[June 12th, 2022]
It was 5am and I was laying on the mattress in the attic. Noah is probably ending his shift right now. He must be tired by this point, at least I thought so. I waited until around 9am, just in case.
My current plan was to kidnap Gabi and keep her in the bunker for as long as I needed to. First I would undo the brainwashing that Jimmy gave her.
I would start small. On the first week, I would refuse to give her food until she admitted that Jimmy wasn’t perfect. Then the next week, I would only feed her if she could think of something she didn’t like about him.
Next, she would have to give insults. And then, I would read her diary to her and make her say the exact opposite of whatever was written in it. One page at a time.
I would make her tell stories of “good” memories she had with Jimmy, correcting her on details she got wrong or didn’t realize were toxic and abusive. This would go on until she could recite the real version of the story from memory, the one that didn’t dishonestly frame Jimmy as a good person.
Then we would move on to me. We would discuss my intentions and my character, over and over again, until she got it right.
This process could take months. Years even. Still, I was fully committed to undoing every ounce of brainwashing in her head, until she could finally see the truth and accept me for who I really am. Even if I had to destroy and rebuild her identity from the ground up.
The first step though, was getting her there without Noah spotting me. This is why I gave him a separate shift later in the day. He was definitely asleep right now.
I must’ve been laying there thinking about the plan for too long. I heard a strange snapping noise that made me flinch. The wooden beams under my mattress were creaking with more volume than usual.
I looked around, assuming Blake had snuck in while I was thinking. I kept my head on a swivel for the next hour.
Out the attic window, I could see the UPS truck coming down the road. I sat up and tried to get a closer look. It’s that guy again who’s always flirting with Gabi. I wanted to get my revenge on him, but now was definitely not the time. Maybe if I knocked him out and brought Gabi into the truck, I could take both of them to the bunker? I decided against it.
Suddenly, I heard a scream from Gabi’s room. I quickly looked into the peephole in the floor of the attic. She was streaming. Ha, that was a first. She’d never streamed before without me knowing. I guess I just didn’t get the notification.
I sighed and fell back onto the mattress. I might’ve fell back a little too hard, cause I heard more creaking and snapping. I stayed perfectly still. Gabi definitely heard that. I was hoping she would just chalk it up to rats in the ceiling or something, and I could make my escape before she investigated any further.
I slowwwwly began to sit up, and….
The entire mattress, with me on top of it, fell through the floor. I found myself suddenly in Gabi’s room, staring up at a massive hole in the ceiling. Fiberglass, dust, and paint chips were still raining down. Broken off wooden beams pointed toward me like daggers from above.
I looked over at Gabi, still sitting at her desk with the computers on, and everyone in the chat reacting in real-time to what just happened. She didn’t look at me. She just read the chat, while reaching under her desk. I thought she was about to push her chair back so she could get up and run away, but she didn’t.
There was a pause.
I was still wrapping my head around the fact that this was real, and that it definitely happened. Fuck me.
The doorbell rang. Now isn’t the fucking time, package guy!
Gabi slowly turned her head towards me, her hand still under her desk.
“You!”
I knew what she meant when I saw her pull a taser out of nowhere. I was in my full-body latex suit, and nobody could see my face, sure, but she definitely remembered our conversation from yesterday. She was waiting for a chance to attack me herself, so she could find out where Jimmy was.
Time seemed to slow down as she ran across the room, lunging at me with the taser. I nearly jumped outta my pants. Full of adrenaline, I jumped all the way from her bed, onto her desk.
I stumbled over the setup, knocking over monitors, getting tangled in chords. One leg of the desk snapped and the whole thing tilted, throwing me to the ground. A streamdeck fell over and hit me in the head. One of the buttons Gabi set up as a soundbite must’ve been pushed in that moment, cause I shit you not, I actually heard the fish from spongebob yell “My leg!”
I looked over and saw the laptop still open. Everyone in chat was getting a real kick out of the situation, thinking it was an elaborate bit.
As I watched Gabi pick up her entire nightstand in a fit of adrenaline fueled rage and get ready to throw it on top of me, I thought to myself:
“I hope you assholes are enjoying the show…. Fuckers.”
In the next instant my head was sandwiched, getting smashed between the nightstand and the floor. The laptop was destroyed right along with me, ending the stream.
After a breif pause, I realized I was still alive. I tried to get up, but Gabi jumped on top of the nightstand that was still squishing my face into the ground. Now I could barely breath. I heard Gabi on the phone, saying her address. She must’ve been calling the police.
It was now or never. There was a huge hole in her ceiling. She knew who I was. The police were on their way. Blake could hear her calling the police. If Blake was gonna make his move, it absolutely HAD to be here and now. I had to make a move first.
I struggled, lifting the nightstand just enough to where I could get my arm underneath me. I pulled the blowdart out of my back pocket as Gabi yelled at me to stay down.
