Don't Hang Up

[ashkent]

Well, this has already been on the site as an interactive story, but other that about four occassions the number of valid points to have some interaction were becoming more an more sparse the further in the story went.
Another reason I wanted to end it as an interactive story was that there were more holes in the opening chapters than in a Tombstone salloon door. Also with stories like that I tend to find that I don't get a grip on the story or characters until about ten-fifteen thousand words in. Dean Koontz rewrites every chapter as he writes them, another author I can't think of rewrites each line until he's happy with it. I write a tenth of a book then go back to the beginning and rewrite it!
So, this is the extended and edited version of Don't Hang Up. The first chapter remains pretty much the same, but from chapter two the details are in sync and some important plot points have been corrected.
Enjoy once again.

[ashkent]

Considering its short, it took a good few hours to write. It's sort of one of those chapters that has to be there and begins a set up of what's coming, but i hate chapters like that where its a normal, everyday exchange between two or three characters. That kind of scene managed to end one of my other stories at the fourth chapter...but I reckon its about time to revisit that particular bastard.

[Chinaren]

Well, for a chapter here it makes possibly less than exciting reading (though perfectly acceptable writing of course), but in a more flowing book, then it's not really so noticeable.

[Burningplain]

Hmmm, I like it.

[ashkent]

I rested my hand on the stained, rotting wooden desk Jen had been standing behind that morning. That memory seemed almost closer than when I had last seen her before leaving for work less than a dozen hours ago.

Time could be funny like that. After a while you forget where the years have gone, then suddenly they are back right before your eyes, taunting and pressing down on your shoulders while the recent years slip away.

Moving away from the reception, I walked along the hallway leading into the treatment rooms. There were five doors around me, two on either side and one at the end, behind which I knew there to be the rest of Oakshade’s rooms. The paint had peeled away from the wood of most of them, long reaching fingers reaching out, while the walls around them were dull and grey.

Oakshade had never been somewhere you would call inviting in the sense of its purpose and reason for being there in the first place. The practitioners in Oakshade dealt with disturbed minds and haunted pasts, and those kinds of people had an effect on the places around them. The building remembered.

It sounds odd, I know, but standing in the still I could almost hear the whispers of ghosts in the walls themselves. The floor hissed with the memory of twisted minds, minds tortured by something they had seen, memories that could drive sane people into dark recesses where they would dwell on and resent their lives.

A shiver ran through me. I had enjoyed every minute working at Oakshade, feeling that I had made a difference to the lives of someone I barely knew, changed the future of young and old who believed everything good was gone from their lives. It made me feel like I had a purpose.

Until Kate Parker.

Coming back into Oakshade had opened wounds I had closed long ago, awakening a Pandora’s Box of evil memories without offering any inkling that below them, hidden away, lurked the essence of hope. Whoever had sent me here knew what they were doing, they knew what they were bringing to the surface but I still didn’t have any idea why.

I put my hand on one of the doors and pushed it open, turning the light of the phone on the room beyond.

The place had been deserted a long time, but it was not untouched. In the dim light I could see empty beer cans, cider bottles, burger containers. The building had become a haunt for teenagers most likely. Kids with nothing better to do than smash windows and wander around a death trap. They could tell stories of how the walls ran with blood, abominations stalked the halls and rooms. It was the haunted house at the end of block, the place you entered as a dare.

A commotion of noise burst in the air behind me. I let out a yell and twisted on the spot, whipping the virtually useless light around the hallway. I grasped the doorframe for balance, but my fingers tore through the rotten wood and I landed on the floor with a crack.

A vague shape moved in front of me and I threw myself to one side. The light illuminated the small furry body as it swooped by.

A bat. It was nothing but a bat. Oakshade was surrounded by woods and fields for miles so it was obvious that wildlife would have found a way inside the decrepit ruin.

I lay on my back, breathing heavily.

Spooked by bats. It wasn’t much of an advertisement for my experience in helping people deal with their fears and build up their ability to face the world with strength and belief in themselves. I needed to keep control of myself, think rationally.

I sat up and flipped open the phone again, instinctively turning the image it bore away from me.

There were surely more creatures in Oakshade, but none of them could do me or anyone else any harm.

As I got to my feet, I also reminded myself that someone could be hidden away in one of the rooms. Not the man on the phone, it didn’t work like that, but he could have sent someone else. Possibly to give me something or tell me something. Fulfil the reason for me being here at all.

