One-Eighty (A Short Story)

One-Eighty

  by

  Maxwell Cunningham

  Serial Killer, Sid Niles, is on the hunt again. His next target has all the desirable traits of his past victims: young, beautiful, and female. Little does he know that she is about to turn the tables on him and cause his world to come crumbling down.

  Copyright © 2012 by Maxwell Cunningham

  https://www.maxwellcunningham.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Sid Niles felt the cool October wind hit the back of his neck as he watched the sun complete its descent, ushering in the darkness that would aid his nightly hunt. Like usual, he had no particular victim in mind, though lately he preferred beautiful women in their twenties. Not necessarily the flavor of the week, but a demographic that he grew fond of as he carried out his handiwork.

  The park in which he spent most of the afternoon was clearing out, though he knew several late-nighters were bound to be out for a walk. Perhaps they walked after a long shift at work with the desire to squeeze a little exercise into their hectic day. He didn’t care what their motives were. His motive remained the same. Satiate his desires for the kill.

  His black hoodie and equally black pants ensured that he would become invisible. He had his routine down to a science and he knew that tonight would be just as exhilarating as the previous night had been. The crunching of leaves below heavy feet gave him the first indication that someone was walking down the secluded trail that he stalked. The soft voice of a woman shortly followed.

  “I know. That bastard screwed me over again. I should have listened to you. I just can’t learn my lesson.”

  Sid heard her voice and pegged her at the perfect age. He continued to eavesdrop on her phone call.

  “Why can’t all guys be like your boyfriend? Can you, like, clone him or something?”

  The sound of her giggle practically made his heart skip a beat.

  “No, no, no! I’m not trying to say I want your boyfriend…”

  Sid emerged from the trees and entered the trail. The woman continued her conversation, oblivious to the danger that was now less than twenty yards behind her.

  “…there are plenty of other guys…”

  Closer.

  “…Todd Chambers…”

  Ten yards behind.

  “…Brian Messinger…”

  At five yards, he lifted his knife, eager to penetrate her back and end her short life, though he hoped to not kill her instantly. He loved to see his victims suffer.

  Then he heard her voice continue as his knife was about to begin its descent.

  “…and,” she paused before screaming, “Sid Niles!”

  He gasped as she whipped around and clubbed him in the side with what might have been a wooden mallet. The blow caused him to drop his knife and as he reached down to grab it, a second blow landed on the top of his skull. The pain from the blow subsided as the blackness of the backs of his eyelids was overtaken by the darkness and silence of unconsciousness.

  * * *

  “Wake up, you maggot.”

  Those were the first words Sid heard when he came to. His eyes opened warily and the blurred image of a woman standing in front of him became clearer by the second. He felt the hard wooden chair that was beneath him. His arms strained as he attempted to lift them to choke the woman. The rope that tied them to the chair nearly cut into his skin as he pulled.

  “Nice try, but you aren’t getting out of that chair anytime soon…”

  “What in the—”

  “Shut your mouth. Did I say you could speak?”

  Sid hung his head. He could feel the lump at the top of his skull from the impact of the blow he received earlier. How much earlier? How long had he been in this chair? These were questions he was asking himself as he looked at his legs. They were tied as well.

  “Okay, so you’re probably wondering how I know who you are.”

  Sid looked up and saw the brunette woman. Her smile was sinister, almost as sinister as his smile probably was right before he slashed his victims.

  “You might remember a blonde girl…mid-twenties…beautiful. Heather Smith”

  “I don’t know who you are talking—”

  The woman smacked Sid across the face with the back of her hand. The mild pain from her hand did little to take his mind off of the throbbing of his head. Sid tried to sift through his mental database of victims, though they all blended together somehow. He remembered parts of each one, though sometimes he didn’t learn their names.

  “Anyway, incase you are wondering, Heather was my sister. They found her purse and a sliver of her skirt not too far from where you were going to attack me. And you probably thought I didn’t know you were hiding out, waiting for someone. You may have had this nagging thought that perhaps you were being watched as you attacked those three women this week. If so, you were right. I watched you stab them. I watched you torture them as they died. I watched you hack up their bodies into pieces. I almost killed you during the one last night, but for some reason I couldn’t. I couldn’t because in the back of my mind, I want to believe that Heather is still alive. Her body didn’t turn up like the others.”

  The woman turned around and walked to a nearby table. She grabbed a pair of pliers and turned around. She smiled at Sid as she approached him.

  “After last night, I knew you’d keep hunting in that spot, like you couldn’t get enough. I knew you’d try for me. I was the perfect bait for you. Just your type.”

