by Jeff Strand
She no longer needs to wipe any tears from her eyes.
“What you’re saying is that you’re going to try to profit from a murder. That makes you no better than me.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“No.”
“Oh, you’re cute. Even by the standards of some loser trying to save himself from life in prison, it’s pretty weak to suggest that doing something good, like removing a brutal psycho brain-damaged serial killer from society, is an immoral act just because it comes with rewards.”
“Are we having a philosophical discussion now?”
She unspools a piece of duct tape from the roll. “No, because you’re going to stop talking.” She rips off the tape and sticks it over my mouth.
It’s hard to breathe because there’s still dirt in my nose.
“There are a few ways we can do this,” she says. “I could smother you again until you lose consciousness, but I don’t think I could trust you to stay asleep for that long. I was worried enough that you’d be awake when I ran back from the car. So we’ll veto that idea.”
Even if my mouth weren’t taped, I’d have nothing to say.
“The next option would be to cut your hamstrings. One slice on each and you won’t be going anywhere. The thing is, somebody as pathetic as you would probably bleed to death, so that idea doesn’t work either. I could bury you up to your neck, except that makes me look kind of ghoulish, which isn’t what I want.”
I offer a muffled suggestion.
“Don’t talk,” she says. “I’m brainstorming.”
I continue to talk through the duct tape. What’s she going to do, slash my throat for refusing to shut up?
Well, maybe—I don’t know what this lady is capable of at this point—but I’m willing to risk it.
She rips off the tape. It hurts.
“What?”
“Just tape me all the way, for Christ’s sake,” I say. “Mummy me. I won’t be able to go anywhere.”
I wish this were a sneaky plan on my part, but if she wrapped me entirely in duct tape I really wouldn’t be able to escape. I just don’t want her to decide that the hamstring idea had merit. Or that I’d be less adept at navigating the woods if she gouged out my eyes.
“I could do that,” she says, nodding. She looks far too cool and composed. I wish she’d return to being frazzled, slightly hysterical, and annoying. “But wouldn’t you rather just ride with me in the car?”
I nod.
“Give me your arm,” she says.
“Why?”
“Just give me your arm. Hold it out.”
“Hell no.”
“Would you rather I bury you up to your neck? What if wild animals find you?”
“Wild animals aren’t going to find me.”
“Ants, then. Fire ants. All over your head. Swarming. Stinging the crap out of you.”
I hold out my arms. I’d like to think she’s just going to cut the tape binding my wrists together, but that’s probably not her intention. She looks me in the eyes, and I can tell she’s psyching herself up for something. This can’t be good.
“I need to show you I’m not afraid to stab you.”
Without hesitation, she jabs the blade of the knife into my upper arm.
She doesn’t plunge it too deep, but blood spills immediately, and goddamn does it hurt. I want to launch into a stream of epithets but I manage to keep myself under control.
“Do we understand each other?” she asks.
“Why’d you do that?”
“To prove I would.”
“You didn’t have to stab me!”
“Yes, I did. That was the whole point.”
I can’t believe it. She stabbed me. She smothered me until I passed out and then she stabbed me. This is so far beyond what should be acceptable that I can’t even verbalize it.
“Do I need to stab your other arm?” she asks. Her tone is like a mother asking her son if he wants another spanking, or if he’s ready to behave.
“No,” I say, trying to sound like a deadly serial killer and not a whiny child. It’s embarrassingly difficult to accomplish this.
“Good. The next one will not be another arm stab. You betray my trust and I won’t stop stabbing until you’re dead. Got it?”
“I’ve got it.”
She begins to saw away at the duct tape binding my ankles together. It’s a very good knife, but her tape-cutting skills aren’t spectacular, and it takes a while. I resist the temptation to make a sarcastic comment.
Finally my feet are free. Mindy points the knife at me, as if in warning, then stands up.
“Get up,” she says.
“My legs are asleep,” I tell her, “so if I stumble, don’t take it as an attack.”
“How about we wait until your legs aren’t asleep, so I don’t have to kill you over a misunderstanding?”
“Works for me.”
I sit there. Something weird about me: I love the pinprick sensation when feeling returns to a limb. I will often sit on my hands until they go numb just to get that sensation. I’m not enjoying it quite as much now.
“You ready?” Mindy asks.
“Yeah.”
“Stand up.”
I stand up. I don’t stumble.
She very quickly turns her back to me and climbs out of the grave. I might have been able to grab her then, but more likely I would’ve gotten a knife in my face. I’ll wait for a more opportune moment to strike.
I’m not sure if I should be relieved by her plan of action or worried by it. If she really wanted to hand me over to the cops, the safest thing she could do is follow my suggestion: tape me up and leave me. Why risk walking me back to the car and riding into town with me?
If we discount the possibility that she’s a complete idiot, since I don’t believe she is, this might all be a fake-out. She’s trying to scare me, but once she’s made her point, she’ll let me go.
Or she has something much worse planned.
