Chapter 2.

“You expect me to eat that?”

“Of course, you can’t waste precious food. Didn’t I teach you that before?”

There was a time in the past I caught her eating a cockroach she’d accidentally stepped on and killed. Based upon a past experience like that, I knew she was dead serious. If she was perfectly fine with godforsaken cockroaches of all things, I had no way to know whether there was anything off-limits for her. 

When she finished skinning the poor rat alive she stuck her hand out in my direction.

“What?”

“Take it and eat it.”

“Raw?! Are you crazy?”

Ah, sorry. That’s right, you’re not crazy, you’re absolutely insane. Calling you crazy would be a compliment rather than an insult after all. Even crazy people would surely think, damn that bitch is crazy when comparing themselves to Adele.

“You can’t call just skinning a rat, cooking. Didn’t you say you were going to cook for me? Shouldn’t you at least season it up and boil it in a pot or roast it in the oven or something?”

That should buy enough time for the cops to show up, so please don’t let me down, Adele. Daddy needs a new lease on life since you’re the crazy type to throw that shit straight out the window. Hell, there isn’t enough life in the world to fill the creases between her teeth let alone my little life. It wouldn’t even be enough to act as an appetizer for this lunatic of an ex-girlfriend.

Thankfully, my words were not in vain and she lowered her gaze seemingly in deep thought when she heard me voice my concerns. Throughout our exchange, I found it very difficult to stop the sweat that accumulated on my forehead from sliding down the side of my cheeks. There was an eerie silence between the two of us and it was so silent that I could actually hear as the beads of sweat dripped down from my chin and splattered on top of my lap.

I somehow doubted the so-called ghost girlfriend would be able to terrify me more than this psychotic woman.

“Well, I suppose if I’m going to make you your last meal, I should make it taste better.”

Last meal? Hurry up, officers! What are you lazy bastards doing? Get your butts over here ASAP! Just a few words from her were enough to cause my heart to thump heavily against my chest and make the inside of my mouth turn dry from nervousness.

“Hmhmmhmmhmmm.”

For some reason, her happy humming as she headed towards the door sounded like the most dreadful horror movie effects imaginable to me. Forget about little children singing creepy nursery rhymes. It was to the point that all the hair on my body stood on ends and it was definitely on a level far above a little creepy ghost girl giggling at the end of a dark hallway.

She walked out the door and closed it behind her before I heard her footsteps head in the direction of the kitchen area. Through the closed door, the sounds of pots and pans being tossed about before they crashed loudly against the ground and walls could be heard outside my room. I could tell she’d certainly made a mess in record time.

It was only when she wasn’t in the room that I realized how erratic my heart raced from the sheer terror of my present situation. Just looking at the skin she’d tossed to the ground after she mutilated the rat left me heaving long drawn out breaths of cold air in and out of my lungs when I tried to calm myself down. Rather than helping me regain my composure, it just sent more shivers down my back. If I made a wrong move, I’d definitely end up like that poor rat.

I got up from my seat and tiptoed my way over to the door. I tried to open it, but I found that the door was wedged and there was no way for me to sneak out without alerting her.

I turned my line of sight towards the window behind my laptop and pried open a gap between the horizontal blinds to keep an eye out for the cop’s arrival. I was on the 20th floor of a high rise apartment complex and there was no way I’d be able to survive a fall like this, so I could only pray the cops reached here before it was too late.

There was a balcony, but it was only accessible through the living room. The window was too far to jump to the balcony and it wasn’t possible to open it anyways. Right now I was in a locked room situation with no escape in sight.

“Hmmhmhmhmmm. Darling, I hope you don’t have any strange ideas. I wouldn’t want to have to slit your ankles so you can’t run away from me again.” 

Of course, those were the terrifying words that came from the mouth of my psychotic ex-girlfriend who I heard happily cooking my last supper behind the door that led to hell.

“Oh, by the way, darling, I took the liberty to remove the battery from your phone before you woke up so we wouldn’t need to worry about the cops coming to ruin our merry little reunion.”

The words of the grim reaper resounded in my ear like a hammer striking a gong. Naturally, I hurriedly pulled out my smartphone and tried to turn it on. To my horror and dismay, I realized I couldn’t. How did she pull it off without waking me up?

With her words echoing in my head like the cry of a savage beast, it was almost as if she’d thrown a bucket of ice-cold water ruthlessly against my face. My naive hope of rescue arriving to save me was completely thwarted and washed right down the drain.

Even though that plan was a failure, I still refused to completely give up. With that plan rotting in the gutter, my brain rapidly moved towards another path towards survival. I sat back down on my chair in front of my laptop and turned it on. Thankfully, she didn’t remove the battery or take the power cord for it. Seeing it boot up so easily, I doubted myself. Would she really just leave me with such a convenient device like this that could be used to contact the outside world to request for help?

I opened up Brave, because I really needed the browser that would pump me full with the most courage; however, the first words that entered my eyes were “this site cannot be reached.”

I looked down and checked the connection status and saw a disgusting red X in the corner indicating there was no connection to the internet.

I stood up and rushed over to the modem and found the power cord was… missing. This can’t be happening… no internet?

“Oh that’s right, I forgot to mention you can use your laptop to enjoy those games you like, but you can only enjoy offline single-player since it wouldn’t be good if someone was rude enough to disrupt our alone time.”

I fell to my knees in crushing defeat and looked up at the ceiling of my room and screamed out, “A laptop without an internet connection is just scrap metal! You! YOU MONSTER!”

How can such a horrifying monster exist? To take away the internet is equivalent to killing me off. How can a person in the modern age live without an internet connection? Damn it, I can’t even use my phone as a hotspot. I knew I should have bought a second smartphone and kept it hidden in case of emergencies!

Wait… a phone?