Both woman's hearts beat very quickly and look at one another. It's as if both are thinking the same thing. They know what this man is capable of...a man with a short temper and unusual sexual fetishes.
Gwendolyn is torn on what to do. Clearly, this woman is being held against her will and Gwendolyn recognizes her from the news the other night. She's the missing woman, Emma Swan. If she lets Emma go, Arthur might catch her and possibly kill her, but if she shoves the woman back into the basement, she's basically kidnapping her too and preventing the woman her one chance of escaping.
Emma wants to immediately hold the woman at gunpoint and force this man to let her go in exchange for his wife's life. Emma knows that this is very drastic and she'd never threatened to kill anyone, but this whole situation is extremely drastic. She just had to get out of this house. She thought that maybe this woman knew that she was down there, but by the look on her face and the man's insistence that she keep quiet, this man's wife is an innocent bystander who stumbled onto her captivity by accident.
The hesitation turns out to be a huge problem. The front door slams shut and thick heavy boots can be heard.
"Honey?" the wheezy voice calls from down the hall.
Both women's hearts drop to their stomachs. Emma fumbles for her gun and raises it. Gwendolyn shrinks against the back wall across from the basement door and curls up into a ball. She drops the screwdriver to the floor and feels tears welling up in her eyes. She begins to hyperventilate and sob at the same time.
"Gwen?" his voice calls out again. "Honey? Are you alright?"
The heavy boots come down the hall and Emma points the gun towards the sound. She takes a strong stance, prepared to protect herself.
When Arthur rounds the corner, he freezes... eyes wide by the scene he sees in front of him.
Something inside him snaps and a fire is lit inside him.
"Don't come any closer," Emma says bravely. "I'm getting out of this hell hole if it's the last thing I do."
Arthur takes in a sharp breath. He looks from Emma to Gwen and back again. He feels his rage growing ever so slowly inside of him. It takes everything he has not to explode, he turns to his wife.
"Gwen..." he says in an eerily calm voice. "What's going on?"
"She helped me," Emma says. She suddenly realizes what this statement could mean for the woman so she adds, "Unintentionally she picked the lock, which was small potatoes to me breaking down the door with an axe. She didn't know I was here and now I'm leaving..."
"Are you?" Arthur says smoothly.
"Don't Arthur..." Gwendolyn weeps from the floor. She's shaking erratically. Her mind is racing, so confused about what her husband has done. What would this mean for her family? Her children? She should've left when she had the chance, but now she knew too much. But if she had left, someone may have never discovered and inadvertently set this poor woman free. She's so afraid of what to do.
"What was that?" he growls.
"Let the woman go..."
"I can't do that Gwen," Arthur says. He takes a step towards Gwen instead of Emma. Emma holds the gun up, having it pointed directly at Arthur's heart. Emma knows she should protect the woman, not knowing what this monster might do to her. She had to stand up for the woman's life, clearly, she was caught in the man's twisted web.
"Don't get any closer to her!" Emma warns.
Arthur turns to look at his captive, very surprised about how fiercely she was holding the gun. She held it expertly, so he assumed that she had some experience with weapons.
"You're going to protect her?" he asks in surprise.
"She's clearly afraid of you, you bastard! I protect the innocent."
"What are you a cop?" Arthur asks.
"Bail bonds," Emma says.
"A woman of the law..." Arthur says. He takes a step back from Gwen and turns to face Emma fully. "No wonder you put up such a fight."
"I put up a fight because you were raping me!" Emma snaps. "I did what I could to protect myself."
Gwen weeps a little harder as Emma shouts out what she already assumed. "Why Arthur Why?!" she whimpers from the floor.
"I did it for us," Arthur says in a gentler voice.
"He wants to get me pregnant!" Emma shouts. "Give him a baby since you can't anymore."
Arthur's face turns red in anger and he clenches his fists. To hear this horrible truth said out loud makes him embarrassed and upset. Gwen never checked with him before she had the operation, never asked if he wanted another child. It's why he did this in the first place... to give them a new family. Now with Emma saying his plan out loud, it made him sound clinically insane, which was likely true at this moment with his anger levels rising more and more each second.
"Why would you do this?!" Gwen screams.
