Starchela in LA

Chapter Twenty-Five: IN THE BACK OF THE VAN

Chapter Twenty-Five - IN THE BACK OF THE VAN

Bound. Gagged. Bleeding.

Drums are banging in my head, not thoughts.

He's staring me down. I ache. I struggle for breath.

He's strong, his fingers hurt me when he tied me up. He lifted me and threw me in the back of the van. He drove. My lips started hurting under the duct tape. I stopped crying. He parked.

He's not talking, not moving, just staring me down from the driver's seat. I want to think but drums are banging in my head. I try to force myself to think. Try to clear my head. It keeps buzzing, my eyes keep going back to the man. The way he's sitting there, menacing, staring at me – he might as well be grinding a bowie knife's blade against a marble skull. Now, where did that image come from? The dude reaches over at something I can't see from where he's put me – and never taking his eyes off me, produces a Rambo hunting knife. Without a word, starts grinding it against the driver's seat armrest. That hotwires me. When your worst fears come to pass as soon as they occur in your head, you have to get out of your head.

Barstow "Bar" Weston. That's his name. Natalie's former husband. Ex-con. I remember that much. I concentrate on that. How do I destroy this dude?

I start giving out noises from behind the duct tape. Mooooo.

He keeps grinding his blade.

I insist. MOOOOOOO.

He leans over and pulls the tape off. Crude! It hurts as much as it looks when they do it in the movies. My lower face is burning.

"I... I won't... I can't..." I try.

He stops grinding the knife, it freezes in mid-motion. I know he's about to use it on me.

"I'm a person. My name is Starchela. I don't live with Natalie anymore." I blurt this because someone said that if the killer sees you as a person – hears your name, – instead of a nameless victim, they might not kill you. Or something.

"I go to UCLA. I write plays and listen to music." It's a double-edged sword, elaborating on that – what if he hates the music I like, - so I leave it at that.

"I have a mom. And she was there tonight, I don't know how come. She has a twin sister who slips into a bag-lady persona, although she's really the Queen of Bel Air. It's complicated."

"Who are you?"he finally mutters.

"I'm Natalie's roommate."

"Exactly."

And so I get it: I'm nothing to him. To this dude, I'm just Natalie's roommate. He doesn't care about me, this is about her, not about me. I start feeling a little miffed here – why am I tied up in the back of this van here and not Natalie if this jackass is so not over her? Anyway, she's the one he's so obsessed with, so I must make this about her if he is to really notice me.

"I can talk to Natalie," I say.

"I can talk to Natalie." Something about the way he says it – he doesn't believe it. So it hits me: I realize why he grabbed me and not Natalie tonight.

"No, you can't."

"What?"

"She won't talk to you," I say. "That's why you keep going to the people around her."

He slithers off the driver's seat and into the back of the van with me, pointing his blade at my face. But I've manned up under Evangeline Lilly's tutelage:

"That's right, Einstein, cut off my tongue, see how I sex you up for Natalie then."

He pauses. I don't. "I can talk to her about you, I can tell her that you seriously care for her. I think she may have some feelings for you, too. She's still keeping that doll you made for her in prison. But first, you have to get this corny thing out of my face."

He looks at the knife as if he sees it for the first time. Then he goes to work with it on me. He grabs my hair, and slashes off a palmful. I scream.

He bares his teeth in my face, so I shut up. I'm trembling like a dildo. Natalie keeps one that she showed me one night.

"You're cocky," Bar hisses.

"I... I'm nothing," I whimper.

"That's right. You're nothing to me. If they find you by the side of the road a couple of days from now, she'll know I did it for her."

"And will she love you for it?"

He puts his teeth away, sucks them back into his mouth and closes it over them. It's a relief.

"She's not crazy about bad boys, like you know her. Shane won't hurt anyone for her. She's into good boys now, or no boys at all, I'm not sure," I say.

"Girls?"

"Don't think so."

"So how can you help me?"

"I don't know. We don't live together anymore, we hardly talk. I hadn't seen her for weeks before tonight. I don't know, I don't know why I'm here," I'm on the verge of crying again, shedding all the BS and confident posturing, and telling the truth: I'm powerless and worthless.

"So what's she into? What's she like these days?"

I recall my beautiful roommate, the Hollywood wannabe with a wild side. She goes to parties to meet career opportunities. She works as an agent's receptionist to pay the bills. She keeps a dildo and a voodoo doll from a previous life.

"You should work with her on a film," I say to him. "You guys should write a movie about your life, together and apart. And she should get her boss to make the movie. And my aunt should help make that movie. That'll bring you back together."

He's looking at me like the mother ship will beam me up any instant now.

"You think?" he mutters.

"Absolutely."

"She's into that?"

"You guys should totally do it."

Then the side door of the van flies open, and Torquevald Nordon charges in. His shoulders are so broad they hit the sides of the door, but his arms got the reach – he grabs Bar and whishes him out.

Suddenly, there's fresh air and a piece of night that I can see through the van's door. Shane and Natalie rush in, and pick me up. They carry me out. As they undo the tape around my wrists and ankles, I can see my mom and aunt, twin sisters that look so different, come out of the trees. And I can see Torquevald Nordon keeping lifting Bar into the air and then slamming him down on the ground.