Why kill somebody quickly in the woods when you could do it slowly in a soundproofed basement?
I know one thing for sure: I’m not going to jail. Mindy might be the big hero who brought the Flatside Killer to justice, but it’ll be the Flatside Killer’s corpse. Let her tell reporters how she plunged the knife into my back, again and again.
“Come out of the grave,” she tells me.
I hold up my hands. “I can’t do it with my hands taped together.”
“Stop it!” she says, furious. “Do not even start that shit! We’re not going to play games where you try to pull one over on me. You do exactly what the hell you’re told, and you do it exactly when the hell I tell you to do it, and you respect my intelligence!”
“All right,” I say. “I apologize.”
I was definitely trying to con her into cutting the tape, but to be fair, it’s not easy to climb out of a hole when you can’t put your hands apart for leverage.
It takes me a few attempts to get out, and she probably thinks I’m faking it, but she doesn’t stab me to death, so that’s good.
“Face that way,” she says, pointing in the direction of the car.
I turn that way, as requested.
She walks up behind me. She jabs me in the back with the knife, hard enough to hurt but not enough to break the skin. I wince.
“Walk slow,” she says.
She’s got the knife and the flashlight, so I don’t think she could grab me if I made a break for it. But she could stab me or club me over the head, and thus I need to pick my moment carefully.
I’m running away for certain, though.
It’s not going to take us long to get back to the car, even walking slowly, so I need to find a good moment soon. I’ll try to engage her in conversation as a distraction.
“This isn’t the life you want,” I tell her.
“What do you mean?”
“Celebrity.”
“I’m not worried about that. It’ll fade. Killers stay famous foreve
r, but nobody remembers who caught them. Who caught Ted Bundy?”
“I don’t know. The cops.”
“Come up with something better. Come on, try to convince me to change my plan. I want to hear what you’ve got.”
“I thought you told me not to play games?”
“This is different. I give you permission to speak.”
“They don’t believe your story. They’ll know you were involved with Terrence’s death.”
“We’ve already covered this. If you’re not going to come up with something new, then, yeah, I’d rather you not speak.”
“You might—”
“You know what? Don’t talk. You had your chance and you screwed it up by rehashing your old crap. I’m no longer interested.”
“I’ve got a great reason,” I tell her.
She jabs me in the back again. I’m not sure if this one breaks the skin.
“Damn it!”
“I said, stop talking.”
Something is trickling down my back. “Bitch.”
“I was wondering how long it would take you to get to the b-word. Typical.”
“Hey, when you stab me in the back, you’re acting like a bitch. There’s nothing sexist about that.”
“I didn’t stab you. I poked you.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Do you need Mommy to kiss your boo-boo to make it all better? Do you want me to get you a Band-Aid with little pictures of jet planes on it? Oh, poor, poor Flattie. I don’t know how I’ll sleep at night knowing I poked a tiny little dot in your back.”
Has she lost her fear of me, or is she overcompensating? Though I suspect it’s the latter, I can work with both possibilities. She may very well end up murdering me, but it sure as hell won’t be after she’s made fun of me.
Mindy will know which one of us is the scary one.
She’ll know beyond any possible doubt.
Or…I could just run. She might not expect it if I do it right now.
I run.
I could probably outrun her, but my hands are bound and she’s got the car keys, so if this becomes a race, eventually she’ll have the car and I won’t. So my best option is to get far enough ahead of her to find an unpleasant place to hide.
“Are you kidding me?” she shouts as I run off.
I do not reply.
I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Or, more accurately, I put more effort into running than I ever have in my life; unfortunately, the uneven ground and my inability to see much of anything are impacting my speed.
A branch slashes across my face.
My left foot comes down on a tree root or something else uneven, and though I stumble I don’t pitch forward onto the ground.
Is she following me?
I don’t think she’s following me.
That would be fantastic.
Then I hear footsteps and breathing. She’s decided to follow me.
“You can’t get away from me!” she shouts.
I’m not convinced of that. I’m scared but right now I’m feeling pretty good about my chances. This head start is really going to help.
She’s still shouting: “I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t come back! I’ll cut you to pieces! Get back here, goddamn it!”
I don’t think I will. I tear through the woods. She should have been much more careful. When you have a savage serial predator as your hostage, you don’t just keep a knife to his back, not unless you want him to—
Something grabs my foot and I fall.
Okay, nothing actually grabbed it, but whatever I tripped over sure felt that way. My fall is not a mild tumble from which I can easily leap back to my feet, but a full-on face-plant, with blood.
The beam of the flashlight zips past me.
I cough and sputter as I try to get back up. I never did get all of the dirt out of my nostrils, so having a bloody nose right now is decidedly inconvenient. I snort some of it onto my shirt, but then continue running.
She’s still coming after me.
More branches slash across my face. Jesus, do they grow freaking razor blade trees out here?
“I’m gonna fuck you up!” Mindy informs me. She is very, very, very upset with me, it appears.
