Mentor (An Impossible Novella)

by Julia Sykes

  Mentor

  An Impossible Novella

  By Julia Sykes

  © 2014

  Author’s Note

  Before you read Mentor, I feel the need to explicitly and emphatically warn you that this book deals with dark themes that many readers will find disturbing. This is not a romance. There is no Hero in this story. There is no antagonist, either. This is the story of two people trying to find sanity – and possibly redemption – in a horrific situation.

  I would warn you not to purchase this book if you are worried it will upset you, but I won’t bother with that. This book will upset you. But if I’ve managed to get it right, it will also intrigue you, and possibly even tug at your heartstrings.

  In September 2013, the FBI became aware of the existence of a sadistic psychopath who is abducting women. His identity is still unknown; he goes by the alias “The Mentor.” This is the story of his relationship with the first woman he ever abducted.

  Prologue

  The Mentor

  April 20, 1978

  I slinked further into the shadows, concealing myself in the darker shades of night. The tremor in my hands came not from apprehension or hesitancy, but from anticipation.

  I waited for my victim.

  Soon, the darkness within me would be released, the pressure siphoned off. She would take my darkness. I would impart it to her, inflict it upon her.

  I would be able to breathe again.

  Seeking to still my shaking, I immersed myself in the memory of the first and only time the enigmatic pressure within me had been released.

  Screams. Blood. Death.

  Power. Freedom. Absolution.

  I realized now that I hadn’t really been alive before the day the light left my father’s eyes. His lifeblood spilled over my hands, and the dulling film of perpetual apathy that coated my psyche dissipated. The world became sharp, my senses impossibly heightened. It was the closest thing to human emotion I had ever experienced. The pleasure that flooded me was the nearest approximation I could imagine to what normal people called joy.

  But now the memory of that hyper-awareness – that sensation of being alive – tormented me as much as it pleased me.

  No sooner had I disposed of my father’s body than the sensation began to fade, and the dim monotony of my detached existence began to seep back into me. Now that I was aware of it, the dimness built, gathering slowly into darkness. My darkness.

  It coiled within me, slithering through my veins and rendering my very pulse sluggish. It would overcome me, would consume me from the inside out, if it didn’t find release.

  Killing again wasn’t an option. I might not have a formal education, but I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t going to leave a trail of bodies behind and risk being caught.

  If I kept her with me, she could take my darkness regularly. I would allow it to consume her rather than me. I would train her to like it. Otherwise, my darkness would devour her completely, and I would have to find a new toy. I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself by taking more than one woman.

  Kathleen Marie White wasn’t special to me in any way. No one was special to me. I had chosen her because she was convenient and she suited my needs.

  Like me, she practically lived at the Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame. She had come here to study for the last four years, and even though I was a few years younger than she, I had been coming here for much longer than that.

  I wasn’t a student, but I had always found solace at the library. The desire to avoid my father and my disinterest in mundane human interactions made it an ideal place for me to hide out. People couldn’t speak in the library. The pointless tedium of social pretentiousness was muffled within those walls.

  As always, she was the last to leave the library on a Saturday night. The light of the streetlamp near the entrance caught the reddish facets of her dark hair, crowning her head with a crimson halo for the space of a moment.

  My mind conjured up images of how I might draw that blood red shade from her body in other ways. Something unfamiliar stirred low in my gut in response, and my pulse jumped past its normal tempo.

  Interesting.

  I had intended to use sexual torment against her. Sex held little appeal for me; it would simply be a means to an end. But in that moment, I understood its allure. When used as a weapon, sex might be pleasurable. The sudden stiffening of my cock told me as much.

  I clenched my fingers into hard fists, willing their increased trembling to stop.

  Control.

  Control yourself. Control the darkness.

  Soon, I would control her, and the darkness would never rule me again. I would be alive. More than that, I would revel in the heady power I had experienced as my father’s life slipped away under my hands. She would give that to me daily.

  She turned from locking the library doors, and I caught sight of her face. It was lovelier than I had realized. She wasn’t perfect by conventional standards, but the hint of a contented smile that played around the corners of her mouth gave off a sense of innocence that was undeniably appealing. Her deep green eyes were large, only further lending to that vision of purity.

  When I had watched her over the last four years, her beauty had been obscured by unconscious nervous habits. Usually, a small furrow persisted between her brows as she bent over a book, and her full lips were thinned while she chewed at a pencil.

  I had chosen her for that very reason. Drive and determination were evident in every line of her body as she studied furiously every day. She thought she could shape her own destiny if she just worked hard enough.

  But her fate was no longer hers to govern. What she surely considered her greatest assets – her tenacity and intellect – were the very qualities which would lead to her ruination at my hands.

  There would have been no satisfaction in breaking a weak woman. Kathleen Marie White was exactly what I needed.

  No, it was more than that. More than need.

  Want.

  I wanted something. The realization was jarring, the sensation utterly new. My lips curled upward in a semblance of a smile, and my hand was rock steady as I reached into my pocket to retrieve the ether-soaked rag.

