Posted at 10:02 am on Sep 18, 2007 by:
Red Spyder
“Slaugh-ter-house: an establishment where animals are butchered.” Hmmm…what about humans?
A warm wind swept through the night air, the sky nearly cloudless, allowing people to easily see the stars and full moon, especially on the outskirts of the city where the amount of smog was much lower. Of course, there weren’t very many people out there at night, or during the hot summer days for that matter. Buildings and such were scarce. There were just farms, occasional gas stations and truck stops, long since abandoned factories, and a slaughterhouse, which was abandoned as well.
The final days of the summer season were rapidly approaching and it would soon become fall. Leaves would begin changing colors and part ways with the trees they hung from throughout spring and summer, floating to the ground for people to rake up and leaving behind bare tree branches, some of which might break off over the course of fall and winter and end up on the ground as well where a child might pick it up to play with. Grass would turn brown and die and the daily temperatures would start getting cooler, providing relief from the soaring temperatures of the summer that went over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit on some days.
For Red Spyder though, the time of the year didn’t matter when it came to killing. Spring, summer, fall, winter, it was all the same to him. It wasn’t like people died any differently if they were murdered in the coldness of winter as opposed to the hotness of summer. They still ran. They still screamed. They still bled. Besides, if there was a difference, he might end up having a favorite, more preferable season to kill in and then he probably wouldn’t kill all year round like he did now, just during that particular season and that didn’t sound very good to him. Not good at all.
An eighteen-wheeler sped past the slaughterhouse on the old two-lane road, its headlights momentarily shining across the main building and gleaming off of the chain link fence topped with barbed wire that surrounded it. Just several seconds later, there was a flash of light and an orb of electricity formed in the middle of the empty parking lot in front of the slaughterhouse that got bigger until Red showed up with the body of an unconscious woman slung over one of his shoulders, the electricity disappeared with a crackle just as quickly as it had appeared. For most people, it would’ve been difficult to get past the fence, but for someone with the ability to teleport, it was a simple task. While there was a gate, it was kept shut by a thick chain and a large padlock.
He laid the woman’s body down on the aged parking lot that was covered with pebbles, fading oil stains, and broken glass and proceeded to look up at the building that stood before him where in the past, many cows and pigs had been killed and their meat was processed to be sold in supermarkets across the country for people to buy, cook, and eat. Red was making himself hungry thinking about all of the steaks, ground beef, pork chops, and bacon that must’ve come from the slaughterhouse over the years. About three years ago though, the slaughterhouse had closed. He didn’t know why it had shutdown and he didn’t really care either because it was all his for now.
In the basement of the slaughterhouse, where there was at least a mile of hallways connecting many different rooms, three rotting corpses were located; three people that Red had tortured to death. And the woman that he had brought with him tonight would soon be joining them. In a minute or two, he would take her down there to one of the rooms, chain her up, and wait for her to awaken. Then, he would dissect her until she was dead. Her organs would be strewn around whatever room he ended up choosing and her blood would be sprayed and splashed along the floor, walls, and ceiling, painting over the concrete, tile, and dried spots of animal blood.
The wind blew again. Red could hear it rustling through the leaves of the trees that lined the edges of the road and surrounded the entire compound that made up the slaughterhouse. The trees were thick, stretching across the land for acres. The area was very underdeveloped. He could remember something from a few years about plans to widen the road from two-lanes to four. Apparently though, somewhere down the line, those plans got canceled and the area was once again nearly completely forgotten about. Another vehicle drove past the slaughterhouse on that road, headed towards the city. Red didn’t have to turn around to know that it was just a car and doubted that the driver and any other occupants of the car, if there had been any, saw him standing there in the moonlight of the summer night.
There wasn’t much light to see by out there at night anyway. The main sources of light came from the moon, the amount from it depending on how cloudy it was, and the headlights of passing vehicles. No light posts were installed on the sides of road like they were for most of the streets that ran throughout the city and the slaughterhouse’s connection to power had been severed right after it was closed, although Red had managed to set up a portable generator in the basement when he first took over the slaughterhouse for himself so that he could have the lights on down there when he wanted them and that wasn’t often. He had then strewn several thick cables throughout the basement’s twisting passages, one end of the cables attached to the generator and the other ends attached to various sources that were connected to the lighting system of the basement. It had been a slightly complicated procedure and had taken him several tries before he got everything correctly placed.
