The Spiral
She strutted down the empty alleyway, her stilettos loudly clip-clopping, the sound reverberating in his ears. She hummed a tune, the same tune over and over again. “Don’t blame me, love made me crazy, if it doesn’t, you ain’t doing it right” She chuckled high and loud. Suddenly her maniacal shrieks faded and she stopped walking. She cocked her head sideways “where are you, my love?” She looked up at the sky and turned in a circle, arms stretched out, dark hair flowing down her back, cascading curls bouncing in the cool evening air, parts of it gleaming gold as it caught the sulfuric streetlight. Her emerald silk dress fit her perfectly.
His blood ran cold at the sight of her. And yet, he couldn’t help but notice the way the viridescent silk spun around her waist so snugly, the fabric flowing down the top of her thigh and discreetly splitting around her left leg. She was wearing the bracelet he got her, eight emeralds set in South African diamonds… to match the ring he thought would one day rest on her finger“You know I won’t hurt you,” She said, but Damian knew, he knew there was no way he could come outside, if he did, he wouldn’t survive. She was delusional, downright psychotic. Her angelic face had fooled him. He would not be her next victim. She laughed “Come on out…what are you afraid of?” she taunted
‘Maybe I’m afraid of the foot-long axe in your hand you insane woman’ He thought while desperately trying to get a signal. How had he ended up here? His frustration was getting increasingly difficult to control. Finally, he got a single bar. He put the emergency number on speed dial.
His heart throbbed, he had been planning on proposing, and all she wanted was his heart, and not in the way he liked. “You shouldn’t have read my diaries, Damian, I told you it’s personal” she chuckled, but her words rang with shadowed menace. Her face lit up with glee. She was enjoying this he realized, she was enjoying the hunt. He had climbed up the abandoned building under construction to catch a signal. He didn’t have time, she would soon realize where he was hiding. Carla, a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. That’s how she managed to lure and kill the other seven men before him. her beauty clouded their judgement, and her alluring persona impaired it. ‘Killed’ was a rather audacious understatement, he thought. she had mangled, butchered, and mutilated them. ‘Why’ he had thought-numerous times, ‘why me?’. He was lucky to have found her neatly kept records or the so-called ‘diaries’ he had read. Damian had assumed her reluctance to let him read the diaries was because of some hormone-driven teen girl ramblings about high school crushes. He set out to find some embarrassing dirt on his future fiancee and instead found pictures and descriptions of suitors bound at the wrists and ankles, heads hacked off first, the body skinned, and then stitched back up, only the heart removed. the flesh scrutinised and studied. And then she simply chucked them into the pacific.
A sudden chill ran down his spine. Caught up in his panicky state he hadn’t kept a watch on Carla. He prayed she was still in the alley. He slowly dared to look down. She wasn’t there. He looked around frantically and grabbed at anything that could be used as a weapon in the pitch darkness. His phone! where was his phone? No, he had to hide. Where was she? He ran up to the pole nearest to him but tripped in his haste, then split his palms and winced- cursing under his breath for being so loud.‘This is a spiral’ he thought, there’s no way I can get out. the harder I try, the further I’m sucked in’. He stood dead still behind the pillar, breathing heavily, his heart beating at 100 miles an hour.
Suddenly he heard a whistle. He looked around frantically. A dreadful feeling came over him. He was immobile but somehow looked up. He saw her smiling face looking down at him from the incomplete upper floor, “Hey baby,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face. He froze. She swung the axe. She jumped down the steps, her still smiling face, gorily splattered with blood, and walking back down the alley, she whistled the same tune again… “Don’t blame me, love made me crazy, if it doesn’t, you ain't doing it right….”
