Promises

Before reading: Please note: this fictional work has multiple sensitive and graphic scenes including references to sexual violence, abuse, and murder. If you are of a sensitive nature…you might want to skip.

One quiet morning, I awoke to snowflakes. Blowing here, to fro in the wind, they landed quietly on already frozen patches of ice from the rainstorm the night before. I stared out of the frosted window and wondered if the electricity in the cabin would be frozen out soon. It wouldn’t surprise me. The hot apple cider helped warm me inside out and I wondered how my little friend in the basement was faring. It was much colder there with no heat. Five days after he landed there. No blankets. No comforts a nasty soul like his would desire at this point. For months he had chased me, consciously and subconsciously, until at last he found me. The night before had been terrible. First I’d knocked him out with the tree limb I had used as his takedown. Long and snarly and heavy enough in the middle to knock him unconscious. He was tall, dark haired, and way too skinny with boring brown eyes. If he hadn’t stalked me, he wouldn’t have found his demise I rationalized to myself. After all some people shouldn’t be stalked. A year, a whole blasted year the man bothered me. Using Voice to Skull technology to constantly talk to me. Driving me to this point. So yesterday, just before dinner, I drove up in the hills with a car full of groceries that would keep me, not my friend below, quite satisfied until he died from dehydration and starvation. The car tires crunched through the snow as I made my way up to the abandoned old cabin I inherited long ago. I found a heavy branch outside. I wrapped a few ropes tied together around a high old branch while I stood on a ladder in the freezing cold, and the other end I pulled out of sight and under the cabin door to the old plush stuffed chair beside the window and secured it to the leg of the chair. I started a fire, a big nice fire, brought in the groceries, and then waited for him to make an appearance. Stupid man. He came waltzing up the hill like there was no problem at all passing by my No trespassing sign. I watched him dart from tree to tree about 50 yards away and then, as I knew he would do, because it’s the biggest tree. I cut the rope and watched as he collapsed under the weight of the big heavy branch that bloodied his dumb head. Then I put on my boots and as he sat dumbfounded in the snow I thwacked him across the head with the flat edge of my wood chopping ax and dragged his limp self through the snow and across the threshold and over to the basement door no one would ever suspect was there. I pushed his unconscious frame down the cement steps without caring where his maimed body landed or how and locked the door behind me with a huge bar across the middle of the door. So now I wait, drinking my hot apple cider. I’m snowed in with him. I don’t think he’ll be getting up and moving around much and the dehydration should set in quickly with the blood loss he had. My father was a hunter and had raised me right, believe me. Do you? I know it’s an incredible story and no, I’m afraid that I have no intentions of calling the police this time. I’ve done that many times in the past, at least once a month. I’m afraid he won’t be leaving the cabin and it will be at least 10 years after I leave his rotting corpse here before I ever come back. No one else will because I have the property lined in security. The phone lines are down at the moment anyway. I’ll listen to him squiggle, I’ll listen to him scream, until the weak little moans cease and he’ll realize he’s never coming out. I’ll know he’s dead when his voice leaves my mind and the stimulation in the nerves in my nether region ceases. His presence will fade and the technology will flat line. But this is only day six, I’m afraid. I wonder if I remembered to buy eggs? I do like those. I got up to make me some. My guest would smell it and he would whine to me as he had made me and so many others whine over the years. He was sadistic, attracted to children and allowed to rape them with technology he’d often told me. He’d raped his own mother he showed me using the same technology. He was waiting to grab me up like the meek little bird he envisioned me as. The problem with his theory is that sometimes birds have sharp beaks and claws to go with all that brilliantly colored plumage. I am normally and naturally a very forgiving, kind person but he’d given me absolutely no choice, so please don’t think too harshly of me. He’d stalked, and terrorized, and tortured me until my mind could take no more and I found myself simply moving turn by turn in my car, up the abandoned road, until I’d caught sight of him in his white sedan inching ever closer but trying to stay out of sight. I planned nothing before hand because he uses AlterEgo technology to read my thoughts and then respond to them in an insulting manner. So what else was I to do? I meditated and kept my thoughts quiet and I trapped the trapper instead. I do feel rather proud of myself. There’s an end to this nightmare in sight. I added some sausage to the skillet and fried it up after I made the eggs and collected the toast from near the fireplace. I buttered it to my hearts content and made sure I yelled down to my guest how wonderful it all tasted as I stood opposite the door. It had turned out well, all in all, and we all know what Shakespeare had to say about that. Alls well that ends well, after all. After breakfast I snuggled back into my overstuffed chair by the window and patiently waited. I waited and watched as the snow fell, first in wild torrents, and then later softly to the well insulated window sill. It was as cozy up here as it was deeply cold and damp in that basement. Whoever in my family had thought to build that first was a genius as far as I was concerned. After some time the calls from downstairs ceased vocally. He must have given in. It slowly became quiet in my mind again. I could hear my own thoughts once more, felt the pain drain from my nerves and muscles as they relaxed finally. Felt my breathing quiet and steady as my automatic processes returned to normal. I napped for a time in that warmth and comfort. I did not feel guilty. I will reiterate that for you until kingdom comes for me. I was free finally of that terrible, painful, horror-stricken state of being that man had put me in. The snow eventually stopped. I did not bother to check on my guest as first I showered and then I made my way to the bedroom comfortably and completely relaxed for the first time in many, many months. Days repeated like this, then weeks, and one day I woke completely refreshed and the snow had thawed enough to leave. This morning, in fact, I am driving myself back down the hill and to the pharmacy to treat the terrible ear infection and fever I have suffered for weeks on end. It was a quick call for them and then I’ll be just fine. I’m certain this time, and if my terrible nightmare ever happens again, it will only end the same as this one. I promised myself, over and over, and I promise you my reader. I always keep my promises.