Coming Soon to a Mall Near You

Suspense Stories | Aug 7, 2012 | 8 min read
16 Votes, average: 3 out of 5
Suspense Stories

Coming Soon to a Mall Near You

Kelly Marino
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Karen awoke with a start, staring blindly into the space around her. Apprehension settled into her every nerve, and beads of sweat sprang up all over her body. Shivering with fear, she knew she wasn't lying in her comfy 4-poster bed with her husband, where she should have been.

She flexed her abdominal muscles and winced in pain as she tried to rise. Unable to move, she blinked several times before she was able to comprehend that she was in a darkened room. Her ears strained to catch some noise that would give her a clue as to her whereabouts, but the world seemed unnervingly static. The only thing she could hear was the steady, distant hum of what sounded like an air conditioning condenser laboring to cool the interior of a large house on a muggy July day.

Beneath her hands, which were at her sides, she felt a rough, gritty surface that scraped her fingers as she wiggled them. She took a deep breath, and the dank odor of an unfinished basement rushed into her nostrils, causing them to wrinkle with distaste.
As her eyes darted back and forth, a troubling memory skipped through her mind.
"That security guard," she whispered.
He had approached her in the mall parking lot as she was preparing to open her car door.
"Do you need help with anything, Ma'am?"
"No, thanks, I've got it," she had told him politely.
"OK, then. Have a nice evening."
"Thank you."
Thinking nothing of the benign exchange, Karen had turned her back on him and grasped the door handle.

***

George, a long-divorced and recently unemployed telephone lineman, raised a half-empty beer can to his lips and tilted his head back. As the cold, crisp brew ran down his throat, his mind replayed the glorious vision of his eighth successful ‘catch.' And what a catch this one had shaped up to be: she was young, beautiful, and pregnant. He had never targeted pregnant females before, but seeing this middle-heavy woman waddling through the parking lot at the mall had assailed his brain—not to mention his loins—with an unexpected jolt of excruciating attraction.
With massive hands, he crushed his empty beer can, tossed it onto the coffee table, and leaned back on the dingy, threadbare couch, where he had just eaten a greasy sausage and egg biscuit.
"Stupid bitch thought she was so tough," he said to himself, chuckling. "By noon, she'll be nice and ripe."

After his chest launched a window-rattling belch that stunk up half the room, he groaned and used the back of his hand to wipe the trickle of beer running down his stubbly chin.
From his pack of cigarettes, he shook loose a reluctant Camel and captured it with his lips. He withdrew a tattered matchbook from his shirt pocket, plucked one match away from the rest, and dragged the red tip across the sulfur strip. A crackling hiss gave way to a snap of flame that immediately caught the end of the waiting cigarette. With a deep intake of breath, his lungs sucked down a bucketful of smoke, which he then expelled slowly into the air. As white plumes floated from his mouth and filled the living room, his beady eyes followed the swirling clouds as they drifted toward the old-fashioned telephone on a milk crate near the kitchen.
"Oh! There it is!" he said happily, directing his attention toward the TV perched atop a rickety stand on the far side of the messy room.
He grabbed the remote, turned up the volume, and listened intently as the field reporter for the Channel One Early Edition stood in a parking lot, surrounded by curious but dismayed onlookers.

"…and they're on the look-out for her car, which is also missing. There is some speculation that the woman could be the latest victim of the serial killer who has terrorized Staten Island for the past three years. The suspect is tall, with short, blond hair, and has a husky build. The police have no leads, and they're asking for anyone who may have seen anything to please call 9-1-1. Reporting live from the Staten Island Mall, I'm LeeAnne Roberts. Jim, back to you in the studio," she said solemnly.
"9-1-1. They're not gonna help her," George said with a sarcastic chuckle. He stood up abruptly and headed into the bathroom to take a leak.

***

A flare of alarm streaked across the horizon of Karen's memory, illuminating her mind with the terrifying realization that the seemingly nice security guard near her car in the parking lot had struck her on the head the moment she had turned her back on him.
Panic sprang to life and instantly wove a chain of terror around her heart, which pounded frantically in her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
With wide eyes that searched the thinning darkness, she scanned the small room, which gradually began to glow with a ghostly, dark-pink haze that crept through the grimy window above her.

