Seven, eight ... Gonna stay up late (Rebekka Franck #4) (4 page)

There were
people
upstairs. She heard the doorbell, then
footsteps, then voices, people talking and lots of laughing.

Here is my chance
,
Amalie thought to herself.
If I make myself
heard, then they'll certainly come to my rescue.

So once again she screamed all she could and
banged on the plastic surrounding her. With great strength she banged on the
sides, on the top, even kicked her feet at the bottom as hard as she could to
make as much noise as humanly possible.

"Help me! I'm down here!" She yelled.
"I'm being held hostage down here! I'm right here! I'm down here!!"

She realized she still didn't know where
"down here" was. If it was the basement of a house, or maybe she was
in an apartment and what she heard were the voices and footsteps of people
living upstairs. She had been in the darkness for so long that she hardly knew
what was up or down. But somehow she had to alert those people, let them know
that she was there, and was being held against her will. Someone had to hear
her, someone had to be able to help her.

Her voice soon became hoarse from the yelling.
Her mouth was so dry by now and she was so, so very thirsty.

"PLEASE!" she pleaded one last time,
then gave in to the sulking and tears that had been wanting to get out for many
hours. She sobbed and cried in agony and anguish, feeling sorry for herself and
finally admitting she was terrified that she would never get out, never see her
beloved horse again, never breathe the fresh air or see the open ocean again.

The very thought arose something in her, some
kind of strength to lift her head and put her mouth to the hole and scream into
the tube.

"HEEELP!"

Then she sunk back into her own feelings of
misery and pity. She cried and howled and let her tears wet the floor of her
cage. Her body was beginning to hurt from being in the same position for so
long and from the hard material she was lying on. She tried to move, to turn
her body, but there wasn't enough room. 

She was afraid to lose her mind while wondering
why this was happening to her, what she could possibly have done to deserve
this? She hadn't been a good person, she knew that. She was spoiled, a typical
rich-girl with an attitude that she expected everybody to wait on her. Yes, she
knew that. And it was bad. She was bad. She knew she had not treated people
well. Was God somehow punishing her for that? She had been mean, acting
superior towards even her best friends, even towards Camilla. Oh, Camilla. How
worried she had to be. She at least had to know that Amalie was gone, didn't she?
Had she told her father by now? Amalie hoped she had, cause then this would be
over soon. But what if Camilla didn't care? What if she thought that Amalie had
deserved what she got? Deserved it for treating her poorly?

Amalie had brought so much pain to others, she
thought and regretted each and every thing she had ever done. She had hurt so
many people especially her own mother whom she didn't care much for, since she
left four years ago for some Spanish man named Pedro and moved to Spain to get
away from Amalie’s father. Amalie detested her for that. No, she loathed her
for leaving. The few times she had been invited to Spain to visit, Amalie had
acted like a spoiled brat, slammed the doors, refused to spend time with her
mother and constantly told her how much she hated her and how she hated Pedro
even more. In the end her mother had stopped inviting her to come. It was her
own fault, she had said to Amalie's father on the phone. And her dad's fault.

"You have turned her into this cold beast
with no emotions," Amalie heard her say while listening in on the
conversation from a phone in another room. "She's all yours."

Now Amalie missed her mother more than ever. She
missed the mother she remembered from her childhood, the one who had enjoyed
her company and loved her like a mother should love her child. But something
had happened. Something that had made her mother angry and resentful toward her
father. Suddenly they barely spoke and her mother started drinking before noon.
In the beginning it was just a glass of white wine now and then when only
Amalie noticed it, but later her mother would lie in her bed upstairs in the
middle of the day when Amalie came home from school. She would be asleep, an
empty bottle on the floor and several pill bottles on the nightstand. In the
end Amalie hardly saw her mother anymore. Her father took over the education of
his daughter and soon he had taught her all she needed to know. All he had
learned about life.  When Amalie's mother came back from her third stay at
a rehab center, she came home only to pack her stuff. She was leaving, for
good, she told Amalie. She had met someone else, Amalie overheard her tell her
father. She also heard her father laugh and send her away with the words:
 Get out. I'm busy.

Amalie's father had told her that he didn't
care, but Amalie knew he did.  He cared so much he had sent a pack of his
reservoir dogs to beat the living daylights out of this Pedro and send him to
the hospital for several weeks. He was attacked in his village in Spain by what
seemed like a random gang only out to rob him, but both Amalie and her mother
knew who sent them and they also both knew that this was just the beginning of
it.

On the day the mother told them she was leaving,
Amalie's heart was torn to pieces. Still she managed to keep her calm like her
father had taught her.
Never lose it
,
he said.
Never show emotions in front of
people. They'll think you're weak.
So she stood proud and stoic, not
moving a muscle in her face while watching her mother pack her bags. Her mother
looked at her just before she went out the door.

"Not even a tear, huh? Well you certainly
are your father's daughter," she said, her last words before she went out
the door.

Amalie hadn't shed one single tear for her
mother. She decided she wasn't worth it; she didn't want to give her the
satisfaction. Instead she made her life a living hell every time they were
together. That was her way of getting her revenge. But it had failed. Now she
needed her mother more than ever. Now she was shedding all her piled up tears
for her mother and for herself.

But it was much too late.

An hour later, maybe two, she heard a noise above her.
She was sniveling and gasping for air. Suddenly she saw a light somewhere. It
almost blinded her eyes since they had gotten too used to the darkness. She
blinked fast to force her eyes to work properly. More light emerged as she
realized a door had been opened. Someone was coming!

