“Is your stomach hurting? Aw, that’s too bad,” the voice said, as a stack of pancakes landed in front of him. Stanley had gotten a few hours of sleep before he was awakened and told to eat again. He was so fed up with food.
“Please,” he said. “Please, no more.”
“Eat,” the voice said again.
The smell made him nauseous and he felt like throwing up as he took the first bite. He chewed and felt how the pancakes were growing inside of his mouth. His stomach turned at the prospect of having to contain any more food, and when he had swallowed the first two pancakes, his gag reflex tried to send it all back up. Stanley bent over to the side to throw up, but was forcefully pulled back and his mouth held closed. The vomit came up in his mouth and almost choked him.
“No cheating,” the voice said. “Now, swallow it all again.”
Stanley felt such pain in his throat and stomach. The thought of having to swallow it all again made him cry.
Please, let me go. Please, don’t force me to do this.
“Now, swallow,” the voice said. “Or your granddaughter dies.”
Stanley whimpered, then closed his eyes and swallowed it with much resistance. He gagged again, but this time it only reached as far as his throat before he managed to press it back down. His gastric system had been enlarged over the last couple of days and he felt it happening again. It was excruciatingly painful.
The grip on his mouth was removed and he gasped for air. His guardian grabbed the fork, then cut out a piece of the pancake, dipped it in syrup, and brought it up towards his mouth.
“Please,” he muttered. “I’m so full. I can’t take any more in.”
But his guardian didn’t listen. The fork was forced into his mouth and then he swallowed the piece whole, without chewing it. Stanley coughed and gasped for air, when another forkful landed in his mouth. Stanley tried to chew this time, but soon after, another forkful was pressed in his mouth and he had to swallow the first in order to not choke. It hurt his throat as it went down. Then followed the pain from his stomach, which was expanding in order to make room for more food.
When will this end? Oh, God, please make this stop.
His guardian clapped his cheek and smiled. “There you go. You ate it all. All the pancakes are gone. They were good, right?”
Stanley looked at the crazy personage in front of him, then nodded. He didn’t dare not to.
“Excellent,” the voice said. “I bet your stomach is hurting now, right?”
Stanley nodded with a deep moan.
“Good,” the guardian said. “Now you know what it feels like.”
Stanley closed his eyes and breathed heavily. His stomach hurt so badly he could hardly breathe. Stanley had never been a big eater, and his stomach had gotten quite a shock from all the food it suddenly had to contain. He prayed it was all over. He prayed silently that he’d be allowed to go now, that this person that had kept him there and fed him all this food would somehow be done with him and let him and Elyse go.
Please, dear God. Please, let Elyse be unharmed.
His guardian looked at him and smiled. “Now, I do hope you have room left for dessert.”
Chapter Seventeen
March 2015
All the girls changed into bikinis as soon as they got to their room at the motel. Katie watched them as they stood in front of the mirror looking at themselves, putting up their long hair in ponytails, putting on more mascara.
You’re going to the beach. You’re going in the water. You don’t need mascara!
Katie didn’t feel like showing her winter-pale body off in any small piece of clothing. She didn’t want to apply mascara and fix her hair. She grabbed a book and sat on her bed, where she started reading.
“Look at her,” Britney said, as she spotted Katie. “Isn’t it cute? A fuzzy little bookworm cuddled up in her corner.”
The other girls laughed. Katie was used to that. It had always been this way. Nobody ever saw Katie. Nobody cared enough. Only to mock her. But, one day, she would show them. One day she would be famous. One day she would do something big, make a difference in this world. Once she was famous, they would all want to be her friend. They would all look up to her.
“You think she’ll ever turn into a butterfly?” she continued. “Nah, she’ll probably prefer to stay underground in the dirt and darkness. Unless…” Britney smiled viciously. “Unless, of course, Greg…oh, sweet dear Greg…unless he asks her to come with him into the light. That is why you’ve come, isn’t it? It’s because of him.”
