The Waiting room (E1 – E3)

E2 - The Waiting room

Baron pulled at the door of the shed. The old rusty iron creaked, but the door still did not move. There was a small iron wedged at the side and Baron had to exert more energy to get that out of the way but when he did he was pleased with the results. The door all but fell out and quickly he jumped to the side. He was going through all that trouble because Joan was a wonderful woman.

She was delightful to spend time with, and even more delightful in bed. He fell in love with her slowly but surely and he wasn’t ashamed of his feelings at all. He felt he deserved it after all those years of suffering. He looked inside the shed and saw that it was larger than it had looked from outside and very quiet. He had expected rats and other insects. Even the walls had no cobwebs, only streaks of dirt.

Stepping into the place seemed like stepping into a place frozen in time. He put a foot forward and got a hollow sound. Weird. The floor was made of wood. He walked towards an old sofa lying on its face and picked up an old photograph. It was a picture of Joan with an old woman Baron suspected was her mother. They were both hugging each other and smiling widely to the camera. Baron smiled without meaning to, it was not hard to deduce that the old woman was now gone to meet her ancestors and these were her things.

He placed the photograph gently on a nearby table and took a step forward. Behind him, the table crashed loudly to the ground. Reflexively, Baron fell into a fighting pose and faced the falling object. He snorted when he saw that it was only a table and he shook his head at himself, wondering why he was so skittish. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about playing in the shed anymore. He picked his feet from the floor and walked out, arranging the door gently behind him.

Joan was back when he got to the inn. He snuck up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. That was a wrong move, the poor woman was frightened and thrust the sharp kitchen knife at him, narrowly missing his left cheek.

“Woah! Easy, it is me!” Baron said.

“Damn it!” Joan swore. “You fucking scared me”

“I’m sorry,” Baron said quickly. He had never heard her swear before. She smiled at him and he sighed in relief. This was the Joan he knew and loved.

“I don’t know why you move so quietly Baron!” She admonished.

“Something I learned while doing hide and seek with my four-year-old daughter,” Baron said smiling.

“Four years old?”

“Yes. Four years old but with the sharpest ears I have ever seen” he said. She looked at him and he saw she was pleased that he had spoken of his daughter.

“What did you get from the market?” He asked her, changing the topic.

“Enough food to last us for a while,” she said. Baron licked his chops. He watched helplessly as she struggled to cut the hard beef. She wouldn’t let him help her but Baron was already brainstorming to make sure cutting meat became an easy task for her.

“I’ve always said it. You cook so well! I wonder why lots of people don’t come here” he said.

“I’ve told you before. It is because of how far away from town it is. Not everyone wants to travel miles for somewhere to stay” Joan said, chopping the lettuce harshly. Baron was scared for her hands.

“Not everyone is running away,” he said sadly.

“Don’t think about that.” Joan said pouting “Come here, come kiss me.”

***

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Melody

The road stretched for miles as Melody walked. She knew she was safe so long as she didn’t go back to the house. Her mother would be thinking less about the fleeing Melody and more about the dead man soiling her floor with his blood anyway. Melody chuckled bitterly.

“Hey, you!” A voice startled her. Melody turned to see a woman in a red coat. She was carrying a small black bag slung across her shoulder and she smelled heavily of perfume.

“Oh hello,” Melody replied. The young woman laughed out loud.

“Hello? What are you? Twelve?” She said, Melody hugged her bag closer to her.

“No ma’am,” she said. The woman in red burst into laughter, throwing her head back.

“Jesus! No one has called me that in a long while. You’re cute, what are you doing out here this time of the night?” She asked.

Melody’s survival fears kicked in, suddenly she didn’t trust the woman “I got lost. My parents are looking for me” she said.

“Really? Are they?” The woman asked with a teasing light in her eyes.

“Yes!” My mother will be here with the police soon”

“Yada Yada Yada” the woman said rolling her eyes “I’m not going to kidnap you or take you against your will. You know that!”

“Yeah..” Melody said reluctantly, apprehensive that she had annoyed the woman.

