Broken Marilyns

BREAKTHROUGH

BREAKTHROUGH

I hadn’t spoken to Bradley since our falling out and found myself thinking about him, about what I found in his basement.  Those pictures were my biggest find yet.  I felt bad for the way things ended and decided to visit Bradley to re-connect.

Bradley’s car wasn’t in the parking lot when I passed by but I decided to stop anyway.  Doubling back, I parked a little ways down the street and casually walked to his house.  I knocked on the door several times but Bradley didn’t come to the door.  It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone, he was always volunteering for extra hours.  Jingling my keys, I turned on my heels to head back for my car.  His key, I remembered, he hadn’t asked for his house key back.  Maybe I’d just look around a little bit.

Since I wasn’t living there anymore, there was a chance that Bradley left the door to the office unlocked.  Slowly, I turned the knob and willed it to open, but it didn’t.  Breaking through the window and risking another broken screen would be a sure sign that I was here.  Walking back into the living room/kitchen area, I noticed Bradley had left his laptop on the counter.  Wiggling the mouse, the screen lit up and two internet tabs were minimized at the bottom bar.  Clicking on one, it opened up to a public profile page and I immediately recognized the girl – she was one of the girls in Bradley’s basement pictures.  Clicking over to the other tab, there was another profile picture, again, one of the girls.  I took pictures of the profile pages with my phone, making sure the URL’s were visible so I could investigate further once I got home.

Turning to make my exit, Aubrey stared at me from her perch like she was calling out to me.  "Where are you?" I asked aloud.  Curiosity begged my fingers to pick up the picture and when I did, the too-small picture shifted, leaving a gap between it and the frame’s inner cardboard border.  There was something behind the picture of Aubrey.  Pushing up the tiny prongs in the back with my finger, I removed the backing and picked up another picture behind the first.  I froze.  It was the same picture of Aubrey, only in color instead of black and white.  The tree behind Aubrey was covered in a huge red painted X.  What was this?  I slid the picture inside my back pants pocket and ran back to my car.

As soon as I got home, I scurried over to my laptop and typed in the URL for one of the girls.  It seemed like a normal profile page and there were recent posts.  Navigating to the second page, I was confused and relieved to find the same thing.  Maybe there was a good explanation for Bradley having their photos – he was a cop, and they were missing at one point.  I began to read the posts from the second woman, Meg.  Once I was satisfied that she was a normal girl living a normal life, I switched back to the first girl, Amelia, and grew stiff.  I pulled up both profiles side-by-side, and compared the two – both women posted the same things within minutes of each other.

I couldn’t settle down for the rest of the night so I decided to quiet my mind by watching TV.  Simon was still harassing me and Bradley was a giant question mark.  Fear and paranoia were consuming me.  Every time the picture on the TV flashed too quickly, its reflection on the sliding glass door grabbed my attention, making me jump.

"Screeeeech."  I pushed myself deeper into my couch and trembled.  Something just scratched against the glass - there was someone or something outside.  Slowly, I swallowed my fear and rolled off my couch.  Crawling into my kitchen, I grabbed the biggest knife I could find from one of the drawers.  Peeking over the counter as I crouched, one of the curtains danced slowly in the breeze; the door was open.  Quickly, I turned off the lights, my house now reminiscent of a horror movie.  I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled towards the door but the more I crawled, the further away the door seemed to get.  I had to get out of the house.  I was so close now, my fingers pressed over the metal tracks of the doorway.  A panicked feeling of hopeless despair curled inside my chest as fingers dug into my ankles and pulled me backwards while I tried to scream.  One, two, three times my flesh is pierced and blood erupts from my body as my attacker stabs me relentlessly.  The pain is more than I can bear, but he keeps on stabbing while I thrash for impossible freedom.  I keep praying the agony will stop but it doesn’t. 

I wake as I almost thrash myself right off the couch, I sat up and buried my head in my hands, shaken by my dream.  It was so real, the pain so vivid I could feel tingling where the stab wounds had been carved into my skin and bone but there were no marks on my body.