And there was one thing I now told myself that wasn’t in the rooms around me. Ghosts. There were no ghosts roaming the halls of Oakshade because they were stalking the corridors of my mind as they had done for years.

Only now they were in surroundings that amplified them, allowing them to dominate my memory

And none dominated more at that moment than young, disturbed Kate Parker.

[Chinaren]

Oooh.  Intruiging!

[Burningplain]

This is good, I enjoy it.

[ashkent]

“So what do we know about the dead guy?”

DCI Jack Metcalfe stood in David Thompson’s kitchen looking out at the neat garden.

DC Mickey Flint passed him a file.

“That’s the basic rundown,” Mickey said. “He was only released last month. He had the possibility of parole fifteen years back, but he attacked the analyst compiling the report on him and ended up doing the rest of his stretch.”

“And let me guess,” Metcalfe said as he fingered through the limited information in the file. “His analyst was David Thompson?”

Mickey nodded. “Which at least adds some meat to the story.”

“There’s always meat, Mickey. These things never just happen to people. The question is do we really believe that this Grant was released last month and goes on a revenge mission?”

“It happens, Guv.”

Jack dropped Grant’s file onto the worktop and turned from the window.

“When it does happen the ex-con isn’t usually the one who ends up dead.”

He looked beyond Mickey, into the hallway where Grant’s body had been found seeping blood into the floor. He had seen more crime scenes than he ever wanted to truly recall, and he had been to very few that reeked so much of deceit. There was more to this than a simple revenge attack gone wrong.

“How long before we get back the results on the knife?” he asked.

“They’re going to call once the have anything. There were one set of clear prints but they think there’s another partial on there that didn’t belong to Grant.”

Metcalfe moved into the hallway, stepping around the area where the body had been lifted from. He looked through the open living room door, his eyes wandering over what he could see inside.

“We know its going to belong to Thompson,” he said quietly, ponderously almost. “But if it’s a partial print, is that because he wiped it or because he didn’t really have hold of it.”

“You think this was an accident?”

“I don’t know yet,” Metcalfe answered, continuing to look around the room inside.

“It could be.”

Mickey rubbed an itch at his neck. “So if it was innocent then why did the guy run? Just panicked?”

“If he just panicked he wouldn’t have been able to calmly walk past the guys who got the callout. There’s something else about all of this.”

Metcalfe went through what he knew in his head while his eyes continued their journey across the cluttered mantelpiece. Mickey was wrong about Thompson. He hadn’t panicked, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling something similar inside. The guy was a qualified psychologist, he was meant to unravel other people’s problems and keep his own feelings out of the equation. That meant he could be good at hiding things.

It just didn’t ring true that he would kill the guy and run unless he had a good reason.

Mickey interrupted his thoughts. “Well if there was something else, Tony Grant isn’t going to tell us about it. The longer Thompson stays out there the worse it’s going to look for him.”

“Maybe there’s someone else who can tell us,” Metcalfe said thoughtfully.

“Who?”

Metcalfe pointed to a wedding photograph in the middle of the mantel.

“Her,” he said.

“His wife?” Mickey asked after leaning forward to peer around the doorframe. “I didn’t know he had a wife. She hasn’t been here since we arrived.”

“And that’s what we were missing,” Metcalfe said. “Where is his wife?”

[Burningplain]

The plot thickens. Very good

[ashkent]

“So how are you today, Kate?”

My room in Oakshade always struck me as more inviting than the office in Dragonville General. The right working area made the job of helping the patients relax a lot easier. I remember Kate being nervous on that first appointment.

It was peculiar considering her willingness to speak to anyone who would listen outside in the waiting room, but that was the way it worked. People could be one thing one minute, then in other surroundings they could become a stranger.

I had to ask the question again before she gave a quiet, affirmative reply.

I sat opposite Kate, no desk between us just a neat glass topped table containing a small cactus, her glass of water and my cup of coffee. I didn’t like having barriers between my patients and I. There were enough walls to break down without erecting additional ones.

“Is there anything you want to talk about right now?” I asked her. “Anything at all?”

Kate shook her head.

This was not an unusual first meeting. Coming up against some resistance was almost guaranteed, but this time I was surprised having seen Kate’s need to approach me earlier.

“Did you have plenty to read out there while you waited?” I tried, receiving a quick nod. “Well, I just hope they didn’t give you all the old  rubbish magazines. You’d have been better off being late.”

