Dark Twisted
By Parker Meador
Sara listened as Mark’s truck pulled out of their
driveway. She had been awake long before the alarm had gone off. Her sleep was sporadic and filled with
nightmarish dreams of Mark trying to kill her and a little girl wearing a
beautiful white dress.
The dreams
didn’t surprise Sara after the events of the previous evening. It was their
anniversary and nothing had worked out like Sara had planned.
Mark came
stumbling in late from work, reeking of sweat and booze. Sara pretended to be
asleep as Mark entered their bedroom, felt his way to their bedside and emptied
his pockets onto the nightstand.
“Hey, you
asleep?” asked Mark in his best whisper.
“Sara, you asleep” slurred Mark, a little louder
this time.
“HEY! HEY! YOU ASLEEP!” he belted
out.
“I was until you woke me. Why did you do that
Mark?” asked Sara.
“Cause I felt like it. That’s why! I don’t need a
reason in my own house!” was his answer.
“It’s my house to.” Sara mumbled into her
pillow.
“What did you say?” asked
Mark.
“Do you pay the bills? Do you work? Do you bust
your ass 6 days a week?” He didn’t wait for an
answer.
“Hell no you don’t!” He dropped hard onto the bed,
almost sending Sara into the floor.
“You’d think after all these years you’d learn
that.” Mark growled as he kicked off his work boots.
“13 years to be exact” said Sara. Mark’s elbow dug
into Sara’s side sending a painful wave in all
directions.
“I think that’s enough backtalk,” declared Mark.
Sara felt
relief that Mark had left for work but her side still hurt and she felt sick at
her stomach. With visions of her dream
still filling her thoughts, Sara couldn’t remember the last time she had a good
dream or one that felt so real. She thought, the young girl in the snow white
dress must have been her. Her mother had made her one just like it for her
10th birthday. She loved that
dress and the way it made her feel. It made her feel pretty and loved. She
hadn’t felt those feelings in a very long time.
Sara felt
like if she didn’t get up and do something she would die laying in that bed,
going over every detail of one of the worst anniversaries in her often troubled
marriage. What a sad thought that this wasn’t the worst. She had to get up and
get moving now before the weight of the whole ordeal crushed
her.
She didn’t
feel much like breakfast so she decided to see if there was enough soiled
laundry to start a load. What she found in the bathroom made her wish she was
back in the bed. She was glad her nausea from before had
passed.
There in
the bathroom floor was a pile of Marks handiwork, a soaked bathroom towel on top of his putrid
work clothes. She soon found out that he
must have gotten up during the night and found the leftover ham, cheese and
biscuits she had prepared for their dinner. All his favorites now discovered
thrown up under his clothes. He had been a busy boy overnight. Sara slowly and
carefully placed each vile item into the laundry basket. She soon discovered
that things could always get worse as her left sock turned yellow. Just
something else Mark couldn’t get in the toilet. This experience just took over
first place on the all-time list. It would have been nice to compile a list of
her favorite anniversaries and not the opposite.
After
spraying the clothes down with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and water, she
headed to the basement, never so eager to get a load of clothes
going.
She felt
the cool rush of air from the basement just seconds before she noticed the door
was left wide open. She dropped the basket and started calling Miss Prissy as
she hurried down the hall.
“Here kitty kitty, here Miss Prissy. Here Prissy!”
She called out not expecting and answer.
Miss
Prissy was a good cat, a smart cat but when she got a chance to head down stairs
and chase mice, she was dead to the world for a couple of
days.
Mark had
left the door open but Sara couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t go in the
basement unless he had no other choice. He called it the dungeon and sent Sara
down whenever he needed something. The most popular excuses for not going were
because if he fell, he couldn’t work and that they would lose everything and he
didn’t want to breath in deadly mold spores. Sara knew those were just excuses
to cover up the fact that for whatever reason he was scared. It was for that
reason that Sara loved and cherished the basement. It was cool, quiet and most
importantly Mark free.
She
continued down the stairs hoping she would see Miss Prissy but not holding out
hope for such a sighting. It was a large space filled with many feline hiding
places.
Sara loaded the last of the contents of the
basket and was reading a note from Mark’s pocket when she heard the floorboards
above her head start to creak and moan. Thoughts of murderers, psychos and
rapists filled her head. Mark would never come home from work without calling
and he had the only other key to the house. She knew it wasn’t just the old
house settling because this old girl was settled
out.
She ran to
the base of the stairs and carefully climbed to the top. She reached for the
doorknob, trying to keep her hand from shaking but it was locked. She almost
lost her balance but used the knob to steady herself. Someone was definitely
here. This door didn’t lock automatically. It had to be locked using the key
that was hanging on the wall at the end of the
hallway.
Sara was locked in the basement by someone but at
least she wasn’t alone. She heard Miss Prissy at the bottom of the stairs. The
last 24 hours had been hell. Terror now filled Sara. She realized she had left
her cell phone in the bathroom. Maybe Mark had tried to call. Maybe he was
teaching her a lesson. He hated it when she didn’t answer her phone quickly. She
tried to calm herself, hoping that Mark was up to this and not the axe rapist
she had conjured up in her mind just seconds before. She didn’t know whether to
call out to Mark or finish the laundry and hope that he would unlock the door
before he left again. She could finish reading her romance novel that was
getting quite good. Mark hated those kinds of books with a passion. He often
said, “Why would you read that crap when you have me?”
“Why
indeed?” she thought as she suppressed a small laugh. Not much too laugh at
these days. She was a prisoner in her
own home and now a prisoner in her own basement.
She
wouldn’t let herself believe it could be anyone but him. That would be too much
for her fragile mind to take, especially after the last few days. If she was
going to be locked in the basement at least she had Miss Prissy to keep her
company. Sadly Miss Prissy was her best friend and only source of love. She
turned. She needed to see her face. She
needed the calming effect, her cat had on her.
There was
no Miss Prissy at the bottom of the steps. There stood a small child wearing the
white dress from her dreams, her childhood. It hadn’t been her wearing the snowy
dress in her dream. It was this little girl.
Sara was
overcome, the stairwell spinning. She fell downward towards the little girl.
Light turned to blackness. Isabelle had come back.