Red glanced down at the woman’s body and saw that she was beginning to stir. She was a brunette, about twenty-four or twenty-five years old, and he found her somewhat attractive. But how attractive she was didn’t really matter to him. He’d chosen her based on how easy of a target she was, not her looks. She would no longer be attractive to anyone soon anyway once he was done with her. He figured that she was a college student since he’d seen her only a few blocks away from the campus of the city’s university in front of a restaurant and she’d had a textbook for some class with her. He’d waited until she was away from the restaurant and other people though before he made his move. Walking down the sidewalk away from the restaurant, she’d turned down it onto a street that was a part of a neighborhood, unaware of the man following her. He guessed that she either lived in one of the houses or she was going to visit someone. Before she could get too far, he had crept behind her and applied a choke hold until she passed out from the lack of the oxygen, the textbook slipping from her hands, bouncing off of the curb and going into the gutter. He had then scooped up her body and teleported away to the slaughterhouse before anyone spotted him, if they hadn’t already.
And now here they were, him standing over her in the parking lot of the slaughterhouse, ready to treat her like one of the many animals that had been through there in its years of operation. Red could already envision his many blades cutting through her clothes and into her flesh, spilling her blood out of her body until there was no blood left to spill. He would make her final minutes of life her most horrific. She would experience more pain than she ever thought was possible to even be caused. If her corpse was ever discovered, many tests would have to be done to positively identify her because what they would find would be the rotting, mutilated shell of what was once an attractive young woman who had been working on getting a degree in medicine when her life was suddenly and tragically stolen from her by a psychopath who had killed many times before and would undoubtedly kill again.
This was going to be a lot of fun. It would be for him anyway. Reaching down, he picked her up and slung her over one of his shoulders, the arm loosely wrapped around both of her legs to help hold her in place, her head and arms dangling down towards the ground behind him as he walked towards the nearest entrance of the slaughterhouse’s main building. The moving around was actually causing the woman to wake up more though and her being fully awake wasn’t something that Red wanted to occur just yet. Her eyes slowly opened and it took her mind a moment to catch up with the rest of her.
Her name was Katie and she was currently upside-down…no, that wasn’t right. Only her upper body was upside-down. She was being carried on the right shoulder of a large man who she was pretty sure that she didn’t know at all. Tilting her head up a little bit, she managed to see some of her surroundings. She didn’t recognize them either. She was trying to recall what she had last been doing, but she could only remember walking from her school to her boyfriend’s house. But after that, nothing was coming to her. She didn’t even know if she’d ever arrived at her boyfriend’s home. Other than a pounding headache, which she wasn’t sure if was from whatever had happened to her before now or just the fact that she was partially upside-down and at least some of her blood was rushing to her head, she seemed to be okay physically.
Deep inside of her somewhere, she had a bad feeling about the current situation. She didn’t know what had happened to her exactly before now, she didn’t know where she was, and she didn’t know who the man was that was carrying her over his shoulder as he walked towards, as far as she could tell, some type of building. She felt that she needed to try and escape before something happened to her. What if the guy was just trying to help her though? Maybe he’d found her unconscious on the side of a road and he was taking her somewhere safe until an ambulance could get there. She didn’t think that was the case though. Something about him didn’t seem right. She thought that it could just be how he was carrying her, but the bloodstains that she was seeing on the tail of his trench coat had her convinced that this man had no good intentions with her. She needed to get away from him and that place, wherever it was, now.
Not really having any other ideas on how to go about making her escape, she proceeded to grab at the bloodstained tail of the Red’s trench coat and began pulling herself forwards and downwards. This action caught him by surprise, but he quickly managed to tighten his hold on her legs, keeping her from moving off of his shoulder any further, at least for the moment. She let go of his trench coat and discovered that her fingertips were only a couple inches away from the ground. She started to attempt to kick her legs out of his grasp so that she could get completely free. Getting one leg loose, she ended up inadvertently striking him in his right temple with the heel of her shoe, causing him to immediately release her other leg and allow her to fall the rest of the way to the ground as he stumbled sideways, moving his hands up to the his head to hold it in pain.
Katie scraped the palms of her hands and her knees when she hit the ground, a light amount of blood appearing on the affected areas, but she stood back up, trying to ignore the stinging pain that had her eyes tearing up. As if she suddenly remembered the man being there and the potential lethality of him, she quickly spun around and was relieved to find that he was still distracted by the pain from the kick that she’d managed to give him. She needed to start running before he could turn his attention back to her, but where could she go? As she turned her head to scan surrounding area, all she could see was the chain link fence surrounding the property with no visible opening of any kind in it. She supposed that she could try and crawl under it. That would require her to dig underneath the fence some first and besides all of the ground under it seeming to be pavement, she had nothing to dig with except for her own two hands. And there was no chance at all of her trying to climb over the fence. Not with the barbed wire that was all along the top of it.