After a breif struggle, I got my head and an arm out from under the stand, and sent a dart right into Gabi’s shoulder.
She tried to taze me in the eyeball. I had no choice but to grab it with my hand, screaming in pain. Now it was a battle of attrition.
After what felt like an eternity of pain, the taser finally stopped burning the skin off my hand, and fell to the floor. Gabi fell asleep on top of the nightstand, sprawling out to distribute her weight evenly, making it as difficult as possible to get out from under it and continue with the plan.
I sprinted to the closet, grabbing the sleeping bag. I frantically stuffed Gabi into it, zipping it up and closing it tight with a ziptie. This was my one and only shot. I could not risk letting her escape.
Thanks to the adrenaline coursing through my veins and how light she was, it wasn’t difficult to put her over my shoulder and run downstairs.
I thought about those moments as a kid when I would sprint upstairs after turning the light off, imagining what kinda monsters would grab me from behind if I wasn’t fast enough. This was a thousand times worse. I was sure Blake would’ve made his way upstairs after hearing the commotion, and if he saw me from go knows where, carrying Gabi, he would waste no time trying to catch up and steal her from me.
I made it down the stairs safe, but had no time. I ran to the front door and kicked it open from the inside, refusing to lose any momentum.
There was no sign of Blake, but I saw the postman walking back to his truck. He jumped when he heard the door being kicked off the hinges, and looked back to see me in my creepy black spandex suit, who had attacked him just a few days ago, carrying a sleeping bag with suspiciously human-sized cargo.
With my free hand, I put the taser in his face and set it off, making him jump back and run away to the truck.
As I ran across the street, I could see Noah staring down at me through his window. This couldn’t have been going worse. I frantically dug around in my pocket for the keys while I ran across the parking lot. I managed to get my car unlocked just as I got to it, threw myself and Gabi in the back seat, then slammed the door shut.
The postman was in the parking lot now, yelling profanities, drawing in way too much attention. I locked the door right before he got his hand on it and started pulling. He banged his hands on the window.
“Who is that?!”
He yelled. I stupidly looked at the sleeping bag and then back at him, practically admitting to the crime right then and there. I jumped into the front seat, started the car, and slammed the gas.
Postman jumped out of the way as I backed into another car. I saw him run back to his own truck as I drove into the road.
“For the love of fuck, please don’t follow me…”
But he did. I could see in my rear-view mirror that he was on the phone, most likely with the police. I needed to get rid of him somehow before I continued the plan. If I let him find out where the bunker is, it’s all over.
There was a bridge just a minute away from the abandoned neighborhood. I turned on my signal jammer. I could see him looking at his phone in confusion. After I left this bridge, the police wouldn’t know where to look for me.
I stopped my car in the middle of the bridge. I saw nobody else around. This pretty much confirmed that Blake wasn’t following and didn’t know where I was. I was in the clear as long as I could handle this one last obstacle. Just this one guy.
I stepped out of the car, taser in hand. The postman slowly stepped out of his. We silently walked towards each other, watching each other’s every move.
I just needed to win this one fight. Just this one in my life, and everything would be fine. When he was about six feet away, he leaned in towards me, just asking to be tased in the face. Just as I pressed my thumb against the button, I felt a sharp pain in my jaw. In the same instant, I saw him bring his hand back in front of his face.
I didn’t even see his arm extend, but I knew he punched me just then. I stumbled back a bit, dropping the taser. He was about to punch me again, but changed his focus at the last second. He went for the taser, but I kicked it off the bridge.
He didn’t react. He just returned his attention to my face, and shifted his weight around in a constant motion, making it impossible for me to read his next move.
My dad made me take boxing classes as a kid before, but I quickly lost interest and stopped going. I wanted to return to my comfortable room where I could play my video games and never feel physically tired.
I kept my guard up, or at least did the best I could from memory. Every time he went for a punch, I backed up. I saw movement from underneath his truck, but I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off of him. I was forced directly into the present moment, unable to speculate or plan, or get lost in my thoughts.
I had to focus on the threat directly in front of me. I couldn’t afford to be paranoid about the future, or try to plan around that. If I got knocked out here, it would be all over.
I kept backing up until I got to my car. I moved around to the other side, making him chase me in circles. Eventually, he got fed up and jumped on top of the car. In my peripheral vision, I saw the man who emerged from underneath the UPS truck.
It was Noah. He apparently tagged along, and was holding a crowbar. I backed up away from my car. Postman inched towards me again with his guard up. Noah lightly jogged towards us until he was just a few feet behind postman, then began walking with his heels. Slowly, carefully… Not making a sound.
I needed to buy some time. I went for a punch. Postman simply swatted my hand away. It didn’t even seem to register to him that he was attacked. Part of me wanted him to show some surprise, as if he didn’t expect me to fight back, but was “proven wrong”, but he just didn’t care. He simply kept his focus.
