Everything Comes With A Price (The Grabber Fanfiction)

The Morning After

Susanna did a slow roll onto her side, and the room seemed to whirl along with her. Her head was pounding so hard, that she could feel the folds of pinkish-gray tissue throb; one fleshy chunk of convoluted brain matter at a time.

"I made you some breakfast..."

Susanna let out a disgruntled groan. The bones in her neck crackled as she turned to look in the direction his voice came from. He stood in the doorway, the light coming from the stairwell behind him illuminated his silhouette. He glowed in front of her like angel, but he was no where near heaven sent.

She strained her neck to look around the so-called spare room, he told her about. The room was nothing more than a basement, with cold tile flooring. The mattress had seen better days—She would have preferred those bus stop benches to this. Susanna felt a persistent stabbing in her side, she lifted her t-shirt to assess the damage. Her eyes zoned in on a rusty spring that was sticking out of the ratty mattress. The spring was poking her side all night, it penetrated her skin just enough to leave a red mark; it was small, and probably harmless, but it hurt like hell.

She looked up at him again. This time, she noticed he was holding a tray with breakfast: a steaming plate of eggs and a glistening bottle of Sprite. Strangely enough, the oddest thing about this scene wasn't the horrific pairing of soda-pop and scrambled eggs; it was the mask on his face...

It resembled a Halloween mask, but she never saw one as terrifying this. Every Halloween mask she'd ever seen was made from plastic, and elastic string. But this mask was homemade...As if he spent hours in a dusty workshop molding plaster, and crafting it's features, sanding it down, measuring a leather strap custom to fit him, and him alone. Like a tailer fits a man into a one of a kind suit. Susanna wanted to close her eyes to spare herself from the sight of him, and she if wasn't so disturbed she would have; but she was paralyzed with fear. The mask was straight out of nightmares: The features were dramatized a large sculpted nose, thin overly arched eyebrows painted above the eye holes. His beautiful teal eyes shone through, those perfect carved sockets. The most unsettling part of the mask was the mouth. Much like the other facial attributes it was overly pronounced; a large off-putting grin. The smile was exceedingly eerie for reason being that she knew this man had never smiled that wide in his whole rotten life.

Susanna hadn't eaten a real meal in what felt like weeks. She had been surviving off scraps. She could use to eat, and she would have—if it wasn't for the vile taste in her mouth. Her lip finally ceased bleeding from last night, but blood had a metallic aftertaste that hadn't gone away; much like the sting from where he hit her. Susanna rose holding herself up on an unsteady arm. Susanna slowly raised her head, she looked at him through downward brows. The early dawn light was peaking in through the cellar window, her pale skin glistened in it. Her brown eyes were cast in a dull gray haze.

"I'm not hungry."

He kicked the door shut behind him. Susanna cringed as the door slammed shut. The door was heavy, she could tell by the thundering boom alone. Susanna tried to take notice of each inch of the room as far as her eyes could see at least; just like her father always taught her to do. A good cop is always aware of their surroundings—is what he would have said.

There was a reason Susanna was so inspired by her father, he was one of the best detectives in the city. It pained her to admit that maybe her father was right about some things. She was starting to see that she didn't have as much of a clue of what went on outside the security of her parent's property lines. She didn't know half as much as she thought she did. What she did know, was it took her less than a week to come face to face with The Galesburg Grabber. Sure, it wasn't intentional, but it was more than even the best detectives could say.