She turned back around to look at the building. Maybe she could go into there and find another way to exit. It was a large building though and she was beginning to wonder if she’d end up getting lost in there instead. If the man came in after her, which he most likely would, he would probably be able to navigate it better than her and if he found her, she didn’t think that she would be able to fight him off. He was very tall and certainly weighed a lot more than her. If she could find a weapon, she might have a chance in a fight with him. She thought that it was a very slim chance though. He looked very dangerous and she had no doubt that he would be able to handle himself well in a fight, especially against a woman who was much smaller in body size compared to him.
Hearing him grunt as he regained some of his composure, still holding his head, her mind was made up. She would enter the building, whatever it was, and try to make it out alive. No, she wouldn’t try. She would escape from this monster of a man and she would find some help. Then, her life could resume its normalcy. She’d think it was some kind of nightmare, but she was sure that the pain she was feeling on her hands and knees was real. This sick man had kidnapped her and he had plans to harm her. And she now had plans of her own to get away from him as fast as possible. She still hoped that she would awaken at any moment though and realize that it was all just a very bad dream.
Pushing those thoughts of the scenario just being a nightmare out of her mind for the time being, Katie began running towards the building, bits of gravel crunching underneath her shoes. As she got closer and closer to the double steel doors directly in front of her, less than ten feet away from them, Red straightened his body up behind her and slowly slid his hands away from his head, a grin now across his face, not of pain, but of enjoyment. The lucky kick to his temple that the woman had managed to get in had hurt, but nowhere near as badly as he had played it off. This was exactly what he had secretly wanted from the beginning: a chase. And you couldn’t have a good chase without one person running away from another. He hadn’t really known how he could set up a chase like this before, other than the chases he normally had in the city, but those were losing there fun. This was perfect though, even if it had been set up just by chance. He just stood there, watching and waiting while she continued running, less than five feet away from the doors now. He would go after her once she was inside where she would think she was a little safer. She would be under a false sense of security and even though it would only be slight, it would be enough to cause her to make the mistakes that would eventually lead to her demise. She didn’t look back at him as she ran, but at this point, he wouldn’t have cared if she did.
When she reached the double doors, she hoped that they were unlocked. She knew that she’d have no chance of getting away if they weren’t. They were and for two large steel doors, they felt surprisingly light as she yanked them open. Maybe that was just because of the adrenaline currently flowing through her body though. She ran into the waiting darkness of the building, barely able to see in front of her, and she heard the man begin to laugh, an evil tone in it as it echoed throughout the night. She finally turned around to look at him as the two doors started to close on their own behind her and she saw him standing in almost the same spot that she’d left him in, his staring, glowing red eyes seeming to pierce through her body. The doors continued coming together, the beam of light from the outside getting thinner until it was completely gone when the doors finishing closing, making that part of the building, some kind of hallway, darker and she turned back around, beginning to run again.
Katie dodged around different objects that she could see the outlines of, some of which were propped up against the walls and others were scattered around on the floor. From what she saw by the light provided before the doors had re-closed, the floor and walls were made of concrete and dirty. The walls were high with windows lining the top, panes of glass broken out in some places. Most of the objects had appeared to just be junk: old rusty pipes, pieces of ventilation, and discarded machinery parts among other random stuff.
To her right, she could see a door. She stopped running for just a moment and reached out to it. Her hand brushed against it and she could feel that it was wooden. She moved her hand around until she found the door knob and she grabbed it, twisting it to try and open the door, having no idea what lay on the other side. It was just an office with one other door on the inside leading to another part of the building, but that didn’t matter to her because she found that that door was locked. The other one wasn’t, not that she would know that, but she didn’t really have the time to try and break this door down. By the time she managed to get through it, the man would be caught up with her, ready to do whatever he had in his mind to do to her. Speaking of the man, she couldn’t hear him laughing anymore. That was probably a bad sign.
