This is the second part of my portfolio. It's the final draft of my fiction piece that was, to me, some of my best work. I hope you enjoy it.
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Just keep going. Her face was perspiring as it never had, sweat stinging her eyes, but she forced her legs to keep turning over. Her entire body screamed at her to stop, take a breath, but she knew that if she slowed, he would catch her. If only I hadn’t snooped. Things were fine until I found out about his – No. She couldn’t think about that now. Her very existence depended on her mind being in one place. One false step and – No. She couldn’t think about that either.
The only problem was she had never been here before. Before tonight, she wasn’t even aware this place existed. Then again, there were a lot of things that had come to light tonight, and now the person she trusted most in the whole world was nothing more than a twisted, sinister madman, as dark and as crooked as the winding passageway through which she was running. If it weren’t for the small amounts of light that trickled through doors that appeared at random intervals on either side of her, she wouldn’t have made it as far as she did. Yet she could still hear him, steadily getting closer. His grunts echoed eerily off the walls, sounding as if they were everywhere at once. She didn’t even know if he was in front of her or behind her. For all she knew, he might pop out of any door and catch her. She kept running. And running.
But it wasn’t enough. She turned yet another corner, and there he stood, his dark silhouette hunched over and gasping for air. But just like a wolf eyeing a helpless victim, he stared at her with ever-burning eyes that held all the hate and anger in the world. Almost hungry eyes. She knew she should turn the other way, maybe try and outrun him, but her legs had shut down. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she pleaded with her body to comply. Yet there was no response. He took a step forward. She closed her eyes and accepted her fate. Within seconds, he was on her.
* * *
He was nowhere to be seen. Max scanned the bleachers, the parking lot, the concession stand, and the bathroom facilities. He couldn’t spot his dad anywhere: not talking to other fans, not arguing over prices at the concession stand, nothing. He just wasn’t there.
But he promised. He promised he would come Max thought to himself. It’s the championship game. He promised he wouldn’t miss this one.
“Strike one!” the umpire yelled. Crap! Pay attention! He stepped out of the batter’s box, took a deep breath, swung once, and re-entered his arena. This was his time, his moment to shine. This was his team, his field. Max had owned this sport since he could throw a baseball. And now it was his last game: the conference championship, final inning, one out, down one. Robert had just crushed a double into right-center and was poised on second, just waiting for Max to hit him home.
A swing and a miss. “Strike two!” No! That was my pitch! Come on, Max! He stepped out again. Why aren’t you here, Dad? Why can you never make it to anything I participate in? Concerts, games, speech meets… He stepped back in the box. “Focus!” he said under his breath as the pitcher readied himself on the mount. There was the pitch, inside, just how Max liked it. A lights-out swing. Contact.
* * *
“Hello?” The kitchen door shut behind him as he entered the house. “Mom? Dad?” He dropped his equipment down in the living room and went to search the floor for any sign of life. That’s odd. At least Mom is usually home by now, Max thought as he came out of his parents’ bedroom. He searched the basement. Nothing. Not even a load of laundry in the washer. The usual aroma of fresh, homemade bread was missing as he again went through the kitchen. No Wheel of Fortune was playing on the television. His mother wasn’t quietly humming to herself as she ironed his shirts.
“Hmm…” He climbed the stairs to the second floor. Wait! What was that? A noise sounded from his father’s study.
“Dad?” He knocked twice. No answer. “Dad! You in there?” He jiggled the doorknob. It was unlocked. He turned the handle and slowly pushed the door open.
“Holy crap.”
The room was a catastrophe. Books lay everywhere, some missing pages, others having no pages at all. The light fixture on the ceiling had been smashed, littering the ground with shards of glass. The desk had been overturned, its contents strewn about all over the room. Drawers had been emptied. Folders had been rifled through. Spots of red liquid dotted the floor and clung to the broken glass for dear life. The window on the far end had apparently been hit with something heavy, for a cracked web weaved darkness and faint moonlight into the room, casting an eerie glow on its contents. Another small ray of light passed right down the middle of the room, and Max turned to see a small beam of faint light running vertically up the near wall. A door? Since when has there been a door there?