“Oh, Greg,” the others moaned and laughed. “Oh, Greg!”
Britney leaned closer to Katie. “You do know the real reason why he brought you here, don’t you?”
Katie’s heart stopped. She tried hard to not let these girls get to her, but it was difficult. She didn’t belong here with any of them and they all knew it.
“He does this every year, you know,” Britney said. “He finds some weirdo who has a crush on him, then he fucks her in the dunes and never speaks to her again. That’s his thing. That way, he’s sure to get laid over spring break.”
Katie didn’t look up from her book. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Could it be? Were they right about him?
“Leave me alone,” she whispered.
“Just don’t be a fool,” Britney said, grabbing her beach towel and sunscreen. “You don’t belong here and you know it.”
The girls followed Britney out the door and slammed it behind them. Katie stared at the book while tears rolled across her cheeks. It had been a mistake to come on this trip. She had known it from the beginning. How could she have been so stupid to believe Greg could actually be interested in her? Now she was stuck here for an entire week. She couldn’t afford to go home on her own. She didn’t come from some rich family like the rest of the girls on campus did. She attended Princeton on a scholarship. Originally, she was a foster child, who had lived in six different families, constantly moving while growing up, never finding a place to call home. Not until she reached high school, when Phillip and Eve Monroe had taken her in and loved her like she was the child they never had, even though they had tried for many years. All through her childhood, Katie had buried her nose in books, and because of that she always had good grades, and in high school she did so well for herself that she was accepted to Princeton and able to land a full scholarship. She had always sought comfort in doing well in school, and now she was being rewarded for it. But she had made the mistake of thinking she could be accepted by the other students…that she could be one of them.
Sometimes, it was like they smelled it on her. Smelled the fear on her skin. They knew she didn’t belong, even though she didn’t tell them. They all knew.
There was a knock on the door and Katie wiped away her tears. Greg peeked inside. Katie’s heart started pounding. She’d had a crush on him for what felt like forever. She didn’t think people knew, since she had kept it to herself. But, apparently, they did.
“Hi there,” he said and entered. He was wearing board shorts and nothing on top. The sight of his torso made Katie blush. He sat on the bed next to her. “Everybody is down at the beach. Aren’t you coming? We need an extra man for volleyball.”
Greg looked at her with his soft brown eyes. His hair and skin looked like he had been in the sun for weeks rather than cooped up inside of a university, studying. He smiled and put a hand on her arm. “I hope you’re not going to sit in here with your nose in a book all week. I was hoping we could have a little fun, the two of us, on this trip.”
Katie blushed. She looked at him, scrutinized him. Was he for real? Was he just pretending to be nice to her? She couldn’t tell.
Katie closed the book with a slam. It was the first and maybe only time in her life she’d be on spring break in Cocoa Beach. So what if Greg had only brought her there to have sex with her and dump her afterwards. She could enjoy her trip anyway, couldn’t she? It was time for her to let her hair down.
?
??I’ll be right out,” she said. “Just let me change.”
Chapter Eighteen
March 2015
The beach was crawling with college kids. It was always the same at this time of year. Spring breakers came down and drank their brains out. They probably needed it, I thought. There was a lot of pressure on the young people today, a lot of demands regarding what they wanted to do with their lives. A flock of them had just checked in at the motel and I helped them set up the volleyball net before I went surfing.
“Do you give lessons?” a boy named Greg asked me.
“Not usually,” I said. “But I might make an exception if some of you want to try it. I have a couple of soft-top boards out the back. I could give you a few tips, but you have to do the hard work.”
The three boys looked at each other. Two of them were athletic and would do fine, but I was more concerned about the third one. He was overweight and might have a hard time getting up on the board.
“We’d love to,” Greg said. “Right guys?”
They all nodded.
“Okay. Let me get the boards out.”