Kate stirred visibly. “No, I couldn’t be late. Never late. It’s not good. Are you late, Dr Thompson?”

“Not right now,” I said. “I have been late before but not very often.”

“I’m never late,” Kate said, taking on a stern tone. “It isn’t right to be late and making people wait. People waste a lot of their lives waiting.”

It had taken just one little spark to ignite Kate’s voice. The session passed by quickly, moving effortlessly from her obsession with lateness to a little of her history, and arriving, by the last few minutes, at what I would like to talk to her about in our next session.

“Before the next time you see me, Kate, I would like you to think about something. I want you to think about the last year, in particular anything that has happened that you didn’t like or wish you could change.”

“Ok,” Kate said. “Do you mean…sort of anything?”

I smiled and told her it could be anything.

“Can I ask you something, Dr Thompson?” Kate asked me.

“Sure you can.”

Kate chewed on her lip for a moment. “Am I pretty?”

The question caught me off guard but I suppressed the surprise from rising on my face.

“Of course you are,” I told her without any hint of a lie.

Kate was almost beautiful by anyone’s standards, certainly beyond pretty. Her eyes, chocolate brown, had a depth to them that could have been infinite. Her dark hair, straight, to her shoulders, hung around her pale face, accentuating just how alluring her eyes were.

“Everyone says that,” she said, sounding a little downhearted.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I just don’t believe them.”

I leaned forward, a classic technique I had used many times to try and use actual distance to cross a metaphorical one.

“Do you believe me?” I asked, smiling.

“I do,” she said, lifting her eyes to me and returning the smile.

As far as it went, that was the first mistake I made with Kate Parker.

[Chinaren]

Oh, nice!

[Burningplain]

Hmmm. Interesting. The plot thickens.

[ashkent]

Jennifer knocked at my office door just as I was packing up for the day. The door was ajar so she poked her head inside, smiling at me.

“Hey,” I said. “You off?”

“Almost,” she said. “Just waiting of my lift. He’s a little late, so I thought I’d come and see if I could pass a few minutes. Oh, and there was the small matter of the patient files you haven’t brought back for me.”

“Oh shit,” I said, turning to the pile on the corner of the desk. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Don’t worry,” Jennifer said, that smile still on her full lips. “I usually end up going around and finding them when the docs have left. You’re not the first to forget and I’m not giving you the accolade of being the last.”

I lifted the pile from the desk and passed them over to her. A loose sheet fell from the top file, falling to the floor. I bent and picked it up, finding it to be the patient chart of Kate Parker.

I apologised again, although as I did I wasn’t quite sure why, and opened the file to replace the chart.

“She’s a bit of a tragic case,” I said, closing the file again. “It doesn’t say in the file why she was transferred to me.”

“Does it not?” Jen said, shuffling the four files into a position that allowed her to open the top one again. She fingered through some of the sheets. “That’s strange. I’m sure there was a letter from Dragonville General about her.”

“So she was a referral?”

“I think so,” Jen said. “I can’t be sure though. She’s one of about forty files I’ve seen today. I’m a bit boggled to be honest.”

“I can imagine. I get it just from looking at my own patients. You know what I find helps? A drink.”

Jennifer laughed. “Let me guess, you know a little place just down the road?”

“Well it’s a little further than just down the road, but I do know somewhere.”

“That’s a brilliant idea, David, but there’s one small problem. You remember me saying “He’s a little late” when I said about my lift? The he is my boyfriend.”

“Ah, okay,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck in a way I knew you didn’t have to be qualified to read. “Now I feel a bit awkward.”

She laughed again, this time reaching out and putting her hand on my arm. “I’m flattered, honestly. If I was free and single, I’d be jumping at the offer so don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“I’ll try not to,” I said. “I’ll also try not to be so much of a flirt in future before I check these things.”

I picked up my briefcase and we left the office together, walking down the hallway back to the reception area.

Jennifer took the files into their store area, and returned a couple of minutes later with her own bag.

“What did you mean about Kate Parker?” she asked me as she locked the reception office door and dropped the key into her purse.

“Sorry?” I asked, genuinely unsure of what she meant.

“You said she was tragic.”

“Oh, right. It was something she asked me at the end of the session. She asked if I thought she was pretty.”

“And that makes her tragic? It sounds more like she has a crush on you.”

