Ransom X

Chapter 18 Curled Queen

  Tracy pressed herself farther in the corner hearing the outside door open. It always took ages from the first sound until Blue would open the inner door. The seconds stretched her nerves until pitched like the wires strung to the far keys on a piano. How long would he take this time?

  A full minute later, she heard the key go into the lock, minutes more and the lock turned. The hesitation must mean something. Blue wasn’t looking forward to this errand. It was over for her, she knew it.

  Blue had bits of papers in his hands; he thumbed through them like a dealer churns a stack of cards. “I told you it would come to a vote if you didn’t make it.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears, “Have you counted them?”

  “No,” Her head snapped up, clearly surprised. He explained “I thought it was better to do it in front of you.” He glanced down at his hands.

  Tracy’s mouth trembled as she spoke “I really did good today, right? They must have noticed.” Blue flipped the ballots onto the floor, read them like tealeaves. It was an elaborate act, a poker bluff that invited speculation and dread. With her life on the line, Tracy showed great restraint waiting moments before blurting out. “Good news?”

  “Yes - I don’t really read them. I just do what I want to do.” He said arms spread wide and welcoming. He took on the outward countenance of a preacher and it seemed fitting when Tracy uttered “Thank God.” Tracy let out a sigh of relief.

  A dark transition overtook every aspect of the man she knew as Blue, his tone of voice dropped off into a black abyss. Malice, somehow built from humble playful beginnings. “Let’s not bring him into it, yet, it feels like you deserve punishment after what you did today. Look at your soiled sinful body, and your newly sinful mind.” His steps toward her became heavy and imposing. Unseen to Tracy a knife, barely three inches long, dropped into his hand, covered by his palm. “Stand in the shower please.”

  “What? I did what you said–” Her voice was cut off. She chirped in fear as he swooped in and tucked the blade under her throat. With a brisk step he led her to the shower. A fierce tango, bodies locked in a strained embrace. This was the moment that he lived for, the uncertainty, the balance of life and death. Her gasps for air fed a fire in his eyes, a savage light. Tracy looked up into them; she had always counted Blue as a friend and now everything, even the shape of the room and colors, changed in her eyes. Trust gasped, dying, and betrayed on the edge of a surge of panic and recognition.

  This was Blade’s foreplay.

  Fear shook her body in waves, her skin wrapped around useless muscles; messages came from a useless brain. Impossible was the only way to describe the kind of futility and helplessness that Blue was able to bring to bear in the last moments with his victims. He breached the walls of all of their senses and pulled their insides out. Safe to say that the best way to describe the final ordeal was in the words of one of the women who made it through their final meeting with him. The transcript hung in Legacy’s office, the last moments of a two-hour interrogation after which the girl said nothing. “It made me forget the torture, all I can remember are those moments with him.”

  Tracy tottered on the edge of a silver blade, red blood trickled from a superficial wound, and she would never again see the world the through those crystal blue eyes.