such animalistic ways, but there was no other way. Beside the mattress was better than on it.
After I’d drained my bladder, I sat on the mattress and looked at the mess I’d made as it slowly crept across the concrete floor. As it made its way to the drain in the center of the room, it pooled around Stephanie’s heel. I felt horrible that she had to lie in my piss. Damn Ron.
At some point, I fell asleep. I had no way of keeping track of time in the basement. If there were any windows, they were tightly covered and let in no light. I never knew what day it was or what time it was.
I woke to the feel of someone’s hand on my butt. Once again, I was curled in the fetal position to stay as warm as I could. I opened my eyes but didn’t move. Focusing on the feel of the touch, I ruled out the possibility of a bug or a rodent. It was definitely a human. A disturbing image flashed through my mind of Stephanie’s cold corpse crawling across the floor and touching me. I quickly rolled onto my back to find that Ron was on his knees beside me.
“Will you have me now?” he asked.
Immediately, I answered no.
In a huff, he got up. In the dim light of the bare bulbs, I saw that he was naked. And excited. And now, angry.
He paced back and forth for a little bit, mumbling under his breath something I couldn’t make out. I watched him closely, afraid this would be the time he raped me. And if it was, I’d still consider myself lucky that I wasn’t Stephanie.
I watched in amazement that even in his anger and frustration, he kept his erection. It bobbed around in front of him as he angrily stomped back and forth across the room. Had this been a movie I was watching from the comfort of my own home, I would’ve surely laughed. But here, in this moment, it was the farthest thing from funny.
Then, he saw Stephanie. With no more than a second’s worth of consideration, he walked over to her and got on his knees. With her arms and legs still shackled to the floor, spread wide, he had his way with her.
As if it wasn’t disturbing enough to watch him rape a dead woman, I listened as he said my name over and over while doing it. With each thrust of his hips, he said, “Nicole. Nicole. Nicole.” As he climaxed, he said my name again. This time, it was loud. A long, terrifying howl of my name, sure to haunt me in my sleep.
And that wasn’t even the creepy part.
Worse than watching him rape a dead woman, worse than him repeatedly saying my name while raping a dead woman, was the fact that he stared at me the whole time. His eyes never left mine while he defiled the woman he’d murdered so violently.
My skin broke out in gooseflesh, my throat tightened, my stomach knotted , and my heart pounded.
He got up from her and walked past me without saying anything. I watched him walk slowly up the stairs. When he closed the door behind him, I released the breath I’d been holding. I noticed I was crying, so I gave in and let it go, crying harder than I’d ever cried before.
The severity of the situation was starting to sink in on me. All thoughts of controlling the situation were gone now. All hopes of being let go were gone along with them. I wasn’t capable of handling someone like him. I had no training in dealing with people with mental problems. I don’t know if anyone had the training it would take to deal with Ron. He scared me more than anything I’d ever encountered, either in real life or in my nightmares.
As I fell asleep, I was grateful for the sweet release sleep brought to me . Even if my dreams were nightmares, it’d be less frightening than my reality.
I woke some time later to the sounds of Ron beating Stephanie’s lifeless body, but when I rolled over, I was alone in the basement. Well, alone with Stephanie’s body. Ron wasn’t in the room. I must’ve been having a nightmare. The sad part was the nightmare had been a reality just hours before.
When I escaped, I was going to have to get two jobs to pay
Raine Miller
Sarah Withrow
Wendy S. Hales
Stewart Meyer
Lisa Marie Wilkinson
Brian Herbert, Jan Herbert
Brett Halliday
Susan Barrie
M. K. Eidem, Michelle Howard
Janette Oke