We had jobs in a new town - I had gotten a research job, and Ted got a job at the same place, but as a worker, a driver maybe. It was a bit of a drive, we had some trouble finding the place, had to dive off into a gravely looking area near a beach, and between tall sandy red brown rocks. After we got around some of the rocks we could see a few other cars parked. We got out of the car.
T: “Yeah, I suppose”
I was wearing a denim button up shirt and a denim full skirt, which looked sturdy enough for the roughness of the site, yet set me apart as not one of the workers. Here was a plank that extended out over the water and up, then met another plank leading up to the left, and to a large deck over the water with buildings on it. We began to walk up the wooden plank and a woman came out – giving the sense visitors were definitely most unwelcome. We said we were arriving for our first day of work, and her cold demeanor became more welcoming, she asked our names and what positions, she seemed a bit dismissive of Ted after he stated his, sending him ahead into the building, but asked my name, which I told and that I and a science/mathematics position (I had temporally forgotten the position I’d applied for, how embarrassing) she didn’t seem to think anything of it, but seemed interest as if she heard of me and was trying to clarify what she knew, she asked what college I’d gone to. I responded Scripps. She said “Oh, yes,” and led me to a desk.
Ted was already there, talking rather seriously to one of the ladies at the desk. I went to another lady who was free and put my papers up. She looked them over, approvingly, then flagged down a man who came over and introduced himself. He was friendly and smiling and took me off to meet some people. I was really nervous. First he introduced me to an auburn haired man, with a slightly weathered face – I realized he’d been a boyfriend of mine in college, before Ted. In some ways we looked strikingly similar, we both had a similar color of red auburn hair, but he had brown eyes, while mine were a dark turquoise blue, pretty with my creamy skin and warm coloring. He took my hand and smiled at me and said “this is a nice surprise.” My introducer said he’d be right back and left the room. I was frustrated – I really needed this job, and this was an unforeseen complication. There was a nearby locker, I stepped in it. He looked at me puzzling as I pulled the door closed. I needed to be alone for a min, he opened the door.
“Close the door please.”
He did. A second later it opened.
“Please close the door.”
He looked at me a little confused but did again. I stood in the dark looking at the light through the slats, just for a min, and realized I had to get myself together. I needed this job for both of us. I left the closet, my ex seemed to have left, and I walked back into the front, where my introducer had returned, he took me off immediately to another office, to meet the big boss. He greeted me a bit distractedly – and said “so you met your research partner…” apparently implying my ex, “…at least you two match” he says, noting my similar hair color.
“Actually we know each other” I respond.
“Oh, so you like him?”
What do I say to that? I really was not looking forward to working with him.
“ Er, yes he is a good man” and that was true, regardless of our past, he was a good man.
“Yes, yes he is. Well let’s get on shall we?” He turned around and got back to what he was doing – dismissing us. The introducer and I went back to the lobby.
Ted was still talking to a lady there and was agitated, I could tell by how he was standing – even though I could only see his back. The introducer asked me about how I knew my research partner.
“He was my ex in college, actually.” And more to myself added, glancing at Ted’s back “and he is not going to be too thrilled with this.” I think the interviewer heard me but made no comment.
Ted was apparently being told he didn’t have a job after all, he was annoyed. I could see the paper the lady had printed out in front of him - something about his driving record and falling asleep while driving. It was BS. He looked at me, and walked out – in his quick glance the understanding that we’d have to talk about it later – we needed at least one of us to have a job – and I couldn’t start out on the wrong foot.
I was shown more about the office and it was a bit of a blur.
…
Its lunch time – I’d been here for maybe a week, enough to know some of the ladies in the office but I was still very new. We all were going out to lunch, we piled into two cars, both belonging to office girls, so they were of poorer quality. There were a couple of us research girls, but for some reason none of us had our own cars. We were driving down what seemed to be a main street with lots of stores on either side. I was thinking of Ted, how he was really uneasy being here, and of me working with my ex. I wanted to make things ok, and I wanted to push forward with our wedding plans.
We were coming up on a store that had Easter supplies – and I saw something in the window that would make Ted very happy – could save all my plans, I had the girls stop – and rush into the store. It was something to do with bags of jellybeans and balloons – and only certain bags had them – maybe it was a trip you could win to somewhere Ted would really like? I was more watching myself then experiencing first hand, and I had no idea what the plan was or why I needed these things. My dream self had the girls go through bags, emptying the jelly beans trying to find what I needed. It was a flurry of activity and I didn’t care that we were breaking store rules. We started putting them in a cart, along with some balloons.