I found two big soft-top boards and carried them to the beach. I gave the boys a basic lesson on how to do a pop-up right, then how to paddle and how to read a wave. Then I took them out in the ocean and pushed them into some little ones. As expected, Greg and his more athletic friend learned quickly, whereas the third boy, Troy, struggled to even lie on the board. I pushed him into a couple of whitewater-waves to make it easier on him, but he never managed to stand up, much to his frustration. Troy had decided to try again when Greg waved at someone on the beach.
“Katie!”
The girl turned and looked in his direction. Cautiously, she waved back. She didn’t seem like she was with them. She was nothing like the other girls they had brought, and somehow, she seemed like she wasn’t very comfortable in this situation.
“Katie! Come try this. It’s fun,” Greg yelled from his board. He turned and told Troy to get off his board.
“Give it to Katie. Let her try,” he said. There was something in the way he said it that made my skin crawl. He was the one running the show, no doubt about it. He spoke aggressively and commandingly at his friends.
“What are you waiting for? Go ahead.”
Troy looked disappointed, then started to paddle in. I was getting a little tired of these kids and longed to go surfing on my own. A set of big chunky waves rolled in from the back. They were calling for me. I saw my buddy Pastor Daniel paddle out not far from me. He waved.
The young girl approached the water cautiously. She looked like she could crawl into a mouse hole. She was way out of her comfort zone. Two other girls were cheering her on, telling her to get out there to Greg. She decided to do as they told her to. Troy gave her his board and wished her good luck, and then I told her to lie on it and then helped her out. She took a bad beating from one wave that washed her right off the board and she ended up in the whitewater being twirled around. The wave took her right back on the beach. When she came up, her hair was in her face and her bikini top had fallen off on one side, so one of her breasts was showing. Greg burst into loud laughter, as the poor girl tried to catch her breath. The girls on the beach giggled and Katie looked up, disoriented, from the tumbling and the steady pounding roar of the ocean. I was still too far out for her to hear me if I yelled.
Don’t turn around, please. Don’t turn!
But she did. In those disastrous seconds, Katie turned around to face the beach and let everyone see her one uncovered breast. It was brutal. I felt terrible and jumped up on her board and let a wave take me in, then jumped up next to her. I tried to stand in front of her, so they couldn’t see it. The two girls were laughing loudly and yelling. Still, poor Katie hadn’t realized what was going on. I pointed to her breast.
“Your…your bikini,” I said.
She still looked confused, then lowered her eyes and realized what had happened. Her pale face turned very red. I felt so bad for her. Katie fixed her bikini and looked at me again. I could tell how embarrassed she was…how this small incident would mark her for the rest of the trip.
“Maybe they didn’t see it,” I said. But we both knew I was lying. If it hadn’t been too embarrassing, she would have cried. Her eyes fell to the ground.
“I…I’d better go up.”
Chapter Nineteen
November 2005
When Elizabeth was almost three years old, something amazing happened to her. Her mother would never forget this moment that changed her life forever. Dottie was preparing breakfast, making pancakes and scrambled eggs for her family, and she placed the platter of them on the kitchen counter in front of Elizabeth, who was drawing. Since the child had never really shown any interest in food, Dottie didn’t expect her to want anything to eat. She grabbed the milk from the fridge and poured the girl a glass like she always did in the morning, since that was the girl’s main source of nutrition, but when she turned her head, she saw something truly astounding. The little girl reached out and grabbed a pancake from the stack.
Dottie held her breath.
Could this be? Was Elizabeth finally interested in food? Dottie smiled as she watched her daughter start eating the pancake in her hands. She couldn’t believe it. Elizabeth was so tiny from not eating, and it had her mother constantly worrying about her. Dottie herself was a fairly voluptuous woman, all those in the West family were, and they never turned down a meal. Food was everything to them. In the South Georgia town where they lived, elaborate spreads of high-calorie foods were the centerpiece of every social activity. If someone didn’t eat, there had to be something wrong with them. And everyone thought something was very wrong with Elizabeth. The neighbors stared at her when they met at church, and even more when they had their usual gathering at the Baptist church afterwards, where all the kids would indulge themselves in sugared doughnuts and cookies. Except for Elizabeth.
