Good Home Cookin': A Novel of Horror (5 page)

He tilted his head and sighed as his
mother walked in front of him offering him a towel. Pressing it to
his nose, he leaned back and glared at the ceiling. Images of
causing his father extreme amounts of pain were racing through his
mind like a torture collage. His mother knelt in front of him and
took his free hand in hers.

“
He does love you Gabe,
regardless of what you might be thinking right now. He just has
those moments where he lets his anger get the best of him. Mistakes
happen and deep down he understands that,” she said comfortingly,
wiping a tear as it fell down Gabe’s face.

She wore a vibrant yellow dress with a
white apron over top. There were multiple red stains on the front
of the apron. It would be another couple of hours before they would
be ready to open for customers. Prep time was hard, long work but
also the most fun… for the Rifflet family.

“
Eleanor, get in here. I
need your help!”

“
Coming dear,” she
answered, giving her son a loving smile before leaving the
room.

Hearing his father’s voice made Gabe
grind his teeth. Jameson was harder on Gabe than he was on their
daughter Elena, who was three years younger. She was his perfect
little angel that could do no wrong. Gabe seemed to be nothing but
a disappointment. Sniffing brought blood to the back of his throat
and he spat it out on the ground instead of the alternative. He
didn’t harbor a taste for that sort of thing like someone else he
knew. Movement to his right brought a slight smile to his
face.

“
Time to wake up my
friend. You’ve rested long enough.”

* * *

His thoughts were a tangled mess of
images, sounds, and words that wouldn’t come together to form
anything useful. It felt like he was falling down a black hole with
no hope of reaching the end. Voices called to him: his sister, his
mom, Rob, Jerry, his ex-girlfriend Melissa, even his childhood
friend Jimmy. The voices stopped as abruptly as they had begun. His
eyelids fluttered as he regained consciousness. A voice spoke to
him but he didn’t recognize it. Frowning, he struggled to clear his
vision and place the figure standing before him.

“
Time to wake up my
friend. You’ve rested long enough.”

Where the hell was he? The last thing
he remembered was…

Pain pulsed in his leg. Thinking was
proving difficult as he tried to produce enough saliva to wet his
tongue so he could speak.

“
Where… what…
happened?”

The figure in front of him bent down
and checked the rope that kept his hands bound behind his back.
Another thick rope had his legs tied firmly to the chair. No
response from the man. The fog in his brain was starting to break
up. Parts of his memory returned but Dylan still couldn’t make
sense to how he had ended up in his current situation. He vaguely
remembered racing through the woods before getting tangled in the
bear trap then black like there was a break in the film of his
mind.

Dylan was afraid to even chance a look
at the damage to his leg but the need to know was overpowering. His
vision blurred slightly as he glanced down and saw that his leg was
wrapped in gauze. Someone had taken the time to treat his wound but
it still throbbed.

“
The effects of the
tranquilizer will wear off soon enough,” the figure’s voice broke
through his pain addled mind, and he recognized the voice. The
bastard who had kidnapped him.

The room’s lighting came from two
sources. One was a single bulb that hovered directly over Dylan’s
head, and the other was from a lamp to his right that sat on what
looked like a work bench of some sort. Sitting on the bench was a
silver tray containing a variety of surgical tools: a hack saw,
scalpel, gauze, and other instruments that caused his heart to skip
a beat or two. Hanging from the ceiling next to him were two
massive gray hooks. He didn’t want to dwell on what those were
for.

Dizziness settled in and he realized
he’d been holding his breath while taking in his surroundings.
Sweat trickled down his face as he tested the ropes on his arms and
legs, hoping to find some wiggle room. His captor had made sure the
ropes were tight but not to the point where they cut off
circulation.

Sucking in a deep breath, he shouted,
“SOMEBODY HELP ME! FOR GOD’S SAKE, SOMEONE…”

A filthy, stained rag inserted into
his mouth cut off his screams and caused him to gag.

“
There will be none of
that,” the man said, backhanding him across his face.

Dylan’s head rocked to the side and he
spit the disgusting rag onto the floor in defiance before beginning
his screams anew. The veins stood out in his neck as he yelled like
a man with nothing left to lose. Neither one noticed the imposing
shadow that was standing in the doorway to the room.

Gabe scrambled to put the rag back
into his mouth and received a vicious bite on his hand for the
trouble.

“
Fuck!”

Jameson strode into the room, shoved
his unhelpful son out of the way, grabbed Dylan by the back of his
head, and brought his eyes up to his. Dylan’s protests were stopped
by the feel of something sharp and metallic against his
tongue.

“
If you say another word,
I will cut out your tongue and feed it to the stray dogs while you
watch.”

Shifting his eyes down gave him a
sickening view of a long blade resting in the corner of his
mouth.

“
Nod once if you
understand.”

Dylan did so carefully so he wouldn’t
cut himself. Jameson smiled briefly, glanced in annoyance at his
son, and put the blade away on his person. Cradling his injured
hand, Gabe waited until Jameson left the room to get up and glare
daggers at Dylan.

Leaning down so his face was level
with Dylan’s, he promised, “Better make your peace with your Maker
because you’re in for one hell of a ride.”

Dylan wasn’t one to give up without a
fight, so he winked at his abductor just to piss him off, and show
that he wasn’t going to play the part of the wounded prey. Gabe
roughly shoved the rag back into his mouth, and used duct tape to
ensure that it stayed in place this time.

