Albatross (11 page)

Samantha started to focus on her next steps. Instead of canceling her date set for two hours from now, she decided she would get dressed, pack, check out of the hotel, and call him from the road after she was gone.

She was deep in thought when a knock at the door drew her attention.

A woman’s voice on the other side announced, “Hotel security.”
This is odd
, Samantha thought. Samantha threw on a robe that actually covered rather than “enhanced” her body, and she looked out the peephole and saw a woman who looked annoyed. The woman was dressed in a security blue blazer, white blouse, and gray pants, and she was holding a radio. Samantha’s head started whirring. Her last date had left thirty minutes ago. He was loud, but she thought it would not draw much attention. Samantha opened the door just enough to show the security officer that she was “just getting out of the shower, and could she give her a few minutes?” and suddenly, the door burst opened, knocking her onto the floor. As she landed, she saw this new intruder close and lock the door behind her. This intruder was a woman, but she was well built—broad shoulders, thick torso, very dark hair, and dark features. Just as suddenly, a metal baton expanded from the intruder’s right hand. As Samantha turned to crawl away, she felt a sharp whack hit her buttocks, and she cried out. Still in shock from the pain, she felt the woman pulling her hair upward to get Samantha on her feet, and her body started to follow. Then the woman yanked her hair in the opposite direction. This sent Samantha hurtling to the bed.

Facedown on the bed, she was violently turned over, and she was looking into the eyes of a killer. She had seen that look before. But she had never seen it in a woman before, only men. The intruder straddled her, one hand holding Samantha’s arms above her head.

“So, Danielle, or whoever you are,” the intruder started, “I need some answers.”

The intruder’s violent behaviors did not match her low, almost calm tone as she spoke. Samantha found it very disconcerting, to say the least.

“What do you want? The money? It’s in the drawer,” Samantha offered.

“I will take that later. But before all that, do you know where Alex Burns is?”

Wow. This was bad. David’s warning had been right, and her gut feelings about getting out of town had been right on. It was much worse than she had thought. This intruder was not law enforcement; her methods were professional and to the point. This intruder did not do paperwork, and there would be no hotel “incident report” done as one might have to do in any law enforcement agency when violence occurred.

“Are you kidding? I stopped that job two months ago. It didn’t pay well,” Samantha stated.

“I can see how you could make a lot of money in your present line of work.” The intruder’s free hand was now moving up Samantha’s side of the opened robe and was now lightly touching her breast. Samantha immediately noticed that the intruder touched her more like the way a person would touch a foreign object rather than something pleasurable. Samantha was struggling to figure her assailant out. There was no emotion on the intruder’s face as Samantha tried to look back into her eyes to see if she was registering any kind of pleasure from touching her. The intruder’s eyes snapped onto Samantha’s eyes, and without any emotion, the intruder slapped her across the face.

Well, that was a big mistake,
she thought
.

“Are you sure you don’t know where he is?” the intruder continued with her monotone, professional voice. Still, no emotion or any indication of what she was thinking.
Maybe looking in her eyes was challenging her dominance,
Samantha thought to herself.

Samantha’s stomach began to turn as the sting of the slap was fresh on her face. She knew this churning in her stomach was more about hatred and emotions brewing than fear and trepidation. She had had these feelings before.

Don’t hit me,
she thought as those feelings seemed to rise rapidly.

Samantha could see that some smell drew the intruder’s attention. The intruder took a moment to sniff the air. Samantha had a sudden vision of a wolf when she saw this reaction. Still, the juxtaposition of her assailant’s violent behavior seconds before and her asking questions in a nonchalant fashion was startling. Without looking into Samantha’s eyes, the intruder asked her next question very calmly.

“Are you wearing perfume? What is it? It’s familiar,” the intruder discussed out loud.

“Your mother’s?” Samantha’s question came out faster than she wanted. She wanted to strike back somehow. Samantha watched the intruder’s lifeless eyes lock onto hers again, and then she slapped Samantha again while she held both of Samantha’s hands above her head.

