Switch Blade Romance

The Basement.

March 1st, 2015.

Sneedville Tennessee.

The basement smelled of damp concrete and old blood, the kind of smell that gets into your clothes and stays there, like a bad memory you can't wash out. Andrew sat on the sagging couch—some ancient thing with springs that poked like accusatory fingers—and the tears came hot and steady, carving clean tracks through the grime on his face. He didn't sob loud; it was the quiet kind of crying, the sort that happens when the body's given up pretending things might still turn out all right.
Across the room, Charles worked with the calm patience of a man hanging laundry. Chains rattled softly as he fastened them to the iron ring bolted into the cinderblock wall. Kayleigh didn't fight much anymore; she just stared at the floor with eyes that looked too big for her head, like a doll somebody had left out in the rain too long. Sam sat beside Andrew, close enough that their shoulders touched, and every few minutes he'd turn those pleading eyes on him—big, wet, hopeless.
"Please, Drew," Sam whispered, voice cracking like dry twigs. "Please help us. He's gonna kill us. He already killed Tegan."
Andrew looked at him, tears blurring the edges of everything. "I can't. Not yet. There's nothing I can do... if there was, I'd do it. I'd do anything."
Charles finished with the chains and turned. His face was ordinary—too ordinary, the face of a guy who'd sell you insurance or fix your carburetor—but the eyes were wrong, flat and shiny like wet stones at the bottom of a well. "You two better shut your yaps," he said, voice mild, almost pleasant. "Shut them now, or I swear to Satan himself I'll cut both your tongues out and feed 'em to the rats upstairs."
He meant it. Andrew knew that the way you know a storm is coming before the first drop hits—pressure in the air, the way the light changes. He reached over and squeezed Sam's leg, quick and hard: wait. Sam got it. He swallowed whatever words were trying to climb out and nodded once, small.
Charles glanced at the body on the floor—Tegan, or what was left of her—and sighed like a man facing a chore he didn't want to do. "I'm going upstairs now to deal with the dead bitch. Got a hell of a mess to clean up, too. Blood everywhere, like somebody spilled a gallon of cherry Kool-Aid and didn't mop it right away." He smiled then, a thin stretch of lips that didn't touch his eyes. "After that, I'll sleep. Then I'll come back down here and deal with you three. Especially you, my precious little chocolate drop."
Andrew flinched at the words, the pet name landing like a slap made of wet meat. Whatever Charles had planned for him this time, it was going to be bad—worse than the bruises, worse than the nights he'd spent curled in the corner praying for morning. Maybe this time Charles really would finish it. End him.
Fuck it, Andrew thought, the words flat and tired in his head. Let him kill me. At this point I won't even care. I won't fight. I'll be out of this hell and into another one, probably. But even as the thought came, something deeper twisted away from it, stubborn as a root in hard soil. He wanted to live. God help him, he wanted to live. Wanted to see Annabelle again, smell her fur when she jumped on him after a long day, wanted his mom's kitchen table and his dad's bad jokes and even Laurie's endless lectures about responsibility. He wanted homework, for Christ's sake. Normal, boring, beautiful homework.
He might have wished for death in the dark corners of his mind, the way a man in a burning building sometimes thinks about jumping. But it was only a last resort, a door he wasn't ready to open.
Sam's voice trembled. "What... what are you gonna do to us?"
Andrew looked at him. "Me? I won't hurt you. Or Kayleigh. Please believe that. It's him. Charles. You gotta worry about him."
Kayleigh made a small, bitter sound from the wall. "Yeah, right. You got us here. You let him kill Tegan. I bet this is some mind-game bullshit, like all these sick fucks pull. Get us to trust you, then—bam—you stick the knife in when our backs are turned."
Andrew shook his head. "That's the last thing I'd do. I just want to go home. I want my dog. I want my own bed. I want my friends back. Hell, I even want to do homework again." He laughed, a dry rasp. "But no. Right now I'm stuck with my boyfriend, who's some demon-worshipping serial killer who wants to turn me into one, too. I'm not even sure how that works, but he wants it. Bad."
"What the fuck," Sam said. He'd been so quiet Andrew had almost forgotten he was breathing. Sam scooted closer to Kayleigh, protective in that helpless way people get when there's nothing left to protect with. "That sounds like pure bullshit."