“No, that wasn’t the tragic bit. When I told her she was, she looked really sad and said that she doesn’t believe it when everyone tells her that. It made me think of her just wandering around, asking people if she’s pretty then moving on looking for the one who might just tell her she’s ugly.”

“That does sound sad,” Jen said as we walked across the waiting room and out through the double doors into the car park. “God, I don’t mean this to sound callous or anything, but I’m so pleased I’m not like her.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “You just need to be thankful that you’ve avoided being drawn into some downward spiral.”

A car horn beeped off to the left, causing us both to look up.

“Well that’s my lift,” Jennifer said, turning away.

I looked past her, peering through the car’s windscreen to find a familiar face on the other side.

“Small world,” I said.

“Sorry?” Jennifer asked, swinging her head back in my direction.

“I didn’t realise you were that Jennifer.”

“What Jennifer?” she asked.

The answer was taken from me by a shout from the car’s driver.

“Alright, Doc.”

Jennifer looked quickly across to Steve as he stepped out of the car, then back to me.

“You know each other?”

“We have been known to bump into each other on occasion,” I said, giving Steve’s hand a shake. “Not often enough in recent times though. His attention seems to have been elsewhere.”

“And now you know where it’s been,” Steve said with a trademark smile.

“I am still here, you know,” Jennifer chided, cuffing Steve in the arm.

I promised to meet up with them for a drink later that night, said my goodbyes and watched the happy couple drive off.

Strolling over to my own car, it struck me that in a few hours I had spent time with women at both ends of the spectrum; Kate Parker, who survived in the doubt of all and everything around her, and Jennifer, who brought a light to the people around her and was clearly happy with her life.

Sometimes though the ways of the world manage to remind people like me that even after years of study and practical experience, no one can truly read a person and know where their lives will lead them.

[Chinaren]

Excellent chapter Ask. Really well written.     It was really 'natural' and flowing.

[ashkent]

Once it was done I liked it, while I was writing it I wanted it to be a puchbag so I could beat the living crap out of it!

[Chinaren]

Once it was done I liked it, while I was writing it I wanted it to be a puchbag so I could beat the living crap out of it!

 

[ashkent]

The creaking, dark corridor of Oakshade couldn’t have been more different than the open, airy car park that I had stood in years ago with Jennifer and Steve.

Those days should have seemed like a million years ago, considering the state I was in, but in the last few hours the last ten years had fallen away like leaves in autumn. The past is gone and what happened, happened is what I tell patients who are unable to exorcise their demons. Yet so easily what should be long gone can come back right up in your face.

I passed by the other doors on the left and right of the hall, pushing open the end one instead.

There were only three rooms in the second section of Oakshade, including the one I worked in during my time there. If I was going to find anything here, I knew that was where it would be.

My office opened up without any resistance of rusty hinges or debris pressed against the door. I shone the light of the phone inside, revealing what little the light could illuminate.

The room seemed to be almost untouched since I the last time I stepped out over the threshold with the intention to never return. There was little reason why anything should have been changed that wasn’t down to vandals or age. I walked out of Oakshade and within only a few weeks the funding behind the project collapsed and Oakshade quickly spiralled into a black hole it could not climb from.

While some said that I began that spiral, the majority agreed that Oakshade had been in trouble long before the death of a patient added to its woes. As always, though, there are always those looking for the scapegoat, looking for the reason behind the decline. The thing is, against everything I preach and try to impose on patients, more often than not there are no reasons.

I walked carefully into the room, stepping around a toppled chair by the door. Lifting the phone and tilting its glow down, I could see my desk, filing cabinets to the side, chairs, waste bin. All the usual furnishings of a consultant’s office, only a little worse for wear and in need of a good dusting down.

The window on the far side of the room, though boarded on the outside was broken, jagged edges of glass reflecting the light, while shards caught the glow on the floor. There was no way that anyone could have smashed the window from the other side recently, which meant either it had been done before the boarding, or someone had done it since.

I had in the past wondered what enticed youths and vandals into places such as Oakshade, places crumbling in their own shadow and bringing with them potential death for stepping on the wrong board or tugging open the wrong door. Over the years I had discovered the answers from numerous interviews with teens from the ASBO crowd, pyromaniacs, self-harmers and even the homeless. It was never as simple as finding one reason – there could be a whole woven tapestry of vagrant stories, where necessity to frequent such places dominated fear of injury, and thrillseekers, who simply wanted to risk their lives for a little bit of danger.

