High Fidelity
by Joe Solmo
“I told you Vanessa. I told you this would happen. You never listened to me. What would I know?" Jeremy said looking down at his girlfriend. Her beautiful blue eyes that he was mesmerized with when they met nearly bulged from her face at his statement. Her response muffled by the gag tied around her head.
“What was so appealing that you had to ruin everything?” he said in an anger fueled loud voice. He walked around her slowly, out of eye sight. Vanessa flinched, expecting something horrible to happen. She felt a tear leave her eye and run down her dirty cheek to the rag that smelled like gasoline that Jeremy had tied around her head. How long has it been? She didn’t know, it was so dark here, in his basement.
“Nothing to say?” she heard him whisper from right behind her left ear. She jumped, her eyes opening in a flash. A whimper left her mouth and died in the cloth. She felt the delicate touch of Jeremy running his fingers through her hair just like he did so many times when they made love. Only this time it seemed so much more sinister. A cold chill raced up her spine, making her shiver and jump.
Vanessa saw him enter her line of sight as he stopped in front of her. She looked up at the face, illuminated by the fallen lamp he had hit her with earlier. It lit him up like a 50s horror movie.
“Where are my manners?” he asked and yanked the gag out of her mouth violently, jarring her. Pain shot through her skull either from the head wound or from the smell of the gasoline, she wasn’t sure. She took deep breaths of relatively clean air. “Well?” he asked her standing in front of her with his arms crossed.
“Where is he?” she asked weakly.
“You don’t get to ask questions. Just answer them,” Jeremy said and kicked her in the ribs, rocking the wooden chair she was tied too. For a moment she thought she was going to fall over to the cold concrete floor, but the chair stayed upright. She glared back at him.
“Still defiant, eh? Maybe you need more time to think things over. I can be patient.
“Jeremy?” she asked. He stopped as he headed to the worn wooden steps that lead to the first floor of his house. He slowly turned back towards her.
“What is it, my love?” he asked with a sneer.
“Jeremy please, let us go. Before this goes to far, Jerm…” she said but he raced over and put her gag back in.
“This old song again, you always did like karaoke. I think you should sing a different tune. The sooner you realize that your answers decide your fate, the faster we can get through this, and move on,” Jeremy said and patted her head like a dog. “See you in a bit. I have some errands to run.”
Vanessa watched Jeremy ascend the stairs and close the door behind him. She sat in the dark basement, with only the little lamp on the floor to see by. His basement always creeped her out when they were dating, but that feeling has increased at least a dozen fold. She left herself cry now that he was gone. Yes, it’s true she messed up, but she didn’t deserve this, no one did.
Long after the tears had dried on her cheeks or were absorbed into the gasoline smelling gag, she tried the bond he had her arms tied too. They were behind her back on the chair. It felt like a zip tie kept her wrists together but she couldn’t be sure. Sometime she fell asleep. The stress of the last few hours finally taking their toll on her.
She awoke with a start; the basement door was opening. She looked for Jeremy in the rectangle of light that symbolized freedom. She decided she would tell him whatever it was he wanted to hear so she could see that freedom again. Jeremy did say her answers would decide her fate, right?
Her thoughts were disrupted as a backpack landed on the floor in front of her. She recognized it instantly as her hiking backpack. He had been to her apartment? What else did he find there?
A moment later Jeremy descended the stairs, they creaked ominously as he came into her field of vision. He smiled at her at he crouched down. “I see your awake. Oh, and you have been crying. Your makeup is running down your cheek. You are really letting yourself go, you know that?” he asked as he spit on her check and gave it a wipe. She cringed from his touch, it was more reflex than anything else, but he noticed. She recognized the look in his eye.
“Hmmph,” he said and backed away. He looked down at the bag on the floor. After a few awkward seconds he smiled and turned back to her. “I got a few things from your place. You know what you would need to sleep over.”
Vanessa shook her head slowly back and forth as the realization of what he had done had sunk in. No one would think she was missing, just left for a few days. No one was out there looking for her right now. She felt so helpless and her shoulders slumped as she began to cry again.