Chapter 13

The night was dragging on as it
usually did on the night shift and the two men were battling sleep,
doing whatever they could to keep awake: cards, discussing plans
for the future, talking about what was happening in the precinct,
etc. Both officers had been on the force for a little over three
years and the night shift was where they had been assigned
to.

Mac popped a new stick of gum in his
mouth, his fourth piece, and shifted in his seat, keeping his cards
hidden.

“
Are you going for
detective next month or are you going to come up with another
excuse as for why you shouldn’t?”

Looking up from his cards, Warren gave
a fake smile, “There is a big difference between an excuse and a
reason.”

“
Pull your panties out of
your ass. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

Mac was twenty five, single, and had
no family in Florida. He’d removed himself from an abusive home and
had never looked back. Stopping abuse of all kinds was the main
motivation to why he chose the career path of a policeman. Passing
him on the street, one would never correctly guess his profession.
Five seven, slightly overweight, with a patchy mustache didn’t
quite grant him the label of an intimidating man of the
law.

Warren was the polar opposite. Twenty
seven, married, with his first child to be born in three months, he
was the quintessential family man. Devoted to his family first, the
job second. People avoided eye contact with him because he did have
the intense stare and muscular build that commanded respect.
Recently his mother had fallen deathly ill, and his father couldn’t
do it on his own, so he did all he could to help with her. He was
lucky if he got four hours of sleep a day but you would never hear
a word of complaint come from his mouth.

Mac knew of the family issues Warren
was facing, but didn’t really know how to respond to the situation
so he resorted to cracking jokes or playing dumb to it. It wasn’t
that he didn’t care. He just had no experience in the area and
Warren didn’t hold it against him.

“
So you didn’t really
answer the question…”

Warren was grateful when the radio
crackled to life, saving him from having to get into this
conversation again.

“
Dispatch to Unit 7, we’ve
got a call for a possible missing person driving a black mustang,
license plate Alpha Tango Four Charlie Two Six, last seen heading
down I-75 South to Miami. Never made it to destination. Name’s
Dylan Masterson. Alcohol may be involved.”

“
Roger dispatch, Unit 7 on
it,” Mac answered.

Their car was pulled to the side of
the road and hadn’t seen a car in the last hour. Warren buckled his
seat belt and nodded to Mac.

“
Let’s head north. I would
have remembered seeing a Mustang pass us. Keep an eye out for
headlights or taillights, car debris, anything that could give us a
sign of an accident. Let’s hope we just find him pulled to the side
of the road.”

“
Guarantee you we’ll find
the person passed out in his car, on the shoulder,” Mac said with a
laugh.

Knowing how horrible car accident
clean ups could be, Warren was silent as they pulled off down the
road, hoping for once that Mac was right.

* * *

No body. Shining his flashlight in the
car revealed little to nothing and left him baffled at the location
of the person who drove the car. Warren did find possible evidence
as to the cause of the accident quick enough when the light
reflected off of the empty liquor bottle. Further inspection led
him to believe possible foul play was involved though. The tires
were shredded, but from what?

Mac was still on the radio, checking
in and informing dispatch that they’d found the vehicle but no
person yet.

He bent down to get a closer view of
the tires and something caught his attention. A piece of metal
jutted crookedly out of the remains of the front driver’s side
tire. Wiggling it back and forth, he removed a three inch chunk. He
held it in the palm of his hand and saw it was tapered to a sharp
point at the end with rough, jagged edges. Following the path the
car was on proved easy enough with his flashlight and he made his
way back towards the road, hoping to find some clue as to what this
guy could have hit or run over.

Waving his beam back and forth across
the road proved pointless. Mac called out to him but he waved him
off as he continued his search. Footsteps rang out on the street
behind him. Fifty feet down the road and there was no sign of any
type of obstruction or debris that could have ripped through his
tires with such ease.

“
What are you looking
for?” Mac asked, slightly out of breath but trying to hide
it.

Clicking off his flashlight, Warren
turned back towards the abandoned vehicle.

“
I’m at a loss for what he
hit because there is no sign of anything on the road as far as I
can tell, but something fucked up his tires bad. There is no smell
of alcohol but I did find an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker on the
floorboard. Something isn’t adding up. The chances that all four
tires burst simultaneously are astronomical,” he said, holding up
the rusted piece of metal for Mac to inspect. “I pulled this out of
one of the tires on the car.”

Dropping it into Mac’s hand, Warren
made his way back over to the Mustang.

“
What do you think
happened?”

“
A missing person, no sign
of where he went to… some blood on the dashboard of the car,
probably from hitting his head when the car flipped. I don’t know
yet,” Warren responded as he crouched next to the car, sweeping the
ground with his flashlight.

Tilting his head to the side to get a
better angle, Warren motioned for Mac to join him. There were two
divots in the ground next to the driver’s side door. “A body just
doesn’t vanish into thin air.”

Chapter 14

A voice calling softly broke through
the haze.

It sounded like his mother’s voice,
telling him that everything was going to be fine. When he’d heard
her voice as a child, he’d been reassured that all the wrong in the
world could be made right. A light brush against his cheek brought
a smile. The soothing voice continued to speak to him, but he
couldn’t understand it at first.

A pair of the most
beautiful hazel eyes greeted him as he opened his own to see the
angel that was in his presence. Not his mother but a woman in her
early twenties, sitting on his lap, with a dazzling smile present
on her face as she coaxed him to wake up. A cream colored t-shirt
and a pair of black underwear was all she was wearing.
What the hell is going on?