I was alone and looking over my shoulder almost against my will, expecting to see those three men following me. I tried to stop myself from picturing their motives but unfortunately, my brain stirred up horrendous scenarios that played inside my head like cheap, exploitative B-movies at a 1970's grind-house.
I do apologize for all the similes. But sometimes these figures of speech are the only way to truly convey an emotion. They are the last ditch effort of those who cannot make sense of things, even years later.
I reached around in my bag, looking for my cellphone as I continued to power-walk home. I avoided shrieking in frustration when I found that it was missing. What else had that man taken from my bag? I didn't have the time to stop and check. I just had to get inside. I just had to lock myself in the safe confines of my apartment, where I would immediately begin trying to forget the awful turn of events my first night out in months had taken.
I had only seen civilian cars pass by for the duration of my trek. A cab hadn't passed since the one that nearly left me pancake-flat on the asphalt. If I saw one and was able to get inside, I contemplated throwing my arms around the driver and thanking him for being in the right place at the right time. I imagined the relief that would flow through me as I crawled into the warm cab and began to put as much distance between me and that bar as possible. I would even kiss the driver's cheek just to show him how thankful I was for his arrival and rescue. I'm sure he would have already experienced stranger things than that in his career.
But no cab rolled down the street and I was left walking alone. No one passed by me, either. I looked at my watch and rolled my eyes; it was almost two A.M. and everything was beginning to wind down in our fair city. Leave it to me to lose track of time. But then, how could I ever have imagined that something so terrible would happen? Several years earlier, I had stayed out until well past two in the morning many times and never once encountered a group of demented sadists.
When I finally came around the corner and my building came into view, I could have cried. I would have, if I had been physically able to do so. My reprieve was short-lived, however; with another strong dose of supreme horror, I realized that the same two jocks were lurking outside my building, their athletically hefty forms sitting prone on the bench just across the street.
I mumbled a rare expletive and ducked into the alleyway beside the building that was four over from mine. After I had cussed once, a whole stream of colorful words and terms spewed out of my mouth. How did they know where I lived? What could they possibly want? It couldn't just be to assault me at that point, and honestly, was my insult really so damaging to their already far out of proportion egos that they had to hunt me down and harm me over it? I cursed myself and my big mouth. I cursed my own over-inflated ego. I cursed the day I realized I wasn't normal.
Throughout all of that cursing, I didn't think about where the third man, the one who had spoken to me, was lurking. As I stomped and kicked like a child having a particularly contemptuous tantrum, I didn't hear his footsteps approaching behind me. But even if I had been completely silent, I still wouldn't have heard him. Just as I poked my head around the wall, I felt his hand wrap around from behind me and hold firmly to my mouth as he pulled me backwards.
Forget all human tendencies. Forget the thought processes and emotions that elevate us above other mammals. The moment I felt him pulling me back into the darkness of the alleyway, I fought like any other animal in a struggle for its life. At first, I just thrashed around wildly, attempting to weaken the painfully strong grip he had on me. Quickly, I realized attempting some actual defense was my only hope.
I opened my mouth and sunk my teeth down into his hand while simultaneously kicking my foot back to nail him perfectly between the legs. He suppressed a cry of pain by just grunting like a wounded hippopotamus, which I would have found hilarious had I not been in a fight for my life. After his hand released my mouth, I took in an unbelievably capacious gasp of air and screamed. As a child, before I decided against having friends, my companions and I used to have competitions to see who could scream the loudest. I always won. But those screams were nothing compared to the real thing; I was sure that everyone in the metropolitan area had heard me.
But just as the last bit of air was exhaled from my lungs, his hand was clamped over my mouth again. When I opened my mouth to bite him again, he swung my body hard to one side and slammed my head up against the brick wall of the alley. I tried to scream but the sound choked off as silver and white stars danced in shimmering pools of black in front of my eyes. I collapsed back against him, struggling to stay awake as the ground slid sideways abruptly, right out from beneath my feet. I was hanging upside down with nothing keeping me attached to the earth but him anymore. I was preparing to tumble head over heels into the starless black sky. I would keep falling forever...
I snapped out of those thoughts just as I began to feel the sensation of falling. My head rolled painfully to one side and rested against something that scratched at my skin.
I started to mutter something but I felt his hand press to my mouth again.
“Do not say anything.” His voice whispered fiercely to me and instantly, that fight sparked to life once again. I pictured a phoenix roaring back to life from its own ashes, from its own demise. But with my head spinning and exhaustion beginning to take over me, the phoenix's life was snuffed out by one mighty wave of ocean water.
My eyes shot open, widening when I became aware that I was submerged in complete darkness. There were three peculiar, nickel-sized holes in the black wall in front of my eyes and through them, I could see the alley clearly. I attempted to move my head but found that it weighed far too much for my small neck to support. That was new. Before, I had a completely normal head, of a completely average weight.
Strange, I thought to myself.
