My Pretties

by Jeff Strand

  He glanced around the parking lot. Nobody else was there. He didn't think an upscale seafood restaurant would bother to have cameras monitoring the parking lot. If he could get her quickly, he could do it without witnesses.

  "Well, I'm over this way," Gertie said, pointing to the left.

  "Me too," Ken lied. Gertie didn't look happy to hear that. He wasn't being paranoid. She knew something was wrong. And she'd have proof very, very soon.

  He wondered if she'd be transparent enough to say, "Oh, no, wait, I was wrong, I'm over there," and point in the other direction. He hoped so. He liked the idea of her being so flustered and scared that she said really stupid shit.

  "Okay," she said, walking away. He followed.

  * * *

  This was a mistake. She should've stayed in the restaurant.

  She could pretend that one of these closer vehicles was hers, but if he didn't immediately go on his merry way, he'd see that she couldn't open the door and know she was lying.

  So they kept walking. She actually had her hand in her purse, fingers wrapped around the stun gun, and she didn't care if he noticed.

  * * *

  What was she reaching for in her purse? Pepper spray?

  He'd have to be careful.

  "Well, here I am," Gertie said, as they reached a small blue car, about what he'd expect a young waitress to drive.

  He opened his arms. "Can I have a goodbye hug?"

  Gertie looked very uncertain. "Oh, uh, yes, I guess, sure."

  Ken put his arms around her.

  * * *

  If this creepy asshole was asking for a hug, Gertie didn't care if she was mistaken about him being a mass abductor. She had the right to protect herself.

  He squeezed her tight. Too tight for a friendly hug.

  She slammed the stun gun into his side.

  * * *

  It hurt like hell. Ken even let out a yelp.

  If Ken believed in God, he'd have to believe that God was looking down and nodding with approval at what he was doing, because this had been one hell of a happy accident. He was wearing several layers of clothing. Not to protect himself against a chick with a stun gun, but to disguise his appearance, so that witnesses would remember him as a guy who could stand to spend a little more time on a treadmill.

  His plan had been to hug her and whisper into her ear that if she wanted to see her cousin alive again, she'd have to come with him. If she reacted poorly, he'd quickly slam her into her car and try to knock her unconscious before anybody else came out of the restaurant. It was far from a foolproof plan, but he couldn't just let her leave.

  When she got him with the stun gun—and she should not have been able to do that—and the pain shot through him he'd thought that this was it, it was over, he was going to prison. But the padding meant that all it did was hurt. It didn't incapacitate him.

  He didn't want to cry out and alert anybody, so he twitched as if he was being electrocuted. He was sure it looked ridiculous, but he only needed to keep this performance going for a second.

  He released the hug then grabbed Gertie's arm, the one with the stun gun. He spun her around and twisted her arm behind her back. Not hard enough to break any bones, but hard enough to send a jolt of pain through her.

  Ken had to move quickly, before she screamed for help.

  He wrenched the stun gun out of her hand then pressed it against the back of her neck.

  She cried out. But it wasn't a scream—it was more of a loud grunt. It was unlikely that anybody inside the restaurant heard her.

  Gertie's legs wobbled and she dropped to one knee.

  Ken didn't want to kill her yet, but he couldn't take the risk of her shouting for help. He didn't know much about stun guns and wasn't sure how much damage a second hit would do to her. He had to take the risk. If she died, she died.

  He pressed the stun gun against the back of her neck again. This time the crackling sound was louder than her grunt. Gertie pitched forward, arms and legs twitching. She was gasping for breath, so she wasn't dead.

  The parking lot was still empty.

  He had to move quickly. He bent over her and scooped her up into his arms. If she struggled too much, he'd shut that down by dropping her on her head, but she didn't move except for the twitching.

  She wasn't very heavy. All he had to do was carry her to his car before anybody walked out of the restaurant. He didn't run, but he walked fast, feeling a definite sense of panic as he hurried to his vehicle.

