Searching
by Daniel Beadle - Thursday, August 30, 2007
The knock is more of a thud than a knock. The man opens the door a crack and begins his inquisition. “Who…?” The door is thrown back in his face and he’s knocked to the ground.Stalker enters, looking around furiously. The man lies on the floor, grasping his face in pain. Between grunts, the man swears at Stalker.
Stalker looks at the clippings and pictures of friends on the man’s walls. “Where is she?” he snarls.
“Fuck you!” Stalker grabs a heavy shot glass and hums it at the man’s forehead. He screams on contact. Stalker picks up the room phone and pounds it into the man’s face. He grabs him by his shirt collar and pulls his half-conscious body into the bathroom. He tosses the man against the mirror, splintering it against the back of his head.
Stalker digs in his pocket and produces a small print out of “she.” He holds in 3 inches in front of his face. “Who is she? Tell me.”
The man’s eyes flutter. “I don’t give a fuck. What the fuck—who the fuck are you?” Stalker knocks the man into the bathtub and turns on the showerhead. The man wades through semi-consciousness, as Stalker looks defeated. He turns his face to the mirror, looking disgusted. He produces a scalpel with a size 11 blade and standard handle from his pocket. The man’s eyes go wide. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
From outside the bathroom, the sound of screaming ends abruptly. Stalker stumbles out of the bathroom with a giant gash across his face. Before he exits, he sees a cell phone on the desk. He snatches it, and exits.
* * *
Stalker stands outside of a gas station convenience store. He flips open the cell phone and opens the library. This fucker has a near endless list of numbers, some of the names don’t make sense. Stalker flips through them, focusing on the female names, or what would seem feminine. She’s in there. She has to be.
"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."—Marcus Tullius Cicero
