I sat near the door waiting and listening. I only had to bide my time. Two meals went by when I suddenly dawned on me that a weapon would be a really good idea, but the room was barren. I knew I wouldn’t be able to break apart any of the plumbing and the blanket certainly wouldn’t be a decent weapon. I was trying to figure out ways to try breaking apart the plumbing when an idea struck — a light bulb if you will. I stood in the center of the room looking up at the light bulb and its wiring. Well, I sure hope this works. I jumped and grabbed at the wire. It didn’t give. I jumped again and again. Getting increasingly frustrated with each jump. I was prepared to give up and just take my chances, but I figured one more try wouldn’t hurt. This time the wire snapped and I fell hard onto the cold cement floor. I landed awkwardly, pain shot through my knee. Shit! I gritted my teeth and tried to stand. I couldn’t afford to let my knee stop me from trying to get out of there. I was a little wobbly and an electric pain shot through my knee, but I was mobile. I retook my position next to the door, straining to hear anymore muffled conversations. I dozed off and on, but I wasn’t disappointed. I was woken by muffled yelling on the other side of the door.

“What the hell did you do!?”

“I did exactly what you asked!”

“I never said to go on a killing spree! I told you to get them. Not go American Psycho.”

“No, you said scare her and grab her. I scared her.”

“Fucking idiot! It took me too much time to get back here because the god damned FBI is swarming all over the town! We need to get her and move. If I’d known I was pairing with Hannibal Lecter, I would have done this on my own.”

The voices belonged to a man and a woman. I wrapped the ends of the wire around my hands, holding the end with the smashed bulb in my hand. One of the arguing voices moved closer to the door, it was the woman‘s voice, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer.

“What an idiot! He might have screwed up this whole thing,” she said.

I heard the lock turn in the door and watched the door open. I pounced, wrapping the wire like a garrote around the woman’s neck. I squeezed with everything I had left in me. When she began clawing at my hands I took the hand with the jagged bulb and jammed it into her eye. She screeched and let me go. All I saw was a shock of blonde hair. I didn’t register who she was. I was hell bent on getting away. I kicked her with my good leg and took off out the door.

The room I found myself in was a cavernous warehouse. I must have been locked in the bathroom. There were old and dilapidated pieces of rusting equipment dotting the otherwise empty space. My eyes darted warily, not finding the male accomplice. Lying across one of the old pieces of machinery was a metal bar, probably a piece that had long ago broken off. I picked it up, feeling the heft. I could manage this. I finally had a weapon and if I came across the man, I wasn’t going to go down easily. I pulled myself together and limped towards the door.

Outside I was greeted with a rose pink and midnight blue sunset. The fresh air felt wonderful in my lungs. I was in a large gravel parking lot, overgrown woods to all but the right side, that’s the way I went. I needed to get an idea of where I was. As I rounded the corner I caught sight of the man and my heart stopped. He was shoving Mark into the trunk of a blue sedan. I ducked back behind the corner of the building and tried to keep my eyes on him. It was Officer Renard. I felt the shock fall over me. I couldn’t understand why he would do the things he had done. Once he had Mark locked in the trunk, he headed into a side door of the building, it was the door farthest from the room where I had been locked. I only had a few seconds.

I took off towards the car, relieved that the door was open. It was an older car so the trunk latch was on the drivers side, just below the steering wheel. As I went to hit the latch, I won the lottery. The keys were sitting on the floor. Without stopping to get Mark out of the trunk, I jammed the keys in the ignition. We were getting the hell out of there, Mark could wait until we were safely away before I got him out. I slammed the car into reverse prepared to gun it. Out of nowhere, glass showered down across me. The driver’s side window was gone. A strong arm grabbed my hair and pulled me from the car. I fought, kicking and screaming, trying desperately to reach for my metal bar, but it just missed my grasp as I was yanked up and over the window. My legs tumbled onto the hard gravel, my knees screaming. I still fought. I clawed at the hands on my head, screaming against the burning pain of my scalp as my hair was ripped out in the tight grip.

I twisted, getting my feet under me. As I stood, Rendard’s arm went around my neck, finally releasing my hair. He landed a hard punch to my stomach, I lost my breath in a huff and crumpled in pain. I reached blindly at the ground trying to find anything I could to defend myself. My hands closed around a rock about the size of a baseball and I swung as I stood. I caught the man in the jaw, and his head jerked backwards. He tumbled over, releasing his grip on me. I jumped onto his chest with the rock in hand. I slammed the rock down, again and again. I felt bones crunching and his face didn’t give any resistance when I dropped the rock. I slammed it down one final time, hearing just a wet splat. I sat silently on his chest trying to slow my breathing. My hands were nearly black from the splattered gore. My arms, chest, and legs were covered in brain matter. I climbed up off of the dead man and went back to the car, which had rolled back to the edge of the parking lot, stopped only by the curb. I opened the trunk and helped Mark out and into the front of the car. He could only look at me, his eyes wide, but expression blank. I shut his door and limped back around the car. As I opened the driver’s side door of the car, the door of the warehouse flew open. Standing there was Ava Wright, blood obscuring the left side of her face. I grabbed the metal bar off of the driver’s seat, ready to swing. Ava let out a guttural scream and charged. Without hesitation, I swung, all of those years of softball paid off, as the bar connected with her face and Ava went down. Dropping the bar, I climbed into the car and took off. It didn’t take the police long to pull us over. A sedan with a smashed window being driven by a blood splattered woman was kind of hard to miss.

At the hospital I fared pretty well. I had torn ligaments in my knee and the wound on my foot had become infected. X-rays showed that I had a broken rib. Mark was shot in the leg by the officer’s gun on the night that I ran. He had a concussion and needed several stitches as a result of a few bashes on the head. We would live. That was what mattered. I managed to keep myself together for a while, but when they came to inform me that my parents bodies had been discovered, I lost it. Going to the morgue and seeing them motionless on the steel gurneys tore my heart out. Ava survived her run in with the metal bar, but she’d lost her eye and suffered some brain damage from the force of the hit. She would spend the rest of her life lost in her own mind. I wish I’d killed her. Officer Renard was dead when they found him. I wish I could have killed him a second time. The couple who would’ve helped me, they were found dead. Renard took care of them as well.

It took a lot of work on the behalf of the FBI to piece together what had happened. It was discovered that Officer Renard had developed an obsession with me long before I’d left for school. They were able to get detailed information from the phone that had been planted. He had been following me for years. They were able to link the phone to him. When they searched his house, they found his wife murdered in their bed. My own phone was on his kitchen table. He had a large series of folders on his computer dedicated solely to me. Papers I had written, photographs, archives of online activity, text message history, any public record on me. He had an app installed on the phone that tracked me. He had been at the party, and he had managed to sneak to the garage to place a small camera in Mark’s jeep. There had even been two cameras in our apartment.

Ava on the other hand, had developed an obsession with Mark. In their eyes, they had a big problem. Mark and I were close and that just wouldn’t do. Officer Renard wanted Mark out of the picture and Ava wanted me out of the picture. They concocted a plan to abduct the two of us and go separate ways. It was Officer Renard who had taken things above and beyond. He had seen me flirting with Tony at the party and had taken it personally.

My parents and my dog were murdered all because I got drunk. If I hadn’t drank that night and flirted with Tony I would have only been kidnapped, no one would have died. I am never going to drink again.