  Almost there...almost there...

  He set her on the ground next to the passenger side of his car, then unlocked the door. His hands were shaking. This was an insane risk, but less of a risk than just letting her leave. He'd made it past the worst part. If somebody caught him now, he could offer a reasonably plausible explanation.

  Ken opened the car door. Picked Gertie up and put her in the passenger seat. No time to fasten the seatbelt. He'd do that after they'd driven away from The Shellfish Grotto.

  He heard the restaurant door open.

  He froze as a couple walked outside.

  No. Don't freeze. There was nothing suspicious about somebody getting in their car in a parking lot. That's what he was supposed to be doing. He just needed to behave like there was nothing wrong.

  He closed the passenger's side door and walked around to the driver's side door, feeling weirdly conscious of every step he was taking, as if he was taking steps like a space alien that would draw undue attention. He opened the door, wondering if he was opening it in a normal manner, then got inside.

  The couple was walking in the opposite direction. They hadn't noticed anything.

  He took a deep breath to calm himself. Gertie was slumped over toward him, so he shoved her back toward her own door. Then he reclined her seat all the way back.

  "Can you hear me?" he asked. "I hope so. I hope you know what's going on. It's going to be awful for you. Really fucking awful. Whatever nightmare is playing in your mind right now, it doesn't compare to the reality of what you're about to endure. I hope you realize that."

  He shut off the stun gun and wedged it into the gap between his seat and the door. Then he started the engine and backed out of the parking space. Nobody else came out of the restaurant, but it wouldn't matter if they did. There was no longer anything suspicious to see.

  He drove away from the restaurant. He'd come back for her car tonight. Ken loved keyless entry, since it meant that all he had to do was click the button on her keychain and her car would beep and flash its headlights. No suspicious going from vehicle to vehicle, testing the locks.

  A few blocks later, he pulled into the parking lot of a different restaurant. This one was closed and there were no other cars in the lot. He put the car into park, then patted Gertie's front pockets. No cell phone. Reaching under her ass, he found it. She probably had a passcode, but maybe he'd get lucky.

  He got lucky.

  He smiled as he scrolled through her text messages. Good to know she didn't think he was a sleazy weirdo.

  * * *

  Charlene picked up her phone as a text arrived from Gertie.

  So....NOT on my way home. :)

  Charlene frowned and typed: ???

  Promise you won't think I'm a slut?

  You're not going home with the producer, are you?

  No! He's way too old. But our cute waiter isn't. :)

  All right. Have fun. Make him wear a condom, you godless tramp.

  Yes, Mom. I'll share all of the details tomorrow.

  I don't want any of them.

  K bye.

  Charlene set her phone back on the coffee table. She didn't think it was such a great idea for Gertie to be going home with a guy she'd just met, but Charlene wasn't her mother or her babysitter, and she couldn't claim that all of her sexual encounters involved lengthy courtships. At least she'd be safer banging some waiter than the way she had been spending her nights.

  * * *

  Ken shut off Gertie's phone, then cro
uched down and bashed it against the pavement. Phones were extremely well made these days and it took a lot of pounding to be sure the phone wasn't salvageable. Then he tossed it into the restaurant's Dumpster. She'd probably be more upset over the loss of her phone than being kidnapped.

  He got back in the car and drove across town.

  No sirens. No flashing lights. No sign that anybody was following him.

  He'd gotten away with it. Vivian would crap her pants if she knew the risks he'd taken, but he'd done it. Gertie was his. Poor girl. If only she'd been able to tell that his layers of clothing weren't his natural blubber, she wouldn't be unconscious in his car right now.

  He saw no reason to kill her and be done with it. She was going into one of the empty cages with the rest of his pretty ladies. Let her have plenty of time to suffer and reflect upon how she brought this upon herself. The other women weren't responsible for their own hellish fates, but as Gertie watched her body wither away she'd know that this was her fault.