He started to make his way across the room, trying his best to avoid the broken glass. He had never seen his father’s study in such disarray. He bent down to examine the red substance more closely. His hair stood on end and a chill ran down his spine. Blood. Why is there blood on the floor of my dad’s study? And now that he was in the room, more and more blood kept showing up. It was on book pages, newspapers, broken glass, the desk, and even a little on the bookcases. And not just drops. There was a smudge by the outlet on one of the walls, and as Max drew closer to the hidden door, he noticed there was a small puddle of it in the room beyond. Fear slowly started to wash over him. As he reached the door, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Someone was watching him. He wheeled around. Nothing. He scanned the whole room once more, and then turned back. He pushed the hidden door slightly and it creaked open.
A small bulb hung from the ceiling, basking the small room in a faint yellow glow that illuminated numerous newspaper articles that were pinned to the walls. Pictures of different people with giant X’s through the middle were attached to each article. These individuals were strange to Max. He had never seen them before in his life, and he didn’t like the way each article they were attached to had a title dealing with murder. “Couple slain in park.” “Child found stabbed to death.” “Woman shot at point-blank range.” Max started to feel nauseous. He almost turned away and left, but then something caught his eye. From the far side, his mother gazed at him from a small photo. She must’ve been gardening. Her hair was disheveled, her hands were dirty, and her apron was torn. Yet she had the biggest smile on her face. She was always happiest in her garden, Max thought as a faint smile crossed his face.
Then something else caught his eye. Many of the articles seemed to have a sentence highlighted vividly in blue. After perusing through some of them, he found that each highlighted sentence was the date and time each victim had been killed. And while Max still didn’t know any of these people, the times seemed oddly familiar to him.
“How can that be?” he wondered aloud as he continued to read through each article. He searched his brain for a logical answer. And then it hit him. This one had been the time of his Christmas band concert last year. That one had been the starting time of his junior-year district baseball championship. That one had been his graduation ceremony! And they all had one thing in common.
No. It can’t be. No. No way. Max felt like he was going to throw up. An unsettling fear had flooded his body, and he turned around to run from this horrific scene. He was just about out the door, when he stopped. Something wasn’t right. He slowly rotated back to face his mother’s picture. Unlike the others, there was no X on this one. No article accompanied the photo explaining how she was mercilessly killed by some raving madman. Tears began to well in Max’s eyes as the horrible realization came to him. He couldn’t take it any longer. He bolted from the room, and was just about to flee from his father’s study when he ran headlong into a shadowy figure that stood in the doorway. The collision sent both of them sprawling backwards.
“Dad!” Max exclaimed as he righted himself. The shadowy form had gotten back on his feet and was staring at Max with such intensity that his gaze seemed to penetrate Max’s body and hit the wall behind him. He knows. He knows I know. He looked around for any chance of escape, but the only route was blocked by the hulking form that continued to watch Max with an almost hungry look. So many thoughts ran through Max’s mind, but he could only venture two words.
“Why, Dad?”
“Nosy, just like your mother. Didn’t go so well for her.” And with a sneer, he pounced.
* * *
Breath came in short, raspy gasps. The cut on his arm bled profusely. His head was spinning from the book that had collided with it. He could barely stand. It had taken him ages just to reach the window. Yet he forced himself to stand there and look down to the ground a story below. There he lay, his dark form broken and beaten. His neck had twisted the wrong way upon contact, and now his figure lay crumpled in a heap on the sidewalk. The window hadn’t been able to withstand his body a second time and had broken right when impact was made. With a final, hateful glare, he had toppled backwards into the night. And now he was gone. He could do no more harm.
Max found the telephone hidden underneath the desk. He dialed.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
