by Rowan Hanlon
He crossed his arms and nodded slightly. “I know what you’re doing.”
She didn’t even let it faze her. “You don’t. You think you do, but you really, really don’t. Well, maybe you do. So, what is it? What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“You want to die,” he said. “And you want to piss me off so badly that I kill you.”
Sloan considered his words, then shrugged. “I guess you’re right. I do. I’m sick of this. I smell so badly. I hate the way I smell. But, then again, when a person doesn’t take a bath in what… Two months?”
“Three,” he said.
Her mouth dropped involuntarily. Three months? She’d been in here three months? She couldn’t believe that. Where did that extra month go? She shook her head, realizing maybe the bastard was better at all this than she was and she should just give up and let him kill her. But it boggled her mind that a whole month of her life had gone missing. And it really, really pissed her off. What right did he have to do this to her? In what universe was this okay?
Sloan turned her attention back to him and realized she had to get him near her. He would soon be bored of their conversation and he’d either torture her some more and then leave, or he’d just leave. She couldn’t face even one more day in this hole of a room. She had to make her move. So, she turned away and slid down the wall and muttered, “You can go now.”
“What did you say to me?” he snapped.
She turned back to him and said, “You can go now.”
“That’s not the way this works,” he growled.
“Either come over here and kill me or just leave,” she said. “I don’t care which. I’ve given up on ever seeing the sunshine again. It ends today.”
“It ends when I say it ends,” he growled.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. You’ve had your fun. You’ve done your evil deeds. Either kill me or let me die here.”
And, just as expected, he stomped over to her, hunkered down in front of her so they were almost nose to nose and hissed in her face, “You die when I say you die.”
Without thinking, without pondering, without even hoping it would work, Sloan pulled the bolt out of the wall and, in one fell swoop, had the chain wrapped around his neck. She was weak but she was lucky she’d caught him off guard. He hadn’t expected this. As she choked him, he grabbed at the chain and tried to get it off his neck. She pulled it tighter, finding this strength inside of her she didn’t even know existed, finding a way to delete her perpetrator. She squeezed the chain and he fumbled and fell backwards until she was on top of him, choking the life out of him, taking away his air, his oxygen, his right to live. But he was still going, he was still fighting. She felt something in his pocket. With one hand, she reached down and pulled it out. It was a small hammer. What was he planning on doing with that thing? Before any horrific scenarios could play out in her mind, she decided she didn’t need to spend too much time pondering that question and instead reared back and hit him as hard as she could across the temple. And he fell back unconscious.
Because she was so weak, the exertion of doing what she’d done made her very light-headed. Also, it was hard to contain her breathing and all at once, she felt like she was going to pass out. Her head swam so badly all she saw for a split second was total back. But she forced her eyes open and glanced over her shoulder at the door. She had to get to it and out of it. She untangled the chain from his throat, got up and headed to the door, limply slightly.
Once she got to the door, she didn’t know what to do. She realized she had always felt she’d never get to see the other side of it. That’s when she almost lost it. Could she even open the door? She touched it precariously, feeling its cold, rough surface. He stirred a little. He wasn’t dead. She glanced over at him, wondering why she hadn’t pulled down the mask he always wore on the lower part of his face. She didn’t even know what he looked like. Should she check? She had always been curious. But then he moved and that sprung her into action. Without thought, she quickly pulled the door open and raced through it as fast as she could.
The corridor was long and narrow. And dark. Sloan stuck to the edges and ran as fast as she could along it. It seemed to go on forever. Then she came to an abrupt end of the corridor and her choice was to go either right or left. Without thinking, she went left, racing as fast as she could. And at the end of this corridor was a set of stairs. She took them as quickly as she could, nearly tripping in her haste. She heard a noise. She glanced over her shoulder and swore she saw a shadow.
“Fuck!” she hissed under her breath and finally made it to the landing. And there was a door. It was, fortunately, unlocked. She threw it open and found herself in yet another corridor. She looked around in a wild panic, then her eyes settled on something so beautiful and so precious she almost burst into tears. It was an exit sign.
She held back her sobs and raced to it, found the door and, luckily, it opened. And she was outside. It was bright daylight, the middle of summer and hot as an inferno. The sun blinded her but felt so good on her pale skin she almost wanted to stop and bathe in it. But she had no time.
Sloan looked around and saw the enormous building she’d been held captive in then an enormous parking lot which was surrounded by a tall, rusty looking chain-link fence. She stared at the fence for a moment, then glanced back at the parking lot, noticing that there was an older truck sitting in it alone, as if it had been abandoned, too. Is that his truck? she wondered. She didn’t know but she knew she didn’t have to the key nor did she know how to hotwire it.
