Rene woke to the whooshing of his own heartbeat in his ears. He noticed two things immediately. It was dark, and he couldn’t breathe through his mouth. He couldn’t even open his mouth.
He attempted to move a hand to his face, to remove whatever obstacle was keeping him from opening his mouth, but he found that his wrists were secured to something above his head. His legs too were immobilized, and he could feel the metal keeping him locked down where he was.
Panic began to course through him as the haziness slowly lifted and he began to remember what had happened just before he’d woken up here. Flashes came to him. Frank’s body. The locked library doors. The cut phone line. Being stabbed with a syringe, and grabbed before he could escape. Adrenaline now surged through him as he pulled desperately at the binds, screaming into the gag over his mouth. There was the loud clank of metal on metal as his feet kicked at the bar to which they’d been chained. The bar didn’t give an inch.
Rene paused, closing his eyes and attempting to steady his breathing. He felt like he was suffocating, like he couldn’t get air in fast enough. It took several deep breaths through his nose before he was able to calm himself enough to think.
The situation was dire. That much was certain. From what he could tell, he was lying on some sort of mattress, and it was clearly somewhere that the serial killer wanted him to be. He tried to think back to everything he’d heard about the other victims. They’d all turned up in the river with signs of torture. All had been missing for several days before they turned up. The killer wanted to play with his victims.
Rene wracked his brain for the details. Katrina had mentioned bruising on their necks and faces. Lacerations. Burn marks.
He clearly had a lot to look forward to.
If he had a few days, there was a chance, wasn’t there? A small chance that he could outsmart this guy and somehow get away. Get back home.
Get to see Emory again.
Rene’s heart thrummed again as he thought about his daughter, about never seeing her again, about leaving her without either of her fathers. He felt sick, but he used everything in him to will the feeling away so that he didn’t vomit in his mouth and aspirate.
His captor was smart. The man had considered every exit Rene might use when he trapped him in the library. It was going to take a lot to outthink that sort of preparation.
Rene thought of something else.
Khal.
Was it possible he was here? Had he already been murdered and disposed of in the river? Or was his dead body nearby somewhere?
Rene attempted to see something, anything in the dark, but it was impossible. There wasn’t the slightest hint of light in the room. He tried to use his other senses to get an idea of where he was. It smelled earthy, damp, and felt cold. There was also the smell of faded rancid sweat. The other victims, maybe.
He could hear a faint trickle of water. It sounded sort of muffled.
Suddenly, he heard the stomp of loud boots coming nearer. Rene winced as blinding lights abruptly lit up the room. He blinked rapidly to adjust his vision, and looked up to find his captor grinning down at him.
He couldn’t hold back the whimper of terror that was muffled by the tape over his mouth. Nor could he stop himself from fighting again against his binds when the large man stepped onto the mattress, and got on his knees to straddle Rene.
He could only stare in wide-eyed terror as the man clasped his nose shut. Utter panic gripped his body, and Rene squirmed and bucked in an attempt to get the man off of him, but it was no use. The man was a beast. He was well over 6 feet tall, and seemed to be made entirely of muscle. As he slowly smothered the life out of Rene, he did so with a dark chuckle at Rene’s futile attempts to release himself.
This was it. The world was beginning to blur. The waves of panic seared through Rene’s body, telling him he had to do anything and everything to breathe again, but there was nothing he could do. His body jerked and shuddered. Dark spots were seeping into his vision. The whooshing in his ears was getting stronger. Consciousness was slipping away.
Then suddenly, he could breathe. The man clambered off of him, and Rene sucked in several long shuddering breaths through his nose. It took him much longer to calm down this time as his captor stood there looking at him curiously with that sadistic face, as though Rene were a new toy he’d just gotten for Christmas and he couldn’t decide what to do with him first.
“I think we’re going to have a lot of fun together.” The man said.
Rene watched helplessly as the man walked out of the room, clicking the light-switch off as he went, once again plunging the room into total darkness.
Rene was left alone in the dark with his thoughts, beginning to wonder how long the other victims had really lasted before they’d succumbed to this psycho’s twisted games.