Moving around the desk, it crossed my mind that it was unlikely any tramp would have smashed the window from the inside if he intended to sleep on the floor, so vandals were my guess. On the other side of the desk, I found the draws smashed open and that confirmed the suspicion. The floor was a mess of the remains of stationary that had been mine when I worked in Oakshade. There weren’t going to be much use to anyone now.

The filing cabinet by the desk remained untouched, but then again metal is much harder to smash into than a wooden desk past its prime.

I opened the top drawer carefully. There was nothing inside. I hadn’t really expected to find anything inside, but couldn’t pass without checking.

I worked my way down the drawers, bending to find the last one empty like all the others. It crossed my mind that maybe I was mistaken and there was nothing for me to find in Oakshade. Perhaps I had been sent there to be unnerved and simply reminded of my past, although as yet I couldn’t work out who could be instigating the goose chase.

Bent over, I pushed the bottom drawer closed with a grinding thump and straightened up to feel something cold press against the back of my neck.

My breath caught in my throat, and instinct told me to turn around and try my luck at disarming whoever was behind me.

“I know what you're thinking, David,” a distorted voice said, stopping my plan before it was fully formed. “I would urge you to think again.”

[Chinaren]

 

Very nice chapters Ask, very nice indeed! Spooky too.

[Burningplain]

Brilliantly written Ash. I'm enjoying this.

[ashkent]

Jack Metcalfe walked under cordon around the Thompson house and headed down to the unmarked car he had arrived in.

There were so many things wrong with the scene that he didn’t know where to start, but so far there was no real evidence to prove his doubts. All he had were his instincts. He hadn’t made it as far in his career without knowing when to follow his gut.

The chair in the living room had been the first thing. The pieces were scattered and the ropes which had seemingly been used to bind someone to it had been found in the hallway, but it didn’t sit well that Thompson had restrained Grant in a chair in his own home. It wasn’t much more likely that the reverse had happened either but it would be unfamiliar surroundings for Grant, and Metcalfe liked to think he had made use of what was around him.

The position of Grant’s body suggested there had been a struggle and Grant had obviously come off the worse party, but the knife had been under him, blood pooling out. Thompson could have used the knife in self defence as easily as he could have wielded it as a weapon. A lack of useful information on either man meant he didn’t know if Thompson was the type. If there could be such a thing as a type.

There were other small details that the forensics had come across during their sweep of the house. Tape on the underside of the dining table, nothing in Grant’s pockets other than fluff, bloodied clothes, assumedly Thompson’s, in the basket upstairs and Thompson’s mobile left behind.

Metcalfe knew all the small details were relevant in some way, the art was in working out how. He knew there was no way of telling whether the tape on the table had been there for a few hours or a few weeks, or if it had been holding something in place. If it were the latter that meant Thompson had taken whatever had been there, and in turn he had found time to take it while he left his mobile phone behind.

Of every thing, Metcalfe didn’t like the clothes in the laundry basket. It appeared to be the one piece of evidence that did make Thompson look like a suspect more than a victim. He had known he was leaving the house and had cleaned up before doing it. He had planned to leave the body in the house and contradictory to almost everything else he had taken the time to clean up.

“Guv,” Mickey shouted somewhere behind him.

Metcalfe turned from the car, considering as he did the last thing he had noticed only moments earlier.

“I’m not expecting you’re going to tell me she’s visiting her mother,” he said when Mickey was within talking distance.

“Not quite,” Mickey said with a half-hearted smile. “Uniform spoke to the neighbour, erm, Gordon, Jim Gordon.”

“And?”

“He and his wife haven’t been around much, but they haven’t seen Jennifer Thompson since early yesterday morning.”

“Hmm,” Metcalfe said, turning and opening the car door. “And all this happens at the same time as she seems to have vanished.”

“You think it’s linked to Grant’s appearance here?”

As he climbed into the car, Metcalfe chewed on the question. Grant had an axe to grind with Thompson and it wouldn’t be the first time a spouse had been caught in the crossfire. Had Grant arrived with an ultimatum?

“I think it’s something we need to throw into the mix,” he said resting his arms on his knees.

Mickey blew out a breath. “Never simple, murder.”

“No,” Metcalfe said. “It isn’t. Has Jim Gordon made any kind of written statement yet?”