She heard a voice. Someone was talking! A face
was revealed in the door opening. She gasped and saw for the first time her
cage. It was a small box, not much bigger than her, made from see-through
plastic.

"Help!" she said from inside of the
box. "I'm in here." She repeated it a few times, then stopped. The
face in the doorway smiled and winked at her. Seeing the face and especially
the peculiar eyes made her stop yelling. It was him. The guy from the festival
and he was walking towards her small plastic cage on the stone floor. Then he
winked again and took a turn towards the racks of wine that covered the entire
wall to her right. He grabbed a bottle and pulled it out.

"Got the wine," he yelled towards the
open door.

Then he winked at her one last time and ran for
the stairs. Startled Amalie saw him disappear up the stairs. She wanted to yell
at him, she wanted to scream to let whoever was upstairs know where she was,
but she couldn't. She was simply paralyzed. Paralyzed by something she had
seen. Right there, right next to her was something hanging from a hook under
the ceiling. It was the remains of a human body. The hook was pierced through
the neck and the head fell to the side, the eyes staring wide and empty into
the air. The skin was smeared in dried blood. One leg was missing and pieces of
the flesh on the back had been removed.

Then the lights went out as the man closed the
door. Everything went quiet except for the low shrieking sound coming from
Amalie's mouth.

When they were
done eating, Allan walked into the basement to get a second bottle of wine. Not
because he intended to drink much of it, but he wanted Sebastian to. He had
been chatting and blabbing on and on all night about his last trip to Milan.
Allan couldn't care less about the designers or the fashion-week or any of all
that Sebastian talked about. To be honest he didn't care much about Sebastian
at all. But he did care about having an alibi for tonight and as usual
Sebastian could deliver just that. He was the perfect cover completely
oblivious to what was going on behind his back, mainly because he was so
self-involved that he hardly noticed anything, not even the distant sound of
the muffled screaming coming from the basement, that Allan tried to drown by
turning up the music. Nor did he suspect that he had once again enjoyed part of
Allan's latest victim in a delightful sauce.

In his defense Allan was a great actor. He knew
to nod at the right time and knew how to sound truly interested in what
Sebastian told him.

Allan opened the next bottle and poured the wine
in the glasses in the kitchen. Then he pulled out a small sleeping pill from
his pants, crushed it between his fingers and threw the remains into
Sebastian's wine. He rotated it with his finger, then brought both glasses with
him into the living room where Sebastian was waiting in the white couch. He
looked great, but not as handsome as Allan, he thought as he spotted his own
reflection passing a full-length mirror on the wall.

When he sat down and gave Sebastian the glass,
Sebastian put his hand on Allan's thigh.

"I missed you while I was gone," he
whispered.

"Well I was right here, waiting for you to
come home," Allan answered with a smile.

Sebastian's hand caressed Allan's leg, then
became a little too comfortable. Allan didn't particularly enjoy having sex
with Sebastian. He didn't hate it either. It just left him kind of numb.
Usually he would enter him from behind imagining that Sebastian was the
lifeless body of someone he had just killed. That would do it for him. He
wasn't into intimacy, he didn't care for anyone's eyes or face, but the body,
the flaccid body of someone whom he had deprived of the very gift of life, now
that was something that would turn him on. He didn't care if it was a boy or a
girl. It didn't matter. As long as they didn't have a pulse.

But Sebastian did very much have a pulse and his
blabbing was annoying Allan particularly this evening. He kept looking at his
watch, while Sebastian spoke about some guy, a designer he had met in Milan who
helped him get back-stage at his fashion-show. Sebastian only told Allan this
story to make him jealous. Allan knew that so he played along.

"You didn't do anything bad while
backstage, did you?" he asked, pretending to care.

Sebastian was clearly satisfied to hear the
jealous tone in his boyfriend's voice. He chuckled, then slapped Allan gently.

"Ah, you naughty boy. Is that all you can
think of? No, you silly. He showed me his passion. Not that kind of passion.
His fashion-passion, of course, heh heh."

Allan laughed pretentiously. "Boy, am I
glad to hear that," he said.

While Sebastian continued his story, Allan drank
from his wine staring at Sebastian's glass. Then he looked at his watch. It was
getting late. Allan hoped the pills would kick in soon.

"Let's toast to you coming back," he
said and raised his glass.

Sebastian followed. "And to naughty
boys," he said laughing.

"And to naughty boys," Allan repeated.
 

Allan's eyes followed Sebastian as he put the
glass to his lips and drank. When he was about to stop, Allan pushed it towards
his mouth again.

"Oh, my," Sebastian said. "You're
trying to get me drunk. Well, I'm not going to refuse you that pleasure. Just
promise me one thing; when you use my body sexually later tonight and exploit
me ..." Sebastian leaned over and whispered. "Please ... don't be
gentle." Then he burst into laughter that echoed in the high-ceiled living
room.

Allan clinked his glass against Sebastian's.

"I promise I won't," he said and
watched as Sebastian finished his.

As Sebastian dozed off in a matter of seconds
Allan smiled widely. Then he slapped his boyfriend a couple of times across the
cheek and when he got no reaction, he carried him upstairs and planted him in
his bed. He pulled off all of his clothes to make him think they had had sex if
he woke up while Allan was still gone.

"Now if you'll excuse me," he said and
bowed in front of Sebastian's lifeless body, looking exactly the way Allan
preferred him.

"I have somewhere to be."