Sloan stumbled across the parking lot, ignoring the truck, knowing that even considering it was a waste of time and made it over to the gate. The gate was unlocked and she opened it enough to get through and ran away from the building and to an old private drive, which was the entrance to the building. She kept running as fast as she could to the end of it and then she came upon a two-lane blacktop road. She looked left, then right, then out of nowhere a car buzzed right by her, not pausing, not giving her a second look. She closed her eyes, knowing she looked deranged and so disgusting. What if no one stopped? He’d be out here and on her in no time! And she could not, would not go back into that building. She felt herself start to panic and her mind started to churn out worst-case scenarios, then she took a deep breath and, instead of panicking, she started walking. And then a big, black SUV roared up the road. She turned and waved at it and yelled, “I’ve been abducted! Please stop! Please stop for me!” She put her hands together as if she was praying, and she was. She prayed to God to let them stop and rescue her.
And they did. They stopped. It was an older couple who got out and hurried to her. While the man called the police, the woman gave her a sweater from the back of their vehicle and a bottle of water and then they both told her everything was going to be okay.
“It won’t,” she said. “But thanks for saying that.”
* * * * *
Sloan didn’t know how he escaped from that building without notice. Perhaps there was a secret underground tunnel she didn’t know about. Maybe he really was a demon of some sort and had vanished into thin air. However, it happened, he was nowhere to be found once the police got there and raided the place.
From what she heard, they sent a SWAT team in with guns and bullet proof vests. They scoured the place from top to bottom looking for the son of a bitch. But he was gone. Again, almost like he’d vanished into thin air. But by the time they’d gotten there, an ambulance had whisked her away to the hospital.
Her hospital stay was too long for her taste, but the doctor refused to release her too soon, telling her she had more wounds to worry about than what was on her body.
“Yes, he mind-fucked me,” she hissed, getting really, really tired of all this. “But he did not break me. I refused to let him break me. Now let me go home. I’ve been here for over a month! I want to go home! Let me go home!”
“Let her go home!” her father roared.<
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Sloan glanced over the doctor’s shoulder at her father, a big, boisterous man with a beer belly, then at her petite, church-going mother, standing by his side. The two were such an odd pair. They were also two of the richest people in the state. He owned a pig farm. A big one. A giant one. Sloan had left home for college as soon as she could, though her parents always begged her to return and had kept her room exactly as she left it, as they had her sister’s.
“I’m not coming home with you, Daddy,” she told him.
“Like hell you’re not,” he said, shaking his head. “You will get your ass in that car and after I find that son of a bitch and tear him to pieces, I’ll let you come back here.”
“No,” she said. “Please shut up.” She turned to the doctor again. “Just let me go home.”
“Can’t do it,” he said. “Are you even ready for the media frenzy? There are a lot of people interested in talking to you.”
“Interested to hear how he pulled by fingernails out?” she asked. “I don’t think so. I won’t talk about this to anyone. Ever. I’m going home and I’m going back to work.”
“You can’t go back to work, honey,” her mother softly said and came to sit on the bed beside her. “You’re too fragile.”
“Mom, please shut up,” she said, getting irritated. “I am in my right mind, okay? Yes, it was horrible but I am out now.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked and took her hand.
Sloan pulled her hand back then crossed her arms, refusing to say what she was really going to do. Instead she said, “I am going back to work and I am going to start my life again. He can’t take that from me. He won’t. I won’t allow it.”
“Come home with me,” she said and took her hand again, then squeezed it. “I’ll get up early every morning and make your gravy and biscuits.”
“I can get gravy and biscuits anywhere, Mom,” she told her.
“Not like mine,” she said and gave a slight nod of self-congratulations, like she made the best gravy and biscuits and no one else’s were better.
“Mom,” she said. “I was starved for three months. I don’t really give a shit about food anymore.”
“Sloan,” she said. “You listen to me. You think you’re tough and you can handle that old world once you’re out of here. You can’t. You need me and your daddy by your side. And your sister.”
Sloan rolled her eyes. “I need to be left alone.”
“You’re not staying in this city!” her father bellowed.
Sloan groaned then turned to the doctor. “Would you tell them to leave me alone?”
He chuckled and said, “I will say this, Miss Sloan Mitchell, you have come out of this better than anyone could. I’ve never had a case like yours, but I don’t have a doubt in my mind that you will be fine.” He turned to her mother. “She will be, too. With that attitude, she could do anything.”
Sloan almost smiled. It was good to know someone believed in her. But they wouldn’t believe what she was really going to do. Not that she’d ever tell them.
“But, having said that,” he said and took a step back. “I will say it would be a good idea for you to stay with your parents for a while.”
“How long is a while?” she asked.
“Six months to a year,” he told her.
Sloan groaned. She couldn’t handle that. There was no way.
“I got two guards at the gate, honey,” her father told her. “If anyone walks up, they’re as good as dead. You hear me? You got nothing to worry about. Your daddy won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
“He’s not coming after me, Daddy,” she said. “Chances are, he’s moved on to his next victim.”
“Even more reason to hunt him down,” he said. “And I’ll do it.”
She turned to him, crossing her arms and realized going home with her parents might not be that bad of an idea. Anything to get out of this hospital. But she wasn’t staying over a week or two. There was no way.