She continued running, passing more objects, and took a turn at the end of the hall. Running only a couple more feet, she found herself at another set of double doors, also steel, but they appeared to be thinner than the previous doors and they also had one round window on each door, one of the windows cracked down the middle. There were no handles so she pushed on the doors and they opened into the next room. She stepped into it and let go of the doors, allowing them to swing close behind her. She was now in some kind of factory area. Maybe a processing room, she wasn’t completely sure. There was slightly more light in it than there had been in the hallway, the moonlight shining in through the rooms many large windows. The floor was tile here and the walls were concrete, much higher than the walls in the hallway she had just come from. There were different types of machines laid out around the room with conveyor belts connecting some of them. The machines appeared to still be functional for the most part, but she supposed that there could be parts missing on the insides of them that she wouldn’t know anything about. And hanging from metal arms in various parts of the room were what appeared to be, at least to her, meat hooks. Was she in a…slaughterhouse?
She guessed that it didn’t really matter what type of building it was because she still needed to find a way to escape from it. It was obviously abandoned anyway or else that man, whoever had kidnapped her and was now mostly likely chasing her, wouldn’t have brought her here. She started moving through the room, working her way around the various machines, looking for any other doors in the room that she could possibly go through and maybe even exit the building through. She didn’t get far before there was a loud bang that caused her to jump, but she quickly resumed her search for another door.
Meanwhile, Red stopped laughing and began walking across the slaughterhouse’s parking lot towards the double steel doors that the woman had just gone through a few seconds ago. He was in no hurry. She wouldn’t be able to succeed to escaping from him and the death he would inevitably give her. He knew nearly every inch of building of the slaughterhouse that she had run into. He knew which doors were locked and which ones were unlocked. He knew where she might be able to climb out of a window to escape and where she might end up injuring herself attempting to make an escape. He’d created barricades and such in places that he thought needed them for occasions like this. In fact, if she did manage to escape from him in there relatively unscathed, he would probably congratulate her for it, not that she would be so eager to accept his congratulations or anything else that he might want to give her after this.
He didn’t have any of his weapons with him tonight, not even his Bowie knife, what was probably his most concealable weapon. He hadn’t planned on needing them. He had planned on using the tools he liked to torture people with instead. That was okay though. There were plenty potential weapons lying around the building, just waiting to be picked up and used. If the woman was smart enough, she would arm herself with one and try to defend herself against him with it when he finally did find her inside. Not that it would do her much good. It would be like when she was kicking her legs to get out of the grip he had on them with his arm. She might get a lucky shot in, but the damage and pain would barely faze him, if at all, and then he would cause her some of the most intense pain she had ever felt in her life before finishing her off.
Red reached the double steel doors and he paused for a moment, wanting to give the woman a decent head start, before he pulled the doors open so hard that they clattered against the metal siding of the building around the doorway. He went inside and continued casually walking, the doors shutting behind him, not expecting to see her again for at least a few more minutes. He was actually a little excited. It was like a child waiting to open presents on Christmas day and murdering her would be his present; his screaming, bloody present. This seemed like one of his most creative murders in a while too. These days, normally it was just locate a victim, stalk them for several blocks until they noticed him, chase them, and kill them. And while he enjoyed chasing his victims, like everything else, a change in location sometimes made it fresher and better. Maybe he would go to a bar and have several beers after this to celebrate, although he often went to a bar after he killed anyways, just for the hell of it.
Turning the corner, he walked a few more paces before he reached the next set of doors, which he pushed open before entering the main room of the building. Ahead of him was the maze of machinery, left behind by the slaughterhouse’s workers when they had lost their jobs because of it being closed down. And already inside of that maze was the woman, trying to make her way through it. Red wasn’t sure where she was headed to exactly and he was pretty sure that she didn’t know either. She just knew that she wanted, needed, to get away from him as quickly as she could. She didn’t realize how close he was to catching up with her or that he could easily make his attack at any given moment. He was just toying with her now, letting her think that she actually had a chance of escaping from him. Once he got bored with that, then he would move in and attack. He would make her bleed. He would make her scream in pain. He would kill her. He began walking around the machines, eyeing various potential weapons that he could use on her when it became the time for that.
Katie tripped and nearly fell over a piece of steel beam. She regained her balance and looked up, trying to see if it had fallen from the ceiling. She couldn’t tell though. It was too dark up there to see much at all. Maybe it had fallen from there or maybe it had just come from somewhere else. It had indeed fallen from the ceiling though, due to the concrete and other supports weakening from lack of care. That had happened just about three weeks ago actually. Red hadn’t been there when it happened. He wasn’t even aware of it. He hadn’t been to slaughterhouse at all in a couple months.