Samantha was recovering from her last slap when she thought she heard the intruder say without much emotion: “You don’t know her.”

Samantha’s feelings of anger and hatred were escalating.
I hate being hit,
she thought. Samantha pushed the feelings down so she could try to think of a way out of her situation. She really didn’t want to do what she had done in the past. This was all so reminiscent of past violence.

Throughout this encounter, Samantha had not really struggled at all in an attempt to convey that she was weak and helpless. Samantha was pulling every survival technique she needed to get out of this mess. Past boyfriends and angry customers had provided her with years of experience. She had done this before as a way luring the person into letting go and giving her an opportunity to escape. But this was strange; this was out of character for a woman to be so determinedly violent without provocation. Regardless, this luring and feigning weakness would have to work if she was going to live. She now conjured up memories so that she would be able to sob. It was easy to come up with such a memory with her family history—the pain, distrust, violations, and betrayals. The tears started to flow as Samantha began to whimper.

Samantha saw that the intruder stopped touching her and was looking at her face. Not her eyes, Samantha noticed.
She must be looking at the tears,
she thought. The intruder wiped the tears off of Samantha’s cheeks as one would brush salt off of a table. Calmly, her assailant spoke more to herself than to Samantha. It became clear to Samantha that this woman saw her as an object. Maybe a lower form of life. Maybe a pet. Samantha was sickened. She was feeling anger burn in her stomach.
I’m not a fucking animal! You’d better not fucking hit me again! I’m not going to be a victim,
Samantha’s thoughts seethed.

“I have to go soon. I have a date later on. If you tell me where Burns is, I might let you go. It could be fun …”

The intruder’s monotone, emotionless voice trailed off as she went back to looking and feeling Samantha’s body as if she was a specimen.

Samantha knew there would be no “fun” with this one. If the intruder had been a man, Samantha might have had a chance. She could have offered sex or given him money. Then through the fake tears and whimpering, Samantha figured it out. From what she remembered from David’s course in psychopathology, this intruder was a very dangerous type of woman. She sounded like a guy. She would dominate and seize power like a guy. This woman was a sexual sadist with an antisocial personality disorder. Her behavior would be focused to cause pain to her victim. This woman wouldn’t be satisfied with just sex. Her orgasm would come after she hurt or killed her victim. David had always said, “It’s a good thing the prevalence for this type of person is very small.”

Samantha found her anger welling up from a pit of past pain. Her tears were fake, but Samantha had that cold feeling she had experienced a few times before when she had been threatened like this. Her heart was racing. Her instincts were sharpening to strike back.
I’m not a fucking animal!
Samantha’s thoughts were screaming.
I’m not going to be a victim again,
her thoughts continued as she felt her muscles begin to coil so she could strike back. Samantha went to a dark place. She had killed before. She didn’t like to. She feared going to hell.
But this asshole is not going to fuck with me,
Samantha thought.

The intruder was busy feeling Samantha’s body as her left hand continued to hold both of Samantha’s hands above her head. But the intruder’s grip was not as solid as she explored Samantha’s body. Samantha continued to whimper. With the robe fully opened, the intruder had full view of Samantha in her “working” outfit, which was thigh-high lace stockings, high heels, and a thong. As the intruder’s right hand started to move up to Samantha’s vagina, Samantha clamped her thighs shut, trapping the intruder’s hand briefly. A low, guttural scream emerged from Samantha’s throat, catching both her and the intruder off guard. Both were enough to distract the woman as Samantha brought the weight of her two hands down on the intruder’s face and knocked her off balance for just a moment. This allowed Samantha to swing her head and bend over the side of the bed. She knew she was not going to get off the bed with this move. She just wanted to get to the crevice above the floor. That was the plan. As she hurled herself to the side of the bed, Samantha found her salvation, a fixed, double-edged knife that was nestled between the bed frame and mattress. She was planning that her intruder would yank her back on the bed. That would give the appearance that Samantha was still a victim and weak, and it would also give her the much needed momentum to use the knife. Samantha felt hatred and anger toward this woman for making her kill again. She hated it. She hated the ones before. She hated this woman too.