“Good. If I leave you out here alone, you will have aged twenty years by morning. If you’re still alive though” the woman said with a sad smile. Melody swallowed in fear.

“So what do you plan to do?” The woman began walking down the road and Melody fell into step beside her. She wasn’t enthusiastic about being alone on the road anymore.

“Would you go home with me? Just for tonight. Your parents would find you before morning anyway” the woman said thoughtfully.

Melody thought about it, staying outside would be very dangerous. She imagined coming upon a rapist or a serial killer like she had come upon this woman and gulped as the full implication of her running away from home hit her.

“I will,” she said and watched the red woman’s eyes twinkle. Melody registered how patiently she waited for her reply. She threw a sideways glance at the woman. She was humming softly and didn’t look like a bad person at all.

***

Baron

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“What do you want from life?” Baron found himself asking Joan one day while they lay in bed. They were having a quiet time and his question seemed to pop out of someplace he had always kept neatly hidden. Joan looked at him and smiled. He knew she was glad he was finally talking seriously with her. She had always longed to know more about him and Baron saw she didn’t mind taking the back door into his past.

“I just want to live a quiet life with a small family,” she said, looking dreamily into space.

“How small do you want this family to be?” Baron asked.

“Just one more person,” Joan murmured.

“A child?”

Joan looked at him as though she didn’t hear his question. She dug her hand comfortably into the soft flesh in his shoulder.

“I have a daughter. You already know that” Baron pushed on, laughing nervously “I have been thinking of going to get her.”

“What? Now?!” Joan asked.

“Oh no. Not now.” Baron said as though even the thought scared him “We’ll wait until we’re ready to have her with us. Okay?”

“Yes!” Joan said. Her smile was so bright it made her look like a benevolent goddess. Baron wanted to inhale her. “Thank you, Baron,” she said and nuzzled into him.

Now he stared at her as they knelt side by side in the soft earth and planted the new tomato crop. He admired the way she slowly dug the hole and placed each seed in methodically. He loved the way her lips were softly parted and the wind ruffling her wooly hair from the nape of her neck. Baron felt his throat constrict. He was in love with this woman and he couldn’t help himself. She was just so beautiful and pure. Eleanor had never been this beautiful or pure and he hadn’t been so surprised when she traded him for a life of luxury.

Joan however, was a caring woman. The right woman who would hold his daughter in her arms and love away all the years of suffering the little girl must have endured. He decided he would tell her about his life but first, he had to make life easy for her. Peradventure her pure spirit made her hate him for the things he had done to survive in the past, he would know that he had in some way touched her life.

She pulled off her gloves and exposed the painful little knife cuts on her fingers. Baron looked away, yes she was stubborn and wouldn’t let him help her cut the beef but how come he hadn’t gotten around to making her that tall stool?

***

Melody

The young woman’s house wasn’t so bad, although she could have taken it easy on all the red velvet, Melody thought amused. The house was literally a red house. From the red vase with plastic roses in them to the soft red rug at their feet. Apart from that, Melody liked the dark and mysterious atmosphere, a lot could be hidden under it. The smell of the place was also nice, something sweet was burning in the incense bowl at the right corner.

“Are you ever going to come in?” The woman asked amused. Melody had been standing just inside the door.

“I like your house” Melody blurted.

“Awww. Aren’t you sweet?” The young woman cooed. She took Melody by the hand, “I am usually tucked up here most days, but lack of cash pushed me out of my haven today,” she said.

“That’s sad,” Melody said. The young woman searched for sarcasm in her face and found none.

“You really are a sweet, awfully innocent girl,” she said surprised. “By the way, my name is Janet. What’s yours? She asked.

“Thank you, mine is Melody” Melody said, pleased.

The young woman led her to a small room around the corner, a large concealed door led to it. It was the only room in the house not flush with red. The bed was dressed with a soft blue blanket and a scattering of multicolored pillows. It looked so soft, Melody couldn’t wait to sleep in it.

