Week 111 – My head is spinning

My head is spinning.

That was Dante’s first thought.

His second was that he needed his gun.

Without moving he did a mental assessment checking to see if his weapon was still on him.

It wasn’t.

Whoever had knocked him out at the library had obviously taken his gun.

The logical conclusion was to assume that the person who had attacked him was the very same killer he’d been hunting. The man who abducted librarians and ripped them to shreds. But he had learned a long time ago that the logical thing wasn’t always what happened, and that making assumptions often led to mistakes.

So instead of assuming he knew what was going on he very carefully opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings. He was in what appeared to be a cave, there were metal bars about five feet from where he lay, running from the ground to the roof of the cave.

He hadn’t just been knocked out he’d been abducted.

The pain from being hit over the head already forgotten, he had long ago learned how to compartmentalise pain, he jumped to his feet. He turned around and was surprised when he heard a voice speak from the shadows.

“Oh, you’re hot. I mean well not hot hot, well, no, you are very sexy, you must work out a lot. I mean, I’m sorry, this is not appropriate ‘we just met’ talk, I shouldn’t have said you were hot. Not because you aren’t, because, yeah, you are, but just … okay, Syd, stop talking now,” a voice babbled.

“You’re Sydney Carriere?” he asked, confused, trying to get a better look at the woman who was still standing partially obscured behind a large rock.

“Yes, have we met?” She finally took a step towards him. “I don’t think I know you. Not that that means we haven’t met before, I don’t always have the best memory for faces. My mom says its because I spend too much time stuck in fantasy land. Because I love books and I’m always reading them. She says if I just spent as much time in the real world as I do in book worlds then . . . . Oh, I’m rambling again. You don’t care that I love books, and you’ve probably already figured out I talk way too much. I’m always being told that I talk too much. In school on all of my report cards . . . Syd, he doesn’t care about your report cards,” she shook her head at herself as she took another tentative step closer. “I’m just going to keep talking until you stop me. And I have a bad habit of taking to myself out loud. I don’t really know why I do it, and sometimes it gets embarrassing but I can’t seem to stop-”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked with a small smile despite the dire situation he was in. “You’re not going to stop talking until I interrupt.”

“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish smile. “How did you know my name?”

“I’m a cop, the one who was working this case, looking for the man who brought us both here. Do you know who he is?”

Before Sydney could reply a figure on the other side of the metal bars stepped forward. “Oh she knows who I am, just like she knows that its her own fault she’s here.”

At the sound of the voice Sydney moved closer to him, standing behind him. That she was afraid of this man was plain to see. Given what he knew about the killer she had good reason to be. But why did the killer believe that Sydney deserved to be here? He couldn’t imagine Sydney doing anything deserving of being abducted by a serial killer, he’d known her all of two minutes and he already knew she was a sweet woman, albeit a little quirky. Was he wrong about her? Or was she just another innocent victim of a vicious psychopath?

“Tell him, Syd.” The killer walked up and wrapped his hands around the bars. “Tell him why you’re here. Tell him why this is all your fault.”