There had been a bunch of kids in the store, and not sure whether our actions had excited them – or they were already up on sugar highs or something - but they started a riot, all grabbing ball type things and throwing them around. They were going to close the store but I needed my things! You couldn’t go through the registers anymore, so I just aimed the cart for outside and ran for it. This seemed to excite some of the kids even more, they also started running outside, taking all kinds of balls with them – sports balls, big plastic balls. A worker, manager there, seemed to think it might be my fault or something because he was hot in pursuit of me. He was a very attractive man I thought grudgingly, and I seemed to know, had this been some silly movie, he’d be my love interest and this would be the wacky way we met – him chasing me down the street as I tried to escape with a cart of stolen Easter goods.
I was in good shape and had a head start, so even pushing the cart managed to stay ahead of him. I was getting really tired but ahead the street sloped down, so I pushed it to there knowing I could rest as the slope did the work for me. I got to the bottom - one of my girlfriends had managed to keep up with me, I grabbed armfuls of the stuff from the cart and ran up a grassy hill into a opening of a courtyard wall. It was an old wall – that seemed to be part of an old building – white with terra cotta tiled roof – but only this outer wall was left, and the inside grassy hill open to the next street.
My blond friend was right behind me, and we could hear him behind us. He’d been singing, his singing becoming more breathless as he ran, but just after he passed through the opening in the wall, to the floor area before it went to grass, we heard a ‘thunk” and the singing abruptly stopped. I was worried, I gave my stolen goods to my friend and told her to take them to safety. I went back to find out what happened to him. He had fallen, thigh deep in a hole – I put my arm under his and pulled him up. I examined him and thought he’d had a broken toe. He seemed a bit amused and exasperated with me. I could tell he was really attracted to me, in some weird way like we were meant to be. Silly movie plots, I thought. I heard the sound of a screeching car, I opened my mouth to say something to him. But suddenly the world was gone.
I was now my friend, the blond girl given the items to put to safety. Having just put them somewhere I was worried about my red haired friend. I went back to find the guy looking very worried and angry and heading out to the street.
“They took her.”
“Huh?”
“Some blond guy and his pierced friends.”
Oooh that was boyfriend’s friends. They were not good men, and she tried to stay as far away from them as she could. She didn’t know why he was friends with them. I followed him jogging down the street, where the road had come down and then turned there was a wooded area – a stream running just below the bank where the road was. Down a way from that was a driveway and the car was racing up the driveway. We slid down the bank to a path below- which traveled under the bridge that the car had just crossed to get to the large estate ahead.
“Wow, they must have moved into the manor” he said, “I use to work here, oversee the maintenance.” He turned to the bank that rose even over our heads. There was old wooden curved door hidden among the vines that covered the bank.
“We can get in the back way, if I remember right.” He pushed open the door with some difficulty. The door opened to a ledge under the street – there was water flowing under here as well, and only a narrow path hugging the side for us to walk on. Apparently this led to a labyrinth which was the back way into the manor, and was booby-trapped. He led the way – through another door, all the while talking about the people who use to work under him to keep up the manor. “Cedric was supposed to keep this place clean, but I’ve been gone for a long time, I don’t know what happened to the place after I left. It was never this filthy”
We went through a door, he motioned for me to stay behind him. “Now there were all kinds of traps here, the guys were suppose to have disabled them,” he named some of the traps as we passed them, a dagger trap, a pit trap, another hole that was already exposed – everything was very dusty and old looking. He stopped abruptly and a second later something thudded into the ground before him. “Ah they missed the poisoned dart trap, they’ be in trouble if I still worked here”.
Up some stairs and we were in a room above ground. He described how men would try to come and sneak into the manor this way - old gangster types. And by the time they got to the end of the labyrinth they’d completely forgotten why they even came, they just wanted out. In different places you could see cigars where men had spit them out, or gold chains and jewelry that had become caught and discarded. Each of the obstacles we came too – that must have been a painful trial to invaders - he knew how to disable or go past safely. In one room the only apparent way to continue was to squeeze through one of the various oddly shaped openings in the wall ahead, each with rather sharp edges. But Guy knew a spot to touch on the wall that opened a door for us to safely pass. By the end I was very glad to have never stumbled upon this place on my own, it was creepy and awful.
Ahead there was light- we’d reached the end, it apparently ended just above the door of the manor – in the attic space that extended over it as an awning. There was a space he indicated we should drop through, which we did, landing on our feet before the door. Almost amused sounding he said gallantly:
“Drop and the doors will open”
Sure enough the decorative glass doors slid open at his lightest of touch. We walked through a forayer, terra cotta tiles, there was a low daybed before us. In it She was sleeping, we could just see her red hair. “Ah there’s our sleeping beauty” he says.