"Yeah, well, it isn't," Andrew said. "I've been living this bullshit for six or seven months. It's gotten five or more of my friends killed. A lot of other people in Annabelle, too. He even killed my Bible-thumping auntie."
Sam stared. "What are you on about, dude?"
Andrew felt the annoyance flare, quick and hot. Jesus Christ, it's like talking to three-year-olds. Or really stoned teenagers... which, hell, they probably are. "You guys don't watch the news?"
Sam shook his head slowly. "Not really. I mean, I'll check Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat... stuff about Kendall..."
Andrew sighed, deep and bone-tired. "Okay. Let me fill you in."
He stood in front of them—chained girl, scared boy, the basement light buzzing overhead like a trapped fly—and talked. He told them everything, starting with the day he met who he thought was Aiden Pierce in Psych class back in August, right down to how Aiden—Charles—had butchered Casey and Peter and so many others, all so he could have Andrew. Just Andrew. By the time he finished, their faces were pale masks of shock.
"Yeah," Andrew said quietly. "I know. It's a lot."
Kayleigh spoke first, voice small. "So he's gonna want you to kill us. Both of us. So some demon can climb inside you and make you like him?"
Andrew nodded. "I don't want to. I can't kill anyone except maybe him. But as sure as I'm standing here, he'll come down tonight or tomorrow night and force me. Or he'll kill us all. I think I'm on my last slip-up. He doesn't usually keep boys around this long. Especially ones who pull the shit I've pulled."
He thought of the escape attempts—the doors that wouldn't budge, the windows too high, the nights Charles had come back smiling with fresh bruises like trophies.
"What if the next one isn't a failure?" Sam said suddenly. "What if we make this one count?"
Andrew looked at them—his new dungeon mates, pale and chained and terrified—and felt something flicker in his chest. Hope, maybe. Or just desperation wearing hope's clothes.
"Do either of you have the keys to that car?"
Kayleigh glanced at Sam. "Fuck my luck, they're probably on Tegan's... whatever's left of her."
Sam patted his pockets, eyes widening. "Oh God. I do. I have them."
Andrew almost laughed, the sound bubbling up like something poisonous. "Fucking A."
"Okay," he said. "That takes care of that. We need a plan. A good one. One we pull off together. We only get one shot."
"Um," Kayleigh said. "I don't think this'll work, but... I have Tegan's phone. We always swapped when we drank, so we wouldn't drunk-text our exes."
Andrew's heart kicked. "Does it work?"
She fished it out, pressed the home button. The screen lit, dim and accusing. "Yeah. But it's almost dead. And no signal for calls."
"Internet?"
She checked. "Shitty 2G down here."
"That's fine. That's great." Andrew held out his hand. "May I?"
She unlocked it, passed it over.
Andrew opened Facebook. Logged Tegan out. Stared at the login screen, brain blank for a horrible second. What's my goddamn password? The battery read 14%. Dropping fast.
He remembered. Fingers shaking, he typed it in. Went to status. Started typing.
8%.
He finished. Hit send.
It hung there, spinning, the little wheel mocking him.
"Come on," he whispered. "Please, God. Please."
4%.
He was ready to give up when it finally posted.
Andrew let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Sam leaned in. "What'd you do?"
Andrew smiled, thin and shaky. "I used Facebook."
"What the fuck?" Sam said.
"Are you serious?" Kayleigh asked, hobbling closer despite the chains.
Andrew turned the screen. 1%. They saw it before it died: a check-in. Three people tagged—Rachel, Lacey, John Henry. The ones looking for him.
"Please come get me," the status read. "He has two other hostages with me in his basement. We're in Sneedsville, Tennessee, at Lake Homewood."
The phone went black.
They stared at the dead screen in the buzzing basement light.
Andrew looked up at them, eyes bright with something that might have been madness or salvation.
"Now," he said softly, "we wait." The three of them huddled in the dim basement glow, the single bulb swinging overhead like a hanged man's last twitch, casting shadows that stretched and clawed across the concrete floor. The air was thick with the copper stink of Tegan's blood and the damp rot of old leaves seeping in from the foundation cracks. Andrew kept his voice low, barely more than a rasp, the kind of whisper that feels like it's scraping your throat raw. Kayleigh's chains clinked softly every time she shifted, a reminder that she was the weak link—literally—the heavy padlock gleaming like a malevolent eye.