  Sid looked at her dark eyes that stood out on her pale face. Her sense of calmness frightened him to no end. The pair of pliers she held grabbed his attention as she moved them closer to his right hand. He could smell her as she grew closer to him. The sweet smell of perfume infected his nostrils, though his normal reaction of arousal did not occur. Instead, he grew even more fearful.

  Then he felt the pliers grip the end of his finger nail on his right hand’s middle finger.

  Sid’s voice cracked. “Please don’t!”

  She did not listen to his cries. She gripped the nail and nearly yanked his finger off in her efforts to detach his finger nail. The pain was far worse than that from the lump on his head. He clenched his right hand into a fist and writhed in pain.

  “You…you bitch!”

  “You think that hurts? Wait until you hear what else I’ve cooked up.”

  Sid was almost afraid to ask. He remained silent.

  “So I know a lot about you, dug up a lot of dirt. But in my quest to get inside your head and get my sister back, I decided to give you a taste of your own medicine.”

  The woman paused, as if she was waiting for a reply. When no reply came, she continued speaking.

  “You took my sister, so I took someone you love as well…Deborah Niles.”

  Sid’s eyes opened wide. He forgot all about his bruised head and his throbbing finger. His own mother had now been sucked into his monstrous world of blood and murder. He never felt regret before that moment. Now he felt a sudden surge of regret for everything he had done up until that point. He would gladly take it all back if it meant he would save his mother.

  He looked up at his captor. “I didn’t take your sister. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please…”

  “You want me to believe that?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t remember a blonde. I really don’t.”

  “Her purse turned up near where you stalk your victims. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  Sid looked at
the pair of pliers that continued to grip onto his finger nail. Just the sight of it made him want to vomit. His stomach was already turning from the pain and the knowledge that his own mother was in danger. Then he watched as she let the nail fall to the floor and approached him again with the pliers closing in on his other hand.

  “Please, no. Oh God, no!”

  His cries did not keep her from holding his hand still and gripping the nail on his left hand’s middle finger. She gripped but did not pull. His reflexes prompted him to pull away slightly but felt the pliers holding him back.

  “After I rip you apart, piece by piece, I’m going to do the same to your mother. Unless…”

  “I’ll do anything!”

  “You already know what I want,” the woman said, tugging on his nail.

  “She’s alive! I’ll take you to her.”

  The woman released the grip she had on his nail, backed away and smiled. “Now that’s more like it. So here’s how this is going to work. In my pocket I have a button, and if I push it, it will alert my partner that I’m in danger and she will take care of your lovely mother for me. So don’t try anything.”

  She walked around the back of his chair, out of sight for a moment. He felt the cold touch of handcuffs around his wrists. Then he felt another pair of cuffs shackle his ankles. She untied his arms from the chair and then his feet. He knew he was walking on eggshells around her, but at the same time, once she hit that button, he knew he would kill her. What other reason did he have to keep her alive? Then again, what other reason did she have to keep his mother alive? They both needed each other and it was obvious that they both knew it.

  “Stand up. Slowly.”

  Sid eased himself out of the chair. He felt like he could easily fall back down unless he focused his full attention on the simple act of standing. His head still throbbed and he felt the pain trickle down his spine.

  He looked around the room that may have been a basement. It was poorly lit, with a small stream of light coming through a small opening in a window near the ceiling.

  “Walk.”

  To walk in the cuffs proved to be difficult. He had to take baby steps to keep balanced and not fall. He moved forward, one infantile step at a time. He could feel something prod into his spine. Perhaps the same club that knocked him out earlier. Perhaps something larger like a baseball bat. He walked until he reached an open door at the bottom of a steep flight of steps.

  The steps were difficult to ascend with his feet bound. He missed one step as he moved up and both of his feet slipped out from under him. He felt his knees take most of the impact, though his face took some of it as it smacked off the edge of the wooden steps. A hand gripped the back of his black shirt and assisted him in gaining his footing for the remaining climb up.

  “Keep moving,” the woman said.

  It seemed to take forever for him to scale the steps, but after a while, he made it to the top. A hand reached to his left to open the door knob. When the door swung open, he pushed back violently to slam into the woman who was only a step lower behind him. He heard her scream as she tumbled towards the concrete floor.

  He took the final step to make it to the doorway. Through the door, he saw he was in a kitchen. He stepped forward and used his backside to shut the door behind him. With his hands behind his back, he felt the knob to locate a lock on it. None could be found.