Dottie didn’t dare to move as she watched her daughter gulp down the pancake…almost without chewing. When it was gone, she approached her and placed the milk in front of her.
“Boy, you’ve got some appetite this morning,” she said, smiling from ear to ear. Dottie wanted to scream in joy, yell to everyone in the house to get down to the kitchen and watch this.
Elizabeth is eating! Elizabeth is finally eating real food!
But, she didn’t. She didn’t want to get their hopes up too high…or her own, for that matter. This could be a one-time event. It might not happen again. But still, Dottie tried her luck, looking at Elizabeth’s sparkling eyes as she eyeballed the stack of pancakes like she wanted to dig in and eat them all.
“Do you want one more?” she asked.
Elizabeth smiled widely. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “They’re good, Mommy.”
Dottie’s hands shook heavily as she reached over and grabbed another pancake and put it on a plate for Elizabeth. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She simply couldn’t believe it. All this time, James had told her the girl would eventually start eating, and all this time she had feared he was wrong, but now…now…now she had finally come around.
“Would you like to try some syrup on this one?” Dottie asked, her voice trembling. She feared Elizabeth would lose interest and go back to her old not-eating self.
But she didn’t. She looked at her mother with the most endearing smile. “Yes!” she exclaimed and gesticulated with her arms. “I am sooo hungry, Mommy. I am so, so, so hungry!”
“Then you better eat some,” Dottie said, and poured syrup on the pancake, then cut it up for her daughter. She watched Elizabeth as she ate. Never had she seen such a beautiful sight. Finally, everything would be all right. Finally, she could stop worrying.
Chapter Twenty
March 2015
Shannon couldn’t concentrate. Her fingers were drumming on the guitar instead of playing the tune of the song she had been working on for days. The words simply wouldn’t come to her. She had planned on finish
ing it today, so she could go on spring break with Angela when she got home from school. But it was almost time to pick her up and she was nowhere near finished.
It would have to wait.
Shannon sighed and looked down at the beach from the balcony of her rented condo, where she was sitting with her guitar in her lap. She spotted Jack in the water. He was pushing in some kids and screaming in joy when they managed to stand up. Shannon chuckled and shook her head. How on earth could he think about surfing with all that was going on? Shannon couldn’t even concentrate on her song. It was unbearable how her past had suddenly caught up with her. The mistake she had made so many years ago when deciding to hide the emails from the police had caught up with her and kicked her in the back. She felt like she was lying on the ground and couldn’t get up again. And this time, it was worse. This time, she knew this email was from the killer; she had no doubt about it. So, this time, it would be all her fault if the killer wasn’t stopped before it was too late. Jack had told her to relax and not beat herself up about it, but she couldn’t. She had kept this bottled up inside of her for too long…this guilt…and it had been eating at her. Now, she would give anything in the world to stop this guy.
But how? How was she supposed to do that? There was nothing in the emails that indicated who this person was. AM didn’t tell much, did it? Were they initials? Hardly.
Shannon sighed and closed her eyes. She let the breeze hit her face. It was a very hot day out. She liked these warm days, where the wind was your friend.
Someone was laughing loudly on the beach. Shannon opened her eyes and looked. Jack was talking to one of the kids in the shallows. He pointed at her chest. What was that? Had she lost her swimsuit? It was only on one side, but the entire beach could see her breast, and she didn’t seem to notice until Jack told her. Some girls were laughing on the beach. Everyone seemed to be staring at her. Shannon felt terrible for the poor girl. That had to be so humiliating. She remembered how it had been at that age. Nothing worse than a public disgrace. Nothing could ruin your life like that.