* * * * *
That was ten years ago. Ten long years. Sloan did stay with her parents for a while and her father did have two armed guards at the gate of their estate. They stood there for a solid six months and never took one shot at anything. Her father also sent out private detectives, mercenaries and the like trying to find her captor. They all came up with nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Then her father died about a year later. When no one could find her captor, he got so distraught over it, he started going out on his own looking for him. She and her mother and her sister all begged him to stop. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He said he was no man to sit around idly and let something like that live after what he’d done.
One day, he came home and they were all in the kitchen. He told them he couldn’t find that “piece of shit,” and he started railing on the system. “Why can’t they find him? They got all these people and all this science and they can’t find some son of a bitch that does something like that? Almost out in plain daylight? What the fuck is wrong with everybody?” Her mother had told him to calm down and he said he wouldn’t. Sloan realized this was eating him alive and she opened her mouth to tell him to stop and that’s when he grabbed his arm and said, “Damn, my arm’s hurtin’!” And then he fell over dead. He’d had a massive heart attack.
Sloan never got over it but she never believed it was her fault. She’d told her father to stop looking for her captor, to let it lie, while, at the same time, conducting her own investigation. But he was too hardheaded to listen. She cried and cried over her father and when they put him in his grave in the family plot near the house, she knew one thing for certain: She was going to find that son of a bitch and he was going to pay for all of the misery he had caused. She would not stop and she would not rest until it was done. She vowed that and her aim became clear as day.
Sloan and her sister inherited the pig farm. Sloan gladly let her sister run it with her husband and they ran it well. She stayed with her mother for a year or so after her father’s death, then she moved back to her condo in Atlanta and went back to work.
It wasn’t as hard as she thought it might be. People stared and they asked questions and that was it. She didn’t divulge any information; she’d just admit that it was her, the girl who’d been abducted, and that was about it.
Once in Atlanta, Sloan lived a very singular life. She didn’t date; she didn’t do anything but work. And, after she finished work, her real work would begin. She began a very regimented workout. She hired the best trainer she could find and he put her through the paces, making her run long distances, do bench work, weight training, swimming and, most importantly, self-defense. She strengthened her body with the long, arduous workouts and it became lean and muscular. This meant, she could endure physical pain if she had to and she could run fast if she had to. If it ever came down to it, she would be ready for him and ready to fight. She knew how to throw punches, how to get out of holds and how to hit to disable someone who was bigger and stronger than she was. She never slacked off during her workouts. She rarely missed one and she never complained about doing them. She had a one-track mind and that was to get stronger and meaner. This would enable her to attack if need be. She was in peak physical condition and this helped to get mind regimented, as well.
Sloan would spend her evenings and weekends and vacations researching abductions, cold cases and serial killers. She studied them, their ways, and tried to figure out their motivations. She did this because, in the end, she knew she would be the one who took him out. He would feel her pain and he would beg for release. And she would deny it. She would give back more than the pain and the helpless that he’d given. She made her plans and she bided her time until the day came when she would be given a break and she’d finally figure out who he was.
And then the day came, just like she knew it always would. The day came when all of her hard work and perseverance finally paid off. Late one night, her phone rang. She picked i
t up and studied the number, then nodded with recognition before answering, “Hello.”
“Hey, it’s me,” she said.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“He got another one,” she said. “This one is in Tennessee.”
Sloan stared at the wall and felt her heart sink at the news he’d been able to strike again. But then it rose with another thought which gave her hope: He wasn’t dead. This meant he was still alive and that meant she still had a shot.
“You up for this, Clara?” Sloan asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she replied, her voice taking on a tone of excitement. “Oh, hell yeah!”
My Name Is Clara Maye Simmons
There were two things that Clara Simmons remembered from her abduction. The first was that he allowed her to stay in her own clothes. It was an outfit she wore often—a well-worn and extremely comfortable pair of skinny jeans and a plain white t-shirt and, under that, a white, high-support sports bra. However, he had taken her shoes, a very expensive pair of black leather riding boots. She usually wore this outfit whenever she went riding and she rode almost every day. She had her horse—a beautiful black thoroughbred, Jasper, named after the famous artist—in a stable not far from her posh home in Nashville, Tennessee. Her husband was an in-demand sessions musician and stayed gone a lot of the time. He’d bought her the horse for her thirty-second birthday to give her something to do while he was away.
The second thing she remembered from her abduction was the unrelenting sound of jazz music being played. It was played from a small radio/CD player he had in the far corner that he’d obviously put on “repeat.” She didn’t even know how he got the electricity to play it, or if the thing just ran on batteries. Even so, it almost never ceased, even at night, even when he was doing horrible things to her. The only time it was turned off was when he changed the CD or, perhaps, changed the batteries. She always thought jazz was such an odd choice of music to play. She loved all music because, well, it came with the territory of having a musician for a husband. Although jazz wasn’t her favorite type of music, she did love Louie Armstrong and, of course, Chet Baker. He never played those two artists. In fact, she didn’t recognize any of the artists he played.