Jasper's Kill

Old Fear

I leave the event with a smile on my face and a large check in my wallet, but in the back of my mind I can still find the worry about my situation. I sigh as I look out the window of the cab, seeing the snowy world of Forks moving past me as we head back to my hotel. *I don’t really want to see Bella again tonight, her questions brought up things I never wanted to think about again, it had only been three weeks since I was able to escape from that life and….I really just don’t want to spend my new life focused on the way my old one ended*. I shivered at the thought, it still terrified me to think of that night. *I went from being a petrified little girl to what I am now, a women, a singer like I’ve always wanted* but the thought wasn’t comforting, it didn’t change the memory that surfaced.

He drags me down the hallway while I kick and whine. I had been through this a hundred times with the man who now lays dead on the floor, and as the man pulls me I can’t help but wish it were my step father. At least I knew him, knew what he liked to do to me, what he liked me to say. The other man is walking behind us, I can hear the thud of his boots but was afraid to look at him and clinched my eyes shut, I didn’t want to see the tall menacing shadow sauntering along behind us, smirking slyly as he watched me cry and struggle. I scream but my pleas are muffled by his hand covering my mouth.

We reach a room, my room, he kicks open the door and I jump, fresh fear tearing a hole in my stomach when I realize how close I am to the pain I can never seem to escape. He throws me and I land hard on the bed, the wind is knocked out of me and it’s incredibly difficult to breath. I know what’s next, and I know I have to block it out, numb myself, numb the pain, and so I do just that. I turn and curl up on my side, staring at the wall through tears as I draw jagged breathes and try to escape *go away, just go away, just go away, go away, go away* I chant in my head over and over. Then, finally, it’s all gone.

They’re voices are faint, my body is numb, my eyes are blank…my mind is gone.

“HEY!” The cabbie yells, springing me from my memory to realize that the car has stopped in front of my motel.

The key slips into the hotel door lock and the little green light beeps and flashes on. I enter the room with the hope of being able to be comfortable, but that is always a stupid thought. I find the room destroyed “What the hell?” I can’t help but ask no one, the desk in the corner is over turned and the bedspread is a mess. My clothes are all over the room and as I maneuver through the room I don’t even know where to begin looking to see if anything was stolen. While looking, a word from the television threw my concentration, “murder”. I pause and look towards the T.V., it is a news broadcast and I sit on the mess of a bed to listen as the blonde, short haired news women chills my blood with words I never wanted to hear.

“-A string of murders all the way from Phoenix, Arizona up to Washington has police on a wild goose chaise from state to state. The first murder took place about three weeks ago and since that time murder after murder as shaken town after town. Eye witness accounts are incredibly difficult to acquire and since it seems the assailant, or assailants have been traveling on foot it has been no easy task tracking them. It seems the people in any given town where a victim would be found have no idea who could have done it, no one seems to have seen anything. The victims range in age from children to the elderly and every race seems to have been accounted for among the dead. I warn you that the photos we are about to show are graphic and we encourage parents to please make sure that any children are out of the room..”

I had frozen when I heard the report but I was jolted from my shock when I saw the photos, every person was killed in the same way my step father had been killed, necks grotesquely snapped with blood and ripped flesh. I begin to loose my breath and bury my face in my palms to try and compose myself. *They were here* I think helplessly *they came all the way up here for me but, why wont they just kill me? Why do they have to mess with me?* I try and calm myself but once again the thought that I could have peace is knocked away when I hear my cell phone ringing. The ring tone version of Macarena fills the room and I grumble, almost ready to cry, but instead grab my phone from my purse and answer it, not bothering to ask who it is.

They remain silent as well, then after a moment he calmly says “not going to say hello?” I sigh, “why ask when I know it’s you? I’m not stupid” I speak threw agitation. He chuckles “My, very bold when my hands aren’t around your neck…I like it”. I shake my head, my stomach feels sick, but I swallow some spit and speak again “what do you want?” I ask, trying to control a crack in my voice, “My dear, that is simple, I want you to get up, and come around to the side door”. I am reluctant to do as he says but I realize it’s stupid to resist and so in a beautiful ball room gown I walk down to the first floor, outside and around to the side door. The area is almost totally enclosed in woods with just a sliver of sidewalk just outside the door, beside which sat a dumpster and a thin alley

“Now call him” he says, I raise an eyebrow as I glance around, seeing only trees and bushes, an alley leading to the back, but no people, “Who?” I ask. “His name is Jasper, call him to you…call him”, I can’t explain how confused I am, so many questions are flying around in my brain they actually slow my reaction time and before I know it he’s screaming “CALL HIM!!!”, his voice pierces my ear, drawing pain and fear filled tears into my eyes, and so with no other options I looked out into the trees and called him, a person I had met only once. “J-Jasper” I call into the woods but, of course, get no response. “Good girl” he comments, I suck and bite my bottom lip “now I’m going to hang up, but keep calling, and if you stop…I’ll be there in a moment my love…and I will kill you” He menacingly warned before I heard a definitive click.

I stand silent in confusion and slip my phone back into my purse, when a big black object slams into the wall beside me with a gargantuan bang that resembled the sound of an explosion. I jump back and scream as the object, which I see is a tree stump splitters into tiny pieces, my footing is shot and I fall to the concrete sidewalk “JASPER!” I scream into the woods, then again and again, my panic almost driving me to frenzy when I get no response “Jasper!…please!!” I call between tears. I am beside myself with worry as I call once more for him, and to the extreme relief of a weakling like me, he arrived.