“Not yet, do you want me to get him to do it tonight.”

“Tell him to come into the station tomorrow. We don’t want to jump too quickly on the idea that something has happened to Thompson’s wife. It’s only a gut feeling and a bit of circumstance at the minute.”

Mickey headed back up the driveway to the Gordon’s house with his instructions. Metcalfe watched him, knowing that he was right about the wife being a part of this; just not sure on the finer details. Was she being held for ransom? Or had she been killed as part of some straightforward revenge plot that hadn’t ended as Grant intended?

“DCI Metcalfe,” a voice said through the car’s two-way, startling Jack from his thoughts.

“Fuck me!” he said, reaching for the handset and barking his name into it.

“Guv, are you still at the Thompson house?”

“Yes, why?” Metcalfe asked.

“We’ve had an anonymous caller with a tip off that an IC1 male fitting David Thompson’s description was seen in a car with an unidentified driver heading towards an old private psychiatric clinic just of the Dragonville trod.”

Metcalfe stared out of the windscreen, the mic still held by his mouth.

“Guv?” the control room officer said.

“I heard,” Metcalfe said. “You said it was anonymous?”

“Yes, Guv.”

“Did they say why they thought to call in?”

“Apparently the place, er, Oakshade Clinic, has been derelict for years. The road the car was travelling on is a no through road with Oakshade at the end of it. There have been a number of emergency calls made about vandalism and fires there recently.”

“Really,” Metcalfe said quietly.

“Excuse me, guv?”

“Get the nearest unit down to check it out and tell them I’ll be there as soon I can.”

Metcalfe tossed the mic back into its holder and sat back in the seat.

An anonymous call. He chewed his top lip as he thought of it. There were only two types of anonymous caller; those who were afraid and those who had a reason for dropping someone in the shit with the law.

No one knew anything yet about what had gone on inside the Thompson house. Word took time to reach the press, and other than a little curtain twitching gossip which could have only travelled to the end of the road there was no reason for anyone to fear seeing someone who happened to look like David Thompson going to an abandoned psych clinic.

“Always trust your gut,” Metcalfe said to himself as he jumped out of the car and ran up the Gordons' drive to find Mickey.

[Chinaren]

Nice!

[Burningplain]

The plot thickens. I like it.

[ashkent]

“Are you the puppet master or another dancing marionette?” I asked, hoping to invoke a reaction that might give me some idea who stood behind me.

“Clever words,” the digitised voice said. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from the brilliant mind of the psychoanalyst.”

There was nothing in the voice I could pick up on, the distortion of whatever device he was using to mask his identity was doing its job well. I couldn’t detect even a whisper of the real voice.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want? Tell me what you want and give me my wife back.”

“All in good time, David. First, I want you to take a seat in that chair and don’t think that I won’t shoot you if you try anything.”

I started moving sideways towards the chair.

“Slowly,” the voice warned beside me.

I took the instruction. I checked if I could pull the chair out a little and after an affirmation I did just that then sat. As instructed I didn’t attempt to turn around. There were times when a risk would be worth it, but I clearly wasn’t in danger yet and if there was a chance of getting any kind of information out of whoever thought he could do this to me then I had to take it to try and get ahead.

“Very good,” he said.

I listened to footsteps crossing the floor behind me from my right side to the left.

The game of cat and mouse had been played out many times in my offices, but I was not used to being the rodent.

“So what happens now?” I said as the first move.

“Always asking questions,” came the reply. “Have you ever considered letting other people ask the questions? You’re supposed to be a good listener in your job so try and show it now.”

“Ok, I’m listening. Tell me what you want.”

“Too eager,” the voice said. “You have to build a relationship of trust before you can learn anything. Don’t make me tell you how to do your job or this is going to be a very short conversation. I get bored quickly when people are tiresome.”

I remained quiet.

The minutes ticked by without a sound. I wanted him to make some kind of noise to let me know were he was. It was a useless thought because he was not going to make this comfortable for me.

Finally, he stepped close behind me with one stride.

“Well done. You can pick up quickly when you have to. Keep it up and everything will be fine. Now drop your hands behind your back.”

I complied, feeling the cold steel of handcuffs clicking into place around my wrists.

“You must be getting used to this,” he said to me. “I can guarantee you’ll find handcuffs harder to break than rope.”