*****
Rene was roused from fitful dreams by the sound of pained screams coming from somewhere in the distance. He heard shouts, and then a crackling noise, and a prolonged shriek.
The sound had Rene completely alert. He reached up to the bar above him, the one to which his wrists were chained, and began to pull on it as hard as he could. There was no give. Not even the slightest hint of weakness as the bar was thoroughly bolted to the wall.
He gave up on the bar, and started to feel around the cuffs on his wrists. They felt like normal handcuffs, as far as he could tell. With a grimace, he tried to push the cuff past his thumb, the metal digging painfully into his flesh as he did so. But it was no use. They were secured too tightly.
He closed his eyes and pushed his head against the mattress angrily, forcefully, the only motion he could really muster to vent his frustration at his situation. He heard another scream and his throat clenched.
It was familiar.
Did he dare to wonder?
“Please no!” The man shouted in the distance, and Rene was left with no doubt.
It was Khal.
He was alive. For now.
Rene had wanted so badly to find him, but on his own terms, not like this. Not a vulnerable victim of the psychopath that had grabbed them both.
Khal screamed again, a long sustained scream, and then he was completely silent. Rene held his breath, listening, hoping for a sign that his friend was okay.
Well, as okay as it was possible to be in the circumstances. But no sound came.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead, Rene thought.
There was a slam of a door, then the unmistakable sound of those boots approaching the room he was in. Rene braced himself as the door opened and the man entered, flicking on the light.
“Mmnnnnn!” Rene whimpered into his gag. There wasn’t much else he could do. The man scoffed at him, then walked across the room and pulled a large lid away from something on the floor. Rene craned his neck up to see what it was. It looked like a large bathtub of faded iron, built into the concrete floor. The man then turned on the faucet, running water into the tub. Rene could only guess what he was doing.
Those large boots stomped around the room as the man rearranged various items, and kept checking on the water level.
Rene glanced around the room, taking in everything he could while the lights were on. The walls were definitely concrete, not a window to be seen. There was one large wooden beam across the ceiling, which had a number of ropes and chains hanging off of it, some of which had the rust color of old blood on them. Seeing them, knowing what they’d been used for, made Rene’s blood run cold. There were weapons on the wall. Knives and other pointy instruments were stuck on magnetic bars.
The water in the bathtub was becoming visible, some even splashing up onto the floor. The man turned it off and walked over to the end of the bed, where he leaned down and pulled out a key to unlock Rene’s feet. Rene immediately pulled his legs up defensively toward himself once his feet were freed. When the man moved toward the head of the bed, Rene kicked at him in a failed attempt to protect himself. The man knocked his legs aside and straddled him again. When Rene didn’t stop kicking and fighting, the man punched him in the face. In a daze, Rene slumped against the bed.
The man unlocked his hands with ease, only releasing one wrist from the cuffs. Then he flipped Rene over and secured his hands behind his back. The man hoisted Rene up and dragged him across the room toward the bathtub. Rene kicked and shoved against the giant, but it did little to slow him down. Eventually, the man dropped him at the edge of the bath, then leaned down and ripped the tape off of Rene’s mouth, which caused Rene to yelp in pain.
He knew words did nothing to this insane creature, but Rene began to plead for his life just the same.
“Please!” He gasped. “Please let me go. Drop me in a forest somewhere, I don’t care. Just please.”
He was gasping for breath, eyeing the water as the man crouched down beside him.
“Come now,” the man said, “we’re just getting started!”
With that, he grabbed Rene, and plunged him headfirst into the tub. Rene didn’t even have time to take a breath before he was thrashing and fighting to get his head back to the surface, despite the pressure of the man holding him down. Fight as he might, there was nothing he could do against the beast. Just as when the man smothered him before, Rene was suffocating, feeling lightheaded, stars bursting in his vision. Then suddenly he was yanked from the water, and gasping for sweet delicious air.