“My sister normally stays here when she comes over,” Janet said. “Come on. Let’s go cook some dinner”

***

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The sunbeam resting on her eyelids was what woke Melody up. She woke up slowly, her mind reluctant to completely process the activities of the previous day. Waking up from a nightmare where she was standing in the middle of a field and blood fell in flakes like snow also had something to do with her mind’s relative slowness.

A bird chirped above her and Melody opened her eyes, expecting to see the curtained window of Janet’s house. The sight that met her eyes was a frightful one. She was in a stone dungeon and what she thought had been a bed was actually just a pile of rags. A cry escaped and Melody quickly clamped a hand over her mouth. Whoever it was that brought her here didn’t need to know she was awake.

She thought back to last night, the last thing she remembered was Janet smiling widely at her across the dining table as they ate a meal of buttered bread and stew. Melody remembered leaving the table early because she suddenly felt dizzy and Janet saying “you’ll be alright”. It was obvious to her now that the woman had put something in her food. Had she not been a fool to trust her in the first place? Her mother had always said that no good woman walked on the road at night.

Melody’s eyes widened, the late-night, the red coat, the red house, and the low lighting. Janet’s breezy way of talking should have been a dead giveaway. Afterall Melody had seen a prostitute before, her mother’s friend Brit was a prostitute and she talked fast and easy all the time. What had she been thinking to trust the woman? All these thoughts ran quickly through her terrified mind.

Melody knew she was in danger. No, it wasn’t instinct, who feels safe in a dungeon full of glass boxes containing knives and chains hanging from the roof and the walls.

She got up really slowly and walked over to the window she had been lying close to. Looking out, she realized there was no “out” the window opened to another small hole that contained a pipe through which the sunlight slipped inside the dungeon. She was underground. The revelation hit Melody like a brick to her head. The odds of her ever escaping was even less than she thought.

A man’s heavy footsteps sounded close by and Melody dived back on the pile of clothes and pretended to be asleep. The footsteps drew closer until the man was standing above her. She could feel the heat pouring off him.

“Still sleeping huh?” The man asked, he sounded drunk and Melody almost sighed aloud, she had managed to deceive him. Then suddenly she felt his hard boots on her ribs, she screamed as the excruciating pain coursed through her.

“Stupid girl.” He said with venom. He stared for some moments as she writhed there on the floor, spat on her face, and walked away.

***

Three years later

Baron

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The steps creaked as he stepped on them. Baron stared at the color on the wall, gray. Joan hated the color gray. What was it doing on the walls of the underground part of her shed? Why did she have a large room beneath her shed? The room contained only three boxes and a large refrigerator. The boxes were protected by old clasps that Baron tore to shreds with ease. They contained silver instruments, sharp surgical objects. The kind you only find in the operating room.

Baron stared at them in shock for a moment. He shook his head and tore open the other box. It contained face masks, gloves, duct tape and yards of rope. He had a fleeting thought that perhaps she was into BDSM but he brushed it away. He knew he was in denial. The refrigerator was harder to open and Baron had to go back up into the shed and get a crowbar. With that, he pried open the refrigerator.

There was a fluffy white material on top of it that made it look like it was full of meat. Baron peeled away the cloth and beheld the horror that was inside. Dead bodies, intertwined in an effort to conserve space. Five dead men in the refrigerator, their faces were frozen in various expressions of fear and anger. Slowly everything began to make sense to him.

Joan living alone in the inn without any customers. The twinkle in Fleischer’s eyes when he had recommended the place. They were working together. Even the old woman in the photograph might have been one of Joan’s victims too and not her mother as he had thought. Baron closed the refrigerator and turned back towards the boxes. He stood in front of them for minutes, just staring but not seeing anything. Then took out the rope, the duct tape, and a long knife. He would need them.

He locked them back up and stepped back to see if everything was arranged in just the way he had come to meet it. His eyes lingered on the refrigerator but there was nothing he could do. He would come back later to get the men out of there and into proper graves. He stepped on the stairs and began to walk slowly up. Baron lifted himself out of the room and was about to look around when a baseball bat bludgeoned him. He swayed, his hands gave way and he dropped into the room, hit his head on the hard floor and blacked out.

…to be continued