“Oooooh. I like this,” he says, holding up one of my Disney T-shirts, before sticking his hand back inside my bag, having me wishing he was the one in a bag…a body bag once and for all. “Now we’re talking,” he continues, holding up a pink skirt. “It should pair perfectly with this…little girl.” He pauses, and his smile turns into a frown as he throws the garments at me. “Put these on.”
“I’m not putting on anything for you, you sick freak!” I spit.
“Oh, but I already know you like to play and you will play. See, your daddy is here. You’re real daddy this time, not some imposter who’s just figuring things out.”
“You’re sick! That’s consensual role-playing between two adults, not pedophilia or whatever else is in your mind.”
“Oh, a feisty one. I like a little brat that doesn’t want to submit. It will make the rape fantasy that much more fun.”
I crawl backwards on my hands and feet and he waves the gun at me. “Now put it on, bitch,” his voice turning ice cold. “And if you’re lucky I’ll put a bullet in your brain while you’re not looking, and while my dick is buried to the hilt inside you. I’m gonna come in you so hard the coroner will have to put it on the report front and center so everyone can see what kind of a whore you are.”
“You idiot. You can’t have sex with me and leave your DNA at the scene.”
“Even feistier than I expected, little girl. Or is it…Little Peaches? I forget.”
“How did you find me?” I ask, trying to buy time.
“Just a little social engineering. See, when you went up into the mountains without phone reception you made it so easy for me. All I had to do was show up at the diner pretending to be your worried brother. I couldn’t get a hold of you, and neither could the diner. They bought my story hook, line, and sinker and it took less than a few minutes, and only a few tears, and one of the waitresses you spoke to coughed your location right up.”
“But how did you find me here?”
“You’ve never heard of GPS? People still don’t understand how easy it truly is to be tracked via their leashes, a.k.a. their cell phones.” He pauses, and then goes ice cold again. “Now quit stalling, whore and get dressed up. I got a fat dick and nowhere to put it and it’s pissing me the fuck off.”
I slowly take the top in my hands, opening it up and holding it in front of me.
“Don’t inspect it! Put the damn thing the fuck on!” he yells. “Before I blast a whole in your head.”
I sit the top down across my knees and reach for the shirt I have on.
>
“That’s right. Slowly, take it off slowly,” he says, the gun lowering slightly as he jams his hand down his pants and starts stroking.
I was so close to freedom, so close to my fairytale ending and now it’s going to end like this?
He fumbles with his hand down his pants and pulls it out, trying to unhook his belt but he can’t get it with one hand. He reaches his gun hand down to his buckle keeping his eyes glued to me so I don’t try something.
“Ready to see what you’ve been missing?” he says, as he unclaps the belt buckle.
Suddenly there’s a noise off to my shoulder followed by a loud ‘bang.’
I fall to the floor, the sound ricocheting through the room disorienting me, but not enough to not recognize the voice coming in from out of the window.
“Nobody’s going to be missing you, asshole,” Daniel says, pulling himself over the window ledge and into my apartment. “Because now you’re in the depths of hell never to be found again.”
I turn back to get a better look at Daniel, a gun of his own in hand.
“Oh my God. What just happened?”
“What just happened was justice was served.”
“But, Daniel,” I plead. “We can’t leave now. He’s dead. The police are going to have questions and you’re going to be detained and…”
He brings a finger to my lips, silencing me.
“There are two things I know. One, a fed who will come down and clean this up. Our names won’t appear anywhere. And two, a guy like this, when he goes after a girl, it’s almost never the first time. He usually gets away with it multiple times before he’s caught. Once we put his name out there, especially after the Me Too movement, and all the other social justice movements, other people will come forward. If anything we’ll be heroes, but in reality, we just want to be ghosts.”
17