Jeremy walked over to her with a pair of her panties. The pair she had worn the first time they had done it. He pulled down his pants and pissed on them, and when they were soaked he finished on her face. She turned away from the warm spray but he held her chin in his hand getting just as much on his arm then on her. He took those panties and rubbed her cheeks hard, taking away the streaked makeup that adorned them. He pulled the gag from her mouth and tossed it on the ground.
“Now I have some more questions for you. If you give me the wrong answer, this will be your new gag,” he said shoving the panties into her face. She recoiled in disgust from the red lace underwear.
“Are you ready to answer my questions?” he asked and walked around behind her. She turned her head from side to side looking for him, but he must have been right behind her, she couldn’t see him. She nodded.
“Good girl, don’t talk unless I tell you it’s okay,” he said. “What I want to know is…why. Why did you do this to me,” Jeremy asked.
“I don’t know. We have been growing apart, I guess,” she said between sobs.
“You don’t know? You guess?” he asked as his voice raised. She heard the click of a lighter and instantly smelled burned hair. “Wrong answer. Don’t fuck with me,” he said. She felt heat on the back of her head and started to whimper. She screamed out as burning hair burned down to the scalp. Jeremy slapped her hard and put the fire out.
“I didn’t give you permission to talk that time,” he whispered next to her ear. “I will be completely honest, I was hoping you would do this. It only makes sense, every time we watched a movie you wouldn’t shut the fuck up. It took me some time to come up with how I would punish you if you misbehaved again. I think you will like what I came up with, it’s really quite ingenious. You always told me I was clever. Although, I will admit I am not sure if it will work. We will find out together,” he said.
Jeremy walked around in front of her. She saw he was smoking a joint. Jeremy never took drugs, it was one thing he hated about her. He would harp on her about her very sporadic recreational marijuana use. He must have gotten the joint from her bedroom. “Would you like a hit?” he asked and waited a second. “Oh, you can answer now,” he finished.
“Oh..okay,” she responded not sure what he wanted to hear. When she said the word okay he tossed the joint into her mouth, lit end first. It took her a second or two to spit it out, and doing so she burned her tongue twice. With a cough the joint landed in her lap, but to her relief it looked like it had gone out.
Jeremy cracked up laughing. “That wasn’t what I had planned. You always said I should be more spontaneous. How’s that for ya?” Vanessa didn’t answer, she was still coughing. “So, I saw this on a facebook video thing. Someone took a piece of paper and attached it to a rotary tool,” he began to explain as he reached into her bag and pulled out a power tool. He unzipped a front pocket and pulled out a circular piece of paper a little larger than a quarter. He attached it to the tool while whistling Journey’s “Separate Ways.”
“You see,” he explained while doing a few test pulls of the trigger on the machine. “What we have here,” he said as he pulled a chair up and sat down in front of her. “What this is, is a thirty-two thousand rpm spinning paper cut.” He giggled and turned the machine one, he lowered it to her bare thigh about three inches above the knee. At first, she didn’t fell anything but the breeze of the machine. She though he was bluffing to scare her, until she saw the flicker of red then even more red and the paper cut a thin slice into her thigh. She bit her lip trying not to scream.
He pulled the tool away from her and looked at the angry red gash on her leg. “Huh it worked,” he said and stuck his thumb into the wound. “Honestly, I had my doubts, honey. But I should have listened to you. You always said I should give myself more credit.”
Vanessa moaned from the pain in her leg. She wished her legs weren’t attached to the chair, or she would have kicked him in the balls for just having that smug look on his face. How did she ever love someone like this?
He turned his head sideway, reminiscent of an inquisitive dog, and raised the tool up higher. He grabbed the joint from her lap and relit it. “You know, Ness. I think I may have been wrong about this. I will admit when I am wrong. And this…,” he said and took a deep pull off the joint. “This is pretty good.”
Jeremy put the tool against her red, piss soaked cheeks and pulled the trigger. He lowered the spinning disk of paper into her soft flesh. He pushed down and the paper shredded. He shut off the machine with a curse and dropped it to the floor with a smack. “Well there goes that,” he said and finished up the joint. He looked at Vanessa like he just noticed she was there.