She carefully climbed over a conveyor belt, not able to see a way around it, at least not an easy way. She landed on the floor on the other side of it and was about to begin running again when she thought she heard footsteps other than her own somewhere behind her. She quickly spun around, expecting the man to be right behind her, ready to do whatever sick thoughts he’d created in his head, but he wasn’t there. She didn’t see him anywhere. Was he hiding? Or had he not even followed her into the building? She had thought that he would chase her. Maybe he hadn’t though. Maybe he went away completely. For some reason though, she doubted that he’d given up on her that easily. He was probably waiting around a corner for her, ready to grab her and take her back into his possession. But she didn’t want to think like that. She needed to think positively. She would manage to escape from this lunatic and then she would go to the police for help.
After moving on a little more, she came to another wooden door. She didn’t have to reach out to feel this one to know that. Moonlight shined through a completely shattered window, illuminating the door like a spotlight might do. It was the other door for the office she had tried to enter just a few minutes ago, not that she would know that, of course. She hoped that it wasn’t locked too because she hadn’t seen any other doors in this part of the building until now. She grabbed the handle and turned it, letting out a sigh of relief when it moved. Opening the door, she found herself looking at a room that was nearly pitch-black, like the hallway had been. Having a quick look around behind her to make sure that the man still wasn’t there or anywhere else nearby, she started to enter the room.
Red had kept his eyes on the woman as he moved around the different machinery, not worried about catching up with her just yet. He did have to quickly step into hiding behind a giant rusty machine though at one point when she suddenly turned around, no doubt looking for him. He guessed that he wouldn’t have cared much if she had seen him there. He would just prefer that she didn’t really know where he was until he was in a closer proximity of her. When she found the other office door, he got ready to make his move. Picking up a meat hook that was lying on the floor almost directly in front of his feet, he stealthily made his own way to the door, hiding behind another machine when she turned around again. He didn’t think that she even suspected that he might be there that time. He was pretty sure that she looked just as a precaution. Too bad no precautions could save her from him.
As Katie entered the doorway, Red came out from his hiding place and rushed at her, the meat hook raised slightly up in a position to be easily swung. His right hand was wrapped around the handle of it. She heard his footsteps pounding across the concrete floor and started to turn around to look, an expression of shock and fright across her face. Before she could get completely around though, he had reached her, his strength combined with his long legs allowing him to move very fast.
He swung the meat hook downwards as she tried to get inside of the room, as if that would be any safer of a place for her to be while he was attacking her. In fact, that was more dangerous of a place to be than out of the openness of the processing room of the building. Inside of the office, it was small and cramped, she wouldn’t have much room to run from and dodge him in there. The sharp pointed end of the meat hook dug in her upper arm, easily tearing through the sleeve of her t-shirt and piercing her flesh, ripping a small chunk of it right out of her arm, leaving behind a hole with blood dripping out of it, running down her arm and staining what was left of the shirt sleeve. She let out a scream of pain and both of them watched as the piece of flesh slipped off of the meat hook and landed on the concrete floor with a wet smacking sound too quiet for either one of them to hear, especially over her screaming, splattering blood across the floor, adding to the blood that was already there that had dripped from her arm.
She pushed at him with both of her arms pressed against his chest, trying to get him away from her, but he didn’t move from his spot at all. Running into the room, she slammed the door shut and quickly locked it. He hadn’t tried to block the door from closing and he wasn’t going to try to break it down. She was basically trapped in there. The other door’s lock was jammed. He’d tried to get it open when he first started using the slaughterhouse, but it wouldn’t budge. And if he hadn’t been able to get it open, he seriously doubted that she would be able to. He figured that she was probably too scared of him to try exiting through the same door she went into the office through. So that left only one way for her to go: up. The room had apparently been under construction when the slaughterhouse was closed. When Red had found it, the room’s ceiling was missing and there was scaffolding set up inside, which reached right up through the ceiling to some kind of opening above the ceiling that was normally hidden by the ceiling tiles. He figured that the opening was just there for maintenance access or something, but it was on the second floor of building.
Taking a couple steps back from the door, still holding onto the meat hook with blood slowly dripping off of the tip of it, he raised it and swung again, this time aiming for the door. The meat hook hit almost the exact center of the door, splintering through the wood and penetrating to the other side, the end of the hook sticking out into the office. He heard the woman scream again and he laughed. He could imagine how she was in the room. She was probably in one corner, as far away from the door as possible, shaking with fear and holding onto her arm in pain, wondering what the hell made the man want to hurt her so badly. Continuing to laugh, he turned around and walked away from the door, preparing to make his way up to the second floor to meet her there.
