The Death of Verity
By Allene Angelica
Copyright © Allene Angelica 2012
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters and events of this book are entirely the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
"One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good" - George Eliot/ Mary Anne Evans
"Damn it! Where are you?" she stared at her cell phone in frustration willing it to ring, beep, anything but the mute silence, as it sat dead in her hand. Her contact was supposed to be here an hour ago. She let out a deep breath, exhaling smoke into the air. Her hand shook as she took another drag of her cigarette. It's fuckin' creepy out here on the docks. It was way past midnight and she was dying to get home and soak in a warm bubble bath.
"Fuck it! I'm outta here!" she felt stupid standing out there in the eerie darkness. She could have been out with her friends tonight but no she had to be an idiot and cancelled after she got an anonymous text telling her to meet some man at the docks around 11:30 pm. The bait, the person had information regarding her parent’s disappearance. Her friends were distressed when she told them of her change of plans.
"But it's your birthday! We wanted to take you out for drinks!" Tina exclaimed petulantly. "Besides, who meets a stranger out at the docks in the middle of the night? It's dumb and dangerous."
Tina knew Verity didn't celebrate her birthday, they all did. It was the day her parents disappeared and there was no talking her out of it. She had made up her mind. She was going to meet this mysterious stranger. He must have information. It was the anniversary of their disappearance. The timing couldn't be coincidental. Besides tonight, birthday aside, was just supposed to be another girl’s night out anyways. They can take a rain check. This is more important.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she mumbled to herself as she briskly made her way to the parking lot. Her booted feet clicked clacked on the pavement.
With all the noise she was making she didn't hear it at first but she suddenly felt as if she was being watched. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She stopped walking abruptly and listened, a second later she distinctly heard footsteps halt behind her. She turned to glance back but the fog was moving in and she couldn't see anything but mist. Her heart rate kicked up, pounding wildly as fear gripped her, and she took off in a sprint towards her car. As she got closer, she could see her mustang's outline and grabbed her keys from her pocket. She pushed the unlock button and immediately after, the panic button. The cardiac inducing squeal of her alarm and the flashing headlights made her heart skip as she grabbed the driver side door handle, yanked it open and jumped in locking the door automatically behind her. As she fumbled to insert the key in the ignition she saw a pair of long muscular male legs enveloped in dark blue jeans through the windshield ahead of her. The fog concealed the rest of him. He stood deathly still. "Fuckin' creepy!" She finally started the car, slammed it into reverse backed up far enough away from the sinister pair of legs threw it into first and gunned it out of the parking lot. She searched her rearview but didn't see anyone following.
When she got home to her studio apartment, she locked and bolted her door. She sat on her bed and began sobbing as all the adrenaline ebbed from her system. She had never been so afraid in her life. Her body convulsed as racking sobs tore through her. She felt so alone and vulnerable. Why now was someone tormenting her with messages about her parents? It was cruel! What happened to them? Were they dead? Or did they just abandon her?
She slowly got to her feet and shuffled to her tiny bathroom. She needed a good long soak. She felt chilled as a tremor ran up her spine. She ran a bath, added some jasmine and chamomile oil and some nice sudsy bubbles. She sank her tired body into the inviting warmth, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her mind raced back to five years ago when she discovered her parents weren't coming home. She was fifteen, a sophomore in high school. They were an average family, both her parents worked during the week but the weekends were theirs and theirs alone. She loved them so much and she knew they loved her. She was a good kid. She usually got home before they did and would sit in the living room of their average sized house to do her homework until they arrived with dinner. That night was special, it was her birthday and they promised her a surprise. She sat there so long that night, waiting, but they never came. She remained there unmoving until the sun came up the next day and the next and the next. The phone rang and rang and rang but she wouldn't, couldn't, answer it. She curled herself up into a ball on the couch convinced that if she waited long enough they would walk through the front door and everything would be all right.
That's how they found her. The police busted down the front door and discovered her unconscious body still in her high school uniform on the couch, dehydrated, barely alive four days later. The school had called the police after she hadn't shown up for a few days and couldn't get a hold of her parents. She hadn't eaten or drank anything for almost a week. She slipped into a coma that lasted for three months, after she was well enough to walk out of the hospital on her own competence; she became the ward of the state. For the next three years she was a mindless zombie. She was placed in a foster home and was lucky enough to have foster parents that really cared about their three foster children. Although she was quiet, reserved and went about each day on auto pilot she excelled in school without even trying.
Ever since she was five years old her parents had enrolled her in several different martial arts schools. They said variety was good for her but the year they had disappeared they told her she needed to take a year off. The school she was transferred to, while in foster care, had a martial arts club. It took her a few weeks to decide to join but when she finally did it was the only time of the week when she came alive. They would meet in the gym twice weekly to practice grappling, punches, kicks and blocks. She didn't make any friends. She avoided social connections at all cost, the other members of her club respected her and didn't invade her privacy. Her senior year her foster parents helped her prepare for when she would have to leave and be on her own. Days after graduating she procured a part time job as a receptionist in a real estate office, by the end of summer as she turned eighteen she had saved enough money to enroll in a community college and rent a small studio apartment in a building where most of the tenants were college students like herself. That first year on her own, working and going to school, she had slowly shed her defenses and opened herself up to her neighbors and classmates. By the time she was twenty she felt normal. She had let her parents go. She had friends and a social life. She was not quite yet ready for a boyfriend but the possibilities were there. She thought it was all behind her, until tonight, until that text message.
She shook herself, she didn't want tonight's fiasco to disturb her already languid brain. She was on her way to feeling completely relaxed and all she wanted was to forget. She thought of her friends and smiled. They were all probably on their way to their favorite 24 hour diner by now, gossiping about the men they met at the club, the stripper-in-training girls grinding on the dance floor wearing next to nothing flaunting their wares and who was caught cheating on whom tonight. I should have been with them, she grimaced.
As the water slowly cooled she murmured to herself, "Just a few more seconds." That's when she heard the squeak of the bathroom door. Her eyelids flew o
pen; standing above her was a man wearing a ski mask holding a dagger in his gloved hand with the other he clamped over her mouth before she could even think to scream as he stabbed her repeatedly in the chest. The pain was agonizing as the blade punctured her body over and over but she still managed to struggle. Her hands searching for anything she could use as a weapon. Everything she grasped slipped from her soapy fingers. She grabbed at him futilely, he was strong his arms like steel, horrified she watched her blood flow out of the gaping wounds turning her bath water crimson. She recognized the dark blue jeans.
His cold ice blue eyes stared into hers, "It's time for you to die, Verity." as she slipped into oblivion. He stared at her cold lifeless body as it sank to the bottom certain she was dead. He walked silently out of the apartment with a grim expression on his face. Sometimes he really hated his job but he was the best at it and he was compensated well so he didn’t complain.
She coughed and sputtered, splashing water over the tub as she quickly sat up. Her hands searched her chest for stab wounds. She opened her eyes and glanced around in fear and confusion. No blood anywhere, her skin was as smooth as when she first entered the tub, she was alone in her bathroom. She shivered, the bath water was frigid.
"WHAT THE FUCK!!!" she yelled out loud.