though the rope might be getting loose. I end up sloughing off some of my flesh as I get my right hand free, and then my left.

  With no knowledge of how long I have left before the psychopath returns, I immediately start undoing the restraints on my ankles. My breaths are coming quick now to match the rhythm of my heart that is soon going to fly out of my chest cavity. If I don’t get out of here soon, I won’t be far enough away when he returns. My hand slips on the rope and I cuss, rather loudly, when I hit the injured side of my hand on the floor.

  “I guess he was right, no one will hear me out here, not even him!” I giggle hysterically as I finally get the nylon rope around my ankles to fall away. The bark of laughter that follows is scratchy and inhuman to my ears, but who can blame a person for losing their mind when they’re threatened with losing fingers?

  The boards are much more difficult than the restraints, considering they’re screwed into the wall rather than nailed, which means I’m screwed. I’m not sure what is really over the window, whether it’s tarp or some other sort of thick material, but it’s going to be difficult to break through with my bare hands. Especially hands that are already throbbing as if they’re asking me to just stop right here and now. Yet I love my fingers dearly, and I love my life even more.

  Embarrassed by the action, I pull off my shirt and wrap it around my left hand, which is not torn up from the rope. I’m right handed, but I’m going to need to learn how to punch with my left hand in the next minute, or I might be missing the fingers on my right. Somehow, I just imagine him starting with my right hand. The images fuel my fear, and kick up my adrenaline another notch as I pull my left hand back.

  “Here it goes,” I whisper to myself. All the while, I’m wondering why I’m even bothering to talk to myself, but hearing my own voice is helping.

  My fist crashes into the tarp and smarts as soon as it comes in contact with the glass. I hear it crack, but it doesn’t shatter. I pull off one of my sneakers and slip my hand into it, and I start using that to break out the glass of the window. The broken glass tears holes within the tarp easily, so I pull my sneaker off my hand and slip it back onto my foot. Then I use my good hand to rip the tarp away, and breathe in the fresh air pouring through the window. The night sounds are like a chorus of cheering to my ears as I pull myself through the opening.

  I hiss when my leg catches on a stray piece of glass and it tears through my jeans to kiss my flesh. Blood runs down my leg under my jeans, but the sensation is welcome as I start light stepping away from the cabin. I don’t want him to know which direction I went, so I try not to disturb the leaves and sticks underneath my feet. When I’m about twenty yards away from the Hell hole, I start running as if my life depends on it, which it does.

  Being lost in the woods with a maniac on the loose is a lot like being chased through the Sahara Dessert by a lion, or any other predator chasing down the prey is an excellent comparison. My breathing is so loud to my own ears that I want to gag myself, but I’m having a hard time getting oxygen to my brain. Fear seized me back at the cabin, but panic is beginning to drag me down under the proverbial water.

  Just as I’m about to start screaming like an idiot, a familiar smell wafts through the air towards me. It’s the scent of burning wood, which means I’m close to a camp fire or a wood stove. My eyes sting with unshed tears as I start blindly running towards the smell. I’m smiling when I burst through the trees and find myself face to face with a large, burly man with a large gun in his hands.

  “Do you have a phone?” This man probably thinks that I’m insane as he grabs me by the shoulders and holds me back. It’s then that I realize I’m not wearing my shirt anymore because it’s resting on the floor of the tiny cabin I was in. My face flushes as he pulls off his flannel shirt and wraps it around my shoulders.

  “Thanks.” I mumble to him as I pull my arms through the oversized sleeves and button up the front.

  “What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of the woods at four in the morning dressed like that?” He sounds more than shocked.

  “Never mind that, just give me a phone. Actually, could you just get me to a road?” The man furrows his bushy brows that look black in the firelight as he rummages around in his pocket. I take the small cellphone from his large hand and feel my insides twist when I see that there are no bars on the phone.

  “Come on, help me put out the fire and we’ll head back to town. On the way, you can tell me what happened.” My limbs feel like they’ve been put through a meat grinder and molded back together, but I manage to throw enough dirt over the fire to put it out. We set off in the gray of dawn down a small trail that I would call a deer path, but he seems to know where he’s going.

  Half an hour into the walk, I realize that something is wrong. We can’t be buried this far into the woods, and there is something oddly familiar about the sound of this man’s footsteps on the ground. I’m growing more and more suspicious by the moment, but he’s holding the gun at his side. I’m afraid to contend with a gun, and I’m also afraid that I might be wrong about my assumption.

  “Could you stop for a second?” I feign fatigue, although it’s not very hard to fake. My knees wobble and knock together as I fall to the groun
d with my head hanging. It has the desired effect because the burly man kneels down in front of me with his gun laid down on the ground, and he puts his fingers under my chin to lift up my face so that I can see his eyes.

  I let out a very long, held in breath when I see that they’re not hazel with tendrils of brown. They’re a warm brown with a ring of darker brown around them, and as soon as the relief floods through me the fatigue is real. It’s so real that I’m unable to get to my feet, and the man has to pull me up. He doesn’t go as far as carrying me, thankfully. His burly arm wraps around my middle as he keeps me upright, and doesn’t say a word when I stumble over some rocks or sticks on the ground.

  Our journey through the woods finally ends when we reach an expanse of field that is bordered by pavement. The grass scratches at my hand as we stumble through it, and the man finally helps me into his pickup truck. It’s beat up, looks unreliable, and makes a horrible gurgling noise when he tries to start it, but when it finally runs I can’t help but feel that I’m riding along in a Lamborghini.

  “I’m going to take you to the police station in town.” For the first time since I woke up in the cabin, my entire body relaxes and my eyes close as the warm air washes over my face from the window. Untrue to his word, the man has not asked me about what happened, and I feel the need to keep close lipped about it. If I talk about it, then the entire thing will feel realer. I just want to leave it behind like a nightmare that someone forgets as soon as they wake up.

  The sound of people talking actually wakes me up, but I try to ignore it like a sleepy teenager on a Monday morning. That is until someone opens up the truck door and my back almost hits the pavement. Burly man’s arms manage to catch me before I hit the ground, and I come up swinging like a cat dunked in cold water.