Before I could even get offended about it, he punched me on the mouth. Once again, I couldn’t even see the extension of his arm. He went for another punch right after, this time going for power instead of speed. I could actually see the fist in front of my face this time as it hit my eye.
The entire upper half of my body flung backward like I was doing some sorta weird pelvic thrust. I stumbled back in a daze, absent-mindedly holding my arms out in front of me with no particular goal in mind. I just kept moving backwards, and postman calmly walked towards me.
He cracked his knuckles. The anger returned to his face. Now that I was all but incapacitated, he was ready to stop moving in a strictly calculated manor and make it personal. This is where it would’ve shifted from a fight to a beating, but the sound of a loud crack accompanied by the metallic ring of a crowbar made me stop and watch the scene unfolding in front of me.
I saw Noah in the midst of swinging the crowbar in a downward arc, and postman stumbling over to the side of the bridge. Noah towered over him as he laid against the railing, holding his bloodied head in a daze.
“Stay put.”
Said Noah. Postman didn’t respond. He just winced in pain, staring at the ground.
Noah walked with me back to my car, and I did my best to act natural. I couldn’t decide if this situation was ideal or not. I don’t think I would’ve been able to escape on my own just then, but now I had a new obstacle.
Noah, I could probably take in a fight, but he knew too much. He knew where the bunker was, he knew where I lived, he knew all of my aliases online, my phone number, my email address, etc. If I wanted him out of the way, I would have no choice but to kill him. I wasn’t sure if I could bring myself to do that.
“Are you going to the bunker?”
He asked me. I thought for a second. What else could I possibly be doing? Would he believe that I just randomly attacked the postman and ran away? No, I was clearly on my way to the bunker.
“Yes.”
He stared at me for a moment, then looked into the back seat of my car. He looked back at me. I forced myself to hold a straight face. My only chance at staying on his good side now was convincing him that I was doing this for Gabi’s protection. I would be contradicting myself a lot if I said I needed her unconscious because she didn’t believe in the threats I warned her about, but it was the best I could do.
I braced myself for the worst.
“Melvin.”
He said, walking over to me. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“Well done. You finally got ‘em. WE finally got ‘em!”
He was smiling now. I didn’t understand what he was saying, until he said:
“Let’s bring him to the bunker.”
The one-minute drive down there was excruciating. I must’ve produced enough sweat to fill a bathtub. Gabi wouldn’t wake up so soon from horse tranquilizer, I knew that much from experience. But if she made a sound in her sleep, Noah would recognize her voice immediately.
It felt like there was an anvil hanging above my balls by nothing but a string of dental floss. I was one second of bad luck away from this whole operation going south. I already lied about Blake being in the sleeping bag. How could I possibly explain myself, especially to someone as perceptive and wise as Noah, if he were to find out it was actually Gabi?
I stopped the car right outside the field where the burnt down house was, and the hatch was somewhere where the backyard used to be.
“Drive up closer to the hatch so we don’t have to carry him that far.”
I worried that the way the uneven terrain jostled the car around would make Gabi stirr in her sleep and make noise. I couldn’t find a reason to argue against Noah’s idea though, so I drove right up the the hatch, my asshole clenched the entire time.
When I stopped the car, I thought for a moment while Noah stared into my soul from the passenger seat.
“Mind opening the hatch for me?”
I said nonchalantly.
“Sure.”
While he opened it up, I quickly pulled Gabi out by the torso. If I had Noah take the legs, he would hopefully assume the reason this sleeping bag was so light, was because I was taking the brunt of the weight.
We carried her over to the open hatch, and I went down first. After going down the ladder, Noah squatted down from outside, lowering the rest of her body down to me. Gabi was now in the bunker.
The only problem now was Noah, but I’ve come up with two excuses not to open the sleeping bag. One, there was no place to tie her up since Jimmy was already tied to the metal beam. Two, we both hated Blake, so it wouldn’t be weird to suggest we keep him stuck in the sleeping bag so he could wake up and panic from overheating and claustrophobia.
Since this place was a Faraday cage, I could ask Noah to check Gabi’s security system on my phone for me to make sure she’s ok in her home before we continue to monitor “Blake”. He would have to go outside to do it. While he was outside, I would hit him with a blow dart and bring him to his house. By then, it would be past 5pm and his turn to watch Gabi. I would send him messages on discord asking him to check in with me so I could make sure he was watching her.
This was only a temporary solution, sure, and there’s a chance he could remember following the postman, but it was the best plan I had for now.
While carrying her towards the corner of the room, I stopped in my tracks. Noah jumped down into the bunker with me.
“You good?”
He said, before immediately realizing what was wrong. Jimmy should’ve been tied up in the middle of the room, but he was nowhere to be found.