“How does it feel?” The man asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“What?” Rene sputtered. It was clearly the wrong thing to say, as he was forcibly dunked back in the water, this time with just a smidgen more of oxygen in his lungs. It took a moment for him to stop fighting. The panic was beginning to transform into a strange kind of peace, and he wondered if maybe it was okay to just let go. Then those strong hands ripped him back out of the water, and he was once more gasping for precious air.
He was collapsed on the ground, gasping like a fish out of water, just waiting to be dunked back in again.
“Delightfully terrifying, isn’t it?” The man asked.
“Please.” Rene muttered, barely above a whisper.
He was plunged back in again, crying out under the water at the sudden violent motion. His fists clenched. His legs struggled to kick out or find purchase to pull him back, but he was completely at this man’s mercy.
Then he was out again, gasping and sputtering, held just above the surface of the water by the man pulling his hair back.
“What do you want from me?” Rene asked, watching his breath send ripples across the water’s surface.
The man chuckled, and stood up, hoisting Rene up with him. Spluttering and shivering, Rene could only look down at the bath. He’d never been more terrified of water in his entire life.
“All that fear must have you sweating something awful. What do you say to a bath?” The man said.
Rene didn’t even have time to respond before the man had dropped him into the bath. The side of his head hit the bottom of the basin, and he felt pain explode out from his temple. He shifted himself around as best he could with his hands still cuffed behind his back, until he was seated and his head was out of the water.
He watched, horrified, as the man pulled the bath cover back over. It was heavy and solid, and he laid it down right over the bathtub, right over Rene’s head. Rene had managed to knock just enough water out of the tub to create an air pocket, within which he now fought to breathe.
“Enjoy your soak. I’ll be back in a little bit.” The man’s voice was muffled beyond the cover.
“Please!” Rene screamed, choking on water when he moved around too much, and fighting to calm himself so he could find the air pocket again.
“Just relax. You’ll be fine.”
The loud boots stomped away, and Rene was trapped there in the water. He tried to press on the cover with his head, but it didn’t even budge an inch. He held his breath and went under to try to move it with his back, but there was no give. It was either too heavy, or latched down. All he could do was sit there in the darkness, trying to steady his breathing so that he didn’t use up all of his oxygen too fast.
*****
It felt like ages. His neck was killing him and his head was becoming woozy as most of his oxygen turned to co2. There was a distant thump, and a moment later, the lid of the bathtub was lifted up. Rene shivered as the man stood over him.
“Have a good soak?” The man asked.
Rene didn’t respond. He merely swallowed and looked at the man, waiting for his next move. The man leaned down and pulled him out of the water by his arm, nearly dislocating his shoulder. Rene winced, but agains said nothing, lest he set the man off. The man turned him so that Rene was facing away from him, then unlocked his wrists. He turned Rene around and pointed at a pile on the mattress, a mattress which Rene now saw was streaked with the telling rust red of dried blood.
The pile he’d indicated had clothes and a towel.
“Dry off and get dressed.” The man ordered. Rene hesitated. Being naked in front of this man was the last thing he wanted.
“Awwww, look who’s modest.” The man grinned. “Tell you what, I’ll turn around and cover my eyes.” He put his fingers over his eyes to demonstrate. “Now, if you try anything, I will take you down and slice your Achilles tendons faster than you can call for momma. So don’t even think about it, okay?”
“Okay.” Rene muttered, his voice hoarse and quiet. The man turned around, and though Rene longed to bolt across the room and grab a weapon, he knew he was no match for the beast keeping him here. So he peeled off his wet clothes, dried off quickly, and put on the new clothes, a white t-shirt and blue hospital scrub pants.
“Done?” The man asked.
“Yes.” Rene said.
The man turned back around and gestured to the bed.
“Sit.” He ordered.
Rene cast a quick glance at the weapons on the wall longingly. With a shaky sigh, he went and sat on the bed. The man secured his wrist to the bar at the head of the bed in a fluid motion, leaving Rene locked in, but with most of his limbs free.
“Since you’ve been so good, I might even give you a treat later. How about dinner and dessert?”
Rene didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. The man stood up with a chuckle, and left the room, once again turning the light off.
Stories From Montana 