"He's insane, your husband is insane," Emma says.
This sends Arthur over the edge.
He lunges at Emma so quickly that the gun goes off, but merely grazes his arm. He swats the gun from her hand and then punches the blonde in the face. Emma goes down, disoriented and her nose is bleeding. She fights the dizziness as best she can, she uses her leg to hit Arthur in the back of the leg hard. He cringes, but he grabs Emma around the throat again. Emma immediately struggles, trying to claw at Arthur's face, dragging her nails along his cheeks. She tries to defend herself, but Arthur gets on top of her struggling body. Normally, she'd be able to throw him off, but because of her lack of nutrition, she's much weaker to put up a good fight. Arthur begins to squeeze her windpipe, taking her breath away as he gets even tighter. Emma gasps desperately, she continues to claw at him, trying to take his hands away. She fears that this might be her last few moments. Her mind races to find something... anything to save herself. She keeps fighting, tears welling up from the lack of oxygen. She thinks of Henry, Killian, Mary Margret, David, Ruby and everyone else whom she would never see again. Everything goes black.
...
Arthur is still strangling Emma until he feels a sharp pain in his back. He drops the unconscious and bleeding Emma to the ground and turns to see a screwdriver stick out of his left shoulder. He sees his distraught wife glaring at him, angry eyes behind frightened tears. He turns like a wild animal would after being attacked and goes towards his wife.
"You're a monster!" Gwen says as fiercely as she can.
"You haven't the faintest idea!" he roars.
He lunges forward, screwdriver still in his shoulder and shoves his wife against the wall. He begins to get his hands around her throat, but Gwen knees him in the groin. He goes down a little bit, allowing Gwen to grab the screwdriver from his shoulder. She goes to stab him again when Arthur shoves his whole body and his wife against the wall. Gwendolyn smashes her head against the wall and becomes unconscious. She falls limp on the floor.
Arthur suddenly gathers his bearings. He blinks and sees his wife on the ground. He then looks at his surrogate lying on the floor, beaten up, but still alive.
He takes a step back and takes a deep breath. He rubs the angry tears from his eyes and uses the kitchen counter to support himself. He can't believe what he has just done, but now even his wife has turned against him. She called him a monster and Emma called him insane. Those words set him off and turned him into a monster. A monster that was bent on killing those he cared about.
Arthur stumbles to the fridge and pulls out a can of beer. He chugs down the whole thing and crushes it in his hands.
A sharp pain suddenly hits him and he feels a warm liquid running down his back. Right, the screwdriver his wife used to stab him with. He tenderly puts his hand up to his shoulder and feels that the blood is soaking through his t-shirt. He immediately goes upstairs, past the unconscious women and goes to treat his wound. He puts lots of rubbing alcohol on it, despite how much it stings and waits until it stops bleeding enough for him to wrap it up. He also treats the scratches Emma gave him on his face and arms. He checks where the bullet grazed him and there was nothing but a red mark. Once he's done that he comes back down and stares at the two women. There's a bullet hole in the wall where Emma missed.
He had to figure out what to do. He couldn't hide Emma here anymore now that Gwen knew about everything, but Emma had yet to provide the family with a baby... if they could be called that anymore. Now that Gwen... his beloved wife had turned against him; he couldn't include her in his plans anymore.
He would have to leave with Emma. Take the kids with him too and take them far away. He could be a single father and still have that baby that he wanted. He could start a new life for all of them...
Immediately he jumps into action.
Arthur goes downstairs, grabs the drugs and injects them into his wife. The longer she was out, the more of a chance he had of getting away. When she would wake up, he'd be long gone with Emma and the children. He cries as he looks at his wife, so limp, so still on the floor. He saw her wonderful beauty and wished that she had just cooperated, then he wouldn't have to do this to her. He gives her one last long kiss and the shoves her into the corner.
Arthur checks Emma's pulse and makes sure her airway is open. She would be okay, but Arthur knew he couldn't take any chances. He decided not to drug her in case it killed her.
He goes down to the basement and decides to use duct tape instead of the chains. He comes back up and binds Emma's hands behind her back with several layers of tape. He then does it to her feet. Finally, since the tape might suffocate her, he stuffs some extra gauze in her mouth. He also wipes the blood from her nose and puts an ice pack on her neck.