His thoughts of what she looked like inside of the room weren’t far off, except that she wasn’t in a corner. She had her back against the wall across from the door, staring at the faint outline of the end of the meat hook that had made its way through the wooden door, still coated with her blood. His laugh had faded, as if he had walked away, but there was no way she could be sure of that and she didn’t want to open the door to find out, only to discover him waiting somewhere out there to attack her again.
It was very dark inside of the room now with the door closed, darker than it had been in the hallway. Katie had managed to see a few details of the room before pretty much all of the light had disappeared from the room when she shut the door on the man though, such as the dark blue carpet, the other door that was now to her left, the scaffolding that was set up against one wall that was now to her right, an empty, cheaply made metal bookshelf that had been knocked over onto the floor, and an old, heavy wooden desk that had been left behind, like a lot a of other things in the slaughterhouse. The bookshelf was close to the door she had entered the room through. She had had to step around it when she ran into the room from the man. And the desk was situated at the base of the scaffolding.
She had a hand on the wound caused by the meat hook. She could feel the hole in her arm where the meat hook had removed the chunk of flesh from it. It was deep and still bleeding, the warm liquid running between her fingers. Even the slightest movement of the arm caused her more pain. She needed to wrap something around the injury to prevent it from bleeding anymore. That could wait though. She was a little more concerned with leaving the room at the moment. If the man managed to get inside of there while she was still there, he would most certainly make her bleed more if he had his way.
Carefully, she moved through the darkness towards the other wooden door, reaching out for it. She didn’t realize that it was the same door she had tried to open in the hallway only a few minutes ago. Her hand bumped into the door and she blindly felt around for the doorknob. The back of her fingers brushed against it and she instantly turned her hand over, wrapping it around the handle. Turning it, or attempting to anyway, she found that it was locked. Letting out a sigh of disappointment, she dropped her hand away from the handle. Now how was she going to get out of that room? She figured that the man would find a way inside eventually, probably by breaking through one of the doors. After all, he had easily managed to put the meat hook through the door she entered the room through.
Glancing up at the top of the room, she saw the small square of light where the maintenance access hatch was. She didn’t know what it was or where it led to, but that didn’t really matter at the moment. There was light coming from somewhere up there and that had to mean that it led to somewhere outside of the room. Almost anywhere would be better than being trapped in the room. Now she just had to find a way up there. What if the man knew about it too though? He would probably know how to get up there and then he could attack her again. But going up there seemed like a better idea than going back out of the room through the door she entered it from.
She thought about the scaffolding that was also in the room. If she could manage to feel her way over to it, maybe she could climb up it to the top of the room. She started to walk again, going slowly with both of her hands out in front of her, hoping that she didn’t trip over something she hadn’t seen when there was light in the room and fall. It would be a little hard to get back in the darkness of a room she wasn’t even very familiar with. Lucky for her, she didn’t trip or have any other problems and she soon found her hands grasping a steel pole that was a part of the scaffolding. She needed to find a way to climb up it in the dark. She thought that it was about a thirty foot climb. Her hands and feet would have to be eyes during this. At least the top of the scaffolding was right underneath the maintenance access hatch was and she supposed that she wouldn’t have to rely on her hands and feet quite as much up there since there was some light coming through the hatch from wherever the hatch led to.
She had to get up on the first platform of the scaffold. She didn’t think that she would be able to pull herself up onto it, especially with her injured arm. It was almost above her head. She knew that it would be easier after she was up onto the first one because she had seen ramps leading up to the next level of platforms after the first, but not between the first platform and the floor. If there was a ladder on one side of the scaffolding, she didn’t know where it was located. She had to make it up there though. She refused to be such an easy target for the man. But if she didn’t hurry up, he would probably break in through one of the doors before she could even begin climbing.
She took a few steps to the right and bumped into something with her leg: it was the desk. She started to move around it, keeping her hands on top of it to help prevent herself from falling when she suddenly got an idea. If she got on top of the desk, she could use it to help reach the first platform of the scaffolding. She carefully climbed onto the desk and stood straight up on it. Walking across the desk, hoping she didn’t accidentally step off of it and tumble onto the floor, she grabbed the edge of the first platform. Now she would have an easier time getting onto it. She began dragging her body up onto the boards that made up the platform, similar to all of the others on the scaffolding, clinching her teeth in response to the pain that was shooting through her injured arm. When she was almost completely on it, she finished getting on by rolling the rest of the way onto it, stopping on her back on the middle of the platform and just laid there for a moment, glad that she would be able to mostly walk the rest of the way up.
