She couldn’t see. She couldn’t move. In fact, there was nothing Helen could do but wait in the trunk of his car, exhausted from screaming and banging and finding no help coming her way. It quickly became apparent that this was it for her.
This was how she would die.
How long had it even been now? A day? A week? She had phased in and out of sleep so much it was hard to tell. Her stomach growled and shrunk, making her gut hurt. Her lips were dry as deserts, her tongue like sandpaper. She needed water, and everything ached.
It came as a shock when the trunk opened. Helen either hadn’t heard the footsteps or thought they were part of a lucid dream – she couldn’t tell. All she knew was her eyes stung at even the dim lights glowing behind Max’s silhouette.
“Get out,” he said. “Right now.”
She started to climb but was too slow. Everything hurt, her muscles screaming as they hadn’t moved in some time. Losing his patience, Max grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and hauled her out impatiently. Helen shielded her eyes and whined, but she didn’t cry.
She never did.
Max marched her toward a huge, empty warehouse. Their feet crunched through wet gravel as lightning flashed overhead, accompanied by magnificent claps of thunder. He knocked open the door, then shoved her through it, directing her down the cold stone steps to an empty room with no carpet. There was trash everywhere, a rat scurrying in the corner, and no window.
What took her attention was the TV. Deep in the bowels of this abandoned warehouse, somehow, the killer had found a small black set and a VCR. He threw her into the chair in front of it, pressed a button on the device, then stood behind it, watching her.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“Just watch.”
Max pointed to the TV, then continued to stare at her. Morbid curiosity kept her watching. The image was fuzzy, but it was easy to make out the rear entrance of her nightclub. Usually it was full of cars, but in the security feed, it was empty.
“I don’t underst—” she began to say.
But then she saw it.
Her husband was leaving the club. Seeing him again made her miss a breath. She put a hand to her mouth as Max appeared on screen, bolting toward him like a bat out of hell. The strike was fast and hard, a simple blow to her love’s skull that made him drop to the ground. His legs twitched. Raw horror blazed through Helen. She’d heard what had happened to him, but she never thought she’d actually see it. On the night of the incident, the security footage had gone missing. Now she knew where it had gone.
“Shut it off,” she demanded.
“Keep watching.”
“Shut it off. Now.”
“I told you to watch!”
Max yelled at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, he had power and authority in his voice. It sent a shiver of cold down Helen’s spine as she went silent, a tear finally producing in her eye. She turned back to the screen and did as she was told – she watched Max pick up a rock from the ground. She watched him carry it back to the man she’d married. Crying, she stared in horror as he struck her husband over and over and over, reducing his skull to a bloody mess.
All the while, Helen felt Max’s eyes all over her. She felt his leering gaze, and from the corner of her eye, she could easily see what he was doing while he watched all this.
Her husband’s killer was grinning.