Inside the 1976 Windsor Case

Ava Windsor

"Ava Windsor"

In a small back-country town in Tennessee

September 21st, 2011

The Sheriff’s Office

“H-how,” the intern began but after hearing her stammer, she tried to retain some professionalism and she cleared her throat. The young man smirked and let his arm fall to his sides, something the intern didn’t fail to notice. Though her common sense said she would never get it open in this life, it still made her hopes lift in her hope of getting away.

That snuggles with Mr.  Fluffy was looking closer by the second, she thought near smugly but her heart sank to her toes when the young man blinked, his blue eyes going to a shiny topaz. His pupils were slit like a cat, and his skin tone seemed to have gotten several shades tanner.

The intern gulped silently, something in the way he grinned, the smirk rivaling a Cheshire cat, meant trouble. Or more specifically, trouble for her. She was going to die if she lost this game. This reverts back to her earlier question of:

“How do you play?”

The young man smirked, “I never thought you would ask,” He laughed, throwing his head back as he put his hands on his hips, and the sound seemed to both send shivers and goose bumps alike into the intern and yet at the same time, make her feel privileged to even have been the reason he laughed in the first place.

I’m a sick bi-; the intern’s thought was cut short when the young man said his next words.

 “It’s quite simple: just run.”

The intern blinked, er brow furrowing soon after. This wasn’t making any sense. Just run, nothing more, just a simple ‘just run’. Was that all? No torture? No “find the secret destination by sunup or I shall tear you limb from limb?” No “Escape the town in the next hour or I shall blow you up along with it?”

Just run…

What did he mean? The young man seemed to have heard her unspoken thoughts and replied, “It may sound impossibly simple but,” the young man fixed her with a paralyzing topaz gaze. “I assure you, it makes sense. You won’t have time to do anything else, besides running.”

He sighed as a memory passed through him and he chuckled, the sound incredibly dark. “You won’t have time to do much else, to stop running means to lose the game.” He smiled at the intern and the intern knew immediately that the young man had done this game with dozens of people. She saw in his gaze that he had never lost, and that he prided himself on this fact.

The other players had stopped running and they lost. He had caught them and they had lost. Whatever they lost meant they weren’t standing beside her. They weren’t threatening her life or telling her in some broken soft voice that she couldn’t afford to lose only to get kicked like a puppy.

Whatever they lost meant they LOST. As in, they were now six feet under and ever coming back. They were dead because they had stopped running. They were dead because they had gotten caught by the young man. They were dead because they had lost the game.

They had lost because they stopped running, she realized as she took her pearl necklace in her fingers and tried to remember the reassuring words her grandmother had told her when she was scared about something.

But not strange at all, the words didn’t make her feel better. The words didn’t make a team of Special Forces bust in and save her.

The words didn’t make an angel appear nor did the young man suddenly die after the ghosts of his victims suddenly spring from the ground and drag him to the fiery depths of Hell where they had long-awaited his arrival to exact their revenge for him having killed them and stolen their lives.

All for a game, it was all because they lost the game. It was all because they stopped running.

Somehow the words didn’t ease her fears. If anything they made it worse. They offered no solaces. They weren’t helping her situation any. They were just a piece of useless jewelry that might end up slowing her down. She looked at them with disdain and thought about throwing them to the floor and smashing them with her heel when she saw the young man had his eyes closed.

She licked her lips, “What?” she snapped. She had forgotten her situation apparently and the young man did well to remind her. He pushed up his sleeve, the white fabric easing up his arm, and revealing to the intern’s utter horror, intricate black tattoos of designs that when analyzed closely turned out to be the last words of multiple people.

Shadows quivered over these words and the intern could almost hear these words being screamed out by various people.

Some of the tattoos seemed angry, like they had been furious at the young man. They insulted him and their last words were written on his arm as those words.

“You’re insane, let me go!”

“What are you doing, you whack job!”

“I haven’t done anything to you, leave me alone!”

Others were pleading for their life, some wondering what they had ode not deserve what had happened to them. It seemed as if some of his past victims had started the game but sometime while playing, had either stopped or thought it was just a trick. Nonetheless their last words were tattooed into his skin just as well. They weren’t spared, they had lost, and all rules applied.

 “No! Please, let us start again! I’ll run this time!”

 “I beg of you, let me live! I will tell no one!”

 “I just wanted to go home...”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

But one tattoo stood out, it was small and childlike in a way. All that was written was a small:

 “Just don’t hurt mommy and Eve anymore…”