Seat 7a by Sebastian Fitzek

Author:Sebastian Fitzek [Fitzek, Sebastian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838934545
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

37

Nele

‘Like crapping a bowling ball.’

Such a stupid comparison could only come from a man. It was far too mild.

To Nele it felt more like trying to press a car battery spiked with nails out her vagina.

And yet she didn’t scream. At least not as loud as she wanted. Not any louder than an aeroplane taking off.

Still, her panting wail sufficed to transform the basement corridor where she lay into a droning cathedral. Her reverberating anguish drifted dully down the corridor, swallowed up by the half-light surrounding her. She’d only made it a few metres away, though it was down metal-grate steps descending from one end of the stalls and into darkness. Then she literally collapsed. Another contraction had seized her, ripping her legs out from under her, sending her to the floor.

Once the contraction ended, she thought she’d been blinded for a moment. But then the shadows returned, of a metal drum in the middle of the corridor, and of wooden doors askew, lining the hallway like so many livestock blinders.

A dungeon, she thought. I’ve fled into a dilapidated dungeon.

Down here she could hardly see more than silhouettes. On the other hand, she could hear and smell that much better.

She smelled faeces, urine, her sweat, and the effluvia of her fear. Heard the wall mortar crumble when she tried pulling herself up using a protruding copper rod (maybe once a water pipe?). To keep running, despite all her pain, down the dark and seemingly tiled corridor, on into the darkness stinking of mud and mould. Away from the footsteps behind her. On the stairs.

The footsteps were getting closer, along with that voice turning her despair into naked panic.

‘Nele?’ she heard her kidnapper yell. This lunatic whose real name was apparently Franz, who’d revealed his actual name to her. Because he never dreamed of ever letting her free again.

‘Nele, come back. Please. I can explain it all to you.’

Another contraction kicked in. The third in only a few minutes.

Please, dear God, don’t let it last another hour, Nele prayed. It was clear to her, of course, that her sense of time was turning as hopelessly dire as this situation she found herself in.

Alone, naked, at his mercy.

‘It’s my fault. I’m not mad at you for running away. I should’ve explained things better.’

His voice had a sad tone to it, completely different than in those movies where the serial killer either sounded quite refined or talked in some sing-song crazy voice. Franz on the other hand sounded so… honest. As if he really were sorry about what he was doing. That didn’t mean he wasn’t crazy.

His next question only confirmed it: ‘Do you know what makes humans radically different from the other mammals?’

Killing others for no good reason? Nele wanted to scream at him but was far too busy trying to breathe from her diaphragm.

She’d discovered it was the best way to manage the impact of these bodily tremors that kept erupting inside her every second.

‘We’re the only mammal in the world that still drinks milk as adults,’ she heard Franz in response to his own question.

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