  I would take what I wanted.

  Chapter 1

  Kathleen

  Are you going to kill me?

  The sharp tang of instinctive fear was a taste at the back of my throat. Or maybe that was the acrid burn of the bile that rose as my head spun and my stomach churned.

  The world was black. I tried to open my eyes, but something pressed tightly against them, holding my lids closed. I sucked in a gasp and immediately gagged when cloth shifted to touch the inside of my throat. My tongue sought to push out the invasive object, but the knot remained firmly drawn between my teeth. I reached up to rip it from my mouth. I was stopped short, something rough biting into my wrists. My arms jerked ineffectually.

  The cloth between my lips absorbed my scream before my mind fully processed my situation. Thoughts were unable to coalesce in the wake of the torrent of terror that surged through my system.

  Restrained. Blindfolded. Gagged.

  Wake up! Wake up!

  This wasn’t the first time I had been trapped in an all-too-vivid nightmare. Ever since I was a child, I had been plagued by dreams of being trapped, powerless, and afraid. Dreams fueled by memories are cruelly potent.

  But none had ever been as visceral as this one.

  My body fought, thrashing. Bruises bloomed beneath the surface of my skin as I twisted against the ropes that bound me securely to the unyielding metal chair.

  Dread pulsed to life, mingling with the panic that thrummed through my veins to create a horrif
ic cocktail. Even in nightmares, pain was an ephemeral, intangible thing. My dreaming mind told me there was pain, but my body knew that my nerve endings weren’t actually screaming from damage. My mind honed in on the fact that my wrists and ankles were being rubbed raw.

  Real. This is real.

  A despairing sob punctuated the screams that continued to rip their way up my throat. The gag caught each of them, smothering the piercing cries to something faint and piteous.

  Screaming would do me no good. It hadn’t in the past, and it wouldn’t help me now.

  Breathe. Think.

  It had taken me years to overcome this primal fear. I had escaped its grip before; I could do it again. Taking several deep breaths, I calmed the convulsions that seized my chest with each wracking sob.

  “Are you finished already?”

  The softly spoken, broadly accented words were uttered just by my ear, jolting a fresh scream from deep within me. Warm breath played across my neck as the man laughed quietly. I twisted my head, instinctively seeking to identify the threat. The thick material pressed against my eyes kept my lids securely shuttered, rendering me blind.

  “I was hoping for a longer show this first time. But that’s all right. I’ll sample each of your screams soon enough. No one can hear you down here.” His whisper was a snake slithering across dry leaves, dread and dead things.

  Dozens of questions should have been running through my mind. Who are you? Where am I? Why are you doing this? But everything was overridden by the terror that overtook me once again at the sound of his voice. There was no menace in it, only cold amusement and a thread of eager anticipation.

  Run run run run run!

  My heart beat wildly against my ribcage, seeking the escape that my immobilized body was unable to attain.

  I heard him inhale deeply, felt him suck the air away just by my cheek. His nose grazed along my jawline, sampling my fear in the same way a lover might revel in his partner’s arousal. I shuddered at the feather-light, intimate contact. It was as though he had stolen all of the oxygen in his one indulgent breath, and my lungs seized, choking off my cries.

  “If you’re done screaming, I’m sure you have questions. I promise to answer all of them honestly. But know that each one will cost you something. If you want to be treated like a human being, you have to earn it. From now on, your humanity is a privilege, not a right. Your body is my plaything, your pain my favorite toy.”

  Rape. Torture.

  The sickening words thrummed to life deep in my mind, but my conscious thoughts were too busy, too frightened, to face them.

  Before I could, the knotted cloth pressed further into my mouth, and I gagged as it brushed the back of my throat again. Then it loosened, and I shoved it free with my tongue. I gulped in cool air. It burned down my raw throat.

  “Please.” It was a strangled, unintelligible croak. I swallowed hard, willing my tightened throat to relax enough to allow words to pass through it. “Please,” I managed to rasp. “Let me go. Please don’t hurt me.”

  Something cold and razor-thin traced a chill line down the column of my throat. I stopped speaking, stopped breathing for fear that one small movement would cause the knife to slice through my delicate skin.

  “You belong to me now. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” The question that was imperative to my next breath came out in a rush.

  He sighed, a long, happy exhalation. I could practically feel the perverse pleasure pulsing off him.

  The blade slid down past my collarbone, but it didn’t so much as prick my skin. Instead, it settled behind the top button of my blouse. There was a slight tug, followed by a popping sound as the tiny false pearl bounced across the hard ground. Before my mind could fully process the horror, another button hit the floor, and a chill raced across my skin where my shirt fell open, exposing me.

  No one had ever looked upon even this small amount of my bare flesh. I had never wanted anyone to see that much of me. Disgust rolled through me as the monster bared me to a man’s eyes for the first time.

  I twisted uselessly against my bonds. “Please, stop! Don’t do this!” The words were stilted, stupid, useless.

