These stairs must lead to the tower that I saw outside earlier, which can only mean one thing.
There is no escape.My body feels numb, and I swallow, throat tight.I might actually die here.
“You’re really starting to piss me off,” a voice behind me rumbles.
I startle and whip my head around. He’s climbing through the crawl space now. His heavy breathing and hulking figure pull me back to the real and current danger. With the little light from my phone, I can see his face well enough to make out the wretched anger in his expression mingled with my handiwork. Blood cakes half his face, dark and shining, from a gash that cuts across one eye down to his cheek. I have enough time to catalog the damage, but when he launches himself toward me, I’ve got less than a few seconds to react. I move to evade, but he snags my ankle in a death-like grip. He gives a sharp tug, and I slip down the stairs, bashing my head on the edge of one step. I cry out as the bite of it makes my head splinter with pain. I hit ithard enough to split my forehead, blood already falling down my temple.
“Get the fuck off of me!” I twist in his grasp, kicking again with my free leg, sinking my heel into his already messed up eye. He flails, crying out. My ankle now freed, I claw my way up the stairs, desperately gripping both phone and keychain. I climb until I reach the top of the stairs, tears welling in my eyes from the pain. My breath hitches as I barrel through the final door, falling to the ground with a hard smack.
“You’re gonna pay for that!” he roars. I pull myself to my aching feet and ignore the twinge in my leg.
“Fat chance! I don’t pay for shit!” I shout back, breathless as I limp to the back of the room. Victory is so close, I can taste it. But then my foot catches and I crash back down to the floor with a shriek. Both my phone and the keychain fly out of my hands and slide into the darkness as I try to catch myself. A sob makes its way from my chest to my throat. The keychain? Gone. But at least there’s still the glow of the light from my phone lighting a small part of the room.
“Goddammit!” Tears stream down my cheeks. What the hell did I trip on? On hands and knees, I look over my shoulder, a scream bubbling up my throat. I didn’t fall onto something. I fell ontosomeone.
A body? There’s a fucking body up here!It’s sitting up, propped against the wall, head slumped to its shoulder. It looks halfway between asleep and dead, as if the wrinkles on its face are from age, not decay. Cobwebs and dust cover every inch of it, evidence of its time spent up here. I can’t even imagine how long it’s been up here, and I don’t want to speculate why, especially not when I’m so close to joining it.
“Damn, baby.” My eyes are drawn away from the dead man and back to the door. There’s nothing between us now. Just fourwalls and a corpse. “I ain’t ever had to chase a bitch this hard before.”
I suck in a deep breath and half-run-half-crawl over the dead body, toward the back of the tower. The scent of mildew and dust is so strong here that it burns my nose. “Dont come any closer.”
“Or you’ll what?” He laughs, stepping over the body in three strides until he’s towering over me. “You’re fucked, baby.”
Seething at his shitty nickname, I snap, “Not half as fucked as you when people realize I’m missing.”
My hands search the ground desperately, connecting with what feels like an iron bar. It’s light with a pointed tip, as if a piece of the gate outside was lost to the attic. I grip it with my left hand and brace myself.
The guy sinks into a squat, dirty fingers grasping my chin. The light limns the lines of his messed up face, highlighting the cruel and lifeless smile plastered there. With a sharp tug, he pulls me close enough to taste the liquor on his breath. “As if someone’s gonna give a shit about some slutty fucking stripper.”
He’s dead wrong if he thinks I won’t be missed. Dax, the girls at String Theory, Gran. Hell, even some of my regulars would know something was wrong if I didn’t show up tomorrow. I white-knuckle the iron bar and grit my teeth. I won’t be some dead girl they find a week or two later, shacked up with another victim they find inside the church tower. If I’m going down, then this guy is going with me.
“Not just a slutty fucking stripper, asshole,” I snarl, readying my arm. “I’m the Associate of thefuckingMonth!”
The shock doesn’t have time to register. I spit right in his face and swing the iron bar upward. The pointed tip sinks into the side of his neck, spattering blood across my face and chest. He rocks back on his heels, howling at the pain. Using my head to separate us, he shoves away and pulls at the bar desperately as I slam against the wall.
Pain blooms at the back of my skull, and a loud ringing goes off in my ears. I’m about to have a wicked headache in the morning, assuming I make it out alive.
“You’re dead, bitch,” he wheezes, pulling the bar free. The wet tear of his skin against the backdrop of this nightmare makes my skin go cold and prickle with goosebumps. With a cursory glance toward the body in the room, he points at it with the bar. “Just like this guy.”
How in the fuck is he still breathing?
The last of my weapons is tossed to the side, hitting the corpse in the chest. He reaches for me and forces me to the floor. My hands come up in fists, desperately beating against his sides. I scream every single swear and obscenity I have ever learned throughout my life with every blow that lands.
“This shit is getting to be real fucking annoying.” With a snarl, he catches one of my arms and twists it up behind my head until I feel a sharp pop. A sob bubbles out of my throat as my arm falls lifeless beside me. In an instant, the fight in me is gone. Without my hands to beat on him, he only has to hold me down. One of his large hands circles my throat, applying enough pressure that all I can do now is focus on breathing. Blood drips down his face and out of the wound in his neck onto skin as he fumbles around with my panties. The fact that he’s bleeding out and still trying to have his way with me is ridiculous.
I could almost laugh, actually.
Looks like you and I are about to become roommates.My eyes search for the other corpse, finding it still propped against the wall.
Or is it? It’s still there, but it’s…moving. Unless it’s just a trick of the poor lighting and my eyes going blurry, but I swear its head turns just as I gasp for air. Here I am, on the brink of death, and my mind is fucking with me. It’s either a hallucination, orI really do see a pair of bright red dots flicker to life in its featureless face.
If you’re really real, I think hard, as if trying to communicate with it,then move your ass and save me!
“I hope this hurts,” the man growls, his belt smacking the inside of my thigh, drawing my attention back to him. By now, my body has gone still and the last of my consciousness is fading. Lungs burning, arms aching, and the cool breath of death is tickling my ear.
And that’s when I hear it. Another voice rings out, “This will hurt more.”
The crushing weight on my chest and the suffocating hand around my throat vanish. Air flows back into my lungs and I breathe it in raggedly. Weakly, I force myself to sit up, drawn to the sound of boots kicking against the hardwood floor. Figures struggle between the darkness and the light, flashing in and out, barely discernible as they scuffle. I might not be able to see them, but I can tell who’s winning.
