Silence.
That's all she could hear when she awoke. Utter silence. No movement. No sounds. No breathing. Just a haunting, eerie, frightening silence.
'Where am I?' she wondered, as she looked around. She was able to make out a window, the outline of a lamp on a side table, and a mirror, but that's it. The darkness was still and black as can be, her eyes then finally adjusting. She tried to move, but she couldn't, glancing upwards to see duct tape on both her wrists around a headboard.
'Oh come on,' she thought, pulling. It was no use at the moment. The mattress was firm underneath her and then reality set in: she was trapped, in some unknown room, with some unknown assailant, somewhere where it would probably take hours before help would come.
Where were the boys?
They had been chasing a demon, who had the habit of making people disappear in the moment of desperation. The demon was cornered; they had it. Then the next thing she knows, the boys are gone, and she's fighting and running for her life. This demon had taken hold of a young man, who was known for being lustful and abusive to women. Her mild knowledge of demon possession in this case: it fueled the dark desires, the inner demon, of the young man and he was enjoying every moment of her panicked state. Her problem right now was that she had no weapons to use to stop him. No gun. No holy water. No salt. No knife. Just her body and her profiling skills.
That was the scary part: dark desires and inner demons. Every human has them, whether they care to admit it or not. When not surfaced, those desires are buried deep within the heart and mind, knowing all of it was just some sort of fantasy that would never come true, a constant battle to keep it under control. As chance would have it, she somehow was the dark desire of this young man, but why? They had never crossed paths. From what she could tell by his rage earlier, he was let down by someone in his life, someone close to him. A girlfriend? Classmate? Teacher? Only time would tell.
The door opened and he stepped in, his eyes glowing this evil red that made her blood run cold. He shut the door and stopped next to the bed, his grin making her anger boil. He was enjoying this too much. Why did people always enjoy other's pain? Was it to make them feel it? Was it to make their intended victim feel like they had no one in the world to help them? The same two words came back to her: dark desires. She only hoped by talking to him that those two words wouldn't be the seal to her fate.
"Stop looking at me like that," she said.
"Why? Does it make you uncomfortable?" he asked
"Yes," she replied. When he grinned in this creepy way, she went off on a tangent.
"What happened? A girlfriend broke up with you? A classmate wouldn't go out with you? A teacher underestimates you? Tell me if I'm wrong."
His hand went around her throat. She smiled in confirmation. She hit a nerve somewhere. The whole point to her profiling him: she had to by herself time, enough that maybe the boys could find her. She grinned, his hand still barely squeezing her throat. This was almost like some crooked version of 'Law and Order' or any other crime/horror show she watched. How cliche. He let go and walked away.
"His classmates didn't bother him and his teachers were the last thing on his mind. His girlfriend though," the demon chuckled, "she was a totally different story. A real piece of work, I might add." He came back to her and looked her in the eye. "She had no idea how to handle him."
"So he killed her out of what? Revenge? Jealousy? Attitude?" She couldn't believe this. It was like some weird chick-flick on TV that went terribly wrong, plus adding in the demon-possession creepiness factor. The demon grinned in satisfaction.
"And we have winner. She didn't like the fact he was a ladies man. She dropped him, clear as day."
"And let me guess, he didn't like how this break-up went down," she completed and he nodded.
"Right again. But," he came closer to her face. She didn't like where this was headed. "That's where I came in. The temptation was too great and he took me in like an old friend. And together, we ended this ourselves. She had no chance against me." He knew she was going to ask, but even though she didn't want to know, he was going to tell her anyway. "You? You were his type. Young, smart, and beautiful....and too good for him," he says, squeezing her throat suddenly.
She couldn't breathe. The red eyes looked back at her in amusement. Now, she remembered how they had fought before he abruptly knocked her out and got her here. That's why her body was coated in bruises and ached.Tears spilled and fear flooded her.
"Dark desires have a way of overtaking us, sort of like me, the inner demon. They sit there in us, waiting to be revealed, waiting to be set free. It is only when we give into temptation and evil like me does it keep coming back for more."
She is about to lose consciousness when a gunshot rings out and the demon is no more. He had disappeared in a cloud of black smoke and all it was now was an empty corpse, but the nightmare was over. The two boys came into the room, one of them grabbing the body, and the other unbinding her. She sighed in relief, being able to breathe normally again, despite the amount of pain she was in.
"How did you find me?" she asks, as they head outside to the woods. Figures. A cabin in the woods. Another cliche ending to another day. They dig up a hole and toss the body in, lighting a match and letting it go.
"Sheriff said this place wasn't on the radar until a few weeks ago, right when the killings started," the older boy replied. "The girls all had a connection to him and the splinters in their feet post-mortem matched the type of wood the cabin was built with." She sighed, but didn't say a word.
"You okay?" one of them asks. She nods, even though she was far from it right now.
"Yeah. I'll be fine after a while." She watched the flames dance upward toward the dark night sky and disappear. She couldn't stop thinking about what the demon said, about those dark desires. The scary part of it all is that she knew he was right. Dark desires are in us, like inner demons we battle everyday, and it's only a matter of time before it surfaced. Not to this extent, but maybe in a different way. Dark desires have a way of showing themselves differently and maybe, just maybe, she had conquered hers this day. After all, they are dark desires. What else could there be?