I wish things had worked out better, since apparently she does have it in her to chase after somebody through the woods with a knife. We would not have been equal partners, but she could have handled some of the more athletic tasks.
My ankle twists, giving a little snap that sounds like my ankle saying “We won’t be doing any more running for a while.” I hit the ground even harder than I did less than a minute ago, and I feel like I may have split my nose right up the center.
I scramble along the ground, hoping to find a good place to hide. A secret passage, maybe. Or a cave. At this point, I’m not choosy.
I hold my breath.
I can see Mindy. She’s about fifty feet away, moving the flashlight beam back and forth, searching. Somehow I managed to crash to the ground without her knowing where I am.
I can’t keep holding my breath. I settle for breathing quietly and remaining as motionless as possible. There’s not really any brush or anything covering me, so she’ll probably find me before too long, but she’s a newbie to hunting humans, so maybe she’ll veer off course.
“Where are you?” she shouts, as if I’d really answer that question.
She turns around in a complete circle. The flashlight beam goes well over my head.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she says. She’s not very good at the taunting.
She’s just standing there, trying to figure out which way to go. Did I really lose her that completely?
“I’m going to find you for sure,” she announces. “No way are you getting away from me. If you come out on your own, I’ll let you go.”
Bullshit, I think. Even I wouldn’t use that transparent of a lie. She should have said something credible.
“If I have to find you myself, I’m going to skin you alive!” She holds up the knife. “I’m going to use this knife, and I’m going to shave off all of your skin with it! I don’t care how much you scream! I don’t care if the cops find us and I go to jail right alongside you! Do you understand me, you son of a bitch? Do you want to die badly, or would you rather we work this out a different way?”
She’s panicking. For all she knows, I’m still running. Long gone. She thinks she’s going to spend the rest of her life waiting for my return.
She knows I’m patient about such things.
I’m in a fuckload of pain and, yes, I’m frightened right now, but if she doesn’t find me, I’d be totally satisfied with her living a life of fear. I’d find a way to send her occasional reminders of my existence.
I’d love that.
I wish she’d start walking in the wrong direction.
Unfortunately, she’s still searching with the flashlight beam. I’m tempted to crawl someplace better hidden, but one snapped branch and she might zero in on me. I have to be silent. Try to blend in. Visualize invisibility.
Visualize invisibility? What a dumb thing to think.
Something crawls on my hand and I flinch. I can’t see for sure, but as I brush it off I think it’s an ant. Great. I’m probably camped out on top of an anthill. Irony is so much goddamn fun.
Mindy is pacing. I can’t see her face but I bet she has a glorious expression of unease. For all she knows, I could be right behind her. I could have a knife she didn’t know about. The blade could be inches from the back of her neck right now.
I’d love to see her suddenly spin around, as if she’s imagined that exact thing, but she doesn’t. She continues sweeping the flashlight beam around.
Give it up. Just move on. You’re not going to find me.
Something stings my leg. Maybe I really am next to an anthill. Unbelievable. I’m going to have to let those little bastards sting me, because if I move, she’ll hear me.
“Hey!” Min
dy shouts. “There’s no reason for us to do this! We’re both screwed without each other. How are you going to get home?”
She needs to do much better than that. The transportation issue is not weighing heavily on my mind.
“If I have to leave without you, I’m coming back with every cop in the city. They’ll be swarming these woods. You’ll never get away.”
That’s a little better. But since her stated plans included delivering me to the police anyway, or skinning me alive, I’m still not convinced that revealing my location is the best way to go.
She’s silent for a moment. She holds the flashlight up to her face as she dabs at her eyes, then she lowers it again.
“I love you!” she calls out.
I laugh. Now she’s just desperate.
Shit. I shouldn’t have laughed.
Did she hear me?
No, she didn’t. Thank God. I wipe off some of the blood streaming down over my lips and continue to watch her.
An ant stings my injured ankle. It continues to sting me as I very slowly bend my knee…
No. That makes some leaves rustle. I freeze.
She shines the flashlight beam toward me.
I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.
The light goes right into my eyes.
Now she shines the light back on herself, holding the flashlight directly beneath her face, the way people do when they’re telling a ghost story.
“Hello, there,” she says, smiling as she looks at me.
And then the moment of ultimate humiliation: my bladder can’t handle this. I didn’t piss myself when she held the knife up to my eyeball, but now I feel the wet warmth and I wish I’d died with my face in the dirt.
“I can seeeeeeeeee you!” she sings.
I don’t respond. Maybe she didn’t really see me.
No, that is some seriously deranged wishful thinking. She saw me. She’s looking right at me.
She shines the flashlight onto the blade of the knife.
“You ready for this?” she asks.
Her voice trembles a bit. She’s faking the whole “playing games with the victim” routine, but it doesn’t matter, because I’m hurt and weaponless and she’s got my knife.
“Too scared to talk?”
I can’t let her think I’ve been paralyzed into terrified silence. “Don’t come over here,” I tell her.