“I’m sorry. Are you hungry? I whipped you up something back at your place,” Jeremy said.
“Yes,” she replied with a sniffle.
“See, I’m not a monster,” Jeremy said and reached behind him for her hiking bag. He pulled it up to his lap and began to root around inside of it.
“Jeremy? Where is he?” she asked, and then flinched, remembering his warning. He looked up and punched her square in the nose, making her eyes water and her vision blurry.
“What did I tell you about talking out of turn?” he said. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. She heard the familiar sound of a Tupperware container being opened. Her Tupperware, she assumed since she still couldn’t see clearly.
Jeremy stood up and grabbed her hair, pulling her head back. “Now do you want to eat, or do you want to chat?” he asked. She waited a moment, afraid to answer. “You may answer me,” he said looking down at her from behind, her head still pulled back.
“Eat,” she said.
“Very well,” Jeremy said and she felt weight on her lap. It must be the Tupperware she concluded. A second later she felt something on her lips. “I made you something to eat. I didn’t want you to get weak on me. Now go ahead and take a big bite,” Jeremy said. She could smell barbeque sauce and her stomach began to growl. She hadn’t eaten since the night before.
She bit into the food, it was cold, and tough, but she chewed through it and swallowed it. “That’s a good girl. Go ahead and take another bite now,” Jeremy said.
“It would be easier without you holding my head back,” Vanessa said.
“One more bite, then I will let your head go,” he said. “Take a big bite now,” Jeremy whispered. She did as he said, afraid to cross him. The cold, tough meat mashed up between her teeth and she swallowed hard. She thought it was sausage, there was a hard knot in there somewhere. She wished she had something to drink.
“Good girl,” he said and let go of her head. She was relieved and put her head down wondering how much hair was left after her burned and pulled on it. What a weird thing to think, she thought.
Jeremy dropped the food back into the container on her lap. Suddenly she felt a tug at her restraints. He let her have her right hand free, but reattached the left to the chair. “Baby steps. You trusted me, now I will trust you,” he said. “Go ahead and feed yourself.”
Vanessa reached down into the bowl on her lap and put her hand on the cold meat. She froze for a second looking at it. It was definitely sausage shaped but what was on the end of it? She began to gag and dry heave. She heard Jeremy’s laugh as he walked towards the stairs. He reached behind them as he watched her with a smile.
“You see, Ness. I couldn’t let you get away with it. Nor him. He was my best friend, my roommate for seven years. You two betrayed me. You wanted him inside you so bad, didn’t you,” he said as he pulled a bow and arrow out from behind the stairs. She began to throw up.
Jeremy raced over to her and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh no. You wanted him inside of you, you got it. You keep him in there, you cock swallowing whore!” he yelled. Vomit shot from between his hands even though he was holding her mouth closed as best as he could.
“In case you are wondering, the rest of him is strewn around your apartment. When you go missing and people start looking for you they will find your ‘victim’ mangled. A document on your computer talking about how you eat the penises of men because your father raped you as a child, something I am sure he will deny, but the damage will be done. And all your stuff will be gone, because you are on the run. And, they will look for you Vanessa, because I escaped you and will be going to the police shortly. Well, after I dispose of your body,” he said and took a few steps back, wiping her vomit on his pants. He raised the bow and fired an arrow into her chest, it struck her below the right breast.
She started to gasp for air. The arrow had penetrated her lung.
“Aimed for the heart, got a lung,” I guess I will take what I can get, I didn’t really think I would miss. I didn’t bother stashing a second arrow. Chock that up to short sidedness I guess. I mean I am kind of emotional, my girlfriend is a serial killer, after all.”
“You son of a bitch!” Vanessa wheezed and tried to stand, but without that rush of oxygenated blood her muscles didn’t react well and she fell over. The arrow bent and tore a larger hole in her chest. She tried to scream but nothing came out. As the world began to fade to black she looked up and saw Jeremy unzipping his pants.
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