The scratchiness that I felt against my head was the man's stubble; my forehead was rested against his cheek. I wanted to exclaim in disgust at having to lean against him simply because my body refused to support the weight of my newly very heavy head. I would have exclaimed in disgust, if I hadn't heard an ominous growl just outside where we were hidden.
“Don't say anything.” The man behind me hissed even more urgently in my ear. He reached up to press what felt like a thick piece of cloth to my wound and held my head against him firmly.
I heard a growl that was even more eerily distressing than the first. For some reason, in my delusional state, the second growl sounded almost conversational, almost as though this animal (it had to be an animal) was trying to communicate with another.
All thoughts shut off quite suddenly, though, when an impossibly gargantuan creature walked right into my field of vision. I prayed that what I was seeing was a contortion of reality brought on by my head injury and the fact that my glasses had flown off in the fight. Whatever that monstrous being was, it appeared to stand at least eight feet tall. It had to have weighed well over six hundred pounds. Physically, it was shaped like a human; two arms, two legs, a head and a torso. It was clothed in black scraps of fabric and matted fur. At the end of its long arms, I saw that its fingernails were elongated and sharpened to thick, dangerously pointed claws. Hair that was long and black hung down past its broad shoulders. When it dropped down onto all fours and began to sniff the ground, I began to beg whatever higher power existed to spare me from seeing its face. Somehow, I knew that the sight of it would snatch the breath from my lungs and freeze my racing heart in its hurried tracks.
That higher power had it in for me, though, because just as I began to plead, a second creature identical to the first dropped down in front of our hiding place. The man behind me must have known that I was going to gasp because once again, his hand was covering my mouth. He needn't have silenced me though, because the indescribably appalling face looking at me through those three holes in the darkness, those harrowing black eyes staring into my own were enough to make the world flip out from underneath of me again and send me tumb
ling backwards into space.
The fall into eternity was less frightening than those eyes.
***
I did not want to wake up. I did not want to confront the situation I knew I would find myself in. I was not given the luxury of being able to believe that everything that had occurred had been a dream. The memories were too vivid, too nightmarishly grotesque to be ignored or downplayed. So when my eyes snapped open, I prepared myself for another fight. I prepared to find myself in an unfamiliar setting, accompanied by the strange man I had met.
I was right about the former but wrong about the latter. When I awoke in an unfamiliar bedroom, I was alone. I sat up abruptly, drawing in one gasp before panting as the terror from the night before seized me. Outside, the first blue light of dawn was breaking on the horizon. I looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand to confirm that it was six-thirty AM. I had been passed out for only three hours. Beside the alarm clock was my canister of pepper spray and cellphone. A note was lying beside them written in a hurried scrawl:
Had to run out. I figured you would want these back.
I rolled my eyes and took the can and phone in my hands. I held the phone in front of my face to find that I had only one missed call from Maura, who we will call my “nanny” for the time being. I couldn't quite discern why she would be calling me between the hours of two and five AM and I didn't have time to ponder it, as I heard the front door open and close.
Despite the throbbing in my head, I began to prepare myself for a fight. I turned, holding the pepper spray up in front of my face and steadied my hand. I would spray every last bit of the can's contents at the beastly so-and-so the moment he came through the door.
“Brynna, I just want to talk to you. Put it down.”
Either I'm predictable or the beastly so-and-so could see through doors. While I was a fan of fantasy novels and films, I was not naïve. I stayed grounded in the real world at all times. As a result of that, I opted to believe the former.
“If you come in here, I will spray all of it into your eyes.” I warned him, just to be fair.
“Then, I guess it would be prudent for me to stay out here and talk to you, wouldn't it?”
“Just move out of the way and let me leave. I don't want to hear anything you have to say.” I gathered all of my nerve to say what I said next. “I am opening the door and coming out.”
What bravery it took for me to say that was nothing compared to the brash stupidity it took to actually do it. My fear silently reached its piercing crescendo and yet I threw open the door, still holding the canister up. I maneuvered my way out into a narrow hallway.
“I'm not looking at you. I barely remember what you look like. After last night, after...” I trailed off, keeping my head down as I continued to walk with his form visible only in my upper peripheral vision and nowhere else. “I don't know what you look like.”
“Am I really so forgettable?” He asked and I grimaced at his lame attempt to make a joke. He was trying to gain my trust. He was trying to charm me into letting my guard down but he didn't quite know who he was dealing with. I had read extensively on psychopathology and considered myself a bit of an expert on the matter. I knew how terrible people worked.
I turned so that I was walking backwards, keeping my eyes to the floor while still being able to see his outline.
“Your head looks terrible. You need to let me take a look at it. I'll even give you a knife to hold, if it will make you feel better about things.”
What in the world? His sarcasm was not meant to irritate. It was meant to entertain. I couldn't help but shake my head at just how strange he was.
“I'll go to the hospital.” I muttered hurriedly. “I'll go and have it taken care of, thank you so much. But I won't go to the police. You have my word on that. I promise. I swear to God, I won't go to the police.”