After a couple minutes, she stood back up and began making her way across the platform, towards the ramp that led up to the second platform. Reaching the ramp, she went up it and walked to the ramp there. She would have to repeat this process on each platform, but it would only take five minutes or so at the most and it was a lot better than having to climb up a long ladder. She stepped around various tools as she moved along each platform, hoping that there were no rotten places in the boards that would collapse from her weight when she walked over them or that she misjudged a step and ended up falling right off of the scaffold to the floor below. She thought about taking one of the tools and trying to break through the other locked door with it. The noise would probably attract the man’s unwanted attention though. She steadily got higher and higher up in the room, reaching the halfway point a lot quicker than she had expected.
Back in the main room of the building, Red had started walking past more of the machinery, headed for another door that the woman would have eventually found if she had gone farther than the office. He was having fun doing this with her. It was almost a shame that the fun would end soon. He knew that he risked the chance of her not climbing up the scaffolding and instead going back out of the door she entered the office through when she thought that he was gone. She might have a good shot at actually getting away from him then, but for some reason, he had a feeling that things were going his way at the moment and he wouldn’t have to stalk her around the building for much longer. Reaching the door, which was already open and led into a stairwell, he went into it and began going up to the second floor. They also went down into the slaughterhouse’s basement. He considered having a quick smoke as he went up the steps, but he decided against it, knowing that he only had a couple cigarettes left at the moment and he would want some after killing her.
About a minute later, he reached the top of the stairs and walked out of the area that made up the second floor of the building, which was much smaller compared to the first floor of the building. One side of it overlooked the processing room of the first floor and there were a couple more offices up there as well, but that was about it, aside from that maintenance access hatch of course. He walked towards the hatch. It was placed in the middle of the floor with wooden crates and metal barrels surrounding it, most of which were empty. The cover for the hatch was already off of it, sitting on the floor next to the hole, but he knew that the woman hadn’t moved it. It had been off when he found the slaughterhouse and he had never bothered to replace it. He was pretty sure that she hadn’t managed to get out of the office yet anyway. She had to be close to making her way out though. Seeing a steel pole lying on the floor, he paused for moment to crouch down and pick it up, intending on using it as a weapon. Standing back up, he continued on his way to the maintenance access hatch, stopping a few feet away from it to wait for her to emerge. He could hear her now, moving around on the scaffolding, her shoes clacking against the boards that made up the scaffold’s platforms.
Katie was almost to the top of the scaffolding. She just had three more platforms to go. Her body was soaked with sweat now. It was very hot inside of the room and there was virtually no air circulating through it, especially with only one fairly small opening at the very top of the room. She had almost fallen off of the scaffolding, as she had so much feared happening from the beginning, when she stumbled over an empty tool box that she had been unable to see in the darkness. But luckily, she had managed to grab onto a part of the scaffolding, keeping herself from tumbling off of it all the way back to the floor. If she had fallen and gotten seriously injured, the man would have no trouble killing her then. It didn’t happen though and she was confident that she would make it out of the situation alive.
Reaching the top platform of the scaffolding, she carefully edged towards the maintenance access hatch. She didn’t know what was up there outside of the hole, but she had no other choice really except to go out there. As she got closer to the hole, she saw a claw hammer near her on the platform, the light coming from area on the other side of the hole making it visible for her. She picked it up, thinking it was better than no weapon if she encountered the man again. She then continued to the hole and pulled herself through it, keeping the hammer in hand.
When Katie first crawled out onto the dirty concrete floor on her hands and knees, she didn’t see Red standing just a few feet away, watching her, still holding onto the steel pole with it now balanced over one of his shoulders. Finally looking at him, she gasped and quickly crawled backwards, nearly falling back through the maintenance access hatch. She then scrambled to her feet, holding the claw hammer out somewhat so that she could easily strike him with it if he got close enough to her. She was sure that he would though. He simply smirked at her. He was done toying with her. He was done playing this cat and mouse game with her. It was time to finish her off before going to drink beer and smoke cigarettes.
He slowly approached her, admiring the fact that she was at least thinking about trying to fight back against him. Some of his victims didn’t resist at all. It was almost like they wanted him to murder them. She had armed herself with a weapon though. The question was would she actually use it though? Not that it really mattered if she did or didn’t. Either way, she was going to die very soon, within the next few minutes probably. As he got closer, he moved the pole outwards in front of him some away from his shoulder, waiting to see just how close he could get to her exactly before she would react.