Arthur then goes to pack. He goes upstairs and grabs three duffle bags, two of them his children used at their weekend trip to Grandma's. He shoves warm clothes into his daughter's and son's bags. He also packs books and several of their favourite toys in there as well. He then goes to his room and packs clothing for him and for Emma. He grabs several sweaters for himself and more of his wife's clothing. He stares at his cell phone for a few moments and then decides to leave it, it could very well be traced. He puts the clothing bags by the door and then goes to the basement. He grabs the handcuffs, the chains, a few knives and guns, a fresh supply of drugs and syringes, some of the pregnancy tests he was going to force Emma to take, as well as the pillow and blanket from the bed. At the last minute, he decides to grab that family picture on his workbench before going back upstairs.
He takes all the money from his wife's purse and one of her credit cards. He then puts all the supplies by the door and decides to drive his car around to the back like he'd done the first night he'd brought Emma home. He didn't want his neighbours freaking out just yet that he was carrying an unconscious woman who looks like a dead body into his car.
Arthur pulls around the back, puts the bags in the very far back. Fortunately, their trunk was like a separate area, so his children would not suspect a thing. He places the pillow down and then he goes over and picks up a bound and gagged Emma. She's quite heavy in his arms, but he manages. His shoulder does sting quite a lot, but he pushes through. He brings her out to the car and lays her down, with her head on the pillow. She looked so delicate and fragile, very pale from being in the dark for so long. At the last minute, Arthur puts some duct tape around Emma's eyes... just in case. He then puts the blanket over her. He gets one last look at her pale face before shutting the trunk and locking it.
Arthur then comes back in. He grabs a few cans of beer from the fridge and some extra food to keep the kids happy on their "road trip." He locks the front door and leaves a light on in the living room to make it look like someone was home. He stares at his wife on the floor for a long few moments, his heart heavy with grief.
"You left me no choice," he says.
He takes only his car keys and then leaves a bottle of water next to Gwen. He relocks the basement to give the police a harder time and wipes his fingerprints from it. At the last minute, he places an old sweater under her head before heading out the back door and locking it.
Arthur stands outside in the fall air, taking in a deep breath. He was doing what was right and he needed to start over.
Arthur then drives towards his children's school. He tries to act as casually as he can. He decides against taking his kids out early, as to not arouse suspicion and it was Friday so a weekend family trip wouldn't seem so unusual. As he waits, he keeps thinking about what he is doing.
It's for the good of the family, he thinks to himself.
When the bell rings to let the kids out, Arthur gets out of the car and waits for his children.
Megan squeals when she sees her daddy and wraps her arms around his legs.
"Daddy, what are you doing here?"
"I have a surprise for you," he says in a calm and collected voice. You'd never have guessed that he had had a fight with his wife and captive today. He beams down at his daughter.
"What is it? What is it?!" Megan asks, jumping up and down.
"We'll wait for Ben before I tell you."
When his young son who is the spitting image of him comes out the door and hugs his daddy, Arthur buckles them into the car.
"Okay guys, here's the surprise... We're going on a road trip."
The kids look confused at first and look at one another.
"Where are we going?"
"It's a surprise," Arthur says, even though he didn't have the faintest idea yet. "But we're going on the classic road trip to see the sights and have fun. We might even get to go to some water slides. Don't worry, it's only for the weekend."
The kids smile at the mention of waterslides.
"We might even go to a space museum."
This gets Ben excited.
"Where's Mommy?" Ben asks.
"She has to work this weekend and there was an emergency surgery that she had to go to, so she couldn't say goodbye. But we'll talk to her soon."
"Why isn't she coming?" Megan asks.
"Well... you guys had your trip with just Mommy to Grandma's, didn't you? Now, this is your trip with just Daddy okay?"
The kids are a little reluctant without their mother, but as soon as Arthur turns the radio on and gives them chips to eat, they settle right down and don't ask about anything else.
Arthur begins to pull out of the school parking lot, his heart pounding and his palms sweating on the wheel. He takes a deep breath before pulling onto the highway.
Such a twist. Please keep reviewing and following and I'll keep updating.