  The kitchen had yellow walls and not a single thing seemed out of place. The only discerning feature was the single cup that sat on the counter, half full with what looked like water. Though thirsty, Sid knew he had little time to waste before his captor awoke. He approached the next door at a snail’s pace and once he reached it, realized that the deadbolt lock was keyed. He had an inkling of where the key might be, though he knew it would be difficult to make it down those steps without falling.

  He meandered to the front door, through a hallway that only had one door that he figured went to a coat closet. By the time he reached the foyer, Sid realized that the front door also had a keyed deadbolt. He knew his only option was to try to open a window and escape that way.

  In the living room, he saw a large window beside a couch. He used his face to part the venetian blinds and saw that the lock was set higher than he probably could reach with his hands bound behind his back. Instead of trying to use his hands, he pressed his nose against the glass and tried to coerce the lock to move from left to right. It did not budge. He tried a second time but his nose slipped from the perspiration that was covering it.

  He backed away from the window and the blinds slammed into one another. He bent down and managed to touch his nose against the fabric that covered his right knee. He rubbed it several times in an effort to remove the sweat that was hindering his escape. Back at the window, with blinds parted and forehead pressed against the glass, he used his nose again. When it was obvious this tactic was not working, he gripped the lock with his upper teeth but it would not budge. After several minutes, the lock still couldn’t be coerced.

  Sid left the window and made his way back to the basement door. With his back facing the door, he turned the knob and stepped forward to pull the door open. To make the descent down the stairs was risky, but so was waiting upstairs. The basement was silent and he knew that she must have been knocked unconscious from her tumble.

  Compared to the upstairs, the basement was black. He felt like he was descending into the depths of hell, which might be an accurate description depending on the state of the woman. One step after another, he focused all of his attention on maintaining his footing. He neared the bottom and his eyes squinted as they adjusted to the lack of light. He could see the silhouette of the woman against the light-colored concrete floor. She was sprawled out like a ragdoll that had been thrown to the ground.

  Crouching down proved difficult, but he was able to position his hands near her pocket to retrieve the button that she claimed would alert her partner that there was trouble. He did not know if it were pushed or not, but he felt that to leave it would be a big mistake when she woke up. Her jeans were tight and his hands strained to check each pocket. The right pocket was empty so he moved around to the other side and slid his hand in her left pocket. He did not find a button in either pocket, but the left pocket was stuffed with something that he knew would prove useful: a ring of keys.

  He felt around the ring of keys, which contained nearly a dozen keys. He hoped to find the smallest key, perhaps the key that would unlock his cuffs. One after another, he felt the key sizes, but each one was the size of standard door key. When he discovered that the handcuff keys were not on that key ring, he stepped towards the bottom of the stairs.

  He had doubts that the woman was actually holding his mother. As he climbed the steps at a grueling pace, he thought of the ramifications of believing that she had lied when the opposite was true. There was no way to know. Sid stopped completely half way up the stairs. He wondered if there was the possibility of killing the woman while shackled at the ankles and at the wrists. He turned his head and saw her still lying there. Vulnerable. Each second that elapsed was a second that she could wake up. Once up, she could do anything to him. She could torture him. She could even kill him. This dilemma stopped him for about thirty seconds.

  He moved his feet slowly to the left and rotated his body around, careful not to slip and fall to the concrete below. Once turned around, he took his first step. He kept his eyes on the woman. Second step. Still staring at her. Still focused. Then she moved.

  Every so slightly, her arm twitched.

  He wanted to run down the steps and kick her into a bloody mess, but he couldn’t. He was stuck moving as slow as a tortoise. Each second that elapsed was a second he was closer to the bottom of the steps and a second she was closer to consciousness.

  Three steps to go.

  In the darkness, he wasn’t sure, but he believed that he saw the white of her eyes as she stared at him.

  Two steps.

  Her head lifted off of the g
round and her torso followed its ascent.

  One step.

  She was hunched over as her eyes pierced his. By the time his right foot landed on the concrete, leaving his left on the first step, she had already hurtled herself towards him. Her body slammed into his and he could feel intense pain as his left leg felt like it had snapped. He lost his balance and fell back onto the steps. His fall was broken by the back of his head hitting one of the higher steps. After this initial impact, his head bounced off the steps below as he slid down to the concrete.

  The dark basement grew darker as he felt her foot make impact with the side of his head. The pain, the awful pain, diminished as he drifted off into darkness. Perhaps it was the darkness of death. Perhaps he would wake again into another hell with this woman acting as Lucifer. Only time would tell.