The Vacuum

Part 29

"Why?"

Her green eyes darted up as she looked at the reporter sitting in front of her, pencil skirt contrasting Alex's jeans and long-sleeved white shirt. "Why what?" She asked quietly as one of the doctors stood behind her to make sure that she didn't lose it in the presence of the Washington Post reporter.

"When you got away...you took a chance to get the other two survivors out." Her pen tapped against her knee. "You're doctors say that you sustained even more injuries trying to get them out. It was very brave but what were you thinking when you took the chance."

Alex furrowed her eyes brows and sat in a cloud of silence for a minute. It made her Doctor tense...thinking that maybe she was lost in memory again; worried that it might cause her to launch from the chair and strangle the primped and primed reporter in front of her.

Alex let out a long breath. "I don't leave people behind."

The house was dark as he walked through it in the early hours of the morning. Looking around he took in the rental furniture and the empty coffee table where Alex always had her laptop and her camera's. Pacing into the bathroom he looked at the cleanly scrubbed tub before flicking on the light to see that the bulb had been replaced with the flickering fluorescent bulb that was in every other bathroom.

Moving out of the bathroom he stomped down the dark hall and into the bedroom. Sitting on the bed he rubbed his lips with his fingers before drawing them back into his hair and nodding slowly to himself.

"Alright..." He muttered before reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a pair of her panties and smirked to himself. This was who he was: a brutal killer who had nothing but blood on his hands. Walters little errand boy, undeserving of affection or caring from...anyone.

Most of all her. She didn't belong here. Walter was right...she could never be his. She wasn't weak enough, wasn't pliable enough for him. Sending Alex away was the only thing he could do. Making her hate him was the only way. It was the first time he had really defied Walter but it got him off the hook and her away before he had to slit her throat. Hopefully, after tonight, it would stop him from thinking about the one person in the world that he couldn't see himself slicing into. He pushed himself up from the bed as he thought about it, walking out of the bedroom and instinctually going over to the fridge in the kitchen. Alex hadn't had time to clean it out before she had hauled all of her things up and ran.

He pulled out a beer before looking at the door on the refrigerator. He frowned as he opened the bottle and walked out into the open living room, seeing that all of the pictures were taken down; all but one. Bringing the bottle to his lips, he looked at the picture surrounded by pricks from the tacks that had once been holding its counterparts around it.

Stepping closer he squinted his eyes at the spider in the forefront, moving gracefully in its own web. There was no color in the picture but even in black, white and gray he swore he could make out the red of the canyon wall. Behind the spider, almost tangled behind the web was the monster that had first planned on killing her. His figure was glistening in sweat around the open part of his jumpsuit, making the skin appear lighter in the harsh contrast of gray. His hair was stuck out in a million directions.

Tearing the photo down he refused to admit that it was his body tangled in the web with the spider.

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One Week Later:

Alex frowned as she looked at the crew assignments for the next week. After a long assignment, the editor liked to keep that said person in the city for at least a few weeks. Most of her peers loved it but she just felt confined. The desert was rolling around in her mind, a swirling vortex of dust, gravel and red clay that pulled at her.