Unique - Prologue (ii) - Then
Prologue (ii)
Tuesday - (Four Days Earlier)
There's a warehouse. Empty- it's been empty for a while. Long enough to have been colonized by the rats, not long enough to turn into the haunt of vagrants and drug addicts. The cops still come here. The neighbors still care. It's just the kind of place that good middle-class teenagers go when they think they're being wild.
They stick to the marked walkways without thinking about it, unconsciously sticking to safety regulations laid out for factory personnel in years previous. Those with flashlights keep them low, pointed center and down.
They giggle, they whisper, they shush anyone who laughs or speaks too loudly.
And then the find the body.
Their parents seek out the very best therapists. Their teachers make sympathetic noises and excuse them from class. Their peers... well, they're teenagers. And the old Canary factory just became the place to be, the place to say you'd been.
A girl squints into the shadows outside the factory and calls, “Natalie?”
There's no reply. She pulls out her phone and checks the time- 9:35. A little late, maybe- but she didn't think they'd go without her. She glances around again, and seeing no sign of her friends, she frowns.
There's a tap on her shoulder. She nearly jumps out of her skin as she whirls around. “Jesus Christ,” she says, “Natalie, you scared the hell outta me.”
Her friend flinches at the sacrilege. The girl rolls her eyes. “Sorry. I mean, 'Oh my gosh, Natalie, you scared the heck out of me.' But you know, you can't go sneaking up on people and expect them to watch their language,” she finishes severely. Her heart still feels like it's about to beat its way right out of her chest.
Natalie shrugs. “Sorry, Shan.”
“Where are the others?”
Natalie nods her head towards the building. “They already went in.” She shrugs. “I told 'em I was gonna wait for you.” There's a flicker of surprise across Shannon's face. “They went in? And you stayed out? Really? Why?”
“Yeah? So?”
“It's just not what I expected.”
Natalie shrugs. “Guess they were more into it then they let on.”
“And you? You were like the only person who really wanted to do this.”
Natalie taps a finger on her braces- a nervous gesture. “It's just different, you know. Actually being here. What if someone sees? I mean, what if the cops are still here?” There’s something insincere in her tone, but Shannon brushes it off.
“Well, they're obviously not- and you know Kayla and Gina. They'd run out of there screaming if a rat looked at them sideways. Sheesh, not even that- if there just were a rat.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“This was your stupid idea, anyway, Natalie. What's your problem?”
Natalie shrugs.
“You're the one that convinced me that was kind of the point. And you wouldn't shut up about seeing where they found the body this morning.” The girl adopts a falsetto: “Oh, Shannon, what if there's blood, like actual blood? We should go see.”
Natalie crosses her arms .”Pardon me for having second thoughts about going into the creepy-as-fuck murder scene.”
Shannon looks at her askance, then says, “That's what I was saying, but no one cared. So I'm here now, you're here now and the others are already inside-”
“Fine. Whatever. Let's go.”
Shannon looks long and hard at her friend. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, why?'
“You just seem...I don't know. Off? You'd tell me if something was up, though. Right?”
Natalie rolls her eyes. “Well, yeah. There's nothing going on. I'm fine.”
Shannon sighs. “Forget it. Let's just get this over with.”
The girls duck under the police tape and shimmy up an old fire escape, ducking through an open window.
It's quiet inside. Even the the noise of street traffic seems to recede within the halls of the old warehouse.
“Which way?”
“I'm- not sure. Down?”
Shannon sighs. “Do you see any stairs?”
“We'll just have to find them.”
“I've got a better idea.” Shannon pulls a cellphone out of her pocket. “I'll just call Gina.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be a spoilsport,” Natalie says, but Shannon waves her off.
The phone rings, and somewhere out in the darkness, a cheerful little tune answers it. It rings and it rings and it rings, then goes to voicemail.
Shannon stares at the phone in her hand.
“There's no way she would have left it here. She loves that thing. Why won't she answer her phone?”
Natalie shrugs. “Probably trying to scare us. Let’s just go down there. We can scare them instead.”
“That doesn't sound like Gina. I’m going to try Kayla.”
“Let's just go look for them,” Natalie says, but Shannon already pulled up her contact list by the time she does.
“Oh, you really shouldn't have done that,” Natalie says as the phone rings.
Shannon looks up. “What?”
There's a sudden blast of music- Kayla's ringtone- just inches away.
“You have Kayla's phone? Why?” Shannon blinks at her friend, feeling puzzled. There are alarms screaming in the back of her head, and she knows she shouldn't probably be scared. But it's so unthinkably absurd she can't do anything more than stare in mute incomprehension.
Natalie shakes her head sadly, ignoring Shannon's questions. “Now I'm going to have to do this the hard way. And I so wanted to avoid bruising the merchandise,” she says.
Shannon backs away, then bumps into an abandoned desk. “Nat, you're scaring me.” Natalie advances, not answering her. She brings her arm up and cracks Shannon hard across the face with back of it. The girl falls to floor, dazed, a trickle of blood oozing down her face.
Natalie glances at her hand, noting the ring she'd forgotten there. “Now look what you made me do,” she said, hitting the girl again. “Oh well. Needs must when the devil drives.”
Shannon tries to crawl away, but her body isn't responding. She's on the very verge of unconsciousness when Natalie picks her up and carries her downstairs. She shouldn't be that strong, Shannon thinks before everything goes fuzzy for a while.
When she awakes, she awakes in chains. She's dangling from her wrists, and everything hurts. She tries lifting her head, but it feels too heavy, and she can't move it up more than a few inches. After a minute, she turns her head slightly to the side. Gina and Kayla dangling from chains of their own next to her, but they look asleep- or drugged.
“Kayla,” Shannon tries to say, but her voice has fled, leaving her nothing but a hoarse whisper. She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry.
She lets her head fall down again. She's exhausted from just the small task of looking next to her.
“Well, what do we have here?” A man's voice. Shannon is too tired to look.
“Hiya, boys.” Natalie. “I've brought you a present. Several presents, actually.”
“What do you want?” Another man's voice, deeply suspicious. “Your kind don't do anything for free.”
“True. Consider this...a token of my esteem,” says Natalie, her tone breezy and insincere. “Let's just say an opportunity presented itself, but I need a little- oh, let's call it a distraction- for my plan to work. That's you boys.”
“Why should we?” The first man again. “What's in it for us?”
“Oh, that's the best part,” Natalie says. “I hear you boys have got yourselves a hunter problem. Help me, and it goes away.”
“We can handle hunters,” says the second man.
“Oh, sure. But these aren’t any ordinary hunters, are they? How many of your nest have you lost already? Let me help you get a little revenge.”
One of the men walk close enough to fall within Shannon's line of sight. She's not sure which. He lifts her head up, and he grins wickedly. He has too many teeth. Her heart races, and she tries to twist away.
The man grabs her by the hair, then leans in close. His tongue darts out, and he leaves a cold, wet trail of saliva up the side of her face.
She's overcome with horror and revulsion, but some tiny part of her mind is still rational enough to think, The blood. He's licking up the blood.
The man lets her go and turns away. Her eyes burn with tears.
“Deal,” the man says.
End Prologue.
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