The Vacuum

Part 12

Alex pushed through the desert at a far more hurried pace than she normally did. She needed to get back to her car and just drive....drive far far far away. He had picked up the damn glow sticks! They were gone. That meant he had to be real...had to be! How many times had she seen him and he'd been real? In front of her shower? At the end of her bed?

What the fuck was she doing here!?

Her paces broke into a run across the dry earth, arms pumping as sweat dripped down her body. She breathed hard as she heard the screaming wind again, a million voices flooding though it. Her eyes squeezed shut out of instinct to block them out and her foot snagged. She went tumbling, barrel rolling in the sand. She laid there for a moment, crawling at the dirt with her eyes shut as her body shook with shivers despite the hot day and the sweat drenching her skin. She didn't cry...couldn't cry.

How much of what she had seen in the past year and a half had been real. If she had seen him and thought he wasn't real how many of the others weren't either. She scrunched up her hands in the dirt before leaning up and hurling it around her, clawing and grabbing at the dry landscape.

"Why!?" She screamed into the empty air. "WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME!?"

She didn't know who she was screaming at. There was no god listening; just nightmares; just demons. She took a long shaky breath as everything around her remained still and unmoving. Folding her legs up to her she put her head on them for a moment as the disturbed dust and earth finally settled around her. She tried to be as still it was as she continued to breathe.

Finally, she pulled herself up from the ground.

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He looked at the car in the parking lot in the desert, swinging the crowbar in his hands. Mac was taking too long to get rid of this little bitch. He kind of wondered if he ever really wanted to. The way he looked at her was all-consuming like there was something inside of her that he wanted to be part of. He'd been able to hold himself back from what was in his nature to do. He'd certainly hadn't bothered with that with Reggie.

Steadying his drip on the crowbar he walked over to her car, raising it like a bat and began to smash. The thick glass of the windshield shattered, creating a spider web-like shape across the drivers side before smashed it again. It gave way with a ringing chime and fell across the seats. The motion was repeated on the passenger's side, all four doors and the back window.

All the while a dopy grin spread on his smooth face. It grew wider as he came around and lifted the hood of the forester, thrusting it open. Sticking the bar back in he began to tare at the wires inside and yank until they ripped.

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It was later than Mac wanted it to be by the time he was finished and climbed back into the dusty old truck. He should not have taken so long but his mind was wandering and it was better to go slow than get blown sky high if the wrong chemical was mixed in the wrong container.

He kept thinking about that cavern; the dark image of the little woman standing, so near to her death. He could have easily fulfilled his prophecy about her fall if he had just walked up behind her in the dark and pressed her hand to the small of her back.

But he was a selfish man. He'd wanted to see the fear finally engulf her face. Than there had been what she looked like...standing there, barely lit. Her skin had been shinning, sweat pooling around the few scars and cuts that still littered her body. It looked pale in the dark of the cave even though he had watched her enough to know how sun battered it was. When she had reached out and touched the water, bringing it back to suck if her knuckles he had twitched with desire.