***

George returned to the living room, plopped down on the couch, and pulled a dirty hand across his smooth scalp.
"Yep, that wig and security badge are the deal," he said, congratulating himself on the clever disguise he had consistently used to hide his identity from the police. He had known that the ever-present video cameras overlooking the island's parking lots would be immortalizing his crimes, so he had worn a blond wig to keep the authorities off his trail. For three years, it had worked to con seven gullible women, dozens of dogged investigators, and countless terrified citizens.
In the beginning, he had felt somewhat annoyed at having to transform his appearance, but he understood that it was the only way for him to fulfill his dream of finally dominating women—all of whom he bitterly despised. He had derived immense pleasure from torturing women physically, but his greatest thrill came from inflicting psychological terror on them for a few days beforehand. Nothing in the world stirred him like watching the expressions of panic and fear leaping out of the frightened eyes of his victims. Listening to them beg and plead for mercy was merely the icing on the cake.
He had even given them names to correspond with his chronological acquisition of them: the first victim was Number 1, the second was Number 2, and so on up to Number 7. He would henceforth refer to that stupid bitch in his basement as Number 8.
Since birth, the women in George's life had tormented him, and he had learned to hate every female on the planet with a white-hot passion. His mother, a miserable woman who had chased his father away, had treated him with contempt and derision—until he finally worked up the balls to kill and dismember her.
And his bitchy ex-wife, who had left him before he could kill her, too, had been impossible to please. From the beginning of their marriage 12 years earlier, she'd done her best to turn him into something he was not: a successful and hard-working technology specialist. At her behest, he had attended DeVry University for two long and frustrating years, but had dropped out because of his lack of discipline and drive, and his inability to keep up with the grueling coursework.
Sure, he had learned a great deal about electronics, phone lines, and networking, but his general disinterest and slovenly study habits proved too much of an impediment for him to earn a degree.
"Come on, bitch, pick up that phone and call me," he mumbled, glancing at the phone that continued to sit mute on the milk crate, scorning him with its silence.

***

Ignoring the pain that she knew was waiting to strike, Karen summoned every ounce of will to roll her achy body into a half-sitting position.
"Ah!" she cried, feeling the ligaments on both sides of her giant belly stretching and complaining as she pulled her weight onto her hands and knees. Carefully maintaining her balance, she rose slowly to her feet and fought to steady herself as a head rush enveloped her brain.
She cringed in agony, both physical and mental. Determined to escape the nightmare in which she had found herself, she took a deep breath and rubbed her belly.
"I'm not going to lose you," she said between clenched teeth. "I've come too far."
She and her wonderful husband had tried again and again to bring a baby to the third trimester of pregnancy, but all four attempts had ended in heartbreaking failure—until this time.
Driving home from her obstetrician's office the previous evening, she had decided to stop off at the Baby Boutique at the mall. She fell in love with an adorable blue frame, brought it to the front of the store, and plunked $30.00 down on the counter.
Blissfully happy, she had walked out of the mall and headed for her car, which she had parked in the back of the lot. She had purposely parked it far from the entrance, as her doctor had suggested, so she could get as much exercise as possible.
"There's got to be a way out of here," she said, inching her way cautiously along the wall under the window. She continued to blink her eyes obsessively, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
As the early morning daylight struggled to penetrate the unwashed window, Karen peered at the wall on the other side of the basement, and she saw, bolted to the ceiling, a heavy chain that hung down to the floor. Placing her feet one in front of the other, she moved guardedly toward the chain, breathing in the putrid air as she crept through the narrow confines of her cramped, musty dungeon.
Just then, the clouds parted and released eager rays of sunlight that bathed the basement in a warm blush, enabling Karen to see the chain in clearer detail.
As her eyes focused on a thick leather collar dangling from the bottom link, she gasped in horror. She spun around, pitched her body in the opposite direction, and stumbled over something on the floor. Determined not to fall and injure her unborn baby, she righted herself and grabbed the rusty support column in front of her.
"What the Hell?" She looked down and saw a thick wire that ran the length of the basement floor and curved upward along the side of a small metal desk—-where it was connected to a phone.
"A phone!" she said breathlessly. "God, please let it work…"

***

George stood in his filthy kitchen near the sink, clutching a whetstone in his left hand and a long butcher knife in his right. He pulled the blade enthusiastically across the stone, smiling as a fresh edge of twinkling steel began to emerge.
He had used a smaller knife on victims 1 through 7, but had decided to graduate to this bigger tool in honor of his newest and best catch, his beautiful, pregnant Number 8.
His hands stopped and his gaze strayed to the knives resting in the wooden block on the counter.
"Now, I know you're jealous. Don't take this personally, but you're just not good enough for her," he said.
As he resumed his ghastly task, he heard the phone ringing. He laid both the whetstone and knife on the counter and strolled into the living room.
He stood in front of the milk crate, lifted the receiver to his ear, and said in a pleasant voice, "9-1-1. What is your emergency?"

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Belinda k Aug 8, 2012

Good job on this! Loved, loved the ending.

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