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.