"Listen close," Andrew said, glancing at the wooden stairs that disappeared up into darkness. The house above creaked occasionally, floorboards groaning under Charles's weight as he moved around up there, cleaning up the mess like some twisted housekeeper from hell. "We've got maybe an hour, two at most, before he's done playing janitor with what's left of Tegan. He said he'd sleep after. That's our window. He sleeps like the dead—deep, but not forever. I've seen it. One wrong noise and it's over."
Sam clutched the car keys in his fist, the metal biting into his palm hard enough to draw a bead of blood. He nodded, eyes darting between Andrew and the chained girl. "The car's parked out back, right? By the lake path. I remember pulling up. Old Ford, keys in my pocket the whole time like a goddamn miracle. But how do we get her loose?" He jerked his chin at Kayleigh.
Kayleigh rattled her wrists, the chains bolted to the wall with rusted links that looked like they'd been there since the house was built back in the Depression. "These aren't coming off easy. Padlock's heavy—combination or key, I can't tell. Charles didn't say. If we can't pick it, we need something to smash the hasp. Bolt cutters, crowbar, anything."
Andrew's mind raced, memories flashing like lightning in a storm—those failed escapes before, the times he'd pried at windows only to find them nailed shut from the outside, the nights Charles had laughed and dragged him back down here by the hair. "Basement's got junk in the corners. I saw a toolbox once, back when he first brought me here. Rusty wrenches, maybe a hacksaw if we're lucky. Old pipes stacked by the furnace—could use one as a lever to bend the ring out of the wall if we work together. Quiet, though. No banging. Sound carries up those stairs like a scream in an empty church."
He sketched it out in the dirt with his finger, a crude map of their prison: couch here, chains there, stairs leading up to the kitchen door that Charles always locked from the outside with a deadbolt. "Step one: free Kayleigh without waking the devil upstairs. We take turns—one keeps watch at the bottom of the stairs, listening for footsteps or that goddamn whistling he does when he's in a mood. The rest hunt for tools. If the lock won't break, we wrap cloth around the chain—my shirt, whatever—and saw slow. Metal on metal sings, so we go patient, like carving bone."
Sam swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "And if he comes down early? Before we're out?"
Andrew's eyes went flat, the way they did when the horror of it all pressed too close. "Then we fight. All three of us. He's strong, but not invincible. Grab anything—a pipe, a loose brick from the wall, even the chains themselves. Aim for the head, the knees. I've seen him bleed. He's just a man under all that demon-worship shit, even if he thinks he's something more. But we don't want that. Best case, we slip out quiet while he's snoring."
Kayleigh leaned forward as much as the chains allowed, her voice a fierce whisper edged with panic. "Once we're loose, stairs are the only way. Kitchen door's probably locked, but there's a window in the mudroom—I saw it when he dragged us down. Small, but we can squeeze. Or the back door by the lake. Then straight to the car. No lights, no engine until we're rolling. Push it if we have to, down the gravel path toward the road. Sneedsville's not far—five miles? Those tagged friends on Facebook, Rachel and them, they might already be moving if the post went through. But we can't count on cavalry. We count on us."
Andrew nodded, feeling the weight of it settle in his gut like cold lead. He thought of Annabelle waiting back home, of Laurie's voice scolding him for being late, of the normal world that felt like a half-remembered dream now. "We move single file up the stairs, me first—I've been here longest, I know the creaks. Sam, you cover the rear with the keys ready. Kayleigh in the middle. Once outside, we run for the car like the hounds of hell are after us. Because they might be. If Charles wakes... he'll come fast. That smile of his, that voice calling me his 'chocolate drop'—it'll turn to something worse. Screaming, maybe. Or worse than screaming."
They fell silent, the plan hanging between them like a frayed rope over an abyss. The basement seemed to press in closer, the shadows lengthening as if listening. Upstairs, the sounds of scrubbing had stopped. Footsteps now—slow, deliberate—headed toward what must be a bedroom. Charles settling in.
Andrew squeezed Sam's shoulder, then reached to touch Kayleigh's hand through the chains. "One shot. We wait ten minutes after the lights go out up there. Then we move. And pray whatever demon he's courting doesn't wake up first."
The bulb flickered once, as if in warning, and the three of them sat in the growing dark, hearts hammering out the seconds until their only chance at salvation—or a quicker trip to whatever hell Charles had waiting.