  “You did this to yourself,” he told me. His voice was dispassionate, seemingly unaffected by my nudity despite his steady progress in stripping me. “You asked a question, and this is the price for your answer.”

  He allowed me to sob and beg, wielding the knife with exact, almost loving, precision. It never once pierced my flesh, not even when he hooked it beneath the waistband of my slacks and the side of my underwear, cleanly shearing through both in one smooth motion.

  Only when I was completely naked, when I had paid the price, did he speak to me again.

  “To answer your question: No. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to keep you.”

  His fingertips brushed my bare waist, trailing slowly upward in a mockery of a caress. Pure revulsion rolled through me in a wracking shudder. My skin pebbled, and all of my fine hairs stood on end.

  I tried in vain to jerk away from him. “Don’t touch me!” My protest was the hiss of a cornered animal.

  He ignored me, his fingers continuing their steady progress. They reached the outer curve of my breast, and his touch stuttered, turning almost tentative. I would have described his exploration as tender were it not for the fact that the shivers racing across my skin were a product of disgust rather than desire.

  “I will touch you whenever I want, pet. One day, you’ll come to crave it. You’ll beg me for the feel of my hands upon you.”

  As though to make up for his moment of hesitation, he gripped my breast hard, his fingers digging into the tender flesh. The flare of pain was shocking in the wake of his gentle touches.

  “You’ll come to crave the pain as well,” he promised in a low murmur.

  “You’re insane!” The accusation came out on something between a defiant scream and a fearful sob.

  “You don’t know the half of it. But you will.”

  His cruel grip eased, and his fingers massaged away the pain. My peaked nipple grazed against his calloused palm. Between my blindness and immobility, I was powerless to prevent all my focus from honing in on the sensation of his skin against mine. My nerve endings crackled, making me hyper-aware of my body in a way that was utterly foreign to me. No one had ever touched me like this; no one had ever touched me at all. Especially not these secret places.

  He tweaked my hardened nipple, and his quiet laugh mingled with my shocked gasp. The sensation was… strange. I squirmed, noticing how warm my skin was against the cool metal chair.

  “We’re going to get along very well, pet,” he assured me. It was the first time I had detected genuine warmth in his voice; it was a perverse, lustful heat. I noticed that his accent was a long drawl, lengthening his words and softening them in a way that belied their cruelty.

  “Don’t call me that!” My indignant snap was ruined by a fearful tremor. “My name is Kathleen. Kathleen Marie White. Please let me go. I have a life. I have a family,” I lied. I would say anything to sway him.

  “No. You don’t.” His fingers closed around my nipple again, pinching and twisting this time. My wild attempt to wrench away only doubled my pain. “I won’t tolerate lies. I know who you are, Kathy.”

  “Kathleen. It’s Kathleen.” The correction was automatic, reinforced by years of practice. Kathy was what my father had called me.

  His fingernails bit into me. I couldn’t hold in my scream.

  “I get to decide what to call my property, pet.”

  I started crying again, and my head shook back and forth. My mind denied what was happening to me.

  He drew away from me, and I made a strange whimper as cool air rushed to fill the space where his heat had painted my skin. His footsteps echoed through my darkness.

  “Where are you going?” My voice was high and thin with my sudden panic. His intimate touches had disgusted me, and his coldly
amused words had terrified me, but fear of the unknown surged through me. I realized a second too late that I had asked a question. Automatically, I recoiled. My clothing had been forfeit for my first answer. What would he take this time?

  “Wherever I feel like going.” His tone was casual, but his meaning was clear. He was free; he had all the power. He was going to leave me here, trapped in the dark and caught under the sapping weight of my fear.

  His footsteps retreated further, and I shrieked out my fury and terror.

  “Let me go, you sick bastard! Let me go!” I jerked at my bonds, my body struggling for freedom. All I earned for myself was fresh pain as rope dug into my bare skin.

  A door creaked open and thumped closed. A lock clicked into place. I screamed into the darkness.

  His Journal

  April 21, 1978

  I can still hear her screaming. The sound just does something for me. In all my life, I’ve never felt this kind of desire. I’ve read about the lust that claims men from the time they hit adolescence, but it’s never happened to me. I had thought that things like happiness and joy had been beaten out of me, rendering me incapable of pleasure. That never really bothered me before, not until I got my first taste of pleasure while I watched my father die in agony.

  What she makes me feel is different. My father’s end was too quick, driven by vengeance and the need to defend myself. Killing him made me feel powerful, but the heady sensation was fleeting.

  If I keep her, I can control her. I can elicit her fear in bliss-inducing surges. For the first time in my life, I hold all the power.

  She’s so fragile. I could break her with my bare hands. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

  My plan to allow her to question me turned out to be a stroke of brilliance. She’s intelligent, that much has been obvious since I first saw her in the library. Her desire for knowledge will slowly force her to surrender everything to me. She will cede herself to me through the illusion of free choice that I allow her. I wonder how long it will take her to realize that her one perceived freedom is my most effective weapon in breaking her.