Watch Your Step

Nina's Tea Party #7

It's been an hour and Jill was starting to get worried. No, she has already been planning on going after Nate. Maybe something bad happened, maybe her gut was telling her the truth.

She remembers those times Nate and her spent late nights finishing an article. And when she woke up, there's already steaming coffee placed by her desk. This wasn't their first time to interview someone who lives in a secluded area. They've been to native tribes and made documentaries about hippies living alone in the mountains. For the longest time, they have been best friends.

Therefore Jill put on her boots and jacket and headed to the house. It was dark and cold and not long before she opened the creaky gate did she hear a noise in the forest. She looked over her shoulder and prayed it was just a rabbit before entering.

She made her footsteps as light as possible and went around the house to the backyard. The dying plants looked eerie in the moonlight. While the hole that's supposed to be by the mango tree was already filled up. Hastily enough because the shovel was laying on top of the pile.

Jill curved her way to the backdoor when something shone on the ground that caught her eye. She walked towards it and picked it up. The thing instantly reminded her of Nate. He used it to basically open anything. Doors, locks, cars, or their beers when they celebrate something. Jill held it close to her heart and asked to herself, Nate what happened to you? She knew she would find the answer inside the house. With her horror mounting, she opened the backdoor and entered the dilapidated kitchen once again.

What presented to her were two adjacent hallways, one leading to the living room and the other to the lavatory. Between those two was an ajar door which she could only conclude as Andy's bedroom.

But it was empty, the bed laid untouched and the lamp beside it was off. When she looked down on the floor, Jill put both of her hands on her mouth.

Her panic pounced immediately. She stifled her scream as she saw her partner's glasses on the floor, all cracked and bloody. She stepped away and bumped into something. Then she turned around and there stood Andy.

His white long hair was all over his face and his rotten teeth were showing as he breathed heavily. Out of the blue, he produced a smile. "My dear, what brings you here?"

Jill couldn't stop her trembling knees but she managed to ask, "What did you do to him?"

"Who?"

"Nate."

"Oh, your friend." Andy paused as he closed his eyes and smoothed his greasy hair. Then he looked back at Jill. "Well, you see, I buried him."

He smiled again. This time wider and more menacing. Jill knew, without a doubt, that this scary old man was no longer joking.

"Houses have rules and he broke them," Andy said, "He found out something he shouldn't have."

He inched towards Jill while Jill was slowly getting backed up against the wall.

"I have preserved her beauty and you're not going to take her away from me, Oh no." Andy licked his lips with his blue tongue. "You should've come here alone from the start to make this easier. Your friend wouldn't have to die."

Jill looked down to her left and saw the lamp on the night table. Too engrossed in her escape attempt, she grabbed it with both hands and aimed to slam it on Andy's head. But this old man who is of an uncertain age had enough time to react to stop Jill's plan. "You have to try better than that, sweetheart," he said.

In reply, Jill brought her knees to Andy's groin which made him bend forward. Then Jill shattered the lamp on his head knocking him down on the floor. She ran to the door, when she heard a loud snap, and made her collapse on the ground.

Sadly, Jill was not as strong as her partner. She screamed like there's no tomorrow. Holding her knee to her chest and her injured foot with his hands, she cried on the floor. Suffering from the most painful thing she ever felt in her life. If this was just any cramp, the one that wakes her up in the middle of the night, Jill would have deemed it as a bad dream. But this felt like a never-ending torture of cramps in hell.

Eventually, her breathing slowed down and the pain receded unless she move her leg. But she was not the only one who recovered.

Jill saw Andy appear by the doorway like a zombie who could never die. He tower over her, rubbing the back of his head and said, "Now you've done it this time."

Andy pulled Jill by her hair to the kitchen like a sack of fertilizer. She could only scream as she was dragged into the secret room. It reeks of a drying wound and it was full of laboratory apparatuses. Unfazed by Jill's screaming, Andy strapped her on a vertical platform that is slightly slanted — the kind for BDSM stuff.

"No, NO, no!" Jill cried. But Andy gagged her with a black cloth and pointed a syringe on the dimple of her arm.

"Because of what you've done, we're going to live and play and fuck and have tea parties together forever. Don't you want that?"

The syringe punctured Jill's arm. Her consciousness started fading and her vision became a blur. But after that, all the pain was gone.