Screaming. Repeated, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand, and cold fear iced through my stomach. Before we get to the daybed, a girl swings down from the ceiling. She is tied upside down by her legs we didn’t see her before since she had pulled herself up and was kinda trying to untie herself. Now she just swung limply facing us – and says – “She’s knocked out – but he has Sally”
The girl’s cheetah print shirt was pull up, exposing the expanse of her belly to sternum. Sticky out of the girl was hundreds of tiny needles, from her belly to her arms, but the majority at a similar downward angle at her belly, the kind you use for piercing tongues and eyebrows and the like. All different bright colors and some tipped with decorative crystals and jewels. Not inserted enough where she’d have much blood loss, but you could tell she must have been held down and had them inserted one by one, careful, to give her pain.
Screaming…screaming… screaming… the girl in the back had been screaming this whole time, short quick screams over and over again, but I’d blocked them out. Guy ran forward before me – She was unconscious the bed – bruised with maybe a few piercings – as if the torturer couldn’t help himself, but he tried because he knew he’d be in trouble for marring her too much. She lay in the white bed – one arm stretched out and exposed, brown and purple bruises forming where hands had gripped her.
To the left we see another girl, needles sticking from her back. She is breathing we can see – but not the source of the screaming – we can see her face and we run by, making a left at the next door. In here is a room that looks almost like a personal salon. Hanging from the ceiling, through a square opening is a girl with hundreds of needles sticking from her legs, from the knees down going up to the ceiling where we can see a man in the bright florescent light in the space above, sticking more brightly colored piercing rods into the girls feet, with quick sure jabs. Each jab elicits a scream from the girl, who appears to have given up fighting back, though it looks like she had been previously. Now she hung, her arms just barely making an effort to grab something to pull herself up.
Guy grabs the girl and pulls her from the torturer and quickly lays her on the floor by the wall, then manages to grab the man and yank him through the opening. He scrambles to his feet and throws some sharped piercing rods, larger ones, at Guy, but none stick, they hit at angles and bounce off or miss completely. A few hit me, but I jump back and none stick. Guy tackles him and has him on the ground on his belly.
Guy pulls over a cylindrical hair curler heater - it has about a 1 foot diameter, and is maybe 2.5 feet long, He turns it on and puts some curlers on it. As if by some unspoken agreement we both know this man should pay for what he did to these girls. I said “not like that” my anger was too hot and impatient for just doing this slow. I grabbed the cylinder with both hands – it was a pretty sturdy thing, and brought it down hard against the back of the blond man’s head, and shoulders. He made a satisfying “umph” I brought it up and hit it again and again, ffffrummmthwack ffffffrummmmthwack. After a couple hits the maddening fire in my head had decreased some I put the cylinder back by Guy. He seemed a bit impatient with my need to quick violence, but he said nothing, just secured the guys body leaving his hands stretched before him.
I sat on the man’s upper back, holding his arms down, Guy was starting to stick needles, thinner needing – sewing needles some with thread trailing their ends, into the blond man’s finger tips. The man was trying to grab small hair trimming scissors and other sharp tools lying about to stab Guy with, but I kept grabbing his hands and holding them still. I had a mental flash of what would happen if he got a hold of one, sinking it deep into Guy’s thigh. I held to his hands tight. I grabbed a needle in my right hand and helped to stick him.
He now had needles sticking out of his fingertips, very deep – through his fingers even. He fumbled with his hands again trying to get free, my hold on him slipped a little, and he managed to stick my hand with two of the needles sticking from his fingers, and squeezed, pushing the needles into the fingers of my left hand. But I’d managed to secure his hand again. He could push the needles into my hand some, but he couldn’t get away or do more damage than that. One needle was just barely sticking the side of my finger; the other was embedded deeply right into the center of my middle finger, middle knuckle, and deep. It must of hurt him to squeeze – using the needle being in his own hand to stick it deeper into mine, but he wanted to hurt me, and so did it through the pain. I knew I was taking damage, but I ignored the pain – there was nothing I could do right now, he must be secured.
I grabbed a long embroidery needle and jabbed him in the palm, again, and again. Stick, stick, stick, into the fleshy part of his palm. In some part of my brain I knew this wasn’t quite right, and I knew that my hand hurt, but it was so satisfying to assuage my anger with his pain. Stick, stick, stick..