“Good. They wouldn't help you, anyway.”
“Okay.” I agreed blindly just to pacify him. “You're right.”
I had come to the door of his apartment. I reached backwards and opened it before darting away without looking back. The pepper spray was still firmly grasped in my hand but I would not stop to use it. I threw open the door to the staircase and hurried down the steps, barely watching where my feet landed. Once or twice, I lost my footing and stumbled forward but my trembling legs managed to catch me before I went tumbling painfully to the landing.
When I burst out onto the street, I was greeted by the sound of early morning traffic and a burst of fresh air that awoke every sense my body possessed. My breath billowed out in front of me, reminiscent of cigarette smoke; I yearned for a charge of nicotine in my blood. I would only be calmed by the jolt it provided in each sacred puff.
Shaking that thought from my head, I started to walk briskly, looking over my shoulder with almost every step I took. It was a relief not to have my purse, I realized. All I had was my pepper spray and my cellphone. Anything else would have slowed me down.
I looked around for any familiar landmarks to tell me where I was. I had never been skilled at memorizing street names and intersections. I always used places to mark where I was in the city. But apparently, I had never ventured as far out as I was then. Not a single building or business helped determine my exact whereabouts.
It was ridiculous and ineffably stupid but I just couldn't bring myself to call Maura. I couldn't stand the idea of having to describe what had happened the night before. I was not capable of churning out some fantastical story to explain what I was doing in an unfamiliar section of town at six-thirty AM. I walked a little further, urging myself not to allow the quiet fear that I felt bubbling inside of me to boil over into a frenzied panic. I had been able to escape which made me luckier than most women. I had to put distance between myself and the man who had taken me.
Only a handful of people walked past me. I could have asked any one of them for directions, I knew. But as I turned and watched the fourth person I had passed keep walking, I suddenly realized that if I was to speak to anyone in the state of anxiety I was in, I would end up spilling the events of the previous night to them. A crazed albeit well-dressed (and now severely bruised) drunk on the street...
“Alright.” His voice said behind me and I jumped, shock throbbing throughout my body like an electrical current. I needed to act defensively; After whipping around, I emptied my can of pepper spray blindly in the direction from which I had heard his unwelcome voice.
When I opened my eyes that had been squeezed shut throughout the duration of my attack, I didn't see him writhing on the ground in agony, howling about how I, a crazy female dog, had just burnt his eyes out. Maybe, like when I had kicked him the night before, he just wasn't verbally announcing to me and any passerby that he was in pain. Maybe that just wasn't how he operated. Strange...
“If I were a rapist,” He walked out from behind the wall and I threw the can of pepper spray at him in frustration and above all else, in resignation. Easily, he moved sideways slightly so that it could fly right past his head. He raised his eyes to look into mine, “would I have let you walk out like that?”
“You didn't let me do anything!” I half-yelled as I pointed at him with a shaking finger. “I ran away! I escaped!”
He nodded.
“Okay. Yeah, sure, you escaped.”
“Shut up!” Now I was shouting and covering my ears for a minute of solace. “You... you... Go away!”
“Brynna, you're going to scare people.”
“I don't care! What is wrong with you?!” I turned and continued to huff up the street. He strode forward to catch up to me. “Just go away, you crazy, evil...”
“Evil? Is that why I saved your life last night?”
“Oh, are you being poetic? Are you being ironic?” I snapped at him as we turned onto a particularly busy street. “Did you date-raping me last night 'save my life'?”
“You think I date-raped you?” He asked me and I could hear a note of anger in his voice. I noticed that as he said
those words, two of the people on the street gave him hilariously quizzical and disgusted looks. “What, dare I ask, gave you that impression? What do you remember about last night?”
“I don't want to remember anything about last night. So, shut up and go away!”
“You didn't answer my question. If I were a rapist, would I be letting you walk out amongst people? Would I let you keep going?”
“Maybe you're going to blackmail me. Maybe you want money or something. How the hell am I supposed to know exactly what goes on in the mind of a crazy person? I thought I had a pretty good idea but you will be pleased to know that I have officially recognized that I have absolutely no idea!”
“Let's go somewhere and get something to eat.”
“I don't know you!” I stopped walking and turned to him, infuriated now. “I don't want to know you! I don't care who you are, what your motives are, or about any scenario that doesn't involve me getting home!”
“Those things are still outside of your apartment, Brynna.”
Hearing that made me stop my indignant trek and turn to him again.
“You thought you had imagined them?” He asked, raising his eyebrows. “That's sweet that you're allowing yourself to be so naïve.”
“I know that I imagined them.” I hissed at him dangerously. “They were projections. They were physical manifestations of the uncomfortable feeling that you provoked in me. They were brought into sight by an elevated heart rate and an adrenaline rush. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“Please, just come with me and we'll talk. I'll explain everything to you. I know you're afraid.” He reached out and grasped my arm gently but I shook him off.
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 2