When the tip of the pole was about an inch away from her chest, she began to pull the hammer back, mostly likely to swing it at the pole to knock it away from her. Before she could even get her arm pulled fully back though, he pulled his own weapon back and swung the steel pole right into her side, hitting her with enough force to crack or even break some of her ribs and sending her flying through the air, the claw hammer slipping from her hand it midair. She landed on the floor, her body sliding across the concrete some before coming to a stop near the railing on the side of the floor that overlooked the processing room, the hammer coming down several feet away from her, out of reach of her outstretched arms.
Slowly, Red turned around and walked towards the woman’s struggling body. He was impressed. She was already attempting to get back up to try and fight him again even though she no longer had a weapon and he was sure that the side he hit on her now ached, adding to the still stinging pain of the arm that he’d torn the hole in with the meat hook earlier. He would allow her to stand back up, if that was what she really wanted, and then he would once again beat her down with the pole.
Making it to her hands and knees, she rose to her feet, her legs shaking from fatigue, spinning around to face him when she was fully upright. Not hesitating at all, he swung the pole at her, this time aiming for her head. Somehow though, she managed to barely duck the pole. Surprised, but not deterred from attacking her, he instead held the steel pole like some kind of sword, pulled it back, and jabbed it into her gut, the sharp edges of the pole stabbing through her flesh and slicing through intestines before popping out of her back in a spray of blood, her eyes going wide. He then lifted her body into the air by the pole, blood beginning to ooze out of her mouth and already dripping off of the end the pole that had impaled her. Her head rolled around loosely, but she wasn’t dead, yet.
Moving towards the railing with her, he raised her over it so that her body dangled above the processing room floor far below. Then, he tilted the steel pole downs in her direction and her body slid off of it, falling through the air towards the floor, him watching the entire time. She didn’t scream at all as she plummeted downwards. He wasn’t even sure if she was conscious anymore. Her body hit the tile floor with a loud thud that reverberated throughout the large and otherwise silent building. He pulled the pole back up and tossed it aside. It clattered against the concrete when it landed in a dark spot of the second floor area, the one end of it covered in her blood. Turning, he then walked back to the stairs and went down them to return to the first floor.
As Red exited the stairwell a moment later, he was utterly shocked at what he saw: she was still alive and was on her front actually trying to drag herself across the floor by her arms, leaving behind a large streak of blood on the tile, most of it coming from her profusely bleeding abdomen. He noticed that a cut end of her intestines were slightly hanging out of the hole in her back, blood and other juices leaking from it. Even if she somehow managed to crawl back outside, get past the fence, and flag down a vehicle for help, the extensive damage done to her intestines would surely end up killing her in the end anyway. Him killing her now would actually be doing her a favor. She wouldn’t have to suffer the pain of her injuries caused by him. Not that he believed in helping any of his victims, but he didn’t feel like waiting around for her to finally expire.
Grabbing two meat hooks off of a group of the metal arms that hung from the ceiling and were usually attached to the meat hooks for dead animals to be hung from, he walked over to her body. She didn’t even seem to notice him. He could see that blood was now dripping out of her ears. Her skull must’ve been fractured from the high fall. Swinging one of meat hooks downwards, he ripped into one of her lower legs with it. She was too weak to scream, but she tried to turn her body over to look at him. He pulled her body backwards towards him though and, releasing his hold on the meat hook still in her leg, swung the other one at the back of her head, the pointed metal boring into her skull with a loud popping sound and continuing into her brain, finally killing her. Letting go of that meat hook as well, he stood straight up and stared down at her beaten and bloodied body. Blood dripped out of her leg and the back of her head now too, forcing its way around the meat hooks.
After a few moments, Red bent down and scooped her body up in his arms. He needed to place it in the basement of the slaughterhouse with the others before he left for the evening. He wouldn’t bother placing her in any room though, at least not yet. She was dead. He didn’t need to chain her up so that he could torture and kill her when she awoke. He walked back to the stairwell, going down the steps towards the basement. At a landing after one flight of steps, there was a heavy metal door in place. He set her body down and pulled the door open, revealing the haunting darkness of the basement area. He didn’t keep the generator for the lights on when he wasn’t working down there. The smell of rotting corpses immediately flooded out into the stairwell. Red didn’t mind the stench though. He was used to the stench after years of murdering people. Picking her body back up, he tossed it down into the basement, listening to crash down several metal steps before coming to a stop on the floor at the bottom of them. He then shut the door and proceeded to teleport away, leaving Katie’s body down in the basement to rot away with the three others…