I wanted to make some kind of response but I knew the drill now. Don’t speak unless requested to speak. He wanted to have me compliant, under his command and if I could make him believe that I was willing to be just that then perhaps I could manage to get him to slip.

Footsteps moved back from me, slow and calculating.

“The first thing I want you to know, David, is that your wife is safe. I cannot say she has been comfortable the whole time, but I have tried to keep her entertained.”

“Son of a fucking– ”

“Oh and you were doing so well, David,” he goaded. “I’m not sure if I want to give you any more chances. I said the same thing to your friend in the car. He didn’t pay attention either.”

“What do you mean? What have you done to him?”

“Well that would be telling really. I thought I had managed to get through to you and did think we could get a little further than this point. It looks like I was wrong.”

The blow crashed into my temple from the right, rocking me enough to topple the chair.

The floor hit me hard, bouncing my head again, turning a daze into blackness and my consciousness flickered out like a flame with three final words ushering me into the dark.

“They are coming.”

[Chinaren]

Oooh!  Good stuff!  Time to panic I think...

[Burningplain]

The plot thickens. As in really, really thickens.

[ashkent]

Jennifer lay on the bed, stripped to her underwear just as he had left her.

She was sure David would have seen the video by now. How had he reacted? She could only hope he hadn’t crumbled. If she knew him it would have made him more determined to find her and save her.

There was no way of knowing though. That was the worst part of the waiting; knowing that something was happening but unable to find out what. She could do nothing but wait until he returned and told her. Again, she did not know when that would be.

She shifted position, cramp in her legs driving her mad. As if that was all she had to think about right now.

Yet, strangely everything else seemed to have become dreamlike and unreal. It was a dejected feeling that he was going to be here for some time. She had not been hurt badly, which was a positive, but she didn’t know how far he would be willing to go if David didn’t play the game the way he had planned.

She knew David would do anything to protect her, and in some ways that saddened her for reasons she couldn’t entirely understand. Perhaps it was the fact that David would do whatever it took that scared her a little. When someone stood to lose someone they believed to be important in their life they could be either dangerous or careless.

It frightened her to think of David being either. She knew him well, and yes it frightened the hell out of her to think what he would do and how the ordeal would end.

The floor creaked outside the room. Jennifer listened, her breath held while she waited to see if he had returned but after a few seconds she realised it must have just been the sounds of the house.

The time passed slower than she believed possible when she was alone here. Usually her alone time at home flew by quicker than she wanted, but that was much different of course. She had books to read, chick-flicks and Jeremy Kyle on TV, sunlight and a view. Here there was little more than the bare light bulb and four walls. It would drive her crazy if she had to stay locked up like an animal for much longer.

It was all part of the plan, he had told her in the beginning. There were too may risks in giving her a room with a window. All it took was one suspicious passer-by to pay more than a fleeting interest and everything would end badly. They had been his words and she believed him.

So all that she had been left with was her own thoughts and memories of the life she had, the life she had led and the life she hoped to have when this all came to an end.

It was the hope of what would come out of it that she found the hardest to concentrate on. The list of people who could get hurt kept barging into the front of her mind and she couldn’t help but think about what she now knew had happened in her own house earlier in the day. He had told her before leaving, supposedly to put her mind at rest. How could it alleviate her doubts when she knew that someone had been killed?

And now she didn’t know what else had happened. It could have been less than an hour or several since he had left her, telling her that it was time to have a tete-a-tete with David.

And that was when the dream reality kicked in. She was waiting for a man who could be dead coming back to her, or waiting for the same man to walk through the door and tell her his plan had not worked out, which she would immediately know meant David was the one lying somewhere as a corpse.

It couldn’t end like that. Surely it couldn’t.

His planning seemed to be meticulous, but already some parts had gone awry. He had told her every time David had done something unexpected, in fact he had only told her that. She knew if David was going along with his demands and instructions because he barely mentioned it. As soon as something caught him off guard though, the wheels became derailed from the track and cracks began to show.

Everyone involved in this had a life to live and she knew much better than she wanted to how easily any of them could end just like that.

She rolled onto her side, resting her head in her hand.

She felt the tears roll before she knew she wanted to cry.

They soon flowed freely and in the quiet she could do nothing but let them.

[Burningplain]

Excellently written. I am thoroughly enjoying this AK.

[Chinaren]

Nice one Ask, glad to see this still moving.  The only slight thing I'd say is that chicks may not refer to chick flicks as chick flicks.  Maybe.