“Bitch!” she heard the intruder yell.
Finally, an emotion! Fuck you!
Samantha’s mind yelled. Just as predicted, she felt a punch in her side that made her cry out for real. It was hard for Samantha to will her body to go limp. But she had too if she was going to kill the intruder. Samantha’s mindset was completely changed. She didn’t want to survive the assault. That time had passed. She wanted to kill the woman. Samantha went limp as the intruder violently yanked her back into the middle of the bed. As she was pulled back, her left arm went wide, and it was caught firmly by the intruder. Samantha’s right arm, however, vectored faster than the woman had expected and slid into the side of the intruder’s head. She felt very little resistance on the knife’s hilt as it entered the intruder’s throat. Samantha knew she had hit an artery because she felt warm liquid shoot up onto her arm.

Samantha didn’t need her nursing degree to know this wound would be fatal. The intruder knew it too.

“Fuck!” the intruder groaned, both her hands clutching at her throat. Not knowing whether to pull the knife out or leave it in, the intruder lost her balance of dominance over her victim and fell onto the bed. Samantha scrambled away from the intruder and watched as the woman began to fade. Samantha waited for the death gurgle, which she knew would come soon. The intruder’s hands clutched her throat to slow the bleeding down. Her breathing became erratic, and she gulped for air. In just a few short moments, the intruder’s movements and her gasps for air slowed down. Eventually, there was a sound of a gurgle and a release of all muscles. Finally, the intruder’s body was completely motionless and silent. Her eyes remained open, looking to the side where Samantha was squatting against the wall. From a curled-up position hugging the wall farthest away from the bed, Samantha looked briefly into her eyes. The intruder’s eyes seemed as lifeless as they were before.
Is she really dead?
she wondered.

At first, Samantha covered her ears and watched passively. Samantha became consciously aware of her own voice muttering repeatedly to herself, “Why did you make me do it?” The anger and hatred that had built up to Samantha stabbing the intruder was passing just as life ebbed from the woman. Samantha felt empty but fearful.

“Why did you make me kill you?” Samantha asked blankly.

Samantha felt suddenly devoid of emotion herself.

When Samantha was sure that the intruder passed away, she removed her hands and looked blankly beyond the dead body. David had explained to her that when people had been victims of violence and survived, they were more likely to experience the prior events of violence again. Samantha had asked him what helped to cure this, and he had said, “Treatment, love, work, more treatment, and time … preferably in that order.”

Samantha had seen death a number of times. This was the third time she had killed someone. Her stepcousin—or rather the cousin of her stepsister—had been the first when Samantha had been fourteen. The other had been a “date.” The man had been in his car and had forced her to do fellatio while he had been holding a knife to her head. He was not aware that she had had her own blade much closer to an easier target. That one had been more difficult as the first two stabs did not kill him, so she had had to stab him repeatedly in the back to make sure he was dead. She always vanished after. She would again. The visual images, smells, and sounds of the flashbacks began to recede when Samantha started to focus on her own breathing and stood up.
It’s never easy to kill
, she thought.

Still, this killing was different. The coldness and emptiness sat with her as she remained crouched against the wall.
Could I become as lifeless as her?
she thought. Samantha began to feel nauseous at the thought. Not only was she a woman, but this time, Samantha had killed with just one blow.
Maybe killing is getting easier for me
, she reflected. Another wave of nausea hit her.

Samantha had no idea how long she stayed there looking at her intruder, now victim, when she was startled by her phone ringing. She jumped, and her body exhaled when it rang. She did not answer. Samantha did get up to see that the intruder was indeed dead and then took a shower. When she was in the shower, she threw up. Once out of the shower, she threw up again for what seemed to be ten minutes. The pain on her backside where she had been struck was pulsating now. Ibuprofen and ice was the answer, but she only had time for the ibuprofen. Her nursing degree allowed her to appreciate the impressive bruises forming.