  Ken pulled into the driveway of the rental house. It was equipped with a remote controlled garage door opener, but no good could come from the device being found inside his car, so he'd have to go inside to open it.

  Gertie was stirring a little. Just a little. He didn't want to shock her again, and the chloroform was hidden inside, so he'd have to leave her. It wouldn't even be a full minute. The most she could do was get the door open, tumble out onto the driveway, and crawl a couple of feet before he caught her.

  Unless she was faking it.

  "Hey, you awake?" he asked her.

  Gertie didn't respond.

  Ken picked up the stun gun, but left it turned off. "I'm going to shock you again, so brace yourself." Though no electricity was flowing, there'd be some sort of reaction unless she was the best actor in the world. "Three, two, one." He pressed it against the back of her neck. Gertie didn't even flinch. She wasn't faking—she was still mostly out of it.

  He left her in the car as he unlocked the door to the garage. He went inside, turned on the light, walked over to the far end, and pressed the button. As the door slowly lifted, he had a mental image of Gertie sprinting away, but when he returned to the vehicle she was still barely conscious in the passenger seat.

  He got back into the car, pulled into the garage, then got out and pressed the button to close the door again.

  Ken sighed with relief as the bottom of the garage door hit the cement. Now he had complete privacy. He sat there for a few moments, breathing deeply. He hadn't realized just how tense he'd been since dessert. But it was all good now.

  Though he didn't think Gertie would give him any problems, he didn't want to be an idiot about it, so he went to retrieve the chloroform so he could knock her out completely. Then he poured some onto the rag and pressed it against her face.

  He couldn't wait to see her expression when she woke up.

  He carried her down to the basement.

  Olivia was still alive, so Gertie would have some company, though Olivia wasn't good company, not anymore.

  Getting the cage down was pretty easy. He climbed the stepladder, unfastened the locking mechanism at the top, and then slowly gave slack to the chain as the cage lowered to the floor.

  Then he unlocked the front of the cage, swung it open, and gently placed Gertie inside her forever home. He locked it back up.

  The hard part was getting the cage back up to the ceiling, since the already heavy cage was now even heavier, and he had to raise it instead of lowering it. He wished he had an automatic spooling system or at least a lever, but no, he basically just had to pull on the chain until the cage was high enough for the locking mechanism to spring shut.

  But he got it up there, then took a few moments to admire his work.

  The date rape drugs had to wear off on their own, but since Gertie had been chloroformed he could wake her up with smelling salts. He retrieved them, climbed back up the ladder, and waved them underneath Gertie's nose.

  Her eyes popped open.

  "Hi," he said.

  Gertie looked like she was going to start screaming, but Ken placed his index finger to his lips and she didn't make a sound. She simply stared at him with wide-eyed terror. Then she began to cough as the reek of death hit her.

  "This is where you're going to die," he informed her. "It's going to take a long time. I don't have much of anything else to say."

  He climbed back down the ladder.

  "Wait!" said Gertie. "Please, wait!"

  "Oh, I bet you're wondering where your cousin is. Kimberly, right? She's right over there. There are a couple of cages between you two, so you won't be able to see her, but I think you'll believe me when I say that's for the best. People don't look good after they're dead and rotting."

  Gertie let out a sob. Ken assumed she was crying more for herself than for her cousin's tragic demise, but he supposed it could be a little of both. He'd briefly considered giving her a spot right next to Kimberly's corpse, then decided that he didn't want to swap out the bodies. Kimberly might fall apart in the process.

  "My friend is—"

  "Your friend thinks that you're getting laid at this very moment. That would be way better, wouldn't it? Crouched on your hands and knees, getting it from behind? Sorry to say those days are over. All you get to do now is sit in your little cage and wait to die. No food. Not a crumb. If you'd minded your own business, maybe you would be having doggy-style sex with a hot waiter right now."

  "Please! People will be looking for me!"

  "I know. All of your roommates said the same thing. Nobody found them."

  * * *

  Gertie tried not to succumb to complete blind panic. She had to stay calm. Make him see reason. She couldn't keep the tears from flowing, but as long as she could keep herself from simply squeezing her eyes shut and screaming at the top of her lungs, maybe she could talk her way out of this.

  Ken picked up the stepladder and walked out of sight. A moment later he walked back to where Gertie could see him.

  "I wish I could stay longer," he said. "I'll be back tomorrow, though."

  "Listen to me," said Gertie, keeping her voice as steady as possible. "You can't get away with this. I'll be found."

  "I disagree with that."

  "They can track me."

  "Is that so?"

  She nodded. "It's a GPS tracker."

  "I didn't see one when I searched you. Are you saying that it's an implant?"

  "Yes. I had it put in when I went out looking for you. They'll trace me back here. But if you let me go, I'll leave and I won't say a word, I promise."

  "Really? It's too late for your dead cousin, but you won't try to save your neighbor Olivia? She's still alive." He pointed to the woman in the cage next to hers.

  Kimberly's death was not a surprise and Gertie forced herself not to let it distract her. She tried to think of the proper way to answer this. "I don't know her."

  "That's pretty cold-blooded."

  "I just want to go home."

  "If you have a tracker implant, then I guess I'll have to lop off whatever part of you has it. Is it your arm? One of your legs? What about your head? Or should I just completely dismember you to be sure?"

  Gertie didn't answer. She rested her forehead against the cage and wept.

  "Lucky for you, I know you're lying, so I won't have to start chopping off limbs. I'll be back tomorrow. You can have some water then. But I hope you enjoyed the chocolate cake, because that was your final meal."

  She said nothing as he left.

  It wasn't hopeless. When people finally realized that she'd gone missing, her picture would be on the news, and Charlene would tell the police that Gertie had been at The Shellfish Grotto before she disappeared. Their server would remember the guy she'd been with. The cops would find him, and force him to reveal where he kept his kidnapping victims.

  Easy, right?

  That's why she was in a basement full of corpses.

  * * *

  K
en felt great as he locked the door. He got her. She'd thought she was smarter than him, and he'd bested her. She was going to die a slow, agonizing death, simply because she'd tried to mess with the wrong guy. He was positively ecstatic.

  He went upstairs, then locked the second door. He really wished he had more time tonight—he was certain that Gertie was down there freaking the hell out. He'd thought about installing a webcam, but wasn't positive that he could make the feed completely secure.

  If he'd ever learned to whistle, this was when he'd use that skill. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this upbeat. None of the other abductions had given him this much satisfaction.

  Was it the extra element of danger?

  Or was it because Gertie was more personal than the others? She was trying to harm him. She actually deserved her fate.

  He supposed it didn't matter. He wasn't going to start purposely trying to make his abductions more dangerous, and if revenge became part of his victim selection, he'd eventually get caught, no doubt about it.

  So he'd simply enjoy feeling good while it lasted. He doubted it would be long.

  Ken walked into the garage and pressed the button to open the door. He got into his car, turned on the engine, and made a failed attempt to whistle as he waited for the door to raise all the way. After it did, he put the car into reverse, backed out—and immediately slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the person who'd stepped into view.

  Vivian. Not looking happy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ken just stared into the rearview mirror, trying not to shit his pants.

  She walked over to his door. It took him a moment to think to put the vehicle in park. He rolled down the window, accidentally using the lever for the back window first, then correcting his mistake.

  "Get out of the car," Vivian told him.

  Ken opened the door.

  "Shut off the engine first."

  He shut off the engine, pocketed the keys, and got out of the car. He shut the door, removed the keys from his pocket to lock the car, then shoved the keys back into his pocket again. His stomach hurt and he wanted to hurry